This study investigated the perceptions of school from students of differing ages, genders, ethnic groups, and grade levels in a rural school environment. The ages were divided into four categories: 11–12 years of age, 13–14 years of age, 15–16 years of age, and 17–19 years of age. The ethnic groups in the school population were African Americans and Caucasians. The different grade levels were 7th through 12th. Wilson and Corbett (1999), in the Report for the Philadelphia Education Fund, “No Excuses”: The Eighth Grade Year in Six Philadelphia Middle Schools, discussed students’ views of what they want their teachers to be like. Later in another book, Listening to Urban Kids, School Reform, and the Teachers They Want, Wilson and Corbett (2002) stated that their overall purpose for conducting this study was to document students’ perceptions of their educational experiences and track how those perceptions evolved over the 3-year period. The investigators initially selected five middle schools from the Philadelphia School District. Wilson and Corbett used interview protocols and selected 50 students from each school who participated in the study. In this study, the researcher compared the results to those of Wilson and Corbett focusing on 10 areas. Students were asked to respond to a series of questions from each area on the survey, which included the following: (a) student’s perception on the transition to high school; (b) student’s perception on learning experiences; (c) student’s perception on success; (d) student’s perception on school safety; (e) student’s perception on the school culture and/or environment; (f) student’s perception on peer pressure; (g) student’s perception on getting good grades; (h) student’s perception on instructional differences; (i) student’s perception on challenging work; and (j) the student’s future plans. The students selected their best choice from the answers given. Using interview protocols, the students responded to the same categories. The results produced data that will enable teachers, administrators, parents, and policy makers to implement school reform effectively by better understanding the students’ perceptions from a rural school environment. Recommendations for further research include the following: (a) determine if the results found in this study are the same as those of students in other rural school environments, (b) gain a greater understanding of the perceptions that students have about school, (c) determine if there is a direct correlation between students’ perception of school and student achievement, and (d) determine if school districts will utilize the data to aid in improving instruction, policy, and procedures within the school district.

Published Article / Cancer patients have varying perceptions about their treatment. The aim of the study was to investigate the different perceptions that patients have about their treatment, and how these perceptions are influenced by their social and cultural backgrounds. The impact of these perceptions on patient responses was also investigated. Eighty-five patients were selected for the study and interviewed using a questionnaire to explore their perceptions and the possible impact of these perceptions on their responses to treatment. An analysis of the perceptions is provided.

This thesis is about television news. I conducted a qualitative study of the decoding of television news on an opportunistic sample of 38 participants with whom I watched news programmes and then conducted individual or paired focused discussions about their thoughts and feelings as they watched. While problems of representativity and scale preclude our making demographic statements as to the prevalence of decoding practices, this database enables me to perform a critical interrogation of two seperate strands of scholarship relating to TV news. I am concerned to interpose a series of caveats as to the complexity and subtlety of interpretive practice which intervenes between the news and any ideological effect it might exert. Secondly I wish to indicate some problems in that genre of empirical studies concerned with 'learning from news' and 'information gain', which do not exhaustively capture the decoding process. I look at how we might study reasoning and inference in relation to the news, and what happens when people confess themselves unable to remember or understand, since these are areas which are not fully probed by information gain studies. I focus on the resources of meaning and reasoning strategies employed in understanding news. I also extend attention to some areas not normally considered in news audience studies, namely the expression of emotions in relation to news, particularly news about South Africa; and ludic or playful decoding. Memory is the crucial structuring construct of most mainstream research on the television news audience. I begin to problematise the nature of memory by indicating how memories are mutually produced, rather than originating entirely in internal psychic storage. I am also trying to develop ideas of social cognition and how they might be applicable to the business of decoding and the meanings which are developed between people rather than the conventional focus on decodings which are produced by individual viewers as finished products, I also try to develop a reflexive conception of how the conduct of the discussions might construct the thinking and behaviour of the particpants, particularly by reference to their apologies and the expectations they seemed to entertain about the research situation.

My main interest is to do a comprehensive analysis, not precisely of data and statistics, but of the way in which regios, Monterrey residents, live and perceive the current wave of violence. This is the perception of violence, crime and fear in Mexico’s so-called post-neoliberal era, focusing on Monterrey’s situation. How do people talk about the increasing perception of violence? Has this perception of violence changed the way in which they live? Are there different perceptions of violence across classes? What does this discourse tell us about how they live/assimilate/reproduce the violence and fear in greater society? How can we make sense of it? I argue that fear of crime and violence are playing a crucial role in disciplining citizens’ lives across classes and that their subjectivities and self-governing techniques, fostered by the neoliberal structure of government, have evolved in a very particular way. / text

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