published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

The Internet is growing in popularity as a health information sourceespecially among young adults. Interactivity has been pinpointed as the keyfeature that makes the Internet a potentially powerful health communicationtool. It is being heralded as a hybrid channel that has the capacity not only todisseminate health information to mass audiences both asynchronously andsynchronously, but also has the capacity to provide an engaging and stimulatingenvironment that can promote exploratory learning and active processing ofinformation. Despite these exciting claims, there is still a dearth of theoreticallydrivenempirical studies providing support for or against these assumptions. Westill know very little about how interactive technologies actually influenceinformation use, learning and motivational processes.A popular view is that the communicative efficacy of interactivetechnologies is influenced more with their match with comprehension processesand individual differences than with the level of interactivity itself. This studywas designed to tease out the potential effects of different levels of interactivityon comprehension and to determine whether individual differences in need forcognition would moderate such effects. About 441 young adults (ages 18-26)from the University of Kentucky participated in a 2 by 2 factorial experimentdesigned to test the effects of two levels of interactivity and two levels of needfor cognition on the comprehension of a health website on skin cancer.Results showed a significant main effect for level of interactivity oncomprehension scores holding the covariates, time on task and reading style,constant. Those exposed to the high interactivity site had significantly highercomprehension scores than those exposed to the low interactivity site. Therewas, however, no significant main effect for need for cognition, neither was therea significant interaction effect between level of interactivity and need forcognition on comprehension scores. Implications of these results and suggestionsfor future research are also discussed.

In this study the learning challenges faced by Black orphaned girl learners in the Xhariep District who head households, were explored. A literature study was undertaken to highlight the causes, magnitude and effects of child-headed households and to establish the learning challenges in general experienced by learners who head households. Important prerequisites for effective learning such as parental expectations, self-esteem, goal orientation, school attendance, positive attributions, motivation, need fulfilment, self-regulation, self-efficacy, cognitive development, parental involvement and socio-economic factors were explored. The literature review informed the conceptual framework of the study, and provided the framework for designing interview questions that were used to gain a deeper understanding of the learning challenges experienced by black girl learners who head households. By means of qualitative, phenomenological research, one-on-one interviews were conducted with a convenient sample of a purposively selected group of 10 Black girl learners at Secondary School Level who head households in the Xhariep District of the Free State Department of Education. The interpretation of the data revealed various learning challenges which are experienced by these learners due to their unfavourable circumstances as heads of households. The interview data revealed that the girls who take part in the study experience a lack of basic needs such as food and money and love and belonging. Furthermore, they experience emotional problems due to the death of their parents and the stressful situation of having the cope with numerous responsibilities at home and school. Due to the mentioned problems, the participants experience learning challenges related to irregular school attendance, difficulty in coping with and concentrating on their schoolwork, poor achievement and low self-esteem. According to the responses of the learners, it is difficult to be a child and a parent at the same time, having to account for all the responsibilities of being a learner and accomplishing the parental role. This study is concluded with recommendations to teachers on how to assist Black girl learners who head households in the Xhariep District. / MEd, Learning and Teaching, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2011

The importance of psychological needs for optimal mental and physical well-being has been well documented within the literature. However, there remains little consensus on the definition of basic psychological needs, on which needs are most important or fundamental, and on how to best assess basic needs in individuals. The purpose of this dissertation was to develop and validate a comprehensive measure of fundamental psychological needs and to examine its predictive utility for both mental and physical health. To fulfil these objectives, measure construction and validation studies were conducted in 2 separate undergraduate student samples (N = 226; N = 283). Participants completed online self-report measures of emotional and psychological symptoms, negative life events, personality characteristics, and psychological needs. Factor Analyses of the Psychological Needs Questionnaire (PNQ) revealed that needs can be classified in a three-level multi-factorial confirmatory model and that self-worth and relationship types of psychological needs can be further divided into several, second-level factors. Results also indicated that the PNQ is reliable and possesses good construct validity as well as predictive utility for numerous psychological and physical problems. In addition, psychological needs moderated the relationship between depressive personality characteristics and mood. Future studies should examine the proposed needs-based model in a longitudinal fashion, both in community and clinical samples. In addition to functioning as a global introduction and providing an overview of the relevant literature, Chapter 1 proposes a new model of psychological needs. Chapter 2 describes in further detail the importance of each need identified by the new model, with a particular emphasis on the consequences associated with having each need unfulfilled. Chapter 3, 4, and 5 represent three academic journal articles resulting from the data collected in the current project. Finally, chapter 6 provides a global discussion of the entire dissertation.

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Tidigare forskning har visat att kreativt matematiskt grundat resonerande (CMR) är en mer effektiv metod än algoritmiskt resonerande (AR) för att lära sig matematik. Kognitiv förmåga samt personlighet har också visats påverka inlärningen. Syftet med denna studie var att jämföra effekten av två olika matematiska inlärningsmetoder och undersöka deras förhållande till kognitiv förmåga samt personlighetsdraget Need for cognition (viljan att kognitivt elaborera). Två grupper bestående av  gymnasieelever (N = 132) fick öva med två olika metoder, AR eller CMR.. En vecka senare genomförde båda grupperna samma matematiktest. Resultaten visade att de som övat med CMR presterade signifikant bättre än de som övat med AR. Kognitiv förmåga predicerade resultat på matematiktestet i båda grupperna. Resultaten är linje med tidigare forskning. Need for cognition predicerade enbart testresultat i CMR-gruppen. / Previous studies have shown that creative mathematical grounded reasoning (CMR) is a more effective method than algoritmic reasoning (AR) when it comes to learning mathematics. Moreover cognitive ability and personality have been shown to impact on learning. The aim of the present study is to replicate previous studies where CMR, and the relation to cognitive ability, have been investigated, and to examine the impact of the personality trait Need for cognition (an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful thinking) for learning. Two groups of upper secondary school pupils (N = 132) practiced with two different methods, CMR and AR. One week later both groups took the same mathematical test. The results showed that the CMR-group performed significantly better than the AR-group. Cognitive ability predicted results on the mathematical test in both groups. The results is in line with previous studies. Need for cognition only predicted test results in the CMR-group.

This thesis deals with issues of upbringing children by their grandparents. It focuses on the fact, how the grandparents handle the upbringining of underage children. The theoretical part is divided into six main chapters. This part includes topics such as family, upbringing and the issue of foster care. The practical part deals with the research itself, as the main research method was chosen to interview and documents analysis. The interview was made with ten grandparents, who have underage child in their custody. The interview was focused on the financial security of families, cooperation with school, the possible educational problems of children at school or at home. Finally, there was made the evaluation based on available data.

Regardless of housing backlog and rapid urbanization created by population growth, the promotion of Self-Help Housing by authorities in charge of housing and policy documents1, there is a limited used of Self-Help Housing in South Africa. In pursuing the Self-Help Housing debate, this research argues that the failure to implement a widespread use of Self-Help Housing is not directly linked to weaknesses of Self-Help Housing. Instead, the difficult access to land for urban poor households, the ignorance from households of their right of having access to adequate shelter, the attitude of dependency evident in households, the paternalistic attitude from the government, the failure to constitute an active community and the failure to establish real priorities of poor people are the main causes of the limited use of Self-Help Housing in South Africa. Tembisa, one of the South Africa’s Townships, is used in this research for the purpose of illustrating the unsuccessful implementation of Self-Help Housing, adopted in South as People Housing Process (PHP).

While many disciplines have formally recognized and explicated the significance of "need" for their areas of study, such focus on this concept has not been undertaken theologically. Given the particular work of analytic philosophers on this concept, this project seeks to rigorously define need in ways informed by both analytic philosophy and biblical studies in order to contribute to theological anthropology. At root then, this project proposes that humans were intended for incompleteness-a need without lack. On this understanding, need is dispositional and inseparable from a creature's ontology. Further, this need was intended to be discovered in a context of abundance, an abundance of what would continually meet this need: God's personal presence. The realization of this incompletion would involve dynamic growth, such that the dispositional need to be in a relation of dependence upon the personal divine presence would require ongoing fulfillment. Thus, this need was not intrinsically an imperfection, but an incompleteness integral to what it means to be human. While being incomplete is typically understood negatively, on this view such need is indicative of what it means to be human. In order to make these claims, the aims of this thesis are thus threefold: first, to highlight the exegetical significance of divine presence for understanding anthropology-providing a sort of minimalism which any anthropology must include; second, to analytically appropriate that significance through the technical concept of fundamental need; and third, to apply this technical concept to the task of constructing a pneumatologically-Christocentric anthropology.

Trata-se de dissertação de mestrado onde se procura dialogar com os autores que elaboraram diversas teorias do desenvolvimento econômico bem como de desenvolvimento da ciência. Para tanto, toma-se o tema do desenvolvimento ferroviário tal como visto por um estudioso que lhe foi contemporâneo, Adolpho Augusto Pinto, como estudo de caso para aquele diálogo. / Most authors have written about economic and scientific development. In this essay, we dialogue with some of them to compress it better. For that, we take the railway development in estate of São Paulo, as it was seen by another author, Adolpho Augusto Pinto, as a theme for that discussion.