Entering the Circle: The Only Viable Hermeneutic for a Biblical Response to Ecocrisis (open access)

Entering the Circle: The Only Viable Hermeneutic for a Biblical Response to Ecocrisis

A paradox exists in attempting to resolve ecocrisis: awareness of ecological concerns is growing, but the crisis continues to escalate. John Firor, a well-known scientist, suggests that to resolve the paradox and hence ecocrisis, we need an alternative definition of "human beingness"--that is, a human ontology.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Veak, Tyler J. (Tyler James)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Prediction of Aggressive and Socially Disruptive Behavior among Forensic Patients: a Validation of the Psychopathy Checklist Screening Version (open access)

Prediction of Aggressive and Socially Disruptive Behavior among Forensic Patients: a Validation of the Psychopathy Checklist Screening Version

Psychopathic criminals commit more crimes, are more prone to recidivism, and more likely to engage in violent crimes and other aggressive behavior than nonpsychopathic criminals. Less is known about forensic patients, both with and without psychopathy, and their aggression. In the current study, patients in a maximum security hospital were examined with respect to their psychopathy and its predictive value on institutional management and dangerousness. In this regard, the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R) have proven to be valid and reliable measures of psychopathy. The present study was an attempt to establish predictive validity for a new version: the Psychopathy Checklist Screening Version (PCLSV). As such, this study examined the PCL-SV's relationship to (a) diagnoses of Antisocial Personality Disorder according to DSM-III-R criteria and (b) the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) Aggression, Drug Problems, and Antisocial Features scales. The influence of major Axis I disorders on the assessment of psychopathy with the PCLSV was also examined. Participants were 150 male forensic psychiatric patients at Vernon State Hospital who were committed for various reasons: incompetence to stand trial, initial evaluation and treatment after having been found not guilty by reason of insanity, and manifest dangerousness. Chart reviews …
Date: May 1997
Creator: Hill, Christie D.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Muscular Differences Between Female Power and Endurance Athletes (open access)

Muscular Differences Between Female Power and Endurance Athletes

The purpose of this study was to compare the torque generating capabilities and fatigue responses of female power athletes, female endurance athletes, and age-matched female non-athletic controls.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Akers, Allen (Roy Allen)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Polish Spaces and Analytic Sets (open access)

Polish Spaces and Analytic Sets

A Polish space is a separable topological space that can be metrized by means of a complete metric. A subset A of a Polish space X is analytic if there is a Polish space Z and a continuous function f : Z —> X such that f(Z)= A. After proving that each uncountable Polish space contains a non-Borel analytic subset we conclude that there exists a universally measurable non-Borel set.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Muller, Kimberly (Kimberly Orisja)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Hemispheric Interactions and Event-Related Potentials in Lateralized Stroop and Stroop Analog Tasks (open access)

Hemispheric Interactions and Event-Related Potentials in Lateralized Stroop and Stroop Analog Tasks

Classical Stroop stimuli and newly developed face/word Stroop analog stimuli were used to investigate hemispheric interactions in Stroop interference effects (SEs) and corresponding event-related potentials (ERPs). Lateralized stimuli were presented unilaterally and bilaterally as congruent or incongruent color strip-word or face-word pairs (to invoke right hemisphere (RH) and left hemisphere (LH) specialization, respectively, in the latter case). The common finding for such tasks is that responses for the congruent condition are faster and more accurate than for the incongruent condition (i.e., the SE). A primary prediction is that the SE will be maximized when both the distractor and target components, or distractor alone, are presented to the specialized hemisphere (i.e., LH for words and RH for faces). A total of 88 right-handed University of North Texas students participated in one of four experiments. Participants manually responded to one component of the stimuli (i.e., color, face, or word), while ignoring the other. Behaviorally, participants showed a robust SE across all experiments, especially for the face/word task with word targets. Findings from the face/word Stroop analog tasks also indicated that SEs were produced by selective attention to either faces or words, implicating a role for top-down (controlled) processes. Hemispheric asymmetries were observed …
Date: December 1997
Creator: Kavcic, Voyko
System: The UNT Digital Library
Exon/Intron Discrimination Using the Finite Induction Pattern Matching Technique (open access)

Exon/Intron Discrimination Using the Finite Induction Pattern Matching Technique

DNA sequence analysis involves precise discrimination of two of the sequence's most important components: exons and introns. Exons encode the proteins that are responsible for almost all the functions in a living organism. Introns interrupt the sequence coding for a protein and must be removed from primary RNA transcripts before translation to protein can occur. A pattern recognition technique called Finite Induction (FI) is utilized to study the language of exons and introns. FI is especially suited for analyzing and classifying large amounts of data representing sequences of interest. It requires no biological information and employs no statistical functions. Finite Induction is applied to the exon and intron components of DNA by building a collection of rules based upon what it finds in the sequences it examines. It then attempts to match the known rule patterns with new rules formed as a result of analyzing a new sequence. A high number of matches predict a probable close relationship between the two sequences; a low number of matches signifies a large amount of difference between the two. This research demonstrates FI to be a viable tool for measurement when known patterns are available for the formation of rule sets.
Date: December 1997
Creator: Taylor, Pamela A., 1941-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Iconic Ida: Tennyson's The Princess and Her Uses (open access)

Iconic Ida: Tennyson's The Princess and Her Uses

Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Princess: A Medley has posed interpretative difficulties for readers since its 1847 debut. Critics, editors, and artists contemporary with Tennyson as well as in this century have puzzled over the poem's stance on the issue of the so-called Woman Question. Treating Tennyson as the first reader of the poem yields an understanding of the title character, Princess Ida, as an ambassador of Tennyson's optimistic and evolutionary views of human development and links his work to that of visionary educators of nineteenth-century England. Later artists, however, produced adaptations of the poem that twisted its hopefulness into satirical commentary, reduced its complexities to ease the task of reading, and put it to work in various causes, many ranged against the improvement of women's condition. In particular, a series of editions carried The Princess into various nations, classrooms, and homes, promoting interpretations that often obscure Tennyson's cautious optimism.
Date: May 1997
Creator: Guidici, Cynthia (Cynthia Dianne)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Public School Library Media Specialists' Perceptions of the Use of the Internet in their Schools (open access)

Texas Public School Library Media Specialists' Perceptions of the Use of the Internet in their Schools

With the advent of the 21st century, technological innovations are transforming the face of education and the school library media center. One of these significant developments is the ability to communicate through the Internet. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of Texas public school library media specialists who are active Internet users about their utilization of the Internet, and how their efforts in implementing and supervising Internet access in their school library media centers impact the Texas public schools that they serve. A survey instrument of Likert items was developed that queried these public school library media specialists for their perceptions of Internet use in their schools. MANOVA was the chosen statistical measure for this study. An initial electronic mail-out to 1,232 Texas public school library media specialists (K-12) with Internet addresses were contacted to participate in this study. After a time frame of one month, 196 Texas school library media specialists e-mailed the researcher, confirming their willingness to be a survey participant. All respondents to this e-mail request participated in this study, and a second U.S. mail-out was sent containing the actual survey instrument. The researcher found that the use of the Internet by school …
Date: June 1997
Creator: Bruns, Loretta A. (Loretta Ann)
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Comparison of Personality Types of Alternative and Traditional Campus Students (open access)

A Comparison of Personality Types of Alternative and Traditional Campus Students

The purpose of this study was to determine personality characteristics of students who are successful on traditional campuses and students who are successful on alternative campuses. With this knowledge, more students may be served on the traditional campus without the necessity for alternative education.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Tribble, Debbie Helton
System: The UNT Digital Library
Inventions, Dreams, Imitations (open access)

Inventions, Dreams, Imitations

Eight short selections of fiction. "Inventions" consists of two invented creation myths. The three stories in "Dreams" are fantasy tales set in a common dream-world. The selections in "Imitations" are neither fantasy nor science fiction: "Time's Tapering Blade" is an experiment in form; "The Wake" concerns a group of friends dealing with a death; and "Janie, Hold the Light" is based on stories from the author's family about Christmas during the depression of the 1930's.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Gatlin, Charles Morgan
System: The UNT Digital Library
Of Time and Judicial Behavior : Time Series Analyses of United States Supreme Court Agenda Setting and Decision-making, 1888-1989 (open access)

Of Time and Judicial Behavior : Time Series Analyses of United States Supreme Court Agenda Setting and Decision-making, 1888-1989

This study examines the agenda setting and decision-making behavior of the United States Supreme Court from 1888 to 1989.
Date: December 1997
Creator: Lanier, Drew Noble
System: The UNT Digital Library
Assessing the Psychological Impact of Fertility Treatment (open access)

Assessing the Psychological Impact of Fertility Treatment

This controlled descriptive study was designed to investigate the psychological status of couples who are engaged in advanced fertility treatments. A battery of psychological test instruments, including the Millon Behavioral Health Inventory (MBHI), the Health Attribution Test (HAT), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS), was used to measure psychological variables that have been shown in the infertility research literature to be associated with the psychological experiences of infertility patients. The scores from the four assessment instruments were compared with those of pregnant couples in childbirth education classes to differentiate the impact of stress associated with fertility treatment from the stress experienced by third trimester pregnant couples. Eighty-five subjects (42 male and 43 female) volunteered for the study and completed packets of questionnaires. The groups were designated Treatment (infertile couples) and Control (pregnant couples). The resulting data were collected and analyzed on the basis of group mean scores on the test instruments.
Date: August 1997
Creator: McKenna, Kenneth A. (Kenneth Allen)
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Factor Analytic Study of Competencies Needed by Entry-level Automotive Technicians (open access)

A Factor Analytic Study of Competencies Needed by Entry-level Automotive Technicians

This study centered on competencies needed by entry-level automotive technicians. Many students in automotive technician programs immediately seek employment upon program completion. This study is one step toward identifying areas in the automotive technician curriculum that need the most training emphasis.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Hyde, Donna A. (Donna Ann)
System: The UNT Digital Library
East, West, Somewhere in the Middle (open access)

East, West, Somewhere in the Middle

A work of creative fiction in novella form, this dissertation follows the first-person travails of Mitch Zeller, a 26-year-old gay man who is faced with an unexpected choice. The dissertation opens with a preface which examines the form of the novella and the content of this particular work.
Date: December 1997
Creator: Behlen, Shawn Lee
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Analysis of the Impact of Curriculum Management Audits on Public School Systems in Texas (open access)

An Analysis of the Impact of Curriculum Management Audits on Public School Systems in Texas

The purposes of this study were to (1) identify the recommendations of Curriculum Management Audits conducted in Texas Public School systems, (2) determine the degree to which each of the recommendations had been implemented, and (3) determine the perceptions of stakeholders as to the factors instrumental in the real and potential impact of the audit. The researcher conducted interviews with superintendents and key central office administrators with a working knowledge of the audit report in each of the eleven Texas school districts studied. Respondents were asked to rate recommendations written for their districts using the following descriptors: Implemented, In Progress, Plan to Implement, Recommendation Modified, No Implementation. The ranking of recommendation implementation revealed that 85% of the recommendations made in the 11 audit reports reviewed in this study had received action toward implementation to some degree. Respondents were also asked to cite factors which facilitated or impeded recommendation implementation. Significant factors facilitating the implementation of recommendations were reported to be time, organizational structure/personnel and planning. The analysis of the collective recommendations revealed that school board policies were not adequate to direct the design, delivery and monitoring of curriculum when measured against audit Standard One criteria. School districts in Texas rely …
Date: August 1997
Creator: Murdock, Sunnye (Sunnye J.)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Node-Link Mapping and Rational Recovery: Enhancing the Recovery Process (open access)

Node-Link Mapping and Rational Recovery: Enhancing the Recovery Process

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) continues to be the most accepted approach for the treatment of addictions in the United States. However, due to recent evidence questioning the effectiveness of AA, the need for alternative approaches to the treatment of addictions has become clear. The following research addresses the efficacy of one such alternative, Rational Recovery (RR). Node-Link Mapping (NLM), a graphic communication technique which uses links and nodes as building blocs to facilitate and enhance communication of information as well as awareness in a counseling environment, was implemented to enhance the recovery process. Three groups of ten (10), chemically dependent, adjudicated subjects were exposed to three different treatment approaches at an outpatient counseling center. The Experimental group received RR with NLM, the Comparison group was exposed only to RR, and the Control group continued in treatment according to the protocol of the counseling agency. All subjects were given the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory-2 (SASSI-2) as a measurement of symptoms associated with chemical dependency. The subjects were also administered the Rotter Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (Rotter I-E Scale) to determine locus of control prior to treatment and any change after treatment.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Schmidt, Eric A. (Eric Alexander)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Assessment of the Perceived Competencies Possessed by Women Administrators in Vocational Education at Community Colleges in Texas (open access)

Assessment of the Perceived Competencies Possessed by Women Administrators in Vocational Education at Community Colleges in Texas

The need for a high-quality workforce to meet increased competition in the world economy has increased the need for competent vocational administrators in public 2-year postsecondary institutions. Researchers have agreed that vocational education is in a state of metamorphosis and must change to meet its challenges in the coming century. At the same time, more women are seeking and obtaining vocational administrative positions. Several studies have been done to identify the competencies needed by vocational administrators to perform their duties, but there has been little research on the actual ability to perform the administrative tasks identified by these studies. Two main purposes of this study are: (a) to determine the perceived level of administrative competencies possessed by women administrators in vocational education at the community college level in Texas; (b) to determine the adequacy of the preservice training received by these administrators to perform their administrative functions. Of the 175 women administrators randomly selected to participate in the study, 71% completed the Administrator Task Inventory. In addition to the descriptive statistics, two multiple regression analyses were tested. First, principal component analysis was used to reduce the number of dependent variables from 11 to 2, after which two multiple regression analyses …
Date: May 1997
Creator: Chiawa, Chioma B. (Chioma Bernadette)
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Investigation of the Relationship between Work Value Congruence in a Dyad and Organizational Commitment as Mediated by Organizational Influences (open access)

An Investigation of the Relationship between Work Value Congruence in a Dyad and Organizational Commitment as Mediated by Organizational Influences

Researchers suggest that value congruence in superior-subordinate dyads results in positive outcomes for an organization (Kemelgor, 1980; Meglino, Ravlin, & Adkins, 1989; 1990; Parkington & Schneider, 1979; Senger, 1971; Weeks, Chonko, Kahle, 1989). Further, evidence is presented which suggests that commitment at the organizational level is achieved, in part, through value congruence at the individual level of analysis. Analysis at the individual level reflects the effect of shared values on interpersonal relations. Work value congruence in a dyad enhances the development of a high quality dyadic relationship. The subordinate in such a relationship perceives being allowed more participation in decision making, more positive work experiences, and less role stress (Turban & Jones, 1988). These items have been found to be predictor variables of commitment from Steer's (1977) framework of antecedents. In this study, a research model was proposed which suggests that work value congruence in the subordinate-superior dyad leads to organizational commitment through its effect on subordinate perceptions of role stress characteristics, participation, and work experiences. The model integrates the organizational aspects of the Steer's (1977) framework for organizational commitment with the interpersonal effect of work value congruence. A field study design using a sample of 96 subordinate-superior dyads at …
Date: May 1997
Creator: Dale, Kathleen M. (Kathleen Marie)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Effect of Technology Integration Education on the Attitudes of Teachers and their Students (open access)

Effect of Technology Integration Education on the Attitudes of Teachers and their Students

This study analyzed the effect of technology integration education on teachers' and students' attitudes toward information technology. Two instruments measuring similar attributes were used to assess teachers' and students' attitudes. Differences in pre- and post-test scores were used to determine changes that occurred during the course of the study.
Date: December 1997
Creator: Christensen, Rhonda
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Descriptive Study of Parenting Styles and Behaviors of 4-Year-Old Children When Parents Participate in a Parenting Education Program (open access)

A Descriptive Study of Parenting Styles and Behaviors of 4-Year-Old Children When Parents Participate in a Parenting Education Program

This study described and explored perceptions of the context and behaviors of seven 4-year-old children whose parents attended a parenting education program. The problem was to explore a group of 9 volunteer parents' perceptions of their parenting styles and perceptions of their 4-year-old children at home while the parents participated in, and completed, a minimum of 4 out of 6 Active Parenting Today parenting education classes. Volunteer parents were recruited during public school registration for prekindergarten. In addition, perceptions of 4 teachers and 4 classroom educational aides in regard to behaviors of the 4-year-old children whose parents participated in and completed the Active Parenting Today program were explored.
Date: May 1997
Creator: Redwine, S. Michelle (Sondra Michelle)
System: The UNT Digital Library
Piano Quintet (open access)

Piano Quintet

The thesis is a traditional piano quintet in the manner of Bartok, incorporating compositional techniques such as golden ratio and using folk materials. Special effects on strings are limited for easy conversion to wind instruments. The piece is about 15 minutes long.
Date: May 1997
Creator: Tan, Chee-Tick
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Impact on the Buyer-Seller Relationship of Firms Using Electronic Data Interchange (open access)

The Impact on the Buyer-Seller Relationship of Firms Using Electronic Data Interchange

This research investigated whether the buyer-seller interorganizational relationship (IOR) differed between a firm and two classes of customers. The first class used electronic data interchange (EDI) with the firm and the second class used the traditional paper-based purchasing system. IOR characteristics included reputation, skill, direct power, indirect power, reciprocity, and efficiency.
Date: May 1997
Creator: Poole, Robyn R. (Robyn Ryan)
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Examination of the Effect of Decision Style on the Use of a Computerized Project Management Tool (open access)

An Examination of the Effect of Decision Style on the Use of a Computerized Project Management Tool

Managing a software development project presents many difficulties. Most software development projects are considered less than successful, and many are simply canceled. Ineffective project management has been cited as a major factor contributing to these failures. Project management tools can greatly assist managers in tracking and controlling their projects. However, project management tools are very structured and analytical in nature, which is not necessarily supported by decision-making styles of the managers. This research examined the influence that decision style has on a project manager's use of a project management tool.
Date: August 1997
Creator: Fox, Terry L., 1963-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Teacher Education Reform of 1992: An Analysis of Events, Processes, and Results (open access)

Texas Teacher Education Reform of 1992: An Analysis of Events, Processes, and Results

This was a qualitative study designed to document the historical process which brought about a performance-centered accountability (or results-based) system in educator preparation in Texas as reflected in the documents of the first 17 institutions approved under the new approval process for educator preparation. The study will also serve as a historical record which used the change process in political systems to analyze the adoption of the Accountability System for Educator Preparation (ASEP). Additionally, the study provided a thorough review of the literature on Michael Fullan's Change Process Model and David Easton's Political Systems Model.
Date: May 1997
Creator: Dixon, Marva T. (Marva Thomas)
System: The UNT Digital Library