The purpose of this study was to evaluate observed parenting practices among first-generation Spanish-speaking Latinos living in Utah. Participants included 50 families with a child between the ages of 4 and 9. Parents and their child engaged in a behavioral observational task that was coded for parenting dimensions and styles to determine if they predict child outcomes among Latino families. Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist to assess for behavioral problems. Observations were coded using the Parenting Scale, developed specifically for this study. In general, parents received high ratings on warmth and demandingness, and lower ratings on autonomy granting. Parenting dimensions significantly predicted internalizing problems. Findings lll also suggested that autonomy granting exerted an influence on total behavioral problems. The application of parenting style categories to Latino parents was not useful. Implications for prevention and intervention methods for Latino families were discussed as well as directions for future research .

In the first chapter, I investigate reputational effects of the disclosure of negative information in a market affected by adverse selection. A series of recent discoveries has increased consumer concern over the presence of counterfeits in the market for fine and rare wine. For the thousands of bottles sold at auction each year, house reputation is used as a quality assurance mechanism to signal product authenticity. Using sales data from 2005-2015 for the ten largest auction houses, I study consumer reaction following two recent disclosures of an auction house having offered or sold counterfeit wine. My identification strategy to examine reputation involves a series of triple difference regressions analyzing equilibrium prices and quantities. I discover one house experienced no losses following a 2008 incident involving 107 counterfeit bottles. However, three houses associated with a 2012 incident involving thousands of bottles were found to have suffered significant reputation losses following the incident. These losses are demonstrated by a 3-8% decrease in equilibrium sales prices and a 6-9% decrease in sales quantities in the year following the disclosure. The second chapter of my dissertation involves the transitivity of stated preferences. Revealed preference theory states that, in order for an individual’s preferences to be consistent with utility maximization, they must satisfy the principle of transitivity. Any deviations from this principle result in a logically inconsistent response pattern. I develop a new framework to study the rationality of stated preferences, accounting for both the number and severity of non-transitive responses an individual makes. I implement this method using a nationally representative survey of 3,234 respondents from the U.S. general population and discover that more than 52% of the population exhibit non-transitive preferences. In addition to measuring the number and severity of non-transitive preferences exhibited by each respondent, another aim of this manuscript is to evaluate the relationship between response transitivity and the individual outcomes of each respondent under the premise that high quality decisions are the result of greater decision-making ability. After controlling for demographic characteristics including age, education, race, gender, ethnicity, and work status, non-transitive patterns are correlated with lower incomes and poorer health.

The buffering effect of social support against a range of stress-related health outcomes has been well-documented in a variety of research areas; however, no previous work has examined the applicability of this model to bariatric surgery outcomes. Additionally, based on previous evidence and relevant theoretical work, the stress-buffering effect of social support may show important gender differences. The current study examined stress, depression, social support, and patient gender as predictors of curvilinear weight loss trajectories during the first year following surgery. Data were collected using retrospective chart review. The buffering effects of three types of support were explored using growth curve modeling: structural, emotional, and functional support. On average, patients lost 27% of their total body weight between baseline and the 12 month follow up. Additionally, the current study found partial support for the stress-buffering model of social support among bariatric surgery patients. Overall, emotional and functional support appear be most relevant to weight loss/maintenance in this population; structural support did not predict weight loss or show any significant interactions with stress or depression. However, results varied depending on patient gender and whether patients reported experiencing high levels of stress (significant interaction with emotional support) or depression (significant interaction with functional support). Such findings have important implications for assessment and follow-up care after bariatric surgery, as well as for future research in this area.

This study focused on the relationship between school-based management, student outcomes and school performance. Its purpose was to identify the conditions that exist in self-managed schools which facilitate improved student outcomes and school performance. In particular, the study investigated three questions: 1. what are the enabling conditions in schools employing school-based management which school staff and parents consider influential in the achievement of improved student outcomes? 2. what explanations do these people give for how these conditions are applied within their schools to achieve success? 3. what judgents do school staff and parents make about the relationship between school-based management, student outcomes and overall school performance? The dissertation commences by describing major challenges and issues facing education over the next decade and by discussing how international and Australian systems of education are responding to these challenges through the implementation of various models of school-based management A review of international literature covering the last fifteen years is then presented to show that the promises and potentials of school-based management espoused by educational authorities have not necessarily led to an automatic improvement in student outcomes and school performance. Various conditions that may enable a school to implement school-based management effectively are suggested.. These conditions, derived from the literature review, are used as the initial prompts to undertake research in fOur Queensland primary schools Qualitative methodologies are used to gather data related to the three questions of the study in these four schools. The data obtained from the fouw case studies are then presented and discussed. The research findings suggest that the relationship between school-based management, student outcomes and school performance are dependent on the existence of severa1 conditions within school-based managed schools. These involve: 1. a comprehensive understanding of the powers available within a school-based management regime; 2. a school's organisational readiness to take on school-based management responsibilities and authonties; 3. the existence of six bases and their enabling conditions: i. an Ideology Base; ii a Relationship Base; iii. a Performance Base; iv. a Pedagogy Base; v. a Management Base; vi. a Governance Base. 4. the capacity of the school to implement school-based management in terms of contextual issues such as the size of the school, workfbrce experience and competency, geographical location and complexity of the campus; 5. the requirement of the controlling authority to delegate key powers and resources such as staffing, facilities management and total school budgeting; 6. a school-based process to manage change and school improvement. It is argued that these conditions maximise the ability of those involved in school-based management to influence improvements in student outcomes and school performance. The dissertation concludes by suggesting five major implications of the study and at least three areas of possible filture research The five major implications are: 1. the development of clear understandings of the scope of the authorities and responsibilities available to school-based managed schools in Queensland; 2. the need to develop methodology to evaluate and identify school organisational readiness to take on school-based management; 3. the development and implementation of a process that will enhance school effectiveness; 4. the development and implementation of a process that can enhance the quality of governance within Education Queensland schools; 5. the development of differentiated school-based management options that broaden the decentralised authorities to schools in consideration of their organisational readiness and capacity to implement school-based management. There are at least three areas of possible future research. The first of these areas involves research to investigate the conditions that exist within schools (to which Education Queensland has assigned the most advanced devolution of authority) that are not successful in improving student outcomes and school performance.. The second area of further research involves an evaluation of the effect that the current school council governance model has on the improvement of student outcomes and school performance.. The third area of future research involves the investigation of the possibilities of enhancing existing school-based management responsibilities and authorities in Education Queensland schools. In summary, this study suggests that school-based management has been used by educational authorities in Australia and overseas as a possible means to improve student outcomes and school performance. The fmdings suggest that for school-based management to achieve what it was set out to achieve, schools need to work an a number of enabling conditions. The most important of these include: an understanding of the school's core purpos~, a school-wide commitment to high teaching expectations, an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of staff, a principal who has a strong commitment to students, a principal who has high hopes, aspirations and expectations for the school, a strong fOcus on literacy, especially reading, effective behaviour management programmes, systems that identify and target student's needs, highly professional staff and school staffing that responds to the complexity of the school. These fmdings are consistent with the argument that there is no automatic causal link between the implementation of school-based management and improved student outcomes and school performance.. It is only when particular enabling conditions exist or are developing within a school, that effective school-based management can take root and support a range of school-based initiatives focused on the improvement of student and school performance When this is the case, school-based management may influence a school's ability to improve student outcomes and school performance.

In this thesis I argue that negative attributions mediate between attachment insecurity and relationship outcomes. Using a sample of 59 couples the well-documented association between attachment insecurity and relationship satisfaction was replicated. I then tested whether this association was mediated by attributions for hypothetical behaviour for a real partner and a hypothetical potential partner. Attributions for real partner behaviour did mediate between insecure attachment and relationship satisfaction, but not attributions for a potential partner. It was further hypothesised that an association would exist between couple communication and attachment insecurity, which would be mediated by negative attributions. Couples completed two ten-minute problem-solving discussions and participated in a video-mediated recall process, providing a measure of attributions for real events with their current partner. Results supported the hypotheses for self-reported, but not observed, communication. It was concluded that the association between attachment and attributions does not represent a consistent cognitive processing bias, but rather a relationship-specific phenomena. Future research directions were proposed to investigate mediation from a long-term perspective and the therapeutic implications of these findings were discussed.

Problem: While the educational preparation of students in a tertiary nursing programme was the general focus of the study, the specific concern was with the degree to which students in the first and third year of the programme implemented all aspects of the nursing process in their delivery of patient care. The study developed out of a need to evaluate the effectiveness of theoretical teaching in regard to the students' ability to implement theoretical principles in clinical practice. The desired outcome of the study is that the data will be useful in developing more appropriate and effective teaching approaches that will result in improved clinical nursing practice. Methodology A survey of patients receiving nursing care from students in the first and third year of their programme was conducted on completion of a one week block of clinical experience for both groups of students. A questionnaire was the instrument of data collection. Factors included in the study were the patients' perceptions of the students' attention to four of the five phases of the nursing process: assessment, diagnosis, planning and evaluation. Questions addressing the degree of patient involvement in all of these phases were included throughout the questionnaire. Questionnaires were returned from twenty nine of the thirty one patients surveyed in the first year student group and from thirty of the thirty one patients surveyed in the third year student group; constituting a 93.5 percent and a 96.7 percent response respectively. Results The scores achieved by each group of students were compared against scores determined by the researcher to indicate realistic educational and professional standards of practice in each specified section and comparisons were also made between the two students groups to identify development of practice over the education programme. Scores indicated that: 1. Within each section of the study both student groups scored below the expected level on certain items, the most notable deficiencies being related to the aspects of patient empowerment through informing and involving. 2. The third year student group scored overall higher than the first year students in regard to attention to the more 'technical' aspects of the nursing process, but did not give the same degree of attention to the 'human' aspects, scoring equal to, or lower than their less experienced colleagues. Conclusions: 1. There are apparent philosophical differences between the graduates of the 'old style' training system and those involved in the tertiary nursing programme in regard to the individualization of patient care and the allocation of priorities within a time frame. 2. Clinical application of theoretical principles relies heavily on the reinforcement of these principles by the clinical teacher/supervisor. There is a need for these clinical supervisors to have: (a) a better understanding of the educational objectives for students in the clinical settings, and (b) assistance towards developing teaching/organizational strategies that will guide the student towards objective attainment when such abilities are not developed. Recommendations: Among the recommendations presented were: 1. that the nursing discipline within the university make formal and informal opportunities to inform all clinicians of the changes in nursing education and the implications these changes have on the overall approach to the delivery of patient care. 2. that there is an increased emphasis on the educational preparation of the clinical supervisors and that their commitment to the students' achievement of the clinical objectives is enhanced through involvement in programme planning and evaluation.

Recent interest in identifying and measuring health outcomes represents an advance in our understanding of how health care for individuals should be evaluated. However, the concept of health outcomes has mainly focussed on improvements in health status. Non-health outcomes of health care may also be important to patients. In this thesis, four tasks were undertaken with the aim of identifying non-health outcomes and establishing the extent of their relevance and importance to patients. First, the illness experience literature was reviewed to identify potential non-health outcomes. Seven categories of non-health outcomes were identified: information, being treated with dignity, being able to trust the health care provider, having distress recognised and supported, participating in decision making, legitimation and reassurance. Second, to gain an in-depth understanding of these concepts, topic-specific literature was reviewed and synthesised. Third, in order to confirm how relevant and important the concepts were to patients, a qualitative study was conducted with each of two different groups of health service users. Broadly, patients considered that all the non-health concepts were relevant, although the extent to which they were important varied. Fourth, to test the relative importance of the seven concepts, a Stated Preference Discrete Choice experiment in the context of general practice was conducted. This study showed that most people thought their GP demonstrated behaviour likely to result in the production of non-health outcomes. The results showed that although all the non-health outcomes were, to some extent, preferred by respondents, trust was most important, followed by legitimation and recognition of and support for emotional distress. Once again, these results point to the importance of context in the evaluation of health care from the patient's perspective. While still being perceived as positive aspects of health care, the provision of information and acting autonomously or participating in decisions about their health care were the non-health outcomes considered least important by patients

Social capital is embedded in relationships and crucial for facilitating value creation. This study adopts a micro-relational perspective on social capital and addresses the gap in the literature concerning its importance for explaining the management of professional-client relationships. The research provides an in-depth analysis of professional-client relationships, considering both the structure and the attributes, as well as how social capital is utilized by professionals to create and maintain networks with new and existing clients. This research proposes a framework for examining the relationship between human capital and social capital. Human capital is understood as manifested by the extent of knowledge acquisition within three domains: market knowledge, technical knowledge and client-specific knowledge. The outcomes of social capital in professional-client relationships are examined in relation to knowledge acquisition and relationship outcome variables. Professionals employed in knowledge-intensive firms rely on both their human capital and social capital to acquire and commercialize their knowledge to deliver value in their professional services to clients. However, research to-date has insufficiently investigated the relationship between human capital and social capital, and the application of social capital theory to the study of lawyers and law firms, as proposed in this PhD research, draws attention to the importance of these social processes within professional-client relationships. Social capital, in this study, is defined as consisting of two dimensions: structural and attributive. The structural dimension of social capital refers to the idea that networks of actors can influence the outcomes of social relationships, while the attributive dimension of social capital refers to the extent of trust in relationships. Structural perspectives on social capital have been predominant in the literature, but discussion on the attributes of such ties have been lacking. As such, with limited attempts to operationalize the construct of social capital in the literature (Koka and Prescott, 2002) and the differing aspects of social capital considered in empirical investigations (Wu, 2008), existing studies on social capital have been characterized by the lack of consensus on the dimensions that compose social capital as well as the measures of social capital (Bolino et al., 2002; Wu, 2008). The theoretical framework is examined through a triangulation of cross-methods and cross-samples approaches by conducting two studies (qualitative and quantitative as different methods) with different samples. Study 1 is a qualitative study, designed to evaluate the theoretical framework through a set of exploratory interviews with Australian client organizations to reveal their views on the contracting, evaluation and continuation of legal service delivery by external law firms. Many of the organizations included in this study are large and diverse businesses, with in-house departments ranging from those managing a small team to large in-house teams working in a large corporate company. Study 1 is an exploratory investigation of the themes that emerged from the interviews, and its findings provide some preliminary evidence for the various propositions. Study 2 is a quantitative study of survey research of Australian law firms and their client organizations conducted by administering web-based questionnaires to lawyers and their clients. The questionnaire items are designed to measure the constructs presented in the theoretical framework, with data collected using both social network techniques and a conventional Likert-type format of question items. The data are analyzed using a series of statistical regression procedures to test for mediation and the effects of the control variables, as well as by conducting Partial Least Squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling to examine the relationships between the constructs in the full structural model. The findings from Study 2 indicate support for the hypotheses presented in the theoretical framework. First, the findings support the hypothesis that there is a link between human capital and social capital. Knowledge acquired from all clients, representing the aspect of a professional’s human capital in this context, is significant in influencing both dimensions of social capital. Second, the findings of the study denote that human capital, as represented by knowledge acquired from a professional’s most important client, plays a mediating role in the relationships between social capital and the various relationship outcomes of reputation, referrals, fee income, and relationship continuity. Third, the findings reveal that the construct of the structural dimension of social capital is made up of various components, including: centrality, frequency of communication, nature of communication, the non-redundancy of ties, and network diversity. Finally, the findings also indicate a high reliability score for conceptualizing the attributive dimension of social capital as constituting of three types of trust: rational trust, moral trust, and affective trust. In conclusion, the study provides a useful means of advancing our understanding of the link between social capital, human capital (knowledge acquisition), and relationship outcomes by empirically examining these constructs in the context of professional-client relationships, and by creating a new line of research inquiry into this significant area of strategic management research.

<p>D. C. Strubler och K. M. York (2007) har skapat en modell, Team Characteristics Model. Denna modell ligger till grund för och används som metod i den här undersökningen. Två studier utförs, en kvalitativ studie där produktions- och teamledare intervjuas om sina erfarenheter </p><p>av teamarbete. Dessutom tillfrågas de om teamets sammansättning har positiva effekter på medlemmarnas arbetsutfall. I den andra studien som är kvantitativ och utförs på industriarbetare, studeras om empowerment samt delaktighet påverkar arbetstillfredsställelsen för team. Den kvalitativa undersökningen visar att teamets sammansättning och arbete anses ha positiva effekter på utfallet, effekter som arbetsglädje och social gemenskap. Det kvantitativa resultatet påvisar ett samband mellan delaktighet och arbetstillfredsställelse men inte mellan empowerment och arbetstillfredsställelse</p>

<p>The purpose of this literature study was to describe how patients experience their quality of life while undergoing a pacemaker implantation. Searches were carried out in the databases Academic Search Elite, Ebsco Host, Pub Med, Pub Med Central, Science Direct and manually. Keywords used were quality of life, treatment outcomes, emotions, pacing and life. This resulted in nineteen peer rewieved articles that were selected for the study results. The results showed that patients undergoing a pacemaker implantation experienced an improvement in their physical health with increased functional status, more energy and strength. From a psychological perspective, some patients experienced an improvement in quality of life while others felt worried and depressed. A common factor among the patients was anxiety and insecurity concerning daily routine activities. The amount of time passed after the pacemaker implantation was also a common factor that had impact on how patients experienced their physical and psychological health. To get a deeper knowledge and understanding when meeting patients undergoing a pacemaker implantation it is important that more research, especially qualitative, is carried out.</p>