A review of preceding studies reveals a number of factors which influence junior- and senior-high-school girls to elect homemaking. The present study proposes to discover additional factors. It, furthermore, proposes to determine whether any relationships exist between the expressed interests of students who elect homemaking and their vocational preferences and general aptitudes.

MSc (Dent), Orthodontics, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand / This study evaluated the influence of age on the perception of facial attractiveness in three samples of South Africans. Eight digitally morphed lateral facial profiles were created by means of computer animation software and presented, in sequential order, to 1798 school learners, 694 university students and 323 school teachers. Each participant was asked to complete a questionnaire in addition to choosing a single face he/she perceived to be the most attractive. Statistical tests included frequency distributions, percentages, cross-tabulations, odds ratios and the Pearson Chi-square test. Results demonstrated that age was a factor in the perception of facial attractiveness particularly amongst individuals of school-going age. Thereafter, increasing age did not exert a significant influence on the perception of profile preference. There was a definite trend towards the preference for less protrusive facial profiles. Nevertheless, due consideration should be given to the individuality associated with aesthetic choices as a significant proportion of raters did indicate a preference for profiles exhibiting mild protrusion. Furthermore, race and cultural background do appear to play a significant role in the perception of facial profile preferences. It is suggested that future studies of a similar nature be undertaken in order to provide the data to permit comparison with the results reported in this study.

by Chow Kar Tak, Kelly, Chan Wai Shing, Cheung Wai Hung, Daniel. / Includes questionnaire in Chinese. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [33]-[35]). / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- The Room Air Conditioners Market in Hong Kong and Zhu Hai --- p.3 / Chapter 3. --- Sample Characteristics --- p.4 / Chapter 4. --- Choice Criteria of Room Air Conditioning Units --- p.7 / Chapter 4.1 --- Country of Brand --- p.12 / Chapter 4.2 --- Country of Production --- p.15 / Chapter 4.3 --- Price --- p.20 / Chapter 4.4 --- Quietness --- p.22 / Chapter 4.5 --- Reliability --- p.23 / Chapter 4.6 --- Additional Features --- p.24 / Chapter 4.7 --- Size --- p.25 / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion --- p.26 / Appendix A -List of Tables / Appendix B -Reference / Appendix C - Survey Questionnaire for Hong Kong / Appendix D - Survey Questionnaire for Zhu Hai

This dissertation contains three essays in Economic Theory. The first chapter relates to information economics and mechanism design: it studies the inefficiencies that arise from delegating information acquisition to an uninterested agent. The second and third chapter are essays in decision theory and explore the behavioral implications of certain types of incomplete preferences. In the first chapter, a principal hires an agent to acquire costly information that will influence the decision of a third party. While the realized piece of information is observable and contractible, the experimental process is not. Assuming a general family of information cost functions (inclusive of Shannon’s mutual information), we show that the first best is achievable when the agent has limited liability or when he is risk averse, in contrast to standard moral hazard models. However, when the agent is risk averse and has limited liability, efficiency losses arise generically. Specifically, we show that the principal obtains his first best outcome if and only if she intends to implement a ”symmetric” experiment, i.e. one in which the cost of generating each piece of evidence is the same. On the other hand, ”asymmetric” experiments that are relatively uninformative with high probability but occasionally produce conclusive evidence will bear large agency costs. In the second chapter, we define an elimination rule as a binary relation that is reflexive and has no strict cycle. We study the behaviors of decision makers that can be represented by certain types of menu dependent elimination rules: upward refinements, in which the elimination rule becomes more complete as the choice set grows and are consistent with the decision maker extracting increasingly more information from bigger sets; and downward refinements, in which the elimination rule shrinks as the choice set grows, and that are consistent with choice overload phenomena. Finally, we study the behavior of a decision maker with incomplete preference who uses a heuristic rule to select an arbitrary subsets of undominated elements in each choice set. We show how to use this framework to identify all choice data consistent with a certain behavioral bias, by illustrating it with both the compromise effect and the attraction effect. In the third chapter, we introduce the notion of revealed betweenness for partial orders of dimension two, i.e. that are the intersection of two linear orders: how to identify solely from binary comparisons which of three mutually incomparable alternatives is ranked as the middle one for both linear orders. We use it to provide a new set of sufficient conditions for a partial order to be of order dimension two or less, by applying a characterization of a particular class of ternary relations: betweenness relations. We finally address the issue of identifiability of this pair of criteria.

Lin, Lei. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-73). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER ONE --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- BACKGROUND --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- RESEARCH OBJECTIVE --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- OUTLINE OF THIS STUDY --- p.4 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- ASYMMETRlC COMPETITION --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Previous Explanations --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- CONSUMER SUSPICION OF ULTERIOR MOTIVE --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Definition of Consumer Suspicion --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Characteristic of Consumer Suspicion of Ulterior Motives --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Consumer Suspicion of Ulterior Motives in Consumer Research --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- ATTRIBUTION --- p.16 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE --- PROPOSITION DEVELOPMENT --- p.20 / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR --- STUDY ONE --- p.25 / Chapter 4.1 --- OBJECTIVES --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2 --- METHOD --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- "Participants, Design and Stimuli" --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Procedure --- p.27 / Chapter 4.3 --- RESULTS --- p.28 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Manipulation Check --- p.28 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Dependent Variable --- p.28 / Chapter 4.4 --- DISCUSSION --- p.32 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE --- STUDY TWO --- p.34 / Chapter 5.1 --- OBJECTIVES --- p.34 / Chapter 5.2 --- METHOD --- p.34 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- "Participants, Design and Stimuli" --- p.34 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Procedure --- p.36 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Measures --- p.37 / Chapter 5.3 --- ANALYSIS AND RESULTS --- p.40 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Manipulation Check --- p.40 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Dependent Variable --- p.42 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Attribution Inference --- p.44 / Chapter 5.3.4 --- Mediating Effects of Attribution Inferences --- p.47 / Chapter 5.4 --- DISCUSSION --- p.49 / Chapter CHAPTER SIX --- STUDY THREE --- p.53 / Chapter 6.1 --- OBJECTIVES --- p.53 / Chapter 6.2 --- METHOD --- p.53 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- "Participants, Design and Manipulation" --- p.53 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Attribution Measures --- p.55 / Chapter 6.3 --- ANALYSIS AND RESULTS --- p.57 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Manipulation Check --- p.57 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Dependent Variable --- p.57 / Chapter 6.3.3 --- Attribution Inference --- p.58 / Chapter 6.3.4 --- Mediating Effects of Product Attribution --- p.59 / Chapter 6.4 --- DISCUSSION --- p.61 / Chapter CHAPTER SEVEN --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.64 / Chapter 7.1 --- SUMMARY OF TI-IE Findings --- p.64 / Chapter 7.2 --- THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS --- p.65 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- Theoretical Contributions --- p.65 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- Practical Implications --- p.66 / Chapter 7.3 --- LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH --- p.67 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.69

Law, Ka Lai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-86). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract (English) --- p.2 / Abstract (Chinese) --- p.3 / Dedication --- p.4 / Acknowledgements --- p.5 / Table of Contents --- p.6 / List of Tables --- p.8 / List of Figures --- p.9 / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.10 / Chapter 1.0 --- Overview --- p.10 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background --- p.10 / Chapter 1.2 --- Research Objectives --- p.11 / Chapter 1.3 --- Significance of This Thesis --- p.12 / Chapter 1.4 --- Organization of The Thesis --- p.13 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Literature Review & Model Development --- p.14 / Chapter 2.0 --- Overview --- p.14 / Chapter 2.1 --- Literature Review on Licensing Effect --- p.14 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Components of Licensing Effect --- p.15 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Licensing Effect and Its Mediator --- p.16 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Rejection of Alternative Explanations --- p.18 / Chapter 2.2 --- Literature Review on Guilt-Reduction Mechanism --- p.20 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Guilt --- p.20 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Guilt-Reduction Mechanisms --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3 --- Conceptual Model and Hypotheses --- p.23 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Conceptual Model --- p.23 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Hypotheses --- p.24 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Research Methodology --- p.28 / Chapter 3.0 --- Overview --- p.28 / Chapter 3.1 --- Research Design --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2 --- Pretest --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Relative Luxury Items --- p.30 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Scenario Development --- p.31 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Questionnaire Development --- p.33 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Procedures --- p.35 / Chapter 3.3 --- Main Study --- p.36 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Participants --- p.37 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Design --- p.37 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Materials --- p.37 / Chapter 3.3.4 --- Scenarios --- p.38 / Chapter 3.3.4 --- Manipulation Checks --- p.41 / Chapter 3.3.5 --- "Dependent, Mediator and Other Measures" --- p.41 / Chapter 3.3.6 --- Procedures --- p.41 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Results And Discussion --- p.43 / Chapter 4.0 --- Overview --- p.43 / Chapter 4.1 --- Manipulation Checks --- p.43 / Chapter 4.2 --- Reliability and Validity of Scales --- p.45 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Reliability Analysis --- p.45 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Construct Validity --- p.45 / Chapter 4.3 --- Hypothesis Testing --- p.47 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- MANOVA --- p.47 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- MANOVA by Path Analysis --- p.51 / Chapter 4.4 --- Discussions --- p.57 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Conclusion --- p.58 / Chapter 5.0 --- Overview --- p.58 / Chapter 5.1 --- Contributions --- p.58 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Theoretical Contribution --- p.58 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Managerial Contribution --- p.59 / Chapter 5.2 --- Limitations --- p.60 / Chapter 5.3 --- Future Research Directions --- p.61 / Chapter 5.4 --- Conclusion --- p.62 / Appendix --- p.63 / References --- p.82

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, December 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Background: Ontario has the highest number of HIV positive test reports in Canada. Many of the HIV prevention interventions had a moderate effect on changing unsafe sexual behaviors within the young adult population. Participants’ preferences for such interventions could be a contributing factor to the moderate effect of the prevention interventions. Treatment preference is defined as a positive or negative attitude toward a particular treatment. To date few empirical studies examined preferences for educational and cognitive/behavioral interventions focusing on HIV prevention for young adults. Purpose: The purpose of this study is twofold: to examine participants’ preferences for different types of educational and cognitive/behavioral intervention components for HIV prevention and to explore socio-structural, psychological and intervention related factors that affect participants’ preferences for intervention. Design: The study used a cross-sectional mixed methods design. The data were collected using a face-to-face interview. Structured and open-ended questions were used to inquire about participants’ preferences for intervention. Sample: The sample consisted of 150 young adults ranging in age from 18 to 39 years, and able to speak and read English. The sample was recruited from the Greater Toronto Area. Measures: The measures included an adapted questionnaire to elicit participant preference for intervention, the multi-dimensional locus of control questionnaire, AIDS health locus of control questionnaire and standard demographic questions. Analysis: Descriptive statistics were used to examine preferences for intervention components. Regression analysis was done to explore the relationships between the selected factors and participants’ preferences for intervention. Findings: All 150 participants had a preference for an HIV prevention intervention. In terms of preference for treatment type, 64% preferred an intervention that incorporated a combination of educational and cognitive-behavioral components. Specifically, 23% preferred the intervention to incorporate all three components: educational information, communication skills and goal attainment. In addition, 49% of the participants’ preferred an intervention that incorporated an average of 1-4 sessions lasting 90 minutes in length. Of the socio-structural, psychological and intervention related factors hypothesized to be associated with participants’ preferences for intervention type, components and dose, intervention related factors were found to be the most significant factors related to participants’ preferences. Conclusions: Young adults preferred to have an HIV prevention intervention that encompassed a combination of education and cognitive-behavioral components when given the opportunity to choose their preferred interventions. Providing interventions that are consistent with participants’ preferences is posited as beneficial as it increases the participants’ sense of control, satisfaction with care, adherence to intervention protocol and achievement of desired outcomes.

Background: Ontario has the highest number of HIV positive test reports in Canada. Many of the HIV prevention interventions had a moderate effect on changing unsafe sexual behaviors within the young adult population. Participants’ preferences for such interventions could be a contributing factor to the moderate effect of the prevention interventions. Treatment preference is defined as a positive or negative attitude toward a particular treatment. To date few empirical studies examined preferences for educational and cognitive/behavioral interventions focusing on HIV prevention for young adults. Purpose: The purpose of this study is twofold: to examine participants’ preferences for different types of educational and cognitive/behavioral intervention components for HIV prevention and to explore socio-structural, psychological and intervention related factors that affect participants’ preferences for intervention. Design: The study used a cross-sectional mixed methods design. The data were collected using a face-to-face interview. Structured and open-ended questions were used to inquire about participants’ preferences for intervention. Sample: The sample consisted of 150 young adults ranging in age from 18 to 39 years, and able to speak and read English. The sample was recruited from the Greater Toronto Area. Measures: The measures included an adapted questionnaire to elicit participant preference for intervention, the multi-dimensional locus of control questionnaire, AIDS health locus of control questionnaire and standard demographic questions. Analysis: Descriptive statistics were used to examine preferences for intervention components. Regression analysis was done to explore the relationships between the selected factors and participants’ preferences for intervention. Findings: All 150 participants had a preference for an HIV prevention intervention. In terms of preference for treatment type, 64% preferred an intervention that incorporated a combination of educational and cognitive-behavioral components. Specifically, 23% preferred the intervention to incorporate all three components: educational information, communication skills and goal attainment. In addition, 49% of the participants’ preferred an intervention that incorporated an average of 1-4 sessions lasting 90 minutes in length. Of the socio-structural, psychological and intervention related factors hypothesized to be associated with participants’ preferences for intervention type, components and dose, intervention related factors were found to be the most significant factors related to participants’ preferences. Conclusions: Young adults preferred to have an HIV prevention intervention that encompassed a combination of education and cognitive-behavioral components when given the opportunity to choose their preferred interventions. Providing interventions that are consistent with participants’ preferences is posited as beneficial as it increases the participants’ sense of control, satisfaction with care, adherence to intervention protocol and achievement of desired outcomes.

<p>When do individuals feel that economic inequality needs to be corrected through redistributive government policy, such as progressive taxes or social spending? Using a cross-national data set of public opinion across both developing and developed countries, this dissertation finds that political context plays a key role in determining how individuals view economic inequality and their support for redistributive social policy. An overarching theme throughout the dissertation is that political elites are key in making inequality a prominent issue for the public. This is done by framing individual attributes such as income, ethnic identity or geographic local (urban vs. rural) in a way that will either maximize or minimize support for redistribution. When political elites lack incentives to mobilize public opinion on the issue, it becomes unlikely that individual attributes such as income or ethnicity will predict support for redistribution.</p> / Dissertation