Nursing role conceptions of registered nursing (RN) students were compared with those of generic students in the baccalaureate program at South Dakota State University. The study population consisted of 76 students. Responses were obtained from four groups of students using a quasi-experimental pretest/posttest group design. Factors positively or…

The paper reports on a study of Braille learning in which subjects (N=96) were provided with information about the structure of the Braille alphabet and expressly instructed to use that information during learning. A previous experiment had found that merely providing subjects with information about Braille alphabet structure had no effect on…

Retirement is recognized as a family experience, affecting retirees, their spouses, and their children. This study examined how the retirement transition affects the middle class, healthy, and financially secure male retiree and his wife. In-depth interviews were conducted with 92 couples from the Boston area in which the husband had been retired…

Leadership in higher education is considered from the perspective of its symbolic dimensions. Results of a study of presidential perceptions of leadership are also examined in order to uncover the symbolic forms that leaders use to accomplish their goals. Organizational symbolism and interpretations of leadership are considered. Topics include:…

The extent to which college presidents incorporate single or multiple vantage points in evaluating good leadership was studied, based on Bolman and Deal's framework as adapted by Birnbaum. They suggest that leaders implicitly use different cognitive "frames" to define their role and understand organizational behavior. A frame helps the…

Most research on teacher education has taken a functionist approach to socialization, emphasizing the importance of moulding individuals to the norms of the profession. Weaknesses have been noted in this approach, and recommendations have been made which call for a theoretical and empirical reorientation to the study of teacher socialization which…

To conduct a series of studies and to provide other researchers with texts that may prove useful in answering a variety of questions about perception in reading, it was necessary for two researchers to create pairs of texts that were different in meaning but were physically different in only one letter. These texts were created by first…

A shadowing paradigm was used to determine the extent to which subjects could comprehend a spoken message without allocating attention or awareness to it. The paradigm involved presenting subjects with a control passage describing neutral events and an experimental passage describing embarrassing events over an unattended auditory channel.…

This paper presents a classification and critique of evaluator roles, and discusses the power relationships in which the evaluator engages and the power and influence strategies available to the evaluator within each type of role. The paper describes an evaluator role continuum, from "evaluator as technician" to "evaluator as change agent." At one…

In order to investigate the relative effectiveness of specific media attributes on student performance on criterion tests, a comparison was made of the effectiveness of two levels of stimulus explicitness in visuals in facilitating student achievement on criterion tests of knowledge, comprehension, and total understanding. Subjects were 171…

Although computer graphics professionals usually consider only technical graphic design issues, recent improvements may make the only limiting design factors the user's purpose, imagination, style, and taste rather than computer hardware or software technology. Computer graphics designers can be helped to avoid pitfalls by understanding the visual…

This digest contains an abridgment of a section of a chapter on "Environmental Education Research Related to Issue Awareness" from the 1984 National Commission for Environmental Education Research (NCEER) Report. The paper was prepared by Randall Wiesenmeyer, Maureen Murrin, and Audrey Tomera. Only the section of the paper dealing with…

Using the analogy of language syntax, this paper describes the development of music syntax in children ages 5 months to 5 years. It is suggested that music syntax enables the child to comprehend familiar and unfamiliar music and to reproduce familiar music and create novel music. Observations were made in a day care center and a nursery school of…

The position of the anthropologist working in North America with Native Americans today differs from that of most anthropologists working with Native Americans a few decades ago, regardless of the topic of study. This affects the kind of anthropological research undertaken, the way in which the work is done, and the results. These consequences, in…

The effects of stress on the psychosocial well-being of older persons have been well documented. Research on stress among the aged has generally considered recent life events as salient stressors in late life and has focussed on older persons without regard to racial differences. Interviews were conducted with 400 elderly black and white residents…