Missile Combat Crew members are officers in the United States Air Force responsible for operating nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. They undergo on-the-job training as part of the curriculum necessary to progress in their careers and achieve higher levels of job responsibility. The curriculum they use is created and maintained by 20th Air Force Test and Training Section. This product is known as the Missile Combat Crew Commander Upgrade program, and it has received criticisms from stakeholders who use it for being out of date and failing to capture the necessary topics for ensuring adequate on the job training is being conducted. This project seeks to examine these critiques, break down the curriculum produced by 20th AF into stages (creation, implementation, and feedback) for evaluation, uses principles of user-oriented design drawing on design anthropology to suggest alternative methods for curriculum creation, and utilizes the results of a diagnostic survey to provide data-driven recommendations to 20th AF for future rewrites of their product based on feedback from the crew members who use their product in the field.

Le biais de sélection par rapport au sexe (ou biais de sexe) représente une différence systématique des proportions d’hommes et de femmes entre un échantillon de participants et leur population, ce qui peut miner la validité d’une étude. La recherche sur le stress humain est susceptible au biais de sexe étant donné la présence de facteurs y étant généralement associés, principalement les protocoles invasifs – contenant des éléments douloureux, inconfortables ou menaçants pour les participants. La présente étude a vérifié si les proportions d’hommes et de femmes des études sur le stress varient selon 1) le niveau d’invasion d’une étude en stress (invasif ou non invasif) et selon 2) des facteurs exploratoires (p. ex. pays, méthode de recrutement). Deux domaines hors stress possédant des protocoles invasifs (douleur expérimentale) et non invasifs (mémoire) ont été utilisés comme domaines contrôles. Dans cette enquête transversale de la littérature, les proportions d’hommes et de femmes ont été recueillies dans 324 études contenant des protocoles invasifs ou non invasifs, représentant un total de 23 611 participants, dont 42,18 % d’hommes. La représentativité des sexes a varié selon le niveau d’invasion dans les domaines du stress et hors stress, les hommes davantage représentés dans les études invasives que dans les études non invasives. Les résultats indiquent que les facteurs exploratoires analysés peuvent tous être associés au sexe. Cette étude a identifié la présence de facteurs pouvant provoquer un biais de sexe en recherche sur le stress humain, ouvrant la voie aux recherches souhaitant approfondir la généralisation des résultats. / Sex selection bias (or sex bias) refers to a systematic difference in the proportions of men and women between a sample of participants and their population, which may undermine the validity of a study. Human stress research is vulnerable to sex bias, given the presence of factors typically associated with it, primarily invasive protocols — containing painful, uncomfortable, or threatening elements for participants. The present study has verified whether the proportions of men and women in stress studies differ by 1) the invasiveness of a study (invasive or non-invasive) and by 2) exploratory factors (e.g. country, recruitment method). Two non-stress domains with invasive (experimental pain) and non-invasive (memory) protocols were used as control domains. In a cross-sectional survey of the literature, the proportions of men and women were collected from 324 studies containing invasive or non-invasive protocols, representing a total of 23 611 participants, 42,18 % of whom were men. Sex representativeness differed across invasiveness levels in both the stress and non-stress domains with men being more represented in invasive than in non-invasive studies. Results indicate that the exploratory factors analyzed may all be associated with sex. This study identified the presence of factors that may cause sex bias in human stress research, opening the door to research wishing to further investigate the generalizability of results.

Des nombreuses applications participatives, commerciales et académiques se appuient sur des volontaires ("la foule") pour acquérir, désambiguiser et nettoyer des données. Ces applications participatives sont largement connues sous le nom de plates-formes de crowdsourcing où des amateurs peuvent participer à de véritables projets scientifiques ou commerciaux. Ainsi, des demandeurs sous-traitent des tâches en les proposant sur des plates-formes telles que Amazon MTurk ou Crowdflower. Puis, des participants en ligne sélectionnent et exécutent ces tâches, appelés microtasks, acceptant un micropaiement en retour. Ces plates-formes sont confrontées à des défis tels qu'assurer la qualité des réponses acquises, aider les participants à trouver des tâches pertinentes et intéressantes, tirer parti des compétences expertes parmi la foule, respecter les délais des tâches et promouvoir les participants qui accomplissent le plus de tâches. Cependant, la plupart des plates-formes ne modélisent pas explicitement les compétences des participants, ou se basent simplement sur une description en terme de mots-clés. Dans ce travail, nous proposons de formaliser les compétences des participants au moyen d'une structure hiérarchique, une taxonomie, qui permet naturellement de raisonner sur les compétences (détecter des compétences équivalentes, substituer des participants, ...). Nous montrons comment optimiser la sélection de tâches au moyen de cette taxonomie. Par de nombreuses expériences synthétiques et réelles, nous montrons qu'il existe une amélioration significative de la qualité lorsque l'on considère une structure hiérarchique de compétences au lieu de mots-clés purs. Dans une seconde partie, nous étudions le problème du choix des tâches par les participants. En effet, choisir parmi une interminable liste de tâches possibles peut s'avérer difficile et prend beaucoup de temps, et s’avère avoir une incidence sur la qualité des réponses. Nous proposons une méthode de réduction du nombre de propositions. L'état de l'art n'utilise ni une taxonomie ni des méthodes de classement. Nous proposons un nouveau modèle de classement qui tient compte de la diversité des compétences du participant et l'urgence de la tâche. À notre connaissance, nous sommes les premiers à combiner les échéances des tâches en une métrique d'urgence avec la proposition de tâches pour le crowdsourcing. Des expériences synthétiques et réelles montre que nous pouvons respecter les délais, obtenir des réponses de haute qualité, garder l'intérêt des participants tout en leur donnant un choix de tâches ciblé. / A large number of commercial and academic participative applications rely on a crowd to acquire, disambiguate and clean data. These participative applications are widely known as crowdsourcing platforms where amateur enthusiasts are involved in real scientific or commercial projects. Requesters are outsourcing tasks by posting them on online commercial crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon MTurk or Crowdflower. There, online participants select and perform these tasks, called microtasks, accepting a micropayment in return. These platforms face challenges such as reassuring the quality of the acquired answers, assisting participants to find relevant and interesting tasks, leveraging expert skills among the crowd, meeting tasks' deadlines and satisfying participants that will happily perform more tasks. However, related work mainly focuses on modeling skills as keywords to improve quality, in this work we formalize skills with the use a hierarchical structure, a taxonomy, that can inherently provide with a natural way to substitute tasks with similar skills. It also takes advantage of the whole crowd workforce. With extensive synthetic and real datasets, we show that there is a significant improvement in quality when someone considers a hierarchical structure of skills instead of pure keywords. On the other hand, we extend our work to study the impact of a participant’s choice given a list of tasks. While our previous solution focused on improving an overall one-to-one matching for tasks and participants we examine how participants can choose from a ranked list of tasks. Selecting from an enormous list of tasks can be challenging and time consuming and has been proved to affect the quality of answers to crowdsourcing platforms. Existing related work concerning crowdsourcing does not use either a taxonomy or ranking methods, that exist in other similar domains, to assist participants. We propose a new model that takes advantage of the diversity of the parcipant's skills and proposes him a smart list of tasks, taking into account their deadlines as well. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to combine the deadlines of tasks into an urgency metric with the task proposition for knowledge-intensive crowdsourcing. Our extensive synthetic and real experimentation show that we can meet deadlines, get high quality answers, keep the interest of participants while giving them a choice of well selected tasks.

Text in Afrikaans / Loosit is a pastoral care model which may be applied to primary school children in South Africa and the use thereof is explored in this research project. Loosit consists of a series of plays as well as a discipleship program. These plays, humoristic yet contextually relevant to children, are done on a set resembling school toilets. Children are encouraged to write to the leading character, Uncle Jani Tor, and to post the letters in the `toilet` post box. Themes focused on in this project are problems with friends, social pressure, problems in the family and death. There is a specific focus on the ethics of Loosit as a model of pastoral care applicable to children. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

Parent-teacher conferences are an important component of parent involvement practice in any school. However, parent-teacher conferences often come short of the expectations of both parents and teachers and fail to lead to lasting solutions to learners' problems. This study focuses on the implementation of parent-teacher conferences in primary schools. The problem was investigated by means of a literature study and an empirical investigation. The literature identified approaches to and models of parent involvement, common barriers to parent-teacher communication and the characteristics of effective conferences. A qualitative investigation explored the process of a small sample of parent-teacher conferences in a selected primary school in Mamelodi, Gauteng Province. Data was gathered by participant observation. Findings showed that teacher talk predominated during conferences; the importance of mutual trust and teachers' listening to parents; guiding parents to improve learning at home and barriers to communication. Recommendations based on the findings were made. / Educational Studies / M.Ed. (Education management)

The aim of the study was to investigate classroom discourse among high school natural science students in Swaziland. The research problem was: Can student interactions tell us something about the negotiation of understanding during natural science teaching? A qualitative approach was used, specifically, the observational case study style. The population comprised three Form 4 students and their natural science teacher, purposely selected. Data was collected using the non-participant observation and the standardised open-ended interview methods. The collected data was analysed using the discourse analysis approach. The analysed data indicated that prevailing discourse patterns were teacher and student talk, as well as written work. A conclusion was that student classroom discourse in the natural sciences should be encouraged among all students for improved understanding and meaning making. / Science and Technology Education / M. Ed. (Natural Science Education)

With the maturation of the child custody investigative process, the role of investigators and the process of these investigations have come under increasing scrutiny. The investigators are expected to be objective, neutral, and professional while following procedures that conform to model standards. However, this assumption of a lack of bias has been largely overlooked in the literature regarding the investigative process. It is assumed that investigators should self-monitor to ensure that their stance is objective and neutral. Furthermore, this position of neutrality and objectivity is assumed to be intuitive and natural. By using a case study, this thesis investigates and describes the process of a child custody investigation predicated on a constructivist epistemology. It highlights the impossibility of any investigator to be objective and neutral in any investigation automatically, regardless of the procedures and methods employed. The thesis highlights the participant observer status of investigators. An aim of the thesis is thus to sensitise investigators to this inevitable vulnerability with the expectation that such an awareness may allow investigators to establish processes to render investigations consciously more balanced, considered, and transparent. A further aim is to describe a child custody evaluation from an eco-systemic perspective by contextualising the investigation in the larger ecosystem to which it belongs. This description includes the investigation as part of an evolving problem-determined system. An awareness of this wider and evolving context may enable investigators to approximate a position of objectivity and neutrality more effectively. It may also act as an inoculation against the ‘contamination’ of the investigator by the investigative system. With the maturation of the child custody investigative process, the role of investigators and the process of these investigations have come under increasing scrutiny. The investigators are expected to be objective, neutral, and professional while following procedures that conform to model standards. However, this assumption of a lack of bias has been largely overlooked in the literature regarding the investigative process. It is assumed that investigators should self-monitor to ensure that their stance is objective and neutral. Furthermore, this position of neutrality and objectivity is assumed to be intuitive and natural. By using a case study, this thesis investigates and describes the process of a child custody investigation predicated on a constructivist epistemology. It highlights the impossibility of any investigator to be objective and neutral in any investigation automatically, regardless of the procedures and methods employed. The thesis highlights the participant observer status of investigators. An aim of the thesis is thus to sensitise investigators to this inevitable vulnerability with the expectation that such an awareness may allow investigators to establish processes to render investigations consciously more balanced, considered, and transparent. A further aim is to describe a child custody evaluation from an eco-systemic perspective by contextualising the investigation in the larger ecosystem to which it belongs. This description includes the investigation as part of an evolving problem-determined system. An awareness of this wider and evolving context may enable investigators to approximate a position of objectivity and neutrality more effectively. It may also act as an inoculation against the ‘contamination’ of the investigator by the investigative system. xviii In South Africa, we have yet to formulate a document that establishes a model standard of practice or specific, dedicated training in this area. This thesis identifies what could be included in both areas (in addition to the expected protocols and procedures) by describing the investigator’s position as an expert learner, rather than just an ‘expert’. In line with current literature, it highlights the benefits of thinking consciously and in a considered manner. Furthermore, it indicates the benefits of a team approach to investigations, which could be considered an area for further investigation. In South Africa, we have yet to formulate a document that establishes a model standard of practice or specific, dedicated training in this area. This thesis identifies what could be included in both areas (in addition to the expected protocols and procedures) by describing the investigator’s position as an expert learner, rather than just an ‘expert’. In line with current literature, it highlights the benefits of thinking consciously and in a considered manner. Furthermore, it indicates the benefits of a team approach to investigations, which could be considered an area for further investigation. / Psychology / D. LITT et. Phil. ( Psychology)

In this study, hypnotic analgesia in obstetrics is explained in terms of ecosystemic thinking, as opposed to traditional conceptualisations of hypnosis. Five case studies were used. Each case is described in detail, as well as the therapeutic rationale behind each case, in order to present the reader with an understanding for the thinking behind the doing of ecosystemic hypnotherapy. The study utilises a new paradigm approach to research which is explained and is in keeping with ecosystemic epistemology. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

The aim of the study is to investigate how young men constructing identities in talk about their own use of violence. The study is based on a fieldwork at a youth detention home in Sweden. The data consists of individual interviews and video recordings of the treatment programme Aggression Replacement Training (ART). Detailed analyses have been made of conversations between the young men, between the young men and the trainers, and of the narratives generated in the individual interviews. The study has a social constructionist approach to identity, which is seen as constructed in a joint achievement in social interaction. An important analytical perspective in the study is how social categories and subcategories are constructed. The study has a particular focus on gender, primarily masculinity, but age and ethnicity are also being emphasised. The analysis draws on four empirical studies. It is shown how the young men construct a preferred self-presentation when talking about violent events. The narratives on violence are either based on experiences or talked about as a hypothetical use of violence. Violence based on personal experience is problematized and legitimized in terms of self-defence, defending friends, restraint and justified violence. Narratives of violence are shown to be interactional resources available to the young men. When talking about violence, the young men can be seen to regulate social relations, and to position themselves in relation to particular discourses of masculinity. The specific understanding of what it entails to be a man enables the use of violence with respect to social categorizations such as age, ethnicity or criminal identity. It is also argued that the treatment programme ART may, at times, facilitate maintaining a criminal identity. / Avhandlingens övergripande syfte är att undersöka hur unga män konstruerar identiteter kring berättelser om eget våldsutövande. Den bygger på en studie gjord vid ett särskilt ungdomshem i Sverige. Såväl enskilda intervjuer som videoinspelningar av behandlingsprogrammet Aggression Replacement Training (ART) har utgjort analysmaterialet. Ingående analyser har gjorts av samtalen mellan de unga männen, mellan de unga männen och behandlingspersonalen, och berättelserna i de enskilda intervjuerna. Avhandlingen bygger på en socialkonstruktionistisk ansats där identitet analyseras i social interaktion med andra. Ett viktigt analytiskt perspektiv i studien är hur sociala kategorier och underkategorier skapas. Ett särskilt fokus ligger på genus och då främst maskulinitet, men även ålder och etnicitet lyfts fram som viktiga perspektiv. Avhandlingen omfattar fyra delstudier. Studien visar hur de unga männen konstruerar en positiv självpresentation när de talar om våldshändelser. Våldsberättelserna är antingen erfarenhetsbaserade eller utgår ifrån tal om hypotetiskt våld. Det erfarenhetsbaserade våldet problematiseras och legitimeras genom att talas om som självförsvar, försvar av kompisar, återhållsamt eller rättmätigt. Studien visar att våldsberättelser är interaktionella resurser för de unga männen. Genom att tala om våld reglerar de sociala relationer och positionerar sig i relation till vissa maskulinitetsdiskurser. Den specifika förståelsen av vad det innebär att vara en man, möjliggör användandet av våld avhängigt andra sociala kategorier, så som ålder, etnicitet och kriminell identitet. Studien indikerar också att behandlingsprogrammet ART ger möjlighet att underlätta upprätthållandet av en kriminell identitet. / <p>Due to copyright matters, have the articles, published in chapter 4, 5, 6 and 7, been removed.</p>

This research examined the lived experiences of an Afghan Muslim male participant group. This study explored their immigration from a Southwest-Asian, highly non-secular society to a Western-style, liberal, secular nation-state. Further, this research was an examination of Muslim male identity as an attribute that is closely related to lived experiences, environment and cultural assimilation. Also, this study looked closely at the meanings that this Afghan Muslim male immigrant group attached to identity, as well as exploring their unique narratives during pre-immigration and post-immigration periods. This qualitative research study used narrative methods to unearth the lived experiences of five Afghan Muslim male citizens. These participants immigrated to the U.S. while serving as interpreters and translators for the coalition forces during the Afghanistan War between 2003 and 2012. Several researchers have examined Muslim immigration from Eastern to Western nations, focusing on their adaptation, assimilation, and developmental patterns. The research objective of this study was slightly different and important to social science in that it focused on how a select group of Afghan Muslim males conceptualized their own sense of identity and how their notion of identity was shaped and influenced by their own pre- and post-migration experiences. To this end, the discoveries in this study revealed that the nature of the identities for many in this study may be deemed more blended and in some instances renegotiated, holding onto parts of their core native identities while embracing aspects of the cultural, ethnic, and social elements of their new host land that fit within their own individual frame of reference.