Browsing by Author "Jason Allaire, Committee Member"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Age Differences in the Effects of Conscious and Unconscious Thought on Decision Making
(2008-10-13) Queen, Tara Licciardello; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Shevaun Neupert, Committee Member; Thomas M. Hess, Committee Chair
Gender Stereotypes about Emotion Portrayed in Children's Picture Books
(2008-08-06) Craig, Ashley B.; Amy G. Halberstadt, Committee Chair; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Mary Wyer, Committee Member
Individual and Contextual Factors Associated with Community Building in Apartment Complexes.
(2010-10-21) Underwood, Tabitha; Roger Mitchell, Committee Chair; Pamela Martin, Committee Member; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Jocelyn Taliaferro, Committee Member
The Influence of a Web-based Course on Alcohol Consumption and Binge Drinking Behavior Among First Year Students
(2010-11-19) Robinson, Lillian; Craig Brookins, Committee Chair; Rupert Nacoste, Committee Member; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Tuere Bowles, Committee Member
Investigating the Quality of the School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA) 3.0: A Validity and Reliability Study
(2008-04-25) Corn, Jenifer O'Sullivan; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Ellen Vasu, Committee Co-Chair; Kevin Oliver, Committee Co-Chair; John Nietfeld, Committee Member
Schools and districts should use a well-designed needs assessment to inform important decisions about a range of technology program areas. Presently, there is a lack of valid and reliable instruments available to schools to effectively assess their educational needs to better design and evaluate their projects and initiatives. The School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA) is a free, user-friendly online survey tool that meets this need for planning and formative evaluation of technology projects in educational settings. This study used existing data from a robust sample (n=1918) of educators from across North Carolina to examine the reliability and validity of STNA. A collective review of study results including the literature review, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and internal consistently reliability analysis indicate that STNA is a high quality instrument. The literature supports the selection and inclusion of STNAs subconstructs. Items in STNA cluster together into 10 factors that support the reliability of the existing constructs identified in STNA. Factors focusing on technology program objectives (Teacher Technology Use, Student Technology Use, Teacher Impact, and Student Impact) were identified as stable, reliable, and invariant across multiple school-level response groups. Additionally, the pattern of responses across school-level groups was the same for 30 out of 49 STNA items related to technology program strategies. A copy of the survey is included in the appendix (see Appendix A) and is available online at http://srvlive.serve.org⁄Evaluation⁄Capacity⁄EvalFramework•resources⁄STNA.php.
Looking for Results: Implementing Federal Agency Strategic Plans through Performance Appraisal Programs
(2010-04-07) Ayers, Rebecca Suzanne; Branda Nowell, Committee Co-Chair; James Swiss, Committee Member; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Jerrell Coggburn, Committee Co-Chair
The use of performance appraisal programs as a management control tool for implementing organizational goals is important for increasing organizational performance. The extent to which performance appraisals align with and employees understand how their work relates to the strategic plan goals of an organization can determine successful implementation. This research examines the extent to which Federal agency program organizational factors and strategic plan characteristics predict performance appraisal goal alignment and to what extent and under what conditions performance appraisal goal alignment supports the successful implementation of strategic plans in a Federal agency. Two aspects of goal alignment were explored: (1) actual embedding of strategic plan goals in performance plans and (2) employee knowledge of how their work relates to the agencyâ€™s goals and priorities. Successful goal alignment was measured through program performance. This research uses the U.S. Office of Management and Budgetâ€™s (OMB) Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) section four â€œProgram Resultsâ€ ratings as an independent rating of program performance. Data for this research comes from OMBâ€™s PART, the U.S. Office of Personnel Managementâ€™s Performance Appraisal Assessment Tool and the Federal Human Capital Survey, and independent ratings of Federal agency strategic plans. Results of the analysis indicate first, that when measuring performance appraisal plan alignment, leadership support of the program is a key determining factor. When measuring employee perceptions of alignment, communication of the organizationâ€™s goals, the climate fit for achieving results, and if the strategic plan was written directly for the agency program are predicting factors. Second, employee alignment is significantly related to program performance while performance appraisal plan alignment is not. When testing the modifying effects of an overall quality performance appraisal, there is a significant interaction between performance culture and performance appraisal plan alignment and employee alignment as it relates to program performance. The relationship between goal alignment and program performance is stronger under conditions of low performance culture. The results reaffirmed the important role of goal alignment to program performance. This study also helps to unpack further the â€œblack-boxâ€ that management capacity, especially human resources management, is important to organizational performance and effectiveness.
Monitoring of Text Comprehension within a Self-Regulation Framework: The Effects of Goal Setting
(2008-08-08) Patterson, Ashley Seaton; John Nietfeld, Committee Chair; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Hiller Spires, Committee Member; Lynne Baker-Ward, Committee Member
Pathways to Sibling Jealousy: The Influence of Parents' Self-Reported Beliefs and Reactions and Children's Implicit Theories
(2006-07-22) Thompson, Julie Anne; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Lynne Baker-Ward, Committee Member; Rupert Nacoste, Committee Member; Amy G Halberstadt, Committee Chair
The goal of the current study was to examine how parents' reported beliefs about children's emotions and parents' reactions to children's expression of negative emotions relate to children's implicit theories about relationships and sibling jealousy experience. Participants were 102 sixth-grade children from two local middle schools and one of their parents (n = 82). Children were interviewed about their implicit theories about relationships, the causes of and frequency, duration, and intensity of their jealousy toward a sibling, and their coping strategies in response to a recalled sibling jealousy event. Parents completed questionnaires regarding their beliefs about children's emotions, their reactions to their own children's negative emotion expression, and their demographics. Parents' beliefs that negative emotions are good and parents' problem-focused and encouraging expression reactions were positively related to children's implicit theories about parents, and to the duration and intensity of sibling jealousy. Parents' encouraging reactions were negatively related to children's passive/avoidant coping with jealousy. Also, children's implicit theories about parents were positively related to children's duration and intensity of jealousy, behavioral action coping, and negatively related to children's passive/avoidant coping. Findings suggest that parent socialization is important in the development of children's implicit theories, as well as children's jealousy experiences and coping strategies.
The Role of Event Plausibility and Age in Children's Recall and Suggestibility.
(2004-11-10) Brown, Benjamin Thomas; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Lynne Baker-Ward, Committee Chair; Daniel Bauer, Committee Member
Although a good deal of research suggests that what we know affects what we remember, very little of this research looks at development through childhood. Children remember more as they grow older (Ornstein, Baker-Ward, Gordon & Merritt, 1997). As children gain more experience and expertise, they may also be developing an understanding of event plausibility. It was predicted that event plausibility moderates the relationships between knowledge and recall and between knowledge and suggestibility. Fuzzy trace theory (Reyna & Brainerd, 1995) has shown that older children are better than their younger counterparts in using gist memory. Gist memories are integrated into prior knowledge, preserving only the central concepts of an event. If older children rely more on gist, which is meaningfully connected to knowledge, it may explain why they would be better able to understand event plausibility. The present research provided younger and older children with knowledge of a novel animal, namely a chinchilla. These children were later read a story about one such chinchilla. This story featured events that would be plausible or implausible given knowledge of the animal. Children were then tested for the recall and suggestibility for the story one day or one week later. In general, plausible events were better recalled than implausible events, and plausible misleading questions led to more suggestibility than implausible questions. As would be expected, age served as a good predictor of recall and suggestibility, with older children displaying better recall and decreased susceptibility to suggestion than younger children. As expected, delay also served as a good predictor of memory and suggestibility, with better recall and less suggestibility in the short delay than the longer delay. There was some evidence that knowledge was activated to a greater extent in the older children as they made their memory judgments. Older children were more susceptible to plausible suggestion over time and less susceptible to implausible suggestion, while younger children displayed increases in suggestibility to both question types. Due to the limitations of the current design, a full understanding of how age, delay, and plausibility interact is still to come. Future research may shed further light on how an understanding of event plausibility develops across the childhood years, and how this development affects children's recall and suggestibility.
The Sojourner's Truth: Exploring Bicultural Identity as a Predictor of Assignment Success in American Expatriates
(2009-04-21) Moore, Ti'eshia Marie; Brad Mehlenbacher, Committee Chair; Susan Bracken, Committee Member; Jason Allaire, Committee Member; Audrey Jaegar, Committee Member
This study explores the bicultural identity of current American expatriates and the relationship between that identity and assignment completion. Biculturalism is defined as the psychological and emotional transition into dual competency, allegiance, and personal identification with the home and host societies. By expanding the cultural identification frameworks utilized in existing models, the study estimates whether and to what degree assignment completion are influenced by an expatriateÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s ability to both adapt and maintain cultural identifications while living and working abroad . Using an online survey to assess levels of cultural adaptation, identification, support, and stress, the study places respondents into one of four quadrants of bicultural identity based on the Acculturation Index (Berry, Kim, Power, Young, & Bujaki, 1989; Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999). The strength of the relationship and influence between the quadrant placement and assignment completion is then examined. Using a four quadrant model of cultural identity, bicultural identity is explored through a logistic regression model. Assignment success, measured as the intention of the expatriate to remain in the assignment for as long as originally stipulated, produced a quasi-separation of data. Subsequent analyses using sociocultural adaptation as the criterion variable found host country identity, organizational support, cultural distance, and service-related assignments as significant predictors of sociocultural adaptation. In turn, adaptation significantly predicted assignment success and organizational commitment. Greater difficulties in adaptation resulted in a 5% reduction in likelihood for assignment success. Ultimately, sociocultural adaptation and support from the sending organization have the most dramatic effects on assignment success. Organizational commitment and identity are investigated in greater detail. Results of the study indicate that expatriates on business or educational assignments are more likely to remain with the sending agency over those on service, non-profit, or religious ones. In addition, expatriates experiencing greater difficulty concerning bureaucracy, authority, and unsatisfactory service or people, were less likely to remain with the sending organization. The study contends that individual and organizational variables interact to influence adaptation, identity, and organizational outcomes. Likewise, the relationship between individual and organizational identity is proposed. The quadrants of cultural identification: bicultural, separation, assimilation, and marginalization are analyzed. Bicultural individuals were able to maintain home ties, while simultaneously adopting new ones, and were the best adapted in the analytic sample. There was support for previous findings that separated expatriates maintained high home and organizational allegiance, while assimilated individuals displayed the weakest organizational allegiance (Black, Gregersen, & Mendenhall, 1992). Marginal expatiates had the greatest difficulty in sociocultural adaptation and felt the least support from the sending agency. The implications for organizations and individual expatriates within the quadrant are discussed. Based on these findings, the study presents suggestions for future research as well as recommendations for organizations involved in expatriation.
Understanding Socioeconomic Differences in Kindergarteners' School Success: The Influence of Executive Function and Strategic Memory.
(2010-05-20) Turner, Kimberly Ann; Lynne Baker-Ward, Committee Chair; Thomas Hess, Committee Member; Mary Haskett, Committee Member; Hiller Spires, Committee Member; Jason Allaire, Committee Member