Our understanding of the history and development of Arabic is greatly challenged by the dearth of sources. Most scholars who have undertaken this task in the past have relied almost exclusively on data from the Arabic grammatical tradition. These sources claimed that Arabic originated as the language of the Bedouin of the central and southern…

This dissertation is composed of three essays looking at innovation at Academic Medical Centers. It tries to empirically explore the problem of translating knowledge from the laboratory bench to the clinic and from the clinic to the bench. Chapter 1, co-authored with Iain Cockburn, establishes the importance of in-house complementary knowledge in…

Effective policymaking requires understanding the causal effects of competing proposals. Relevant causal quantities include proposals' expected effect on different groups of recipients, the impact of policies over time, the potential trade-offs between competing objectives, and, ultimately, the optimal policy. This dissertation studies causal…

The historiography of the Rhodes State College Dental Hygiene Program (Program) presents a historical journey of health care, as it relates to oral health, in the United States, in Ohio, and in Lima. This study bridges the gap between the history of higher education and the history of an academic program, dental hygiene. Prior to this study, there…

The purpose of this study was to examine if there was a difference between mean measures of preliteracy skills of preschool children who participated in Creating Young Readers, a volunteer based reading program, and a control group who had not. Unpaid community volunteers were trained in a modified dialogic reading technique, focusing on…

Research self-efficacy refers to a person's confidence in their ability to perform research activities (Bailey, 1999; Bard et al., 2000; Deemer, 2010; Holden et al., 1999; Kahn, 2001; Mulliken et al., 2007; Phillips et al., 2004; Unrau & Beck, 2004, Unrau & Grinnel, 2005). Little has been written on this topic in relation to Counselor…

The study proposes an alternative approach to studying interpersonal trust. The researcher uses the Rasch analysis to design a quantitative instrument that can be used to measure trust when exploring the effects that various aspects of educational environment have on students' experiences. Prior empirical studies examined trust from a…

This study measured postsecondary faculty attitudes toward academic accommodations and an inclusive teaching method called Universal Design for Instruction (UDI). The purpose of the study was to help determine a readiness for change among faculty with regard to implementing UDI principles, compare differences between faculty groups, as well as add…

Since the 2008 implementation of Response to Intervention (RtI) plans in Illinois, rural schools in southern Illinois with a high percentage of low-income students have been compelled to implement school-wide reforms of their reading programs. Often, limited funding makes it difficult to sustain growth trends in Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).…

Adolescents confront a plethora of physical and emotional changes, especially those alterations surrounding puberty. Body image disturbances have become commonplace with high school students, and school personnel seem to have had little success in fighting this problem. Teenagers with body dissatisfaction may also be at risk for mental health…

This qualitative dissertation research explored the case studies of four novice special education teachers who were the primary instructors for English language arts for students in grades three through eight with an I.E.P. This study addressed the teachers' perspectives, beliefs, practices, and related induction needs concerning their…

Scholars have researched how voters make decisions for well over a half a century, but these studies are limited in what they are able to say about how voters make decisions because they have focused on the choice rather than the process. Most of these studies have focused on the choice that voters reach or the way their memories are structured,…

This dissertation explores the growing epidemic of academic dishonesty in the United States in order to propose an Aristotelian-inspired model for developing moral character to curtail this epidemic. The task is laid out in four parts. Chapter one responds to the problem of "akrasia," adopting a modified version of Devin Henry's…

The purposes of this study were (a) to examine early elementary grade teachers' developmentally appropriate beliefs and their teaching practices in public schools in Bangkok, (b) to explore the functioning of developmentally appropriate practice in the two chosen early elementary schools, and (c) to determine the factors that influence the…

Whereas sleep is often thought of as a common health issue among college students, few, if any, researchers have comprehensively evaluated correlates and predictors of sleep quality and quantity within this population. Most often, studies of this type are used by researchers to assess particular categories of correlates and predictors (e.g.,…