This paper investigates how U.S. private firms communicate with equity investors around private capital raising. Using multiple research methods, including survey, interview, and archival analysis, I provide systematic evidence on private firms’ public and private disclosure practices. I find that despite engaging in a low level of public disclosures, private firms actively communicate with investors through the private communication channel at initial fundraising and subsequent periods. Such private communication also exhibits greater cross-sectional variation. Focusing on provision of financial information, I provide evidence suggesting that private firm managers consider the relevance of information when making disclosure choices. Lastly, I investigate the relation be- tween firms’ private communication and public reporting preference and find a substitutive effect. The study informs current debate on regulating private market participants by examining existing disclosure landscape of private firms as an important first step.

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[pt] Esta dissertação buscou empreender uma genealogia e análise crítica de processos feministas de subjetivação. Como ponta de partida, foram usadas uma experiência que faz parte da trajetória da pesquisadora e o estudo de caso dos grupos de Consciousness-Raising (C-R). Fenômeno popular do feminismo americano dos anos 70, C-R foi uma ferramenta adotada pelo Women s Liberation Movement por meio da qual mulheres organizavam-se com uma metodologia própria para responder perguntas usando exemplos de suas vidas pessoais, além das próprias emoções. As respostas eram tratadas como dados a serem analisados e comparados, de modo a pensar coletivamente o que é ser mulher e identificar opressões estruturais da sociedade. Baseada em vasto levantamento documental, relatos e literatura da época, esta pesquisa pretendeu compreender o funcionamento da dinâmica dos grupos de C-R e pensar criticamente, a partir de autores pós-estruturalistas, pós-colonialistas e da teoria queer, nas diversas implicações políticas e subjetivas de ferramentas e práticas de subjetivação feministas. Com foco nas relações entre C-R e a questão da diferença foi investigado o surgimento e materialização da política identitária nos movimentos feminista e LGBT+, e analisado o papel da cultura material na construção e consolidação de valores normativos dentro e fora desses movimentos. / [en] This thesis sought to undertake a genealogy and critical analysis of feminist subjectification processes. Its starting points were a personal-academic experience of the researcher and the case study of the Consciousness-Raising (C-R) phenomena from the American second-wave feminist movement. C-R was a tool developed and widely adopted by the Women s Liberation Movement, in which women organized themselves using their own methodologies to answer questions based on their personal lives and emotions. The answers were used as data to be analyzed and compared in order to provoke collective reflection on what it means to be a woman and to identify structural oppressions. Based on vast archival research, personal testimonies and feminist literature produced at the time, this thesis aimed to comprehend the dynamics of C-R groups to reflect critically - drawing from post-structuralist, post-colonialist and queer theory - on the several political and subjective implications of feminist subjectification practices and tools. Through focusing on the relationship between C-R and the issue of difference, it also analyzed the development of Identity Politics within the feminist and LGBT+ movements, as well as the role played by material culture in the construction and consolidation of normative values within and outside said movements.

Different types of nonprofit organizations including human service nonprofits like homeless shelters, public broadcasting organizations, and the like thrive on donations. Effective fundraising techniques are essential to a nonprofit’s existence. This research study explored a revised theory of planned behavior to include guilt and convenience in order to understand whether these factors are important in donors’ intentions to give. This study also examined the impact of two different kinds of guilt; anticipated guilt and existential guilt to determine if there was any difference between the types of guilt and the roles that they play as predicting factors in a revised TPB model. This study also explored how human service nonprofits and public broadcasting organizations compare in the factors that help better predict their donating intentions. An online survey was administered to a convenience sample, and hierarchical regression analysis was used to determine significant predicting factors within each revised TPB model. This study confirmed that the standard theory of planned behavior model was a significant predictor of intentions to donate for donors of both human service nonprofits and public broadcasting organizations. However, in both contexts, not all traditional factors of the TPB model contributed to the donation intentions. This study also provides further evidence that guilt can increase the predictive value of the standard TPB model for both types of nonprofits. Anticipated guilt more specifically, was a significant predicting factor for donors’ intentions to give to public broadcasting organizations. In contrast, convenience did not affect the explanatory power of the TPB model in either context. The TPB models for the two nonprofits are compared and theoretical and practical explanations are discussed.

Grandfamilies, or families in which grandparents are raising their grandchildren, often form due to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) experienced by the grandchildren. ACEs have been linked to multiple negative short- and long-term behavioral and emotional consequences for children. Yet, having an ACE history does not guarantee negative outcomes, as protective factors such as positive relationships with a safe and caring adult, healthy family functioning, and utilization of formal services can mitigate the negative effects of ACEs. Researchers have regularly called on families to seek timely intervention and services for ACEs; however, many grandparents raising grandchildren report negative interactions with service providers as well as service delivery. Limited research has explored the extent to which grandfamilies with ACEs may have experienced similar interactions while seeking and using formal services. Guided by Andersen's (1995) Behavioral Model of Health Service Use, this qualitative study sought to explore (1) the service needs of grandchildren with an ACE history who are being raised by their grandparents; (2) the service needs of grandparents raising grandchildren with an ACE history; (3) the process of seeking services when grandparents raising a grandchild with an ACE history look for services for their grandchild; and (4) best practices for delivering services to grandfamilies with an ACE history. The research questions were primarily addressed through via interviewing 10 grandparents from Central Appalachia who were raising a grandchild with an ACE history and by conducting two focus groups of 8 to 12 formal service providers with experience working with grandparents raising grandchildren with an ACE history. Interview data were analyzed using grounded theory and focus group data were analyzed through thematic analysis. Study findings indicated that grandchildren have emotional and developmental needs. Grandparents described needs related to the emotional impact of raising a grandchild with an ACE history, family and parent involvement, and parenting a grandchild with an ACE history. Study results also highlighted how grandparents can expect to encounter barriers throughout the service seeking and delivery process. Study results also highlighted the critical nature of having a strong relationship with a service provider and the importance of a service provider reducing barriers, being attentive to grandfamily needs, and involving the grandparent in the treatment process. Finally, results from the focus groups revealed best practices such as providing grandparents with education on ACEs, being aware of intergenerational ACE cycles, and engaging in assessment and intervention when working with this population. Implications for clinical practice as well as directions for future research are discussed. / Doctor of Philosophy / Historically, grandparents have long been called upon to assist with caring for their grandchildren. In the last forty years, grandparents have increasingly shifted to a new role—that of parent. Grandfamilies are commonly created due to adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, which can include child abuse, child neglect, or household challenges such as parental substance abuse or parental incarceration. Experiencing ACEs does not guarantee negative outcomes in a child's life, but their presence and number can affect it, particularly when a child has experienced numerous ACEs. Professional services or treatment are one way to support these children. However, negative interactions with service providers or unfulfilled expectations with service delivery can dissuade grandparents from continuing services. This study sought to understand how grandparents raising a grandchild with an ACE history identify the grandchild's needs, come to the realization that their grandchild needs professional help, the process and experience of receiving that professional help, as well as what happened after the grandchild received professional services. After interviewing 10 grandparents raising a grandchild with an ACE history, study findings revealed how grandparents identify grandchild needs, and then manage those needs as well as grandchild behaviors. Study findings also illustrated a recursive relationship between grandparents managing grandchild needs and building a relationship of trust with the formal service provider once services have started. Building a relationship of trust with a formal service provider can then result in creating change or the grandparent deciding to end services. Finally, grandparent interview data revealed that throughout the entire process of service seeking, grandparents raising a grandchild with an ACE history commonly experience barriers hindering their access to services including personal, availability, and systemic barriers. Finally, the study sought to understand best practices for working with grandparents raising grandchildren with an ACE history, which include assessing for and creating interventions targeting ACEs, providing education on ACEs to grandparents, and being aware of intergenerational ACE cycles with these families. Strategies for clinical practice are also identified.

This dissertation used a post-structural feminist theoretical lens to examine women’s under-representation in mathematics graduate programs and careers. Five dominant discourses that potentially influence women’s decision to enter mathematical careers were discussed, including how those discourses interact in competing and complementary ways to shape women’s and men’s ideas about the nature of mathematics. The study investigated the long-term impact of a single-sex reform-based summer mathematics program on high school girls. The study utilized a variety of data collection techniques including surveys, field observations, phenomenological interviews, and artifact collection. Nine participants who were enrolled in a summer mathematics program for high school girls in 2000 were purposefully selected to best represent the overall population of program participants during that time period. Results of this study indicate that these women rejected the traditional procedural way that mathematics was taught to them. They saw mathematics as irrelevant and had very little knowledge of potential careers in mathematics. However, the findings of this study suggest that programs like the one studied here can have positive outcomes on girls’ academic performance, their perceptions of their own math ability, and their perceptions of mathematics as field of study. Overall, this study allows researchers to better understand the lived experiences of women in mathematics, hopefully leading to a more dynamic model that can begin to explain how competing discourses influence girls’ and women’s decision to enter mathematics careers. Based on these findings, recommendations for changes in teaching practice are discussed.

This thesis is an investigation of the structural and formal semantic properties of copy raising constructions in English, as well as their expletive counterparts. The first main claim is that contrary to what has been previously assumed, the perceiver of the event (i.e. the Pgoal in Asudeh & Toivonen's 2012 terms) is an obligatory syntactic and semantic argument of the matrix verb. I argue that the identification of the Pgoal is not left to pragmatics, but rather that is represented as a silent pronoun in the structure: one that picks up a logophoric antecedent. The result of this is that the material in the embedded clause is semantically interpreted with respect to the Pgoal's perspective. The second major claim of the thesis is that this perspective-sensitivity is most appropriately captured using a modal semantic framework (Kratzer, 1977, 1981 von Fintel & Heim, 2002). Specifically, I argue that each of the different copy raising verbs encodes a different accessibility relation between possible worlds or situations, while the Pgoal's information state provides the relevant domain of worlds. Using these insights, I propose truth conditions for these constructions, which ultimately are sensitive to a kind of stereotypical ordering, and account for inter-speaker variability. Finally, I discuss the anomalous class of copy raising constructions with non-thematic subjects, and argue that overlapping discourse functions may have resulted in a shift away from modal semantics in these cases. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / This thesis investigates the linguistic meaning associated with the "copy raising" sentence construction, e.g. "Your cat looks like she wants to go outside." I argue that the interpretation of these sentences is dependent on establishing the individual whose perspective is conveyed in the sentence, which does not need to be the speaker. After examining the range of contexts in which various different copy raising constructions can be used, I propose an analysis of their core meaning that draws on the philosophical idea of possible worlds, and the psychological notion of stereotypicality. I also address the question of whether these constructions are related to the phenomenon of evidentiality, a property of certain languages which allows the speaker to linguistically mark the source of evidence for their claim.

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of private funds on selected Texas public institutions of higher education by identifying and comparing the specific ways these institutions are affected by private funds. Conclusions: 1. Private contributions to institutions of higher education will continue to increase in the immediate future. 2. Private contributions to public institutions of higher education come from a variety of sources. 3. Private contributions make a greater impact on programs and projects involving people rather than on buildings and equipment in public institutions of higher education. 4. Future uses of private money in public institutions of higher education also appear to be related to people rather than to capital spending. 5. Public institutions of higher education in Texas will depend upon private funds to a greater extent in the foreseeable future.

The purpose of this study is to examine adult literacy beyond its constraints as a social problem and instead consider the implications of illiteracy as a particular form of lived experience, analogous to women's oppression at large. Through a complex system of meaning making, the knowledge accrued by illiterate adults is qualitatively different, and examining these differences in terms of their correlation to coping mechanisms developed in the face of social alienation and diminished professional prospects yields a greater understanding of class privilege and how nontraditional learners fit into a larger social structure. From the perspective of academic feminism, adult illiteracy presents several problems regarding the scope of an inclusive feminist community that acknowledges privilege and difference. The primary method through which information regarding feminism is conferred is printed materials, which utilize highly specific, specialized jargon, and unwittingly create an exclusive community marred by internalized racism and class stratifications. This study explores other methods through which feminist ideation might theoretically be possible, i.e. cultural "reading" communities and vocational and continuing education programs focused on cultural competencies, as women come out of their imposed silences and become aware of their circumstances in a way that resembles feminist thought, if perhaps without sophisticated language with which to communicate those ideals. In this way, feminist ideation and semiotics tie in together, as attitudinal change may occur without the semantic realization of what this entails. This goal of this paper is also, in part, to justify why acknowledging gendered learning differences and a particular female subjectivity for adult literacy clients will yield better results for their self-valuation, as gender is a component of diversity all but ignored within the scheme of adult literacy pedagogical theory.

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