The problem this study addressed was the determination of those real estate tasks perceived to be most essential by successful residential salespersons (defined as the recipients for the past five years of the Salesperson of the Year award, (or, designation) and in some cases, Realtor Associate of the Year designation awarded annually by some local Texas boards of realtors). Out of 116 local boards of REALTORS listed in the 19781979 Texas membership directory, twenty-eight awarded the Salesperson of the Year designation. During the years 1973 through 1977, ninety-five individuals received the award. Of these sixty-nine returned usable questionnaires for the study. The final list of task statements ranked by the participants in the study were selected by a panel composed of Advisory Council members from post-secondary institutions offering real estate programs, and chairpersons of education committees from local boards of realtors.

This study reports the duties and activities of surveyed public school business education teachers and offers some training alternatives.

Questions of the dominance of cultures of whiteness are pre-imminent issues in historically white South African universities. Even when historically white universities – such as Rhodes University, the site of study for this thesis – have a predominantly black student body post 1994, there are still reports of students experiencing such institutions as alienating and excluding due to the privileging of whiteness. This thesis draws on the significant role played by discourse in how the world is constructed and reconstructed, to better understand how whiteness may continue to be produced and reproduced in everyday interactions at a historically white South African university, and how some students may feel less at home than others within such institutions. The thesis seeks to answer the following research question: what discursive strategies do Rhodes University students use to describe their raced experiences, and what role do these strategies play in either reinforcing and or challenging a culture of whiteness? The thesis engages with and is informed by literature on whiteness as constitutive of both social aspects and phenotypical essence. Drawing primarily from discourse analysis tools, and from interviews with Rhodes University students completed between 2014 and 2015, the thesis argues that whiteness is far from being a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Rather, there are gradations of whiteness where speakers draw upon whatever capital (social, phenotypical or a combination of both) to attain the best possible outcome for themselves. The thesis therefore takes seriously the idea that whiteness is a social construct which can, through socialisation be acquired, lost and, in some cases, decanted partially into other vessels. Whiteness, the thesis argues, is ever incomplete and subject to change as the context changes in order to ensure that it remains associated with privilege, opportunity and power. If whiteness is not limited to white bodies only, as suggested by both the data and literature review, then it must be studied in relation to blackness as well. The interactional, inter-relational and inter-racial construction and use of whiteness both methodologically and conceptually is one of the key contributions to the field of whiteness studies made by this thesis. This open-ended, permanent work in progress approach to whiteness can be the beginning of conversations about race that are not necessarily bounded by phenotype or essence – especially in South Africa, where race and a fixation of rigid social categories continue to be a central part of how South Africans navigate and understand the world around them.

The aim of this study was to contribute with further knowledge about children’s use of metaphors. In the study, 15 children at the age of two were interviewed during an experiment with condensation. In the interview the children were asked to describe the condensation to the interviewer. Most of the children were using subject relevant words, and a few were using pictorial descriptions. There was just one child that was using both pictorial descriptions and subject relevant words in their description of the condensation. The use of both categories can be interpreted as the child deliberately was using a metaphor and that shows, that even children as young as two years of age sometimes use metaphors. From a social constructivist perspective, language is the most important feature in acquiring knowledge, since knowledge is created in social interaction. Therefore the teachers in the younger years have an important role to guide and help children develop a nuanced language. Helping children understand, create and use metaphors in their interactions with others, and in their descriptions of phenomena, will help the children get a deeper sense of meaning in their quest to figure out the world around them. / Syftet med denna studie är att öka kunskapen kring de yngre barnens användande av metaforer i samtal kring experiment i naturvetenskaplig undervisning i förskolan. Ur ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv, är språket en nyckelfaktor i tillägnandet av ny kunskap, då kunskapen skapas i ett socialt sammanhang. Ur detta perspektiv är förskollärarnas roll som guider till ett nyanserat språk avgörande. När förskollärarna stöttar barnen till att inte bara förstå metaforer, utan även skapa egna och använda sig av dem i sina beskrivningar, hjälper de också barnen till att få en djupare förståelse för sin omgivning. I ett experiment med kondens intervjuades 15 barn i tvåårsåldern. De ombads beskriva sina observationer under experimentet för intervjuaren. De flesta barnen använde sig av ämnesrelevanta ord, och några använde sig av bildlika beskrivningar. Endast ett barn använde sig av både bildlika beskrivningar och ämnesrelevanta ord i sina beskrivningar av kondensen. Att barnet använde sig av båda kategorierna kan tolkas som att barnet medvetet använde sig av en metafor, vilket medför ett resultat som tyder på att det förekommer att även så unga barn, som barn i två års ålder använder sig av metaforer.

Nest site selection and nesting success of plains sharp-tailed grouse were examined on the Grand River National Grassland in South Dakota during the nesting season from 2009-2012. We used conditional logistic regression to assess vegetation production, ecological site description, and landscape position on nest site selection. Two competing models regarding nest site selection: top model consisted of non-native forbs and native cool-season grasses, second best model included all grass and forb. Nine ESDs were used for nesting; loamy and clayey ecological sites most frequently used and produced the highest standing crop. Most frequent observed nest site State were Annual/Pioneer Perennial and Introduced and Invaded Grass. Top model for nest daily survival rates included litter, second-best model included ESD; second-best model showed negative effect for nests initiated in thin claypan, limy backslope, and sandy ecological sites. Based on daily survival estimate and 23-day incubation period, nests were 59% successful.

In this study, we introduce several approaches to analyze large volumes of business descriptions by applying machine learning clustering and classification algorithms. The goal is to efficiently classify these descriptions, reducing the search scope and allowing for better business insights and decision-making processes. By using unlabeled business description data, we apply Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC), K-means, and Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithms. Various preprocessing techniques, parameters and cluster numbers are employed for each method, aiming to maximize the number of overlapping and get the right similarity scores within the resulting clusters. The best number of overlapping are obtained using AHC, followed by K-means and DBSCAN, based on the implemented evaluation metrics. The conclusions drawn from this project have the potential to improve and contribute to the development of automated systems for business description analysis. Furthermore, this research opens the way for further exploration and enhancements in the application of machine learning techniques to business analytics.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Nearly every element of human life has a strong narrative component, from music (Kramer, 1991, McClary, 1997) to psychology (McAdams, 2008; Sarbin, 1986) to museums (Austin, 2010) and beyond. In the marketing of products, particularly products online, narratives may be a severely underutilized resource. As the global pandemic has shifted consumption increasingly online (Ecola et al., 2020, Melton, 2020), marketers are challenged to find new ways to make their product appealing to consumers without the ability of physical experiences that help connect a consumer to a product (Thaler, 1980; Peck and Shu, 2009). One way in which product attachment and differentiation may be generated is through product-level narratives. The influence of narratives at a product level, particularly in online product descriptions, has yet to be explored. In this dissertation, I use the theoretical framework of Narrative Transportation Theory to examine the impact of narrative-based product descriptions on consumers’ responses to products. Specifically, I show that product-level narratives can positively influence consumer’s attitudes toward a product and can even create the impression that a product is customized to an individual. Through these effects, I show that product-level narratives may increase consumers’ attachment to products and their willingness to pay a premium price for these products. I also demonstrate that product-level narratives may be used to create perceptions of product personality types. In particular, I look at whether the personality of the main character in a narrative may be imprinted onto the product in the narrative. Furthermore, I seek to extend the bounds of Narrative Transportation Theory by examining product names and images that are evocative of narrative thought. I show that while product names may not be enough to stimulate consumer transportation among readers, product images may stimulate consumer transportation into a narrative and influence consumers’ willingness to pay a premium price for a product through the same mechanisms as a textual narrative product description. Lastly, implications for theory and practice are discussed.

No description available.

Previous usability evaluation method (UEM) comparison studies have noted an evaluator effect on problem detection in heuristic evaluation, with evaluators differing in problems found and problem severity judgments. There have been few studies of the evaluator effect in usability testing (UT), task-based testing with end-users. UEM comparison studies focus on counting usability problems detected, but we also need to assess the content of usability problem descriptions (UPDs) to more fully measure evaluation effectiveness. The goals of this research were to develop UPD guidelines, explore the evaluator effect in UT, and evaluate the usefulness of the guidelines for grading UPD content. Ten guidelines for writing UPDs were developed by consulting usability practitioners through two questionnaires and a card sort. These guidelines are (briefly): be clear and avoid jargon, describe problem severity, provide backing data, describe problem causes, describe user actions, provide a solution, consider politics and diplomacy, be professional and scientific, describe your methodology, and help the reader sympathize with the user. A fourth study compared usability reports collected from 44 evaluators, both practitioners and graduate students, watching the same 10-minute UT session recording. Three judges measured problem detection for each evaluator and graded the reports for following 6 of the UPD guidelines. There was support for existence of an evaluator effect, even when watching pre-recorded sessions, with low to moderate individual thoroughness of problem detection across all/severe problems (22%/34%), reliability of problem detection (37%/50%) and reliability of severity judgments (57% for severe ratings). Practitioners received higher grades averaged across the 6 guidelines than students did, suggesting that the guidelines may be useful for grading reports. The grades for the guidelines were not correlated with thoroughness, suggesting that the guideline grades complement measures of problem detection. A simulation of evaluators working in groups found a 34% increase in severe problems found by adding a second evaluator. The simulation also found that thoroughness of individual evaluators would have been overestimated if the study had included a small number of evaluators. The final recommendations are to use multiple evaluators in UT, and to assess both problem detection and description when measuring evaluation effectiveness. / Ph. D.