Navajo school students, it is believed, underachieve at school in terms of school attendance, dropout rates, and standardized performance tests. Among the many reasons proposed to explain the persistent school underachievement is that school culture is largely based on individualism, interpersonal competition, and other Western norms and values. These, it is argued, are an anathema to Native Americans. Hence, school culture may predispose many Navajo High School students to failure. To test this belief I constructed a model of school achievement motivation drawn from Western conceptualizations of achievement motivation described Navajo High School students achievement motivation. Using confirmatory factor analyses tests of equivalency were conducted that contrasted non-traditional Navajo students and females with near traditional Navajo students and males. Using structural equation modeling, I examined the relations of the language, location, and gender variables on the achievement goal factors, mediated by school measures of achievement, ability beliefs, social goals and achievement goals. I concluded that non-traditional and near traditional Navajo students are more similar than dissimilar. Clearly this raises concerns regarding the making of policy based on assumptions regarding presumed differences between non-traditional and near traditional Navajo High School students. I also concluded that, school achievement measures, the ability beliefs, and the social approval and social concern goals are important factors that influence the school achievement goals Navajo students emphasize. This has implications for the manner in which schools and teachers emphasize these factors in classrooms. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>The purpose of this study was to investigate what factors facilitate young ice hockey players’ continuation or dropout from sport. The study considers active players’, dropout player’s, coaches’ and parents’ perspectives. The main model that is used in the study is push/pull/anti-push/anti-pull framework (Fernandez, Stephan & Fouquereau, 2006). Other models used in the study are the developmental model (Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004) and the career transition model (Stambulova, 2003). The interviews were conducted with eight participants including three active players, one dropout player, two coaches, one parent to an active player and one parent to a dropout player. Semi-structured interview guides based on Athletes Retirement Decision Inventory (ARDI) (Fernandez et al, 2006) were used. The results showed that friends and fellowship in the team were the biggest factors that facilitate for a player to continue in ice-hockey. Underlying factors that can influence a player to dropout are high amount of hard training and a lack of organization in the club. Factors outside ice-hockey that can influence a player to dropout is his will to focus more on school and socializing with friends outside the sport.</p>

The Perkins IV Act was passed in 2006 to promote high school graduation for youth while introducing skills they need to be prepared for in the labor market. Yearly progress reports measure if CTE programs are successful in reducing dropout rates but fall short for a number of reasons. Using state-level data from the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Consortium (NASDCTEc) website for the 2009-2010 school year, state-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) database for 2009-2010, and dropout data from the U.S. Department of Education for the 2010-2011 school year to establish causality, my research seeks to address the extent to which Perkins IV funding reduces drop out rates at the state-level.

Longitudinal substance abuse research has often been compromised by high rates of attrition, thought to be the result of the lifestyle that often accompanies addiction. Several studies have used a standardized follow-up protocol to minimize attrition, however it is unclear whether this protocol is equally effective for participants struggling with varying levels of housing stability, support for sobriety, and substance abuse severity. The current study extends research supporting the effectiveness of this protocol by demonstrating the importance of two central aspects of the follow-up protocol: locator form completion and continual verification contacts. Results indicated that each additional piece of locator form information and verification contact significantly and independently increased the odds for completing a follow-up interview, and that these effects were not moderated by participant characteristics. Practical and theoretical implications for longitudinal substance abuse research are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate what factors facilitate young ice hockey players’ continuation or dropout from sport. The study considers active players’, dropout player’s, coaches’ and parents’ perspectives. The main model that is used in the study is push/pull/anti-push/anti-pull framework (Fernandez, Stephan &amp; Fouquereau, 2006). Other models used in the study are the developmental model (Wylleman &amp; Lavallee, 2004) and the career transition model (Stambulova, 2003). The interviews were conducted with eight participants including three active players, one dropout player, two coaches, one parent to an active player and one parent to a dropout player. Semi-structured interview guides based on Athletes Retirement Decision Inventory (ARDI) (Fernandez et al, 2006) were used. The results showed that friends and fellowship in the team were the biggest factors that facilitate for a player to continue in ice-hockey. Underlying factors that can influence a player to dropout are high amount of hard training and a lack of organization in the club. Factors outside ice-hockey that can influence a player to dropout is his will to focus more on school and socializing with friends outside the sport.

Low Dropout Regulators (LDOs) are extensively used in portable applications like mobile phones, PDAs and notebooks. These portable applications demand high power efficiency and low output voltage ripple. In addition to these, the radio circuits in these applications demand high power supply rejection (PSR). The output voltage of a conventional DC/DC converter (generally switched mode) has considerable ripple which feeds as input to these LDOs. And the challenge is to suppress these ripples for wide range of frequencies (for radio units) to provide clean supply. Enhanced buffer based compensation is proposed for the fully on-chip CMOS LDO which stabilizes the loop for different load conditions as well as improve the power supply rejection (PSR) until frequencies closer to open loop‟s unity-gain frequency. The stability and PSR are totally valid even for load capacitor varying from 0 to 100 pF. The proposed capacitor-less LDO is fabricated in On-Semi 0.5 μm fully CMOS process. Experimental results confirm a PSR of -30 dB till 420 KHz for the maximum load current of 50mA. The load transients of the chip shows transient glitches less than 90 mV independent of output capacitance.

Treatment dropout is a pervasive phenomenon that can preclude clients from benefiting fully from psychotherapy. Research efforts to understand the phenomenon in the preceding decades yielded few consistent results. The investigation of intrinsic client and therapist factors gave way to the more recent exploration of dynamic therapeutic process factors potentially influencing the dropout process. The availability of periodic treatment outcome measurement instruments has helped client-focused research explore the effects of treatment response as a process factor on aspects of psychotherapy. As an added benefit, real-time treatment response measures, such as the Outcome Questionnaire, offer the possibility of timely adjustment in clinical intervention to meet evolving client needs and enhance therapeutic treatment. This present study primarily sought to explore the relationship between psychotherapy dropout and treatment response patterns in terms of clients' psychosocial well-being as measured by the Outcome Questionnaire. The results suggest that treatment response patterns alone may not effectively predict dropout probabilities. Even so, the measure's sub-component assessing the client's subjective experience of symptom distress is shown to be more accurate in predicting dropout than the composite Outcome Questionnaire measure or any other component scale. This finding conceivably highlights the relative importance of symptom distress in the dropout process for the sampled clients. Those clients reporting higher levels of symptom distress appeared to be associated with greater probabilities of dropout termination. Additionally, prior research has recognized a likely mediated relationship between higher client educational attainment and lower dropout probabilities - a trend also observed in this study's sampled population. As one of its expressed intents, this study examined educational attainment's moderating effect on the relationship between aspects of client treatment response and dropout probabilities. While showing educational attainment to be a relevant factor in assessing dropout risks, the analysis results indicate that this client characteristic variable's interactional effect on the evaluated treatment response pattern feature is weak and statistically nonsignificant. The present study contributes to the research literature through providing some clarification to the importance of treatment response in the prediction of psychotherapy client dropout.

As the application of the consuming electronic products being used extensively, more and more functions can be worked on the same chip. Different function blocks may need different supply voltage. Considering of power consumption, circuit operated at low voltage and low current can achieve power reduction. Due to the energy crisis nowadays, plenty of products begin to focus on the green power. The main advantage of green power is saving power, which will not affect the efficiency. In addition, while the CMOS technology process evolves all the time, the stability of the operation voltage needs to be reduced by the advancement. Thus, the power management in a 3D graphic chip application is going to be introduced in this thesis. Utilizing the linear regulator to reduce the DC to 1.2, 1.1, 1.0, 0.9 and 0.8 V from 3.3V, and support a stable voltage for core circuits and I/O circuits. With the emphasis on the circuit efficiency is affected by power management, the level shifter to embed normal useful digital logic is also investigated. When using in the logic gates, it can reduce power consumption simultaneously. Therefore, it is important to adopt power IC in the future.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boise State University, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-34).

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.