An information system can be viewed as a symbiotic relation between the users of the system and the system's hardware, software, and data resources. Ideally, performance evaluation of these systems should be based on the achievement of user based criteria while concurrently minimizing resource costs. Current evaluation technologies concentrate on…

Present research questions the traditional unidimensional model in childhood psychopathology. Not only do parents influence the development of their offspring, they, in turn, are influenced by them. The infant is an active agent, affected by and affecting those around him. The infant emerges as a primary source of influence--often in the direction…

In this study a training program for new teaching assistants in freshman chemistry was developed and assessed. All new assistants in the Freshman Division were assigned by a stratified random technique to either the control or treatment group, with the latter receiving inservice training in the skills of teaching recitation classes. This training…

The report describes the Shared Process Evaluation System (SHAPES), a process analysis system designed to facilitate documenting, rationalizing, and evaluating community development projects. The evaluation process requires five steps. First, the project is described with respect to statements about the original problem situation and demographic…

Ways in which group simulations were incorporated into a Three-Stage Model of Instruction, used to develop 13 units of leadership instruction, are described in this report. The units of instruction were designed for use by high school youth participating in vocational organizations. Using simulation to train leaders has several advantages: (1) it…

This paper explores the relationships among ethnicity, age and inherent social dilemmas. The study examines selected dependent variables (economic and health indicators, social interaction, and life satisfaction items) in an effort to determine the extent to which different configurations of age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status produce varying…

This study was undertaken to describe the perceptual, demographic, and psychological characteristics of black businesspeople in the inner-city community of Buffalo, New York, in order to assist commercial and investment bankers in the formulation of advertising and loan strategies. Of 380 questionnaires distributed to the target population, 104…

This is the third report on the Arkansas Rehabilitation Research and Training Center's study on counselor performance and client outcome. It focuses on the relationship between rehabilitation counselors' interview behaviors and clients outcome. Eighty-nine interviews from a sample of 22 clients and 11 counselors were analyzed for counselor subrole…

Rogers (1970) suggests that group therapy may be both safer and far more effective than individual counseling and therapy in achieving conditions which encourage learning and personal growth. There are many "how to's" and "do's and don'ts" which will ameliorate conditions for creating learning, or problem solving, groups. The…

The mathematical exercise of the the Prisoner's Dilemma is used to explore the issue of whether present models or paradigms of policy analysis cover the complete range of rational decision making. A review of the competing paradigms of the cybernetic concept, the analytic probability concept, and the cognitive categorization concept reveals…

The purpose of this monograph is to examine changing perspectives of rural development in an effort to better understand change in rural social systems via analyzation of interactions between social systems in general and between the U.S. and Asian countries in particular. Initially, an analytic framework is presented which describes intersystem…

Symbolic interaction is the foundation for a theory of rhetoric developed in this paper. As manipulators of symbols, humans, unlike all other animals, use abstractions both to indicate (describe things present) and to represent (describe intangible things). Only human beings are capable of the elaborate systems of linguistic reference called…

This report provides a detailed analysis of the personal communications between parents and teachers and teachers and children in the Queensland Pre-School Correspondence Program in Australia. The communications include letters, tapes, Teacher Information Sheets, and personal meetings and are analyzed by (1) type of contact and topic, (2)…

This paper is a presentation of what a mass movement pressupposes rhetorically, as opposed to what a movement is in social or historical terms. The author outlines the functions of rhetoric in a movement, in order to establish how the metaphor operates as the essential rhetorical instrument. He states that a mass social or historical movement is…

The purpose of this study was to summarize an examination of the social interactions of a sample of 370 preschool children and to demonstrate from the summary that social settings within the preschool environment differentially affect both the quality and quantity of social interaction. The Social Interaction Observation Procedure was used to…