Stress is being linked increasingly to physiological, psychological, sociological, and educational problems. However, scant attention has been given to stress in recent reading research. This study investigated referral and evaluation statements and diagnostic data from parents, teachers, reading specialists, and counselors regarding signs of stress and potential stressors as factors in the reading difficulties of seventy-seven primary schoolchildren referred for evaluation at the pupil Appraisal Center (PAC) at North Texas State University between 1977 and 1984. Qualitative methods, specifically situational analysis, were employed to obtain a holistic view of each subject's reading difficulties. The researcher collected data from documented files at PAC. Data analysis via a categorical coding system produced thirty-nine stress related categories, organized under broad headings of family and school environment, readiness for reading/ learning, general stress reactions, and responses to stress when reading/learning becomes a problem.

The organizational effectiveness and strategic management areas of organizational theory are the general focus of this study. Organizational effectiveness is defined as the extent to which an organization by the use of certain resources fulfills its objectives without depleting its resources and without placing undue strain upon its members and/or society. Strategic management is defined as an array of processes which leads to the development of an effective approach to achieve the organization's objectives. Little agreement appears to exist on how to evaluate organizational effectiveness and to what extent strategic management impacts organizational effectiveness. This is the problem this study addressed. This study presents an extensive review of the literature, formulates some syntheses and utilizes a questionnaire to gather pertinent data. The sample of respondents consisted of a group of key administrators from all the Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. The questionnaire had a ninety percent response rate. This study was primarily a correlation study which emphasized the perceptions of the respondents regarding the elements and/or processes of strategic management and the concepts of organizational effectiveness. The Chi-Square and Spearman rank order tests were utilized for statistical measures. The analysis of data revealed any significant relationships between …

Cognitive therapy for the treatment of depression has generated substantial research indicating its effectiveness and it is currently considered among the most viable conceptualizations of depression. However, it has remained controversial because its methods do not directly address emotional symptoms in depressed persons. Treatment of depressed emotions is a primary focus of hypnotic mood elevating techniques. These techniques enable depressed persons to experience positive emotions during hypnosis sessions and to re-experience them daily concurrent with performance of certain specified behaviors. This study evaluated the efficacy of a multicomponent treatment which combines the techniques of cognitive therapy and hypnotic mood elevation in the treatment of depressed persons. The three treatment conditions constructed for this investigation were cognitive therapy plus hypnotic mood elevation, cognitive therapy plus pseudo-biofeedback, and no treatment waiting list.

This dissertation sought to determine the effects of a buddy system on a student's self-concept, academic achievement, attrition rate, and congruence levels. The buddy system treatment randomly paired two students for the purposes of sharing ideas, working on assignments, getting to know each other, and supporting one another. The study included three randomly selected sections of pre-college level, developmental writing classes from the Brookhaven College of the Dallas County Community College District. Three other classes served as the control group, and one instructor taught all six sections of the course. Three instruments were used as measures of change: the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS), designed by William H. Fitts, measured self-concept levels; the Personality and Educational Environment Scale (PEES), created by Roger Boshier, measured congruence levels; and a written paragraph measured achievement levels in English. Attrition percentages were based on the number of students enrolled during the second week of class who were not present during the sixteenth week of class. To test for significance, an analysis of covariance procedure was used on the TSCS, PEES, and written paragraph results, and a test for the difference between proportions for independent groups was used on the attrition percentages. The class sections were …

The purpose of this study was to investigate symptoms of childhood depression as factors in elementary school age children's reading difficulties. Subjects for study included children who evidenced symptoms of depression from among those referred to the Pupil Appraisal Center (PAC) at North Texas State University for reading difficulties between October, 1983, and April, 1985. The Weinberg Affective Scale (WAS), a screening device for childhood depression, was used to identify the subjects for this study. Using document analysis as the research approach, the researcher examined, recorded, and categorized referral and evaluation statements made by parents, teachers, counselors, and reading specialists the subjects1 PAC files that described symptoms of childhood depression. Also analyzed were diagnostic test data from the evaluation reports of PAC counselors and reading specialists.

The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the effect of the establishment of outside audit committees on the objectivity of the management results-reporting practices of those companies that established such committees in response to the New York Stock Exchange mandate effective June 30, 1978. Management income smoothing behavior is taken as a measurable surrogate for the objectivity of the management results-reporting practices. This research involved the testing of one research problem. The research question asks, "Will the establishment of outside audit committees by companies that had no such committees prior to the New York Stock Exchange mandate effective June 30, 1978, be associated with a decrease in the degree of smoothing in the net income series for the period after that date relative to the degree of smoothing prior to that date?" The answer to this question required the selection of an experimental and a control group. Each group was composed of fifty New York Stock Exchange listed firms. Linear and semi-log regression models were used to measure each firm's degree of income smoothing (defined as reducing the variability of a net income series about its trend line). The change in mean square errors of the experimental and …

This study was conceived as an attempt to determine .and analyze factors deterring participation in continuing professional education among social workers in environments where continuing education for relicensure is mandatory and voluntary. The specific research design implemented to complete this study was the ex-post facto descriptive design. The sample included 106 social workers randomly selected in the state of Texas where continuing education is mandatory and 94 social workers in the state of Louisiana where continuing education is voluntary. The instrument used was the Deterrent to Participation Scale developed by Scanlan (1983) and a demographic inventory. Scanlan (1983) earlier identified six factors deterring participation in continuing professional education: Disengagement, Lack of Quality, Family Constraints, Cost, Lack of Benefit, and Work Constraints. The study concluded that social workers in both states considered work constraint as a major factor deterring participation in continuing professional education. Also the factors of cost and lack of quality were also considered as crucial barriers in their efforts to participate in continuing professional education. The Wilks' multivariate test of significance of the means and univariate F tests at alpha level p < .05 revealed differences in the combined mean scores of social workers in both states when …

The purpose of this study was to compare student scores on geographic skills in the experimental group with student scores on geographic skills in the control group after adjustment was made in teaching methods and learning materials for verbal and spatial ability for students in the experimental group. Hypotheses tested at the .05 level were as follows. 1. Females would score higher than males on a criterion measure of verbal ability. 2. Males would score higher than females on a criterion measure of spatial ability. 3. Experimental/verbal students would score higher on a geography skills posttest. 4. Experimental/spatial students would score higher on a geography skills posttest. 5. The experimental group would score higher than the control group on a geography skills posttest. The sample was 150 high school United States History students in a medium-sized North Texas school district. Analysis of covariance was used to analyze results of the study of six classes after fifteen days of instruction in physical geography concepts. Experimental classes received geographic instruction directed to verbal and spatial abilities; control group classes received traditional geographic instruction which utilized textbook, lecture, and whole-group instruction. Three high schools participated in the study. Conclusions were that males and …

This study investigated the relationships among family environment, demographic measures, the decisions made by unintentionally pregnant adolescents regarding post-delivery plans (stay single, get married, adoption), and the certainty with which these decisions were made. The Information Sheet, Family Environment Scale (Moos & Moos, 1981), and Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965a) were administered to 17 5 pregnant adolescents, ages 14 through 22, who intended to carry their pregnancies to term. Pearson product-moment correlations and multiple regression analyses were utilized to assess the relationships between family environment and certainty of decision and between family environment and negative affect. Greater uncertainty was associated with nonwhite racial status and living with both natural parents or mother only. Higher levels of negative affect were related to lower levels of perceived family cohesion, independence, expressiveness, and intellectualcultural orientation. The demographic variables of age, trimester of pregnancy, and family constellation were also found to be useful in predicting levels of negative affect. Subjects who were older, further along in their pregnancies, and living with both natural parents or mother only tended to report greater negative affect. Findings of greater uncertainty and negative affect associated with living with the natural mother are consistent with …

In a three stage investigation the relationship between personality type and the use of learning as a coping device during the life transitions of adults was studied. Based on the assumption that a paper and pencil device could be constructed to achieve the same or nearly the same results that have been achieved through interviews with adult learners, the first two stages of this investigation involved the construction and validation of an instrument, the Adult Development Learning Inventory (ADLI), to measure the use of learning during life transitions of adults. The inventory has five subsections: a demographic profile, Life Events, Coping Strategies, Learning Activities, and Adulthood Tasks. Content validity of the ADLI was established through both the theory based in adult learning and developmental psychology and the panel of experts. Construct validation tools included principal component factor analysis and the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA with age as the variable of discrimination. The instrument was capable of differentiating among age groups' perception of the tasks in the adult life cycle. For internal consistency, reliability estimates ranged from .83 to .94 for the subsections of the ADLI. Stage III of the investigation explored the relationship between the ADLI and personality as measured by the …

The purposes of this study were to analyze (1) the changes over time in the state anxiety level of children in a computer-assisted program of reading instruction and in classroom reading instruction, (2) the changes in state anxiety patterns as related to gender, achievement level, and ethnicity, and (3) the difference in anxiety levels of the students while in computer-assisted reading instruction and classroom reading instruction.

The focus of this study was to determine the unique contribution of I.Q., gender, instructional organization, time on the computer, classroom instructional time, ethnicity and total instructional time to the predictability of achievement gain in a computer-assisted instructional setting in reading. The sample consisted of 2,000 students in grades three and five from a large suburban school district in the Dallas - Fort Worth area. The students were given the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to determine reading achievement gains and the Cognitive Abilities Test to determine I.Q. levels. The study was conducted over a five month period during the 1984 - 1985 school year. Using multiple regression, the data were analyzed.

The problem of this study was to determine the differences in experimentwise and comparisonwise Type I error rate among six multiple comparison procedures when applied to twenty-eight combinations of normally distributed data. These were the Least Significant Difference, the Fisher-protected Least Significant Difference, the Student Newman-Keuls Test, the Duncan Multiple Range Test, the Tukey Honestly Significant Difference, and the Scheffe Significant Difference. The Spjøtvoll-Stoline and Tukey—Kramer HSD modifications were used for unequal n conditions. A Monte Carlo simulation was used for twenty-eight combinations of k and n. The scores were normally distributed (µ=100; σ=10). Specified multiple comparison procedures were applied under two conditions: (a) all experiments and (b) experiments in which the F-ratio was significant (0.05). Error counts were maintained over 1000 repetitions. The FLSD held experimentwise Type I error rate to nominal alpha for the complete null hypothesis. The FLSD was more sensitive to sample mean differences than the HSD while protecting against experimentwise error. The unprotected LSD was the only procedure to yield comparisonwise Type I error rate at nominal alpha. The SNK and MRT error rates fell between the FLSD and HSD rates. The SSD error rate was the most conservative. Use of the harmonic mean of …

The purpose of this study was to identify childrearing attitudes of Mexican-American mothers with children ages three to five years of age. Specifically the first purpose of this study was to determine childrearing attitudes of Mexican-American mothers with ten years of education or fewer and Mexican-American mothers with eleven years of education or more as identified by the Parent As A Teacher Inventory (PAAT). The second purpose was to identify the relationship of the following demographic variables to childrearing attitudes: mother's age, mother's marital status, family income, sex of child, age of child, access to child, generational status, mother's language and mother's ethnicity. The PAAT and the Parent Information Questionnaire were administered to 112 Mexican-American mothers; 54 Mexican- American mothers with ten years of education or fewer and 58 Mexican-American mothers with eleven years of education or more. The population from which these subjects were drawn were mothers from Mexican-American communities in a North Texas county. Responses on the sample were analyzed using multivariate statistics. Based on the analysis of the data, the following conclusions seem tenable. 1. The Mexican-American mothers with eleven years of education or more have childrearing attitudes which are more positive than the Mexican-American mothers with …

Using a case study approach, this investigation focused on the nature of the relationship between computer related expenditures and student achievement in mathematics, with consideration given to the mediating factors influencing the relationship. Some of these factors included the types of computers and software being used, the objectives of computer instruction, teacher preparation in the use of the computer as an instructional tool, the amount of time individual students had access to a computer during the school year, and the socioeconomic status of pupils. Two of the twenty-five largest school districts in Texas were selected as the subjects for this study. Numerical data were collected from existing documents including general ledgers, bid tabulations, test score tables, and records showing the numbers of students participating in the free and reduced price lunch programs. Specific information regarding the implementations of the instructional programs was gathered through observations and 2 interviews with principals/ teachers, and students in four— teen junior high schools in each of the two school district. The districts exhibited more differences than similarities in the approaches to using computers for instruction in mathematics. One district, for about two hundred dollars per student, purchased a prepared, copyrighted, and patented program consisting …

This study was concerned with the enrollment patterns in required general education courses by technicaloccupational students in an urban community college. The purposes of this study were to (1) examine the general education course enrollment patterns of technical occupational students in specific programs; (2) determine if completion of an English course yields a higher GPA; (3) profile the characteristics of the students who do and do not enroll in general education courses; (4) determine if students enrolled in certain technical-occupational programs are more likely to enroll in general education than students enrolled in similar programs; and (5) determine if completion of general education courses has a positive effect on overall GPA of students.

This study focuses on the problems of international students as perceived by both international students and faculty in a public university. The major purposes of the study are to determine if there are significant differences in perceptions of the problems of international students between international students and faculty members, between groups of international students, and between groups of faculty members. A modification of an international student problem inventory instrument was used to collect data from 371 international students and 316 faculty members. Thirteen hypotheses were tested using frequency and percentages, analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of variance, and univariate analysis of variance, as required according to the data collected and the hypothesis being tested.

In an attempt to determine the normative levels in health attribution and emotional, intellectual, and neuromuscular functioning in the parkinsonian population, 31 diagnosed parkinsonian volunteers recruited from exercise classes and/or organizations were tested. Health attribution was measured by the Health Attribution Test (HAT), personality factors by the Clinical Analysis Questionnaire (CAQ), general intellectual level by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test- Revised (PPVT-R) and the Intellectual Processes subscale of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery (Luria- Intelligence), and neuromuscular functioning by the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND) and Bender- Gestalt (BVMGT). Controls for comparisons were obtained from the clinical ecology population and normals for personality traits and the nonspecific neurologically impaired, healthy aging populations, and normals for intellectual and neuromuscular functionings. Chi-square and t-tests were computed on the data. Results indicated that the parkinsonians manifest less lower body strength (£ < .01), poorer balance with eyes closed (JD < .01), and slower fine motor speed (p < .05) than normals. The parkinsonians function significantly better in areas involving upper body coordination (p < .01, £ < .05) , slow-controlled movements (g.< .001), BVMGT (p < .05), and PPVT-R (p < .01) than the nonspecific neurologically impaired. On the Luria-Intelligence, 21 percent of …

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the prevalence of specific learning disabilities in school-aged hearing impaired children based on the proposed theoretical definition of the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities (1981) and the theoretical definition constructed by the Canadian Association for Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities (1981). The operationalization of these theoretical definitions, coupled with the current operational definition issued by the Texas Education Agency (1983), formulated the investigative framework.

This study investigated the relationship between stress and pain crisis incidence in pediatric Sickle Cell Anemia (SCA). It was hypothesized that SCA children were exposed to higher levels of stress than healthy children. It was also hypothesized that a significant positive correlation existed between level of stress and pain crisis incidence both within and between years. The sample consisted of 20 Black elementary school children with SCA. There were 12 female and 8 male children. The period of investigation included the calendar years 1983 and 1984. Pain crisis incidence was determined through parent interviews and verified by a review of medical records.

After an initial four week baseline period, during which headache activity and medication consumption were monitored, 28 migraineurs were randomly assigned to one of the following groups: (a) the biofeedback temperature warming group, (b) the visual imagery group, (c) the combined treatment group, or (d) the comparison group. All four groups continued to monitor their headache activity and medication consumption during the eight week treatment period and the eight week follow-up period. A two way analysis of variance computed on groups over time indicated a significant decrease in headache activity and medication consumption. During the follow-up period (a) the combined treatment group had significantly fewer headaches than the biofeedback group or the comparison group and (b) the visual imagery group and the combined treatment group had significantly fewer headache hours than the biofeedback group or the comparison group. These results do not appear to be attributable to differences between groups on the amount of time spent in home practice or subjective ratings of relaxation. There was no consistent relationship between increases in finger temperature and headache activity improvement. Decreases in powerful other scores, as measured by the Health Attribution Test, and increases in subjective ratings of internal control were consistent …

Walker Percy differs from other American novelists in that he started writing fiction relatively late in life, after being trained as a physician and after considerable reading and writing in philosophy. Although critics have appreciated Percy's skills as a writer, they have seen Percy above all as a novelist of ideas, and, accordingly, the majority of critical articles and books about Percy has dealt with his themes, especially his philosophical themes, as well as with his philosophical sources. This study explores, therefore, the critical response to philosophical ideas in Percy's five novels to date, as evidenced first by reviews, then by the later articles and books. The critical response developed gradually as critics became aware of Percy's aims and pointed out his use of Christian existentialism and his attacks upon Cartesianism, Stoicism, and modern secular gnosticism. These critical evaluations of Percy's philosophical concerns have sometimes overshadowed interest in his more purely artistic concerns. However, the more a reader understands the underlying philosophical concepts that inform Percy's novels, the more he may understand what Percy is trying to say and the more he may appreciate Percy's accomplishment in expressing his philosophical ideas so skillfully in fictional form. Critics and readers may …

This study briefly reviews both historical and recent conceptualizations of dependency. In particular, it focuses on this concept's applicability to patients with chronic illnesses, especially those with allergies. Type and degree of dependency were seen as an important factor in the approach to the medical and psychological treatment of clinical ecology patients. The purpose of the study was to develop an objective measure of dependency which could quickly identify patients whose dependency conflicts interfere with the treatment process. The study was divided into three phases. In the first phase test responses by 84 inpatients to the CAQ, MMPI, and the HAT as well as historical and demographic data were analyzed by a series of stepwise discriminant analysis. The 53 resulting items were examined for those which most concisely discriminated between the two identified groups (pathologically dependent and nonpathologically dependent). These 15 items were used to test 120 additional patients in phase II. Fourteen items were retained and the coefficients obtained classified the patients in phase I and II with a 98.81 percent and 94.17 percent degree of accuracy respectively. These classification coefficients were used to classify another 30 patients in phase III with a 96.67 percent rate of accuracy. These …

The problem of this study was first year student retention at a private university. The purpose of the study was to identify high risk students (dropout prone) by use of the Stratil Counseling Inventory -_ College Form (SCI-C) in order to initiate early intervention counseling and advising. Intrusive counseling was started within the first six weeks of the 1984 fall semester to facilitate the students' transition to college. The population of the study was first-time full-time freshmen students in attendance at Freshmen Orientation the week prior to the beginning of the 1984 academic year. SCI-C instrument consisted of six scales designed to elicit attrition-related information about the firsttime, freshmen students. The scales identified students who were in need of assistance, and they provided a profile of their problem areas. This information, available within ten days after the beginning of classes enabled Student Development personnel to select the students out of the freshman class who needed help and to refer them to university resources for assistance. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the SCI-C data were: (1) students who needed assistance to integrate into the academic and social envrionment of the university were identified by the SCI-C; (2) students at …