In 1999, Indiana's General Assembly enacted law requiring every Indiana school"% corporation to designate a Safety Specialist. A training and certification program was established which required the designated Safety Specialist to attend six days of training in 1999-2000, and to attend subsequent annual training.In this study, a survey was conducted among the 294 Safety Specialists from the first group of trainees to determine the impact the Safety Specialist program has had in Indiana school corporations in such areas as school climate, student behavior, administrator/teacher behavior, safety awareness, and the implementation of "best practice" programs. Variables such as school size, location, occupation of the Safety Specialist, number of buildings in the corporation, and full-time vs. part-time status of the Safety Specialist, were considered. The survey return rate was 73%.Data were analyzed using ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and a t-test. ANOVA indicated that school size, location, and the occupation of the Safety Specialist were significant (F scores greater than 1.0) in determining changes in overall safety awareness and "best practice."School corporations with more than 2000 students showed greater safety awareness and implemented "best practice" programs more often than corporations with fewer than 2000 students; urban schools indicated higher levels of safety awareness and utilized "best practice" programs more often than suburban or rural schools; schools where the Safety Specialist is the superintendent, assistant superintendent, or "other" had "best practice" programs in place and had more safety awareness than schools where the Safety Specialist was the principal, assistant principal, or teacher.Pearson correlation testing indicated little correlation between the number of school buildings and any of the research topics. However, a positive correlation of .806 did exist between school climate and administrator/teacher behavior.The t-test revealed no differences in any category between part-time and full-time Safety Specialists; mean scores in each category were similar.A follow-up case study conducted in five schools of varying size and location revealed results similar to the survey: Safety Specialists in the majority of schools considered the training to have, been worthwhile, its overall impact positive, and their schools to be safer than ever before. / Department of Educational Leadership

This thesis examines attempts to improve the efficiency of local authority bureaucracies during the 1980's. A number of significant policy initiatives such as the establishment of the Audit Commission, the pressure for local authorities to implement systems of performance measurement and the introduction of performance related pay schemes reflect this quest for improved value for money. The thesis reviews existing economic theories of bureaucracy which show how inefficiency arises in the public sector. Two major hypotheses within this literature are identified; bureaus are inefficient because it is in the interests of bureaucrats either to produce too much output (allocative inefficiency) and/or to produce output at above minimum cost (X-inefficiency). The policy prescriptions arising from this theoretical framework suggest that strategies to reduce inefficiency must aim to change bureaucratic behaviour. One strategy seeks to induce bureaucrats to produce efficiently, whilst the other seeks to provide sponsors with the necessary information on costs to enable them to force bureaucrats to produce efficiently. Performance related pay schemes, which aim to change bureaucratic behaviour, are concerned with eliminating labour X-inefficiency. Our research suggests that the diversity of current schemes reflects a lack of consensus over the definition of indicators of employee performance. The general result of the introduction of performance related pay has been increased salaries for senior officers. Our assessment of the work of the Audit Commission in the area of value for money audits and our empirical research on the impact of performance measurement in local authorities indicates that a wealth of information has been generated in the form of performance indicators (PIs). However, the use of this information as a control device is limited as these indicators are clearly biased towards measuring X-inefficiency as distinct from allocative efficiency.

Thesis (MBus)--University of South Australia, 2000

This study investigated the effectiveness of utilizing acoustic measures as an objective tool in monitoring speech errors and providing visual feedback to enhance speech training and aural rehabilitation of children with hearing impairment. The first part of the study included a comprehensive description of the acoustic characteristics related to the speech deficits of a hearing impaired child. Results of a series of t-tests performed on the experimental measures showed that vowel length and the loci of formant frequencies were most relevant in differentiating between correctly and incorrectly produced vowels, while voice onset time along with measures of Moment 1 (mean) and Moment 3 (skewness) obtained from speech moment analysis, were related to consonant accuracy. These findings, especially the finding of an abnormal sound frequency distribution shown in the hearing impaired child's consonant production, suggest a link between perceptual deficits and speech production errors and provide clues to the type of compensatory feedback needed for aural rehabilitation. The second part of the study involved a multiple baseline design across behaviours with replication across three hearing impaired children to assess the efficacy of treatment with acoustic signals as visual feedback. Participants' speech articulations following traditional speech training and training using spectrographic and RMS displays as visual feedback (referred to as 'visual treatment') were compared, with traditional non-visual treatment followed by visual treatment on one or two targets in a time-staggered fashion. Although no statistically significant difference on the experimental measures was found between the two training approaches based on perceptual assessment, some objective acoustic measures revealed more subtle changes toward normal speech patterns with visual treatment as compared to a traditional approach. Further acoustic-perceptual studies with a larger sample size and longer experimental period are needed to better understand the general and long-term effectiveness of visual treatment.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 22).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-89).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-137). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Alberta, 2010. / "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Measurement, Evaluation and Cognition, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta." Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on May 19, 2010) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, November 2008.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on July 29, 2010). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematics, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.