E-learning has grown to such an extent that paper-based testing is being replaced by computer-based testing otherwise known as e-exams. Because these e-exams can be delivered outside of the traditional proctored environment, additional authentication measures must be employed in order to offer similar authentication assurance as found in proctored, paper-based testing. This dissertation addressed the need for valid authentication in e-learning systems, in e-examinations in particular, and especially in professional certification e-examinations. Furthermore, this dissertation proposed a more robust method for learner authentication during e-examination taking. Finally, this dissertation extended e-learning research by comparing e-examination scores and durations of three separate groups of exam takers using different authentication methods: Online Using Username/Password (OLUP), In-Testing Center (ITC), and Online with Multibiometrics (OLMB) to better understand the role as well as the possible effect of continuous and dynamic multibiometric authentication on professional certification e-examination scores and durations. The sample used in this study was based on participants who were all professional members of a technology professional certification organization. The methodology used to collect data was a posttest only, multiple, non-equivalent groups quasi-experiment, where age, gender, and Information Technology Proficiency (ITP) were also recorded. The analyses performed in this study included pre-analysis data screening, reliability analyses for each instrument used, and the main analysis to address each hypothesis. Group affiliation, i.e. type of authentication methods, was found to have no significant effect on differences among exam scores and durations. While there was a clear path of increased mean e-examination score as authentication method was relaxed, it was evident from the analysis that these were not significant differences. Age was found to have a significant effect on exam scores where younger participants were found to have higher exam scores and lower exam durations than older participants. Gender was not found to have a significant effect on exam scores nor durations. ITP was found to have a significant effect on exam scores and durations where greater scores with the ITP instrument indicated greater exam scores and lower exam durations. This study's results can help organizations better understand the role, possible effect, and potential application of continuous and dynamic multibiometric authentication as a justifiable approach when compared with the more common authentication approach of User Identifier (UID) and password, both in professional certification e-examinations as well as in an online environment.

This dissertation is centrally concerned with exploring obituaries as repositories of values. Obituaries are a publicly-available natural language source that are variably written for members of communities that are wide (nation-level) and narrow (city-level, or at the level of specific groups therein). Because they are explicitly summative, limited in size, and written for consumption by a public audience, obituaries may be expected to express concisely the aspects of their subjects' lives that the authors (often family members living in the same communities) found most salient or worthy of featuring. 140,599 obituaries nested in 832 newspapers from across the USA were scraped with permission from *Legacy.com,* an obituaries publisher. Obituaries were coded for the age at death and gender (female/male) of the deceased using automated algorithms. For each publishing newspaper, county-level median income, educational achievement (operationalized as percent of the population with a Bachelor's degree or higher), and race and ethnicity were averaged across counties, weighting by population size. A Neo4J graph database was constructed using WordNet and the University of South Florida Free Association Norms datasets. Each word in each obituary in the corpus was lemmatized. The shortest path through the WordNet graph from each lemma to 30 Schwartz value prototype words published by Bardi, Calogero, and Mullen (2008) was then recorded. From these path lengths, a new measure, "word-by-hop," was calculated for each Schwartz value to reflect the relative lexical distance between each obituary and that Schwartz value. Of the Schwartz values, Power, Conformity, and Security were most indicated in the corpus, while Universalism, Hedonism, and Stimulation were least indicated. A series of nine two-level regression models suggested that, across Schwartz values, newspaper community accounted for the greatest amount of word-by-hop variability in the corpus. The best-fitting model indicated a small, negative effect of female status across Schwartz values. Unexpectedly, Hedonism and Conformity, which had conceptually opposite prototype words, were highly correlated, possibly indicating that obituary authors "compensate" for describing the deceased in a hedonistic way by concurrently emphasizing restraint. Future research could usefully further expand word-by-hop and incorporate individual-level covariates that match the newspaper-level covariates used here.

L'objectif général de notre thèse est d'étudier les conséquences de l'anémie chez la femme enceinte sur le nouveau-né à l'accouchement et sur le nourrisson jusqu'à 18 mois de vie au sud du Bénin. Dans un premier temps, nous avons montré que l'anémie maternelle n'avait aucun impact ni sur le faible poids de naissance ni sur la prématurité. Par contre les mères anémiées donnaient deux fois plus souvent naissance à des nouveau-nés anémiés. Nos analyses par un modèle mixte nous ont permis de montrer que l'anémie maternelle n'avait aucun impact sur l'évolution du taux d'hémoglobine. Une analyse par classes latentes a mis en évidence deux trajectoires pour l'évolution du taux d'hémoglobine des nourrissons et a permis de mettre en évidence un impact négatif de l'anémie du nouveau-né ainsi que de l'infection placentaire palustre sur cette évolution du taux d'hémoglobine. Enfin, cette analyse a montré le rôle prédictif de l'anémie maternelle sur l'appartenance à la trajectoire la plus basse. Dans un second temps nous nous sommes intéressés à l'impact de l'anémie maternelle sur le développement psychomoteur du nourrisson à 12 mois de vie. Pour l'évaluation du développement psychomoteur nous avons utilisé le Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). Il nous a paru important d'évaluer l'utilisation de cet outil introduit puis adapté pour la 1ère fois au Bénin. Nous avons montré que le MSEL était associé à quelques facteurs de risque connus de mauvais développement de l'enfant à savoir son état nutritionnel, sa relation avec l'environnement familial, le sexe féminin, le statut socio économique de la famille, le quotient intellectuel ainsi que la scolarisation de la mère

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