The purpose of this project was to determine if there was a relationship between the amount of revenue a minor league team makes and the size of the target market in which the team is located. A secondary purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of the inQsit program, an Internet-based testing program developed at Ball State University, as a means of gathering and analyzing data. Only minor league baseball teams that could be reached via e-mail addresses were involved in this study. Subjects (n=149) were e-mailed a cover letter with an embedded URL which took them to the inQsit web site. While a higher return rate was anticipated using this electronic media, the 11% participation rate should give an accurate picture of minor league baseball teams, the amount of revenue they earned in a year, the types of revenue they earned in a year, and the size of the market in which they are located. However, based on the information collected from the minor league teams, the sample size was not large enough to produce statistically significant results, although some trends were identified, suggesting that target market size may have a positive affect on minor league baseball revenue. / School of Physical Education

In recent years Major League Baseball (MLB) has seen a trend of long term multimillion dollar contracts. The purpose of this study was to examine Major League Baseball player’s performance before and after signing a free-agent contract. This research helps to explain the relationship between reward and performance in professional baseball players. Subjects include 65 major league baseball players that were free agents in the years of 2005 and 2006. The group of 65 players consisted of 34 position players and 31 pitchers. The individual statistical analysis of position players’ batting average, homeruns, and runs batted in were used. The statistics that were analyzed for the pitchers were earned run average, innings pitched, strikeouts, and wins and losses. The results that showed significance was batting average, homeruns, runs batted in, and earned run average. The results of this study can be a useful tool for the front office of Major League Baseball teams. / School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

Typescript. / Bibliography: leaves 175-180. / Photocopy. / Microfilm. / xii, 180 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-105). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Vita. Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.J.)--Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This dissertation focuses on three different aspects of physician pricing. The first is the use of the assumption in formal modeling that physicians have the same type of costs for different types of patients. The second aspect of physician pricing investigated here is physicians’ ability to change the name of a service in response to a fee cap without actually changing the price of the service. The third aspect investigated in this dissertation is the effect of posting physician prices on patient-initiated demand for physician services. All three of these aspects have potential implications for the discussion on health care reform. In Chapter One, I examine physician price response to fee ceilings set by third party payers. I use the realistic assumptions that physician’s have the same cost function for all their patients and physicians have increasing marginal cost. Using these assumptions, I find that, in theory, a third party payer that uses fixed fees benefits from including every physician in the community. In chapter two, I use the medical claims data from a Fortune 500 firm (Firm) to evaluate physician pricing response to the Firm’s institution of fee ceilings. I find that physicians who are constrained by the fee ceiling systematically record a more expensive office visit code than physicians who were not constrained by the fee ceiling. This result has implications for private insurers as well as government programs that fix physician fees. In chapter three I use a model of patient-initiated demand under uncertainty to examine the effect of posting physician prices on the demand for physician services. I find that requiring physicians with monopoly power to post all or some of their prices has no effect on the total patient cost associated with physician consultations, including the cost of untreated disease. If physicians compete in a Bertrand fashion, then requiring a physician to post the prices of all types of consultations results in lower total patient cost than posting only some prices. / Ph. D.

The purposes of this descriptive investigation were (l) to construct a reliable instrument for assessing attitudes toward teaching of high school teachers, and (2) to determine if there was a difference in attitudes toward teaching between those high school teachers who were and those who were not involved in a career ladder/merit pay pilot program. Frederick Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory served as the theoretical basis for the investigation. Analysis of work motivation indicates that motivation factors may be classified in two categories, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation emanates from needs within the individual. Intrinsic motivators include the following: achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement and growth possibilities. Extrinsic motivators include the following: organizational policies, salary, working conditions, status, job security, effects on personal life, and interpersonal relations. / Ed. D.

The efficacy of five different types of interventions for increasing the number of participants and the quantity of recyclables collected in a corporate-based recycling program were compared. Employees at a corporate research center (N=443) associated with a large state university were asked to bring aluminum cans, glass, and newspaper from home to bins located at work. In addition, in order to track individual employee's recycling behavior, they were asked to write identifying information on each bag of recyclables (i.e., last 4 digits of social security number or a computer identification name). Interventions included appeal messages, two kinds of reciprocity interventions, goals plus feedback, and raffles. A quasi-experimental, modified multiple baseline design was used. More specifically, interventions were given to one building first, and then after a delay, they were administered to the other three buildings simultaneously. Program and intervention information were disseminated by either traditional office memos, electronic mail, or phone mail. Results indicated that only a small percentage of employees participated in the program, and raffles were the only interventions that reliably increased the number of participants and quantity of recyclables. In the hope of being able to predict which employees would participate in the recycling program, prior to the interventions, employees were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing attitudes towards recycling and person variables. More specifically, employees' optimism, environmental concern, beliefs regarding their ability to control environmental outcomes (i.e., “environmental locus of control"), and psychological reactance were assessed. Mean scores on the environmental concern and environmental locus of control scales indicated that employees were quite concerned about the environment and believed that their behavior could have a positive impact on it. Although psychological reactance scores reliably depended on employees’ recycling status (i.e., whether they were non-participants in the recycling program, infrequent participants, or frequent participants), neither it nor any of the other variables could accurately differentiate participants from non-participants in the program. Reasons for the low participation rates and the discrepancy between person variables and participation were discussed, and suggestions for improving future research in this area were made. / Ph. D.