This study explores online dating by studying the relationship between self-disclosure and self-efficacy in an online dating environment. This research study examines the way self-disclosure, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and gender interrelate in an online dating environment. This study includes, but is not limited to, discussion of the type of correlation between self-efficacy and self-esteem, the relationship between self-disclosure and self-efficacy, and the differences between men's and women's self-disclosure in an online dating environment. From conducting this study, the researcher was able to determine that there is a statistically significant relationship between gender and how it relates to self-disclosure and self-efficacy. With the results from the study, the understanding of how different variables relate to online dating and romantic relationships has been taken one step further as it helps fill the gap in the literature.

This thesis purports to explore and describe the types of information that would be obtainable to the anthropological researcher if he used the minimally structured small group (MDMS-SG) technique with members of a selected ethnic group. The approach was tried on Japanese Portland State University students and also on Saudi Arab Portland State University students for six sessions each. They were told that a graduate anthropology student wanted to get to know them and learn what they thought she should know about their countries. The sessions were taped and notes written after each session. This corpus of material was analyzed using the closed corpus technique which necessitates use of the entire corpus and only the corpus. Post-categorization was used, it being especially appropriate in pilot studies and/or in original exploratory research where the emphasis is on induction rather than deduction. The verbal and other behavioral phenomena exhibited by the two “cultural” groups were compared and an attempt made to isolate that which was distinctively Arab or Japanese. Presence-absence counts and the relative frequency with which behavioral items were exhibited determined whether or not an item was differentiating. Those differences occurred in six major areas which included responses to the constants of the total situation, patterns of organization, paralinguistic phenomena exhibited, interaction patterns displayed, emotions expressed and finally the subject matter discussed. These then are areas for or aspects about which the anthropological investigator can expect to obtain data if he uses the MDMS-SG with “cultural” groups. These differences were then compared with information gathered about Arab and Japanese cultures from other sources. The working hypothesis that the Arab group would spontaneously exhibit significant behavioral differences from the Japanese group under MDMS-SG conditions and that these differences would be related to the ethnic background of that larger population of which they are a part was utilized. The two groups were substantially different and these differences were in the direction of the differences between the two ethnic groups from which they come. Therefore the assumption, while not proved, was substantially strengthened. In the Arab and Japanese groups, it was found that the group reactions to the total situation—the physical surroundings, the investigator, the fact of meeting at all, etc.- -almost all coincided with the written literature. It would seem therefore that the MDMS-SG could be used prior to field work with an unstudied group. Organizational patterns are ideally and easily studied through the use of the MDMS-SG. It could be a part of every ethnology besides having practical significance (i.e. in facilitating international communication) but is only rarely studied now.

The purpose of this study was to compare receptive language, expressive language, and socialization skills of preschool children who have a history of expressive language delay (ELD) with age mates who have a history of normal language development.

Cooperative learning has been one of the most widely used instructional practices around the world since the early 1980's. Small learning groups have been in existence since the beginning of the human race. These groups have grown in their variance and complexity overtime. Classrooms are getting more diverse every year and instructors need a way to take advantage of this diversity to improve learning. The purpose of this study was to see if heterogeneous cooperative learning groups based on student achievement can be used as a differentiated instructional strategy to increase students' ability to demonstrate knowledge of science concepts and ability to do engineering design. This study includes two different groups made up of two different middle school science classrooms of 25-30 students. These students were given an engineering design problem to solve within cooperative learning groups. One class was put into heterogeneous cooperative learning groups based on student's pre-test scores. The other class was grouped based on random assignment. The study measured the difference between each class's pre-post gains, student's responses to a group interaction form and interview questions addressing their perceptions of the makeup of their groups. The findings of the study were that there was no significant difference between learning gains for the treatment and comparison groups. There was a significant difference between the treatment and comparison groups in student perceptions of their group's ability to stay on task and manage their time efficiently. Both the comparison and treatment groups had a positive perception of the composition of their cooperative learning groups.

When children grow up in a Christian home they learn fidelity is essential in a relationship. The inconsistency of biblical messages and parental infidelity is identity altering for children. In this study I use autoethnography to explore how my parents’ infidelity collided with religious teachings to shape my identity and influence my interpersonal relationships. I also use narrative interviewing to identity the ways my siblings were affected by the same experience and how such discrepancies in our home influenced their identities. The theory of narrative inheritance (Goodall, 2005) serves to be a source of empowerment as well as a contributing factor to definitions of infidelity. Familial roles are illuminated as I explore how my siblings and I negotiated cognitive dissonance that resulted from the conflicting narratives of Christianity and parental infidelity.

This study analyzes oral recipe sharing practices as they emerge in Southern cooking. Researcher and participants were immersed in cooking recipes together in a qualitative research method that combined interactive interviewing with sensory ethnography. Findings revealed a category of oral recipe sharing practices that is missing from the literature: cooking lessons. This study identified cooking lessons as a distinct recipe sharing practice and worked to further operationalize and concretize such practices in hopes of spurring further research.

This study examines levels of politeness in real time instructor responses to classroom incivility behaviors. Student participants were randomly assigned to view a video of an instructor responding to either passive or active student incivility behaviors in various ways. The responses were based on politeness theory conceptualizations of avoidance, mid-level politeness, or bald on record responses. A 2 (i.e., passive, active student incivility) x 3 (i.e., avoidance, mid-level, or bald on record instructor response) experimental design formed six conditions. High quality video simulations of a classroom environment, portraying one of the six conditions, were created to specifically address these dimensions. Participants took a web based survey and evaluated the instructor with respect to effectiveness, credibility, and impact on student motivation. Results demonstrate students had most positive responses to bald on record instructor responses to active student incivility. When responding to passive student incivility, a less harsh response (i.e., avoidance, mid-level), while not significantly different from a bald on record response, indicate better outcomes. Therefore, in accordance with politeness theory, instructors should consider the level of imposition created by uncivil student behavior when calibrating responses, as student perceptions can be greatly affected. Theoretical and practical considerations as well as avenues for future research are presented.

Modern companies are increasingly relying on groups of individuals to reach organizational goals and objectives, however many organizations struggle to cultivate optimal teams that can maximize performance. Fortunately, existing research has established that group personality composition (GPC), across five dimensions of personality, is a promising indicator of team effectiveness. Additionally, recent advances in technology have enabled groups of humans to form real-time, closed-loop systems that are modeled after natural swarms, like flocks of birds and colonies of bees. These Artificial Swarm Intelligences (ASI) have been shown to amplify performance in a wide range of tasks, from forecasting financial markets to prioritizing conflicting objectives. The present research examines the effects of group personality composition on team performance and investigates the impact of measuring GPC through ASI systems. 541 participants, across 111 groups, were administered a set of well-accepted and vetted psychometric assessments to capture the personality configurations and social sensitivities of teams. While group-level personality averages explained 10% of the variance in team performance, when group personality composition was measured through human swarms, it was able to explain 29% of the variance, representing a 19% amplification in predictive capacity. Finally, a series of machine learning models were applied and trained to predict group effectiveness. Multivariate Linear Regression and Logistic Regression achieved the highest performance exhibiting 0.19 mean squared error and 81.8% classification accuracy.

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The Internet of Things has become the next big step of a general Internetevolution, and conveys the assurance of security as one of the biggest challenge.In particular, use cases and application scenarios that adopt groupcommunication schemes need to be properly secured, in order to protect themessage exchange among group members from a number of security attacks.A typical way to achieve secure group communication relies on the adoptionof a symmetric group key shared among all the group members. This in turnrequires to rely on a group key management scheme, which is responsible forrevoking and renewing the group key when nodes join or leave the group.Due to the resource-constrained nature of typical IoT devices, the adoptedgroup key management scheme should be ecient and highly scalable withthe group size.This thesis project has been conducted in collaboration with SICS SwedishICT, a research institute with focus on applied computer science. We haveimplemented an ecient group key management protocol initially proposedand designed by SICS, considering the Contiki operating system and resourceconstrainedIoT platforms. We have also experimentally evaluated the protocolin terms of storage overhead, communication overhead, energy consumptionand total required rekeying time. / Internet of Things har blivit nästa stora steg i en generell utveckling avInternet, där en av de största utmaningarna är att garantera säkerhet.Speciellt användningsfall och applikationsscenarion som använder metoderför gruppkommunikation måste vara ordentligt säkrade, för att kunna skyddautbyte av meddelanden mellan gruppens medlemmar från ett antal attackscenarion.Ett vanligt sätt att uppnå säker gruppkommunikation baseras på användningav en symmetrisk gruppnyckel som delas av alla gruppens medlemmar.Detta i sin tur gör det nödvändigt att förlita sig på ett system för hanteringav gruppnycklar, vilket är ansvarigt för återkallning och förnyelse av nycklarnär noder går med i eller lämnar gruppen.På grund av att typiska IoT enheter har begränsade resurser måste metodensom används för hantering av gruppnycklar vara eektiv och mycketskalbar med gruppstorleken.Denna masteruppsats har utförts i samarbetet med SICS Swedish ICT,ett forskningsinstitut med fokus på applicerad datavetenskap. Vi har implementeratett eektiv protokoll för hantering av gruppnycklar ursprungligenframtaget och designat av SICS, med operativsystemet Contiki och resursbegränsade IoT-plattformar i åtanke. Vi har också experimentellt utvärderatprotokollet med hänsyn till overhead för datalagring, overhead för kommunikation,energikonsumtion och den totala tiden som krävs för förnyelse avnycklar.