As a result of the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004), Response to Intervention (RTI) became a legal and acceptable basis for determining special education eligibility. While there may be evidence that RTI has had positive effects on the prereferral process for special education in some schools, there still remains controversy in the field of school psychology about many aspects of RTI, in particular the use of RTI in the identification process for children with learning disabilities. The purpose of current questionnaire study was (a) to determine school psychologists' preferences on the use of RTI in both the prereferral and the identification process of students with learning disabilities, (b) to investigate the implementation process in school systems from school psychologists' perspectives, and (c) to examine the role of the school psychologist in RTI implementation efforts and RTI activities.Data were collected from 41 members of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). Each participant completed a survey, which related to the above purposes, and responded to items using a 5-point Likert scale. Results indicated that sampled school psychologists generally responded favorably to RTI as a prereferral method, but varied on their level of agreement on using RTI for diagnostic purposes. Most respondents agreed that RTI should not be the sole criteria for determining a learning disability and that a comprehensive evaluation should take place including standardized cognitive and academic testing. Identified benefits to implementing RTI were: interventions for struggling students occur earlier, improved instruction for all students, greater collaboration between general and special education, and improved method of identifying at risk groups/individuals. Identified challenges to implementing RTI were: need for professional development, lack of teacher preparation, lack of support staff to implement interventions, and intervention fidelity. A majority of respondents agreed that the school psychologist's role should include various RTI activities and in particular RTI activities related to data interpretation, consultation, supervising, and training.

Persistent conflicts between stakeholders and complex trade offs among forest values have created a difficult decision environment for sustainable forest management. Tools developed for decision support in land use planning are essential for managing these challenges. This research study is an interactive assessment of a land use planning Decision Support Tool (DST) in the Invermere Timber Supply Area (TSA), located in the East Kootenay area of British Columbia. The aim of this study is to explore whether stakeholders' initial stated preferences change and whether trade-offs are made between various forest values upon observation of a long-term forecast of these values using a DST. Representatives from various stakeholder groups in the area were assembled for individual sessions to interact with the multi-criteria DST. Participants were required to state their preferences for six forest values using a weighting scheme. The DST developed an output for each forest value based on the participants' preferences. Upon review of the DST output, the participant had the opportunity to alter their initial preferences iteratively until a desirable output was found. The results indicate that participants' preferences changed after reviewing the DST outputs and that participants are willing to make trade-offs between various forest values using a DST to find a desirable solution. However, the preference order of the forest values changed only slightly from the participants' initial to preferred scenarios; instead participants made drastic changes to the weighting of each value to find a desirable output. Participants also stated their willingness to use DSTs for land use planning decision-making, although underlying assumptions built into the model must be improved before stakeholders can trust the tool as an aid for decision-making. Studies such as this can further the development of DSTs to help find desirable decisions for sustainable resource management and to help create a productive and engaging process.

This research focuses on dining experience as an example of experience marketing. In this study, the qualitative research method has been used to derive particular concepts involved in the dining experience from the bodies of reviews. Similarly, quantitative content analysis method has been used to provide rich and valuable information about the concepts explored from the qualitative data. Inferential statistics has been used in the study to test hypotheses about the relationships between elements in the dining experience context. The results indicate that food quality is the most important predictor of the dining satisfaction while service quality may not be an effective factor to create satisfaction. Moreover, social needs in dining experience are more evident in dinners than in lunches. The results of the study reveal the effectiveness and applicability of the online review analysis in bringing new insights from dining experience to contribute to the field of experience economy. / viii, 127 leaves ; 29 cm

The principal nucleus of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNSTp) is an integral component of the mouse accessory olfactory system, and plays a key role in pheromonal processing. In males, this region is not only larger and contains more neurons than in females, but the cells are also larger. The present study examined the relationship between preference for opposite-sex odour and regional volume, cell number and cell size within the BNSTp of both male and female mice. No correlations were found between olfactory preferences and any of the three morphological BNSTp parameters. However, the olfactory preference task results were not congruent with previous research. Therefore, it remains inconclusive whether relationships exist between olfactory preference behaviour and morphology of the BNSTp.

No description available.

International trade activity is becoming an increasingly more important part of the world economy, and it is recognized that there is a greater necessity to gauge consumers' attitude toward both domestic and foreign products (Netermeyer, Durvasula, and Lichtenstein, 1991). Research in this area has focused on what is termed the country of origin effect, that is, investigating how consumers perceive products sourced from a particular country (Roth and Romeo, 1992). Substantial portions of country of origin studies so far have focused on the consumer behavior of people in developed countries. However, because multinational companies around the world have expanded their operations in various developing countries, it is now relevant to examine this phenomenon in the developing world. This dissertation examines the importance that South African consumers place on country of origin information and how they perceive the quality of products made in various countries, namely the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, China, India, and South Africa. Further more, this study examines the ethnocentric tendencies of South African consumers and the influence of demographical factors on consumer perception as well as the evaluation of domestic versus foreign products in South Africa. One hundred and seventy-six questionnaires were distributed to employees of the University of Natal both Durban and Westville campuses and of this total, one hundred and thirty-three questionnaires were returned. This represents a response rate of seventy-six percent. Data was analyzed using SPSS software. Statistics analysis of the results showed that South African consumers do indeed attach importance to country of origin information and that their evaluation of products is influenced by their perception and image of different countries. In line with previous research, the results indicated that consumers perceived products from developed countries as being of higher quality than products from developing countries. But they also exhibited a positive attitude towards South African products. This contradicts previous research findings whereby consumers in developing country perceive local products negatively. The result also revealed that price, country of origin, and brand are important to South African consumers before they consider purchasing decisions. Furthermore, the result indicated that South African consumers tended to be ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism scores, however, couldn't be generalized for all segments of the population. Differences were found based on sex, education and age. Young, educated, female consumers demonstrated less ethnocentric tendencies than other segments implying that this segment represents the best target groups for overseas manufacturers and marketers. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

Advances in technology have changed the way business is conducted. In particular, the advent of internet/online banking in the financial sector, has revolutionised the banking industry. Despite the introduction of online banking in the 90's, the number of consumers converting to the offering has progressed slowly. There are numerous reasons for this, one of them being lack of infrastructure, high Internet costs and more importantly the mindset of the customer. Banks are competing on the basis of technology and service offering to win a sizeable share of the online market. However very little is known about the factors influencing consumer behaviour in the South African online banking market. This study aims to investigate the psychological and cultural factors influencing consumer behaviour in the online banking sector. It will also investigate the process of decision making that result in consumer behaviour outcomes in the online banking sector. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

Animals can associate orosensory characteristics from food with postingestive effects and adjust meal size to prevent energy deficit. By using odor-fasting duration conditioning, two studies were conducted to test the above hypothesis. In the first study, thirteen male and eleven female adult Wistar rats were given 1.5 hours to ingest a casein-based test-meal odorized by either vanilla or chicken flavor prior to a 4-hour short-fast or a 12-hour long-fast. Rats went through the training phase with a pseudo-random sequence of six duplicates of each odor-fasting pairing over four experimental days, followed by an odor preference test. Gender differences may exist regarding hunger perception because only females were capable of adjusting meal size according to the postprandial fast duration. A second study was conducted to examine whether a sugar-rich meal can improve acquisition of anticipatory satiety through memory enhancement. Thirty-two female Sprague-Dawley rats were given either a sugar-rich or a protein-rich test-meal prior to the post-prandial fasts. Rats were conditioned in a similar fashion to the first study except that different odors were used, postprandial fasts were shortened to 3 and 10 hours, whereas training phase was elongated to eleven duplicates and followed by an extinction phase. Both dietary groups acquired the anticipatory satiety. However, probably due to the carbohydrate-induced overeating, the sugar-rich group in contrast to the protein-rich group, exhibited a delayed learning in meal-size adjustment prior to a short fast. The above studies demonstrated the existence of gender and macronutrient differences in food intake regulation.

Over the last two decades, sanitation policy and development has undergone a paradigm shift away from heavily-subsidized, supply-driven approaches towards behavioral-based demand-driven approaches. These current approaches to increase sanitation demand are multi-faceted, requiring multiple stakeholders with varying degrees of interest, knowledge, and capacity. Although efforts exist to increase sanitation access by incorporating engineering design principles with implementation planning approaches, these groups generally work independently without strong connections, thus reducing the potential of their impact. As a result, the design of appropriate sanitation technology is disengaged from the implementation of acceptable technology into communities, disconnecting user preference integration from sanitation technology design and resulting in fewer sanitation technologies being adopted and used. To address these challenges in developing successful interventions, this research examined how user preferences for specific attributes of appropriate sanitation technologies and their respective implementation arrangements influence their adoption and usage. Data for the study included interviews of 1002 sanitation users living in a peri-urban area of South Africa; the surveyed respondents were asked about their existing sanitation technology, their preferences for various sanitation technology design attributes, as well as their perspectives on current and preferred sanitation implementation arrangements. The data revealed that user acceptability of appropriate sanitation technology is influenced by the adoption classification of the users. Through the identification of motives and barriers to sanitation usage that were statistically significant, it exhibited the need to differentiate users who share private sanitation from those use communal sanitation facilities. Results also indicated that user acceptability of appropriate sanitation systems is dependent on the technical design attributes of sanitation. The development of utility functions detailed the significance of seven technical design attributes and determined their respective priorities. An agent-based simulation examined how user preferences for sanitation technology design and implementation influence its adoption and usage. Findings suggest that user acceptability of sanitation technology is dependent on both the technology design and the implementation arrangement being preferred.

Despite continued polarization along political party lines, it remains unclear how differences in political ideology impact the choices consumers make. The results of seven studies indicate that political ideology profoundly influences the way consumers think and behave. Liberals and conservatives are systematically drawn to distinct choice preferences where liberals prefer hedonic, novel, and desirable options, while conservatives prefer utilitarian, status quo, and feasible options. These findings are robust for multiple measures of political ideology across multiple choice sets. Differences in behavior are explained by the amount of deliberation used for a given decision. Liberals deliberate more than conservatives as they are more open to information while conservatives have a lower tolerance for ambiguous information. Implications for consumers, marketers, and policy makers are provided.