This study investigated whether behavior disordered children would decrease aggressive behavior if their social interest were developed. Three hypotheses that were tested predicted that there would be a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group on adjusted mean scores on aggressive behavior on post test scores. The measuring instruments used were the Child Behavior Checklist Parent Report Form, the Child Behavior Checklist Teacher Report Form, and the Child Behavior Checklist Director Observation Form. It was also predicted that there would be a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group on post test adjusted mean scores as measured on the Social Interest Scale. An analysis of covariance was employed to test the data. Behavior disordered students in the experimental group participated in three activities designed to develop their social interest. They participated in peer tutoring, socialization with nursing home residents, and group discussions. Data were collected from parents, teachers, and observers of behavior disordered students in an elementary school in Northwest Louisiana during the summer term of 1987. Teachers did report a statistically significant difference between the experimental and the control groups in the decrease of aggressive behavior. These results are in accord with predictions …

The variables communication skills, state anxiety, communication apprehension, and level of integration are studied in relation to the assimilation of Alaskan Natives into a western-culture university. Specifically, the differences in communication skills between the two cultures and their effects on course grades are addressed. Results of the statistical analyses (ANOVA, MANOVA, discriminant function analysis, multiple regression) were not significant, most likely due to the small Alaskan Native sample size. The most significant relationship appeared between situational communication apprehension and the ethnicity of the interaction partner. Other results were directional, indicating that variables may be related to assimilation of Native students into a western university environment. Further research and replication is warranted, using an adequate sample of Alaskan Natives.

Freshmen at Sul Ross State University are required to take tests which are used for placement purposes. One of the tests given is the Nelson-Denny Reading Test which measures comprehension, vocabulary, and reading rate. The scores are used with American College Test or Standard Achievement Test scores to place students in either remedial or regular freshman English. Remedial students, who score below the tenth-grade competency level, are placed in English 1300. Regular students are placed in English 1301 or 1302. Twelve studies were found which had been done in this area since 1980. One was directly related to this study. The Anglo and Hispanic population of the freshman class of 1987 was tested. Blacks were not included as they comprised less than 9 percent of the freshman class. There were 69 students in the experimental group and 162 in the control group. A pretest-posttest design was used. A three-way analysis of variance set up data for statistical testing. The Alpha level was set at .05. The findings indicate a significant difference for Hypothesis 1, which predicted no significant difference in the posttest performance of students required to take English 1300 and the pretest performance of students who were not. Therefore …

This study investigated the following with regard to technical-occupational students in a multi-campus urban community college: The enrollment patterns in required general education courses at specific intervals of course work; the relation between successful completion of certain required general education courses (English and mathematics) and academic success as measured by grade point average; and the profiles or basic characteristics (age, GPA, sex, and high school graduation status) of (a) the student who had completed a specified amount of general education course work and (b) the graduate who had attained a higher grade point average in technical course work than in general education course work. The data was obtained from the academic records of 328 current student, selected by established criteria, and 284 graduates of six technical-occupational programs. The six programs were chosen by pairs to represent white-collar, technical-skilled, and blue-collar oriented occupations. Data on enrollment patterns were analyzed according to percentage in frequency distributions. Differences in mean grade point averages for completers and non-completers of English and mathematics were analyzed using the t-test. Significant variance among the groups representing types of occupations was analyzed using the chi-square test for independence. The Pearson Product Moment test was used to investigate correlations …

This ethnographic, descriptive case study is concerned with an analysis of the Elderhostel experience at one specific university. Questionnaires, evaluation documents, observations, phototographs, and interviews were used in this study to describe the 1988 Elderhostel experience at North Texas State University. Thirty-three persons were initially asked to participate in this study. Twenty-nine agreed and actually completed the questionnaires, and 26 completed the program evaluation. The study is organized and presented in the following manner: Chapter I introduces the study. Chapter II presents a review of related literature addressing those studies directly concerned with the Elderhostel experience, those addressing motivational reasons for participation in adult education, and those dealing with learning abilities, interests, and goals of the elderly in general. Chapter III includes the methods and procedures used to collect and analyze the data. Chapter IV presents the descriptive and statistical analysis of the data, and Chapter V includes the summary, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations that were derived from the analysis. Major findings of this study include a description of the organization and administration of the program, a description of the educational and co-curricular activities offered and how they were evaluated by the participants, and demographic and motivational data of the …

Federal guidelines required prime sponsors under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA, to serve the "significant segments" of the eligible population. This study analyzes whether prime sponsors in Texas and Louisiana correctly identified and served those segments. This study finds that eligible ethnic groups were properly identified and were served equitably; age and gender distinctions, however, were inadequately observed in the providing of services.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are personal and demographic characteristics which can predict the most accurate teacher appraisers. The demographics were limited to the following: campus-level job assignment, employing district size, sex, race, number of years of experience as an administrator, previous level of teaching experience, and curriculum area taught by the appraiser. The 622 subjects were school administrators trained to utilize the Texas Teacher Appraisal System. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression. Where an independent variable was significant (.05), a follow-up ANOVA and Tukey's multiple comparison were employed. Based on the findings of this study the following conclusions were drawn: 1. A summary data set indicated there was little evidence that any of the demographic variables was a significant predictor of accuracy in the evaluation process. 2. Six different data sets indicated that varying instructional settings and methodologies can influence evaluator accuracy. The campus assignment, years of experience, content area taught, race, and sex of the appraisers were all identified in at least one of the exercise sets as having significance. Except for sex and race, none of the variables was found to be significant when the overall prediction equation with all …

The purposes of this study were. to identify current uses of computers by university foodservice operations and to determine if there.are any differences in computer use among university foodservice operations. The twelve university foodservice directors who responded to the research questionnaire varied significantly in their computer usage and computer characteristics. Institutions serving more than 1,000 meals per day represented 91% of the sample using computers. Chi Square analysis found a significant use of menu-costing programs. The computers were used more than six hours a day by 75% of the sample. The.problems relating to hardware and software selection indicate a lack of assessment of operational needs for foodservice operations. Guidelines to assist foodservice directors in computerization are needed.

The purpose of the study was to determine if occupational investigation teachers and vocational administrators held similar or differing attitudes toward the occupational investigation courses in relation to the mainstreamed handicapped students they served. The following conclusions were warranted from the findings of the analyses of the data. Findings derived from multiple T tests indicate that occupational investigation teachers perceive all survey item statements concerning Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) meetings and the content of Individual Education Programs (IEPs) as occurring to a significantly lesser degree than do vocational administrators. There is no significant discrepancy in their perceptions toward the current practices of occupational investigation teacher training, student assessment, classroom accessibility, course content, or special education assistance described in the survey items. The results of the multiple T tests indicate that there are no significant differences between the attitudes and perceptions of occupational investigation teachers and vocational administrators in Texas toward the future of any of the conditions reflected in the survey items. Teachers and administrators agree that all of the current conditions reflected by the items should be promoted to a higher degree in the future. The results of the multiple T tests indicate a high degree of significance …

The purposes of the study were: to determine the relationship between class size and academic achievement among university students in first-semester calculus classes, and to compare opinions about the instructor, course, and classroom learning environment of university students in small first-semester calculus classes with those in large classes. The sample consisted of 225 university students distributed among two large and two small sections of first-semester calculus classes taught at the University of Texas at Arlington during the fall of 1987. Each of two tenured faculty members taught a large and small section of approximately 85 and 27 students, respectively. During the first week of the semester, scores from the Calculus Readiness Test (CR) were obtained from the sample and used as the covariate in each analysis of covariance of four periodic tests, a comprehensive final examination, and final grade average. The CR scores were also used in a logistic regression analysis of attrition rates between each pair of large and small sections of first-semester calculus. Three semantic differentials were used to test the hypotheses relating to student opinion of the instructor, course, and classroom learning environment. It was found that for both pairs of large and small first-semester calculus classes …

American writers of narrative fiction frequently manipulate the words of their narrators in order to convey a significance of which the author and the reader are aware but the narrator is not. By causing the narrator to reveal information unwittingly, the author develops covert themes that are antithetical to those espoused by the narrator. Particularly subject to such subversion is the first-person narrator whose "I" is not to be interpreted as the voice of the author. This study examines how and why the first-person narrator is subverted in four works of twentieth-century American fiction: J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to , and Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus

The history of California's Basque boardinghouses, or ostatuak, is the subject of this dissertation. To date, scholarly literature on ethnic boardinghouses is minimal and even less has been written on the Basque "hotels" of the American West. As a result, conclusions in this study rely upon interviews, census records, local directories, early maps, and newspapers. The first Basque boardinghouses in the United States appeared in California in the decade following the gold rush and tended to be outposts along travel routes used by Basque miners and sheepmen. As more Basques migrated to the United States, clusters of ostatuak sprang up in communities where Basque colonies had formed, particularly in Los Angeles and San Francisco during the late nineteenth century. In the years between 1890 and 1940, the ostatuak reached their zenith as Basques spread throughout the state and took their boardinghouses with them. This study outlines the earliest appearances of the Basque ostatuak, charts their expansion, and describes their present state of demise. The role of the ostatuak within Basque-American culture and a description of how they operated is another important aspect of this dissertation. Information from interviews supports the claim that the ostatua was the most important social institution …

This study concerns the characteristics of fund development directors employed in selected homes for the aged. The first purpose of this study is to develop a profile of job functions, through task analysis, among development directors in charitable homes for the aged. The second purpose of this study is to develop a profile of personal characteristics of development directors of charitable homes for the aged based on the following characteristics: age, sex, educational background, experience outside development, membership in community organizations and amount of specific training in fund development. One instrument was used to gather data for the study. It was distributed to a population of 29 development directors in charitable homes for the aged in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. This population was predetermined by an initial survey form sent to 193 chief executive officers in the five states mentioned above. Twenty-nine reported formalized programs employing a full-time person with at least a part-time involvement in fund development activities. Of the twenty-nine development directors surveyed, fifteen usable instruments were received (52 percent). A program was used for the survey that included crosstabulation of social characteristics, success in fund raising, length of time in position and educational preparation. …

Test items supplied with seven textbooks approved for use in Computer Science I and II curricula in Texas public schools were categorized by Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Eating was done by a panel of ten judges selected from a group of participants at a taxonomy workshop. The selection criterion was demonstration of at least 80 percent competency in item classification. Judges received a small stipend for completing the rating task. Of 2020 possible items, 998 were randomly selected for analysis. Equal percentages of items from each text were then randomly assigned to each rater. All statistical analyses were computed using SPSS/PC+ (version 2.1). In both courses, CLD frequencies decreased through the three lower levels. The percentage of questions falling in these levels was approximately 83 percent for both courses. However, the higher-level course contained almost 10 percent more Knowledge level questions than did the lower course. At the higher taxonomic levels, the decline was roughly five percent per level in CS I but erratic in CS II. Analysis by book also revealed wide differences within each course.

The developmental appropriateness of the English language arts essential elements for kindergarten children in the State of Texas was evaluated by surveying the opinions of thirty-six kindergarten teachers in one school district. A questionnaire was developed using the essential elements so that respondents could record a yes or no opinion and supply additional comments on each essential element. Ninety-seven percent of the teachers responded. The results indicated rates of agreement for developmental appropriateness by the teachers surveyed to be 100% for language, 95% for listening, 94% for speaking and reading and 81% for writing.

There has been extensive criticism of schools for allowing counselors to be used for duties that lie beyond defined counselor roles. The purpose of this study was to determine if counselors are still being misused today as they have allegedly been in the past. The problem was divided into nine questions in order to ascertain differences in actual and ideal roles of secondary school counselors as perceived by counselors, principals and counselor educators. The study was limited to secondary schools in the Region X Education Service Center in Texas. The study included brief definitions of roles and an extensive review of literature. Twenty-three schools from the Region X Education Service Center in Texas were chosen using a random, stratified selection process. A counselor and the principal from each of these schools were interviewed using a Q sort. Three counselor educators were randomly selected to participate from each of three universities in the area. The Q-sort technique was used in order to determine differences in actual and ideal perceptions of the counselor's role as held by counselors, principals, and counselor educators. Cohen's equation for Q sorts was used to establish correlations between the different perceptions. A t distribution for correlation was …

Dr. W. A. Criswell is the well known pastor of the twenty-seven thousand member historic First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas, Texas. He has held the position for the past forty-three years. Until now no one has attempted an in-depth study of Criswell's educational contributions to the First Baptist Church (which have also been adopted into the Southern Baptist denomination, America's largest Protestant religious organization). Although Criswell has been the Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas for many years, this was by no means his introduction to the pastorate. In 1928 he was ordained as a seventeen year old minister of the gospel in Amarillo, Texas. He has been a pastor for over sixty years. Criswell has made a lasting impact on the church staff, school staff (Criswell College and First Baptist Academy), students in those schools, the Southern Baptist denomination and also the city of Dallas. He has been one of the key figures in evangelical national movements. Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators, and Governors are no strangers to a Sunday morning service held in the large sanctuary in downtown Dallas. Much of the research for this project originated from the Oral Memoirs of W. A. Criswell. a …

This qualitative case study provided a narrative portrait of 12 students in the 11th grade in one north Texas district who failed the initial administration of the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) exit-level test. It also presented an account of their perceptions of the test and their efforts to overcome this educational hurdle. The following conclusions were drawn from the study. Limited English proficiency (LEP) students had difficulty mastering the language arts section of the test. A majority of the students reported that TEAMS failure had no social impact. Most of the students declined district-offered remediation. Students tended to perceive the test as a personal challenge. Those students who attended remedial tutoring sessions performed better on the following retest than those who declined remediation. Hispanic and Asian students expressed additional study as being the key to passing the test. Black students felt that the key to passing was to spend sufficient time while taking the test. Those students who were more verbal during their interviews tended to be more successul in passing the language arts section of the TEAMS. The following recommendations were made from the study: (a) students who fail the TEAMS by minimal margins should be …

The general purpose of this study is to examine the effects of socialization background and cognitive style on individuals' patterns of behavior. The more specific purpose is to integrate the individual differences factor using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator with Meadian Theory of Socialization in order to explore the ways in which a group of incarcerated individuals with prior felony and misdemeanor convictions and a group of college students are different regarding their different socialization background and cognitive styles. Data for this study were collected from a university and a county jail in Texas. During the process of data collection, two questionnaires consisting of 117 items were used to measure individual characteristics and elements of socialization background. This study is organized into four different chapters. Chapter I involves a detailed review of related literature, the purpose of the study, stated hypotheses, significance of the study, and limitations. Chapter II discusses methodological procedures and Chapter III presents the findings of the study. The last chapter includes a detailed conclusion and practical implications of the study. The findings in this study indicated that the group of incarcerated individuals and the group of college students are significantly different in terms of their different individual …

This study analyzes the congruence between the objectives of secondary-level English methods courses in Texas universities and the objectives of the state-mandated high school curriculum (the essential elements) in language arts. A questionnaire was used to obtain information from 26 English methods instructors at 22 universities in Texas. The data obtained from these questionnaires reveal that these instructors strongly emphasize preparing prospective English teachers to teach the essential elements of composition. Other significant findings include: (1) the lack of emphasis in the English methods course on strategies for teaching the essential elements of language, when those elements are unrelated to composition, and (2) the lack of uniformity which characterizes the organization of the English methods course at major Texas universities.

Genetic variation was examined in bluehead wrasse, Thalassoma bifasciatum, populations along the Florida Keys. Interpretion of mean heterozygosity (H), percent polymorphic loci per population (P), genetic similarity, and F and G statistics demonstrated a clear division of wrasse populations into "northern" and "southern" groups. Correlation and cluster analyses indicated the six reefs can be grouped in a similar fashion based on genetic and environmental data. The conclusion from this analysis of wrasse populations in the Florida Keys is that substantial population subdivision occurs in response to differing selective pressures created by heterogeneous environments.

This study has five chapters, organized in the following manner: (1) Chapter I contains the introduction, statement of the problem, purpose of the study, questions, significance of the study, and definition of terms; (2) Chapter II is a review of the literature; (3) Chapter III is a description of subjects and tests and procedures for treating the data; (4) Chapter IV contains the statistical technique of the analysis and the findings related to the questions, and (5) Chapter V consists of the summary, findings, conclusions, and recommendations. The problem of the study was to explore the relationship between curiosity and print awareness among four-year-old children. Subjects participating in the study were 71 four-year-old children from six licensed child care and preschool settings located in different geographical sections of a north central Texas city. The study included thirty-four girls and thirty-seven boys. Instruments used to collect the data were Kreitler, Zigler, and Kreitler's battery of curiosity tasks and Goodman's Signs of the Environment and Book Handling Knowledge tasks. Canonical I correlation analyses do not yield a significant relationship between variables of curiosity and print awareness. An alternate Pearson Product Moment correlation yielded some specific pairwise correlations between certain curiosity variables and …

The main purpose of this study was to identify the major obstacles to cooperation as perceived by school library media specialists in the state of Mississippi and to determine if members of the Coastal Mississippi Library Cooperative (CMLC) believe that there are fewer obstacles to cooperation than do non-members. The secondary purpose was to evaluate the CMLC to some extent to determine if success was achieved through organization when defined by the variables, planning, governance, funding, communication, administration, and evaluation. The population of the study was all of the librarians (academic, public, school, and special) in the six-county area which comprises the CMLC, and a random sample of public school librarians throughout the remainder of the state. All of the school librarians were sent a questionnaire that requested their responses to statements of barriers to cooperation. All of the librarians in the CMLC region were sent a questionnaire to obtain their perceptions of participation in the CMLC. Pour librarians, members of the CMLC, were Interviewed to obtain information on the organizational factors of the CMLC. Data received from school library media specialists were submitted to various statistical tests. The Chi-Square statistic was used on the demographic portion of the questionnaire, …

This study examined the factors related to travel mode choices in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area. Changes in population, life style and economy of the Dallas-Fort Worth region over the last few decades demand a careful re-examination of travel demand tools and methods. The purpose of the study was to provide an understanding of transportation modal choice in the region. Those demographic variables best predicting the choices were identified. The Home Interview Survey, a set of disaggregate data from the 19 84 North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) Regional Travel Survey, was analyzed using logistic regression. The major findings of the research indicate that about 97 percent of the travelers in the study area used private cars and 3 percent used public transit. Household income and cars-vans were significant explanatory variables. The impact of household income and number of car-vans available upon an individual's decision for travel mode choice were very important. The number of car-vans available in the household, and age of respondents were significant predictors in travel mode. Household members with incomes of $30,000 to $39,000 and those with incomes of at least $50,000 tended to use more private cars than did other income groups. Also, household …