ABSTRACT Pain is a subjective sensation and is difficult to measure. It is important to quantify pain as benefits are obtained from its quantification. The validity and reliability of pain outcome measures have been extensively researched in Europe, America and Asia. In Africa on the other hand, very few studies have been done. This study was a cross-sectional study to validate and test the reliability of pain scales.The aim of this study was to establish the validity and reliability of the Tswana translations of three pain scales, namely, the Visual Analogue scale (two versions), the Verbal Rating Scale and the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Measure. The validity of the study was determined by the face validity,criterion validity and construct validity.The statistical analysis of the results showed several significant p values (p< 0.05).However, none of the correlations illustrated a strong relationship as there were no r values in excess of 0.5 indicating a moderate correlation or greater than 0.7 indicating a good correlation. The statistical significance only indicated that the observed values were not due to chance.From the statistical analysis of the results, it became apparent that the subjects tested did not have an understanding of any of the three scales .This was seen in all the age groups and education levels selected for the purpose of this study. It is our recommendation therefore, that suitable, new scales be developed for our local population. The scales which have been used up until now are not being understood and hence are not being interpreted or used correctly in the South African context amongst Tswana speaking individuals. Future research needs to be done in developing entirely different scales for the South African scenario. More relevant and better understood scales should be developed for our local population to include persons of different languages and different education levels. This will assist in a better understanding of the health care process and will by so doing, improve their health care and management.

Thesis advisor: Philip E. Strahan / In the first essay of this dissertation I examine the bank credit supply and industry growth effects stemming from the introduction of bank account debit (BAD) taxes using a sample of Latin American countries between 1986 and 2005. I first show that the introduction of BAD taxes is followed by a reduction in the provision of bank credit to the private sector. I identify that a key channel through which these taxes affect credit is by creating a strong incentive to hold cash and reduce the use of bank deposits. I also provide evidence that their implementation ultimately affects economic growth, mainly by reducing the growth prospects of industries that are more susceptible to distortions in the supply of credit. In the second chapter I use a large sample of private firms in Colombia to investigate the impact of the introduction and changes of BAD taxes on the financing and investment decisions of firms. I first document that bank leverage decreases from an average of 23% in the years before the tax to 18% in the post-tax years. Furthermore, using a differences-in-differences empirical strategy, I find that small-risky firms reduce more their leverage and capital expenditures relative to large-high credit quality firms, even after controlling for firms' demand characteristics. In the last essay, written jointly with Heitor Almeida, Miguel A. Ferreira and Igor Cunha, we exploit the sovereign ceiling policy by credit rating agencies to show that sovereign rating downgrades have a real impact on firm investment and financial policy. We identify these causal effects by exploring the effect of sovereign downgrades on corporate ratings that are due to the rating agencies' sovereign ceiling rules. We find that sovereign downgrades lead to greater reduction in investment and leverage at firms that are at the sovereign rating bound than at otherwise similar firms that are below the bound. Consistent with a contraction in capital supply, bond yields of firms at the bound increase more than yields of firms below the bound. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

I examined the relationship between teacher effectiveness as measured by the number of learn units students required to meet an objective and the number of competencies mastered within the categories of teacher repertoires composing the CABAS® rank. Twenty preschool teachers participated in the study. A statistical analysis was used to investigate the degree to which these variables negatively correlated with each other. The results showed that the more competencies teachers mastered, the fewer learn units students required to meet an objective. A second experiment was conducted as an experimental analysis of the correlations found in the descriptive analysis. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to analyze the relationship between the number of competencies teachers mastered and the number of learn units their student required to meet an objective. Four teachers and four teacher assistants participated in the study. The teachers and teacher assistants each taught two sight word objectives for a student with bidirectional naming and a student without bidirectional naming. The results did not show a functional relationship between the number of competencies mastered and a lower LUC (learn unit to criterion). Teachers with more competencies mastered did not present fewer learn units for their students to meet an objective when compared to teacher assistants who had fewer competencies mastered. Possible explanations for a lack of a functional relationship found in Experiment 2 are discussed.

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A research report submitted to the Faculty of Management University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management. February 1999. / One of the levers of competitiveness is innovation. with the increased cost pressures, it is recognised that the innovative potential of all employees must be leveraged. The literature suggests that innovation is innate. It follows, therefore, that an appropriate performance management system, based on an understanding of the requirements of innovative individuals, must harness and encourage innovation to a greater or lesser extent in all employees. The purpose of this study was to assess whether there are any differences in the performance management preferences of innovative and non-innovative employees, with a view to designing appropriate performance management systems. The data was collected by means of a questionnaire distributed among the employees of the retail banking arm of a financial services sector organisation. Responses were elicited from 34 employees. These were then subjected to statistical analysis. The findings point to no real differences between the preferences of innovative and non innovative employees, with the exception of 4 dimensions. The absence of many differences is consistent with the view that innovative capability is a continuum and is an innate ability that is developed to different extents in different people. It suggests that other aspects of the individual personality are equally important in defining a suitable enviromnent of work. The recommendation is that a single performance management system is employed in an organisation with opportunities for customisation for the individual. / AC2017

by Cheung Kwok Lun. / Thesis (M.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1980. / Bibliography: leaves 136-141.

by Wong Wan-chi. / Title in Chinese: / Bibliography: leaves 108-120 / Thesis (M.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1986

This dissertation examines to what extent social comparison is emphasized in performance evaluations of work organizations, how employees react to it, and whether there is an alternative to it. Operationalizing social comparison as an evaluation process that compares an employee’s performance to their coworkers’ performance, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that social comparison is emphasized to a stronger extent in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. Studies 3 and 4 find that employees in collectivistic cultures perceive higher procedural fairness when they receive social comparison evaluations as compared to employees in individualistic cultures. The mediation analyses from Studies 2 and 4 indicate that these findings are explained by the perceived descriptive and injunctive norms of social comparisons within collectivistic versus individualistic cultures, which shape people’s general attitudes toward using social comparison in evaluation settings. In collectivistic cultures that put strong emphasis on people’s social context, social comparison is considered to be a necessary component of performance evaluations. In contrast, in individualistic cultures where people focus on the specific characteristics of each person, social comparison is believed to be more or less irrelevant. Given the aversive effect of social comparison in individualistic cultures, the second chapter of this dissertation investigates whether there is a proper alternative to social comparison in the context of performance evaluations. It finds that temporal comparison—which compares an employee’s performance to his or her own past performance—can be such an alternative. Temporal comparison secures employees’ perceptions of fairness by providing the beliefs that their evaluators are focusing on them and their specific characteristics. These findings imply that employees in individualistic cultures want their independent identities to be acknowledged at work, and providing temporal comparison evaluations is one way to fulfill such needs.

Master of Science / Department of Agronomy / Michel D. Ransom / For many decades, researchers have created indices to rate soil on its ability to produce vegetative growth. The Soil Rating for Plant Growth (SRPG) model was developed by USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in 1992 to array soil mapping units relative to their potential to produce dryland commodity crops independent of management. A few years later, the Kansas Department of Revenue (KDR) Property Valuation Division (PVD) began using the SRPG model for land valuation. Since then, the SRPG was updated to a Kansas-specific model, KS-SRPG, later renamed and modified to PRGM-General Crop Production Index (GCPI), and stored in the National Soil Information System (NASIS). In 2003, modifications were made to the GCPI model to develop an irrigated index for Kansas and was termed the Kansas Irrigated Productivity Index (KIPI). KS-SRPG and KIPI are still used by the PVD, but are no longer updated, are not available to the public, and are difficult to understand. Therefore, it is necessary to construct a new model to predict dryland corn productivity for Kansas soil mapping units. This thesis calibrated and validated a new dryland corn index, which is termed the Kansas Commodity Crop Productivity Index (KCCPI) corn submodel. The KCCPI model was built in NASIS with the goal of being available to the public on Web Soil Survey. Corn yield data in NASIS were used to calibrate the model during development. Dryland corn yield data were obtained from Risk Management Agency (RMA) by Common Land Unit (CLU) and regressed against KCCPI for validation. Results during calibration were promising, but KCCPI was not as successful during validation. This suggests that more work needs to be done to the model with more sets of yield data.

Typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries