Copyright (c) 2008 Fordham University All rights reserved. http://fordham.bepress.com Recent documents in DigitalResearch@Fordham en-us Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:56:23 PDT 3600 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI9324631 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI9324631 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:58:04 PDT The use of computers in personality assessment has become increasingly popular since the 1970's. Computers offer advantages over clinicians in the areas of speed, accuracy, and objectivity in administering and scoring personality inventories. Computers also allow the measurement of response latency to personality inventory items. The present study explored two models of the relationship between item evocativeness and response latency. The first model suggests that more emotionally evocative personality inventory items provoke longer response latencies. The second, more complex model suggests that examinees' self-schema and choice of True/False responses are determinants of response latency, with responses that are congruent with one's self-schema made rapidly and responses that are incongruent with one's self-schema made slowly. Subjects were 98 undergraduate college students. The items used in the study consisted of five practice statements, twenty Reading Speed Assessment items, 240 Basic Personality Inventory (BPI) items, and 36 items used by Temple and Geisinger (1990). The results suggest that the hypothesis that more emotionally evocative items induce longer response times is not valid for personality inventory items. Instead, items that are perceived as moderately evocative or ambiguous in the degree of evocativeness elicit longer response times than items that are perceived as clearly evocative or clearly neutral. This suggests that the amount of emotional ambivalence that an item induces may have a more potent effect on response time than the degree of evocativeness. An alternative explanation is that moderately rated items require greater decision-making time than clearly neutral or evocative items. Thus, cognitive factors may have a more potent effect on RT than emotional factors. These results also suggest that the degree of congruence between a subject's self-schema and his/her answer to schema-related items has an influence on RT. Subjects who are high scorers on a scale probably view themselves as being high in the trait that the scale measures, and therefore they perceive their occasional denial of items on that scale as alien to their self-schema. This conflict between their self-image and their reply leads to a longer RT for the dissonant responses. Daniel Edward Temple PSYCHOLOGY, CLINICAL (0622) PSYCHOLOGY, PERSONALITY (0625) PSYCHOLOGY, PSYCHOMETRICS (0632) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI8508118 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI8508118 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:58:00 PDT This study explored the interaction of high school principals' degrees of Machiavellianism and their school's organizational structure with their experience of occupational stress. It was expected that high Machiavellians would experience more stress in tightly structured situations, while low Machiavellians would experience more stress in loosely structured situations. Principals in New York City, Westchester County and northern New Jersey responded to a questionnaire and subsequently participated in a structured interview. The questionnaire included: the Mach V scale, which measured Machiavellianism: two components of the Job Description Index (work and co-worker satisfaction) which measured aspects of occupational stress: and a Principal Stress Inventory List, which assessed administrative areas that principals found problematic, and a Principals' Questionnaire, which obtained demographic data. The interview asked principals to respond to a List of Decision Areas/Indicators of Organizational Structure, an Organizational Structure Questionnaire, and an Administrative Time Schedule. Multiple regression analyses did not confirm the hypotheses, but indicated the following: (1) high Machiavellian high school principals experienced greater work satisfaction in tightly structured school organizations; (2) high Machiavellian principals were more dissatisfied with co-workers; and (3) high Machiavellian principals experienced greater problems with administrative constraints. The interview data revealed that satisfied principals expressed more feelings of control, commitment, and challenge than dissatisfied principals. In general, principals in schools which had less than 1,500 students were lower in Machiavellianism and also experienced less stress. The relationship between school size and experienced stress suggested that Machiavellianism may be a response to current problems faced by high school principals, rather than being solely an enduring personality characteristic. Finally, the interviews suggested the need for reevaluation of the Machiavellian character trait. Previous studies of Machiavellianism have often focused only on manipulativeness, without recognizing high Machiavellians' commitment to long term goals. It appears that it is the belief in their effectiveness and their ability to make good use of other human and environmental resources that helps them in reaching these goals. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.) ROBERTA JELLINEK PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL (0451) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI8423133 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI8423133 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:59 PDT This study used a peer tutoring program as an intervention to raise the social status of socially isolated children and to test the theory of self-efficacy as an underlying rationale. It was hypothesized that if social isolates were involved in a work task their 'work with' social status would increase. Tutoring was chosen as a work task. Since previous research suggested that when social isolates related to younger children their social interaction increased, it was hypothesized that social isolates who tutored younger children would gain in peer acceptance. The social isolates were fourth, fifth and sixth graders who received a low 'work with' sociometric rating. There were five treatment groups. Group 1 tutored younger children. Group 2 was the attention control group and the children played games with younger children. Group 3 tutored same-aged children as a control for age. Group 4 received only two sessions of pre-treatment training. Group 5 was a waiting list control group only. The children in the first four groups received two sessions of training and then the first three groups continued to meet with the researcher for further training. The program lasted for twelve weeks. The isolates were rated by their classmates before and after the program on positive and negative forms of 'work with' and 'play with' nominations and sociometric roster-ratings. The results showed that only the children who tutored or played games with younger children increased on the peer nomination 'work with' measure. High correlations were found between 'work with' and 'play with' measures with all five groups. Thus it is argued that the 'work with' sociometric measure was influenced more by the existence of a social relationship between the isolate and the younger child than the type of skill that the isolate performs. The hypothesis that social isolates who tutored same-aged children would gain on sociometric peer ratings and the self-efficacy measures as compared to the training only and control groups was not supported. The hypothesis that self-efficacy would increase as peer acceptance increased was not supported. KAREN C. FARLESS RHODES PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL (0620) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7714889 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7714889 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:57 PDT RONALD BRIAN DELEHANTY PSYCHOLOGY, CLINICAL (0622) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7425113 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7425113 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:56 PDT STUART CRISTO HISTORY, ANCIENT (0579) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7419686 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7419686 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:54 PDT ROBERT LEWIS SCHMITT RELIGION, GENERAL (0318) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7402781 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI7402781 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:54 PDT RONALD E PEPIN LITERATURE, MEDIEVAL (0297) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3302121 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3302121 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:49 PDT The goal of this study was to examine the role of reading and writing self-efficacy beliefs in the reading and writing performance of high school students. Of particular interest was whether self-efficacy beliefs represented greater contributions to the prediction of performance for students with discrepant reading and writing performance on the SAT. Furthermore, recognizing the conditions under which reading self-efficacy beliefs generalize to writing activities and writing self-efficacy beliefs generalize to reading activities, informs the self-efficacy literature as to the interchangeability of writing and reading self-efficacy. A practical goal of this study was to describe the differences between students identified as stronger at reading than writing, and stronger at writing than reading. Participants included 619 students identified as strong readers/strong writers, stronger readers/weaker writers, weaker readers/stronger writers, and weak readers/weak writers based on their standardized scores on the SAT Critical Reading and Writing tests. Correlation, multiple regression, path analysis, t-test and chi-square procedures were used to analyze responses to the Reading Self-Efficacy Beliefs Instrument and Writing Self-Efficacy Beliefs, PSAT/NMSQT and SAT scores, and selected items from the SAT Questionnaire. Results indicated that reading self-efficacy beliefs significantly mediated the effects of high school English GPA and parental income, but not gender, on reading performance. The same results held true for writing self-efficacy beliefs and performance. Regression analyses showed that reading and writing self-efficacy beliefs did indeed play a larger role in reading and writing performance for students with discrepant, rather than consistent, reading and writing performance. An analysis of the interchangeability of reading and writing self-efficacy measures showed that by subtracting students' Reading and Writing Self-Efficacy Beliefs-Skills scores from each other, significant mean differences in the subtracted values were found. This suggests that using the two measures together, and not interchangeably, can help educators determine whether students hold discrepant reading and writing self-efficacy beliefs. A comparison of the two discrepant groups showed that weaker readers/stronger writers had significantly more females, more ESL experience, and were more likely to desire help in both reading and writing than stronger readers/weaker writers. Emily Jennifer Shaw EDUCATION, TESTS AND MEASUREMENTS (0288) EDUCATION, EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY (0525) EDUCATION, READING (0535) LANGUAGE, RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION (0681) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3302119 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3302119 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:48 PDT This study used Alternation Theory and Orthogonal Cultural Identification Theory to investigate how African-American high school students' level of biculturalism (an individual's sense of belonging to two different cultures without losing sense of one's original cultural identity; being able to differentiate between the rules, norms, and values of both; and being able to interact in both cultures alternating as necessary) was related to their cultural identity, global and academic self-esteem, and academic achievement. It was hypothesized that the participants' level of biculturalism would have significant and positive correlations with their levels of cultural identity, global and academic self-esteem, and academic achievement. It was further hypothesized that the participants' level of biculturalism would account for more of the variance in terms of their academic achievement than would their levels of cultural identity, and global and academic self-esteem. The participants were 190 African-American high school students from various high schools in the New York City metropolitan area. The sample consisted of one hundred and twenty-five females and 65 males. Their ages ranged from 13 to 19 with a mean age of 15.56. Each participant completed a demographics questionnaire, the Orthogonal Cultural Identification Scale (OCIS), the African American Acculturation Scale-Revised (AAAS-R). the Multi-group Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), and the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents (SPPA). The students' level of academic achievement was determined by obtaining their final report card from the previous school year and determining their grade average based on the four major subjects (English, Math, Science, Social Studies). Data analysis was conducted using Pearson product-moment correlations and hierarchical multiple regressions. The results did not support the hypotheses of the study. Biculturalism was not found to be significantly and positively correlated with cultural identity, global or academic self-esteem, or academic achievement. In addition, biculturalism did not account for a significant amount of the variance in terms of academic achievement. However, cultural identity and academic self-esteem did account for a significant amount of the variance in terms of academic achievement. The results confirmed previous research suggesting the importance of cultural identity for African-American high school students in terms of academic success and contributed new information in terms of the relative importance of academic self-esteem for African-American high school students in terms of academic achievement. The limitations of this study, the implications for working with African-American high school students in regard to academic achievement and cultural differences, and suggestions for future research were also examined. Jonathan Peter Rust BLACK STUDIES (0325) EDUCATION, GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING (0519) EDUCATION, EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY (0525) EDUCATION, SECONDARY (0533) http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3302120 http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3302120 Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:48 PDT This study examined metacognitive strategies used to produce written and oral narratives by 2 more-proficient and 2 less-proficient fourth-grade students. Their scores on the Iowa Writing Assessment, writing samples, and teacher evaluations determined their classification as more- or less-proficient writers. Students scoring 2+ on the holistic scoring scale and 8.5+ on the total analytical score were placed in the more-proficient writers group, the rest in the less-proficient writers' category; two students from each group were then randomly selected to participate in the study. The participants generated oral and written narratives from neutral story prompts, using a version of the language-elicitation protocol “tell a story to get a story”. While writing, the students engaged in think alouds to record strategy use. Oral and written narratives were analyzed to uncover similarities and differences between more- and less-proficient writers in strategy use during the writing process. Their final written texts were scored using the 6+1 Traits of Writing Assessment. Analysis indicated the more-proficient writers used a wider variety of strategies and applied them more often than the less-proficient group. The more-proficient writers achieved higher 6+1 scores on final written product and demonstrated greater strength and frequency in use of strategies, including task environment, planning, translating, revising, editing, writer's motivation, identifying the audience to he addressed, and identifying strategies to generate a topic. Moreover, the strategies at which the more-proficient group excelled tended to be the weakest for the less-proficient group. The more-proficient writers also showed higher frequency in use of planning strategies, particularly goal setting and organizing, than the less-proficient group; these skills are shown to have positive correlation with all 6+1 variables, resulting in higher scores on written products for the more-proficient group. In addition, the more-proficient students employed the complex structure of the classic narrative to organize their written texts, reverting to simpler structures in their oral narratives; less-proficient writers used simpler structures in both oral and written narratives. Based on the findings of metacognitive strategy use, narrative structure, and scoring of written products between the two groups, the researcher offered possible instructional methods to enhance students' writing performance. Renee Sands Tobin EDUCATION, TESTS AND MEASUREMENTS (0288) EDUCATION, ELEMENTARY (0524) LANGUAGE, RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION (0681)