Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2025, Psychology

Previous research has demonstrated that veterans often face challenges transitioning from the military to the civilian workplace, such as underemployment and a perceived lack of belonging in the workplace. Drawing from Construal Level Theory, we investigate the possibility that the military's rank-based hierarchical structure influences veterans' expectations about when to modulate their regulatory scope – the breadth and range of things one considers in decision-making. We suggest that military culture transforms veterans' expectations of expanding and contracting their scope from a within-person process to a between-person process through the chain-of-command, where higher-ranks often have expansive duties like strategic planning and lower-ranks have contractive duties like executing operations. Because this structure is less likely to exist in the civilian workplace, we suggest veterans may form rank-based expectations which influences their judgments and decision-making. We examine this over two experiments. In Experiment 1, we explore this question of whether people generally have rank-based expectations of scope through a person perception paradigm. We showcase the first evidence that people do associate rank with scope but surprisingly find that veterans and non-veterans maintain similar associations. Drawing from stereotype literature where activation not necessarily lead to application, we then explore in Experiments 2a and 2b (Experiment 2b was pre-registered) whether veterans and non-veterans differ in their judgments and decision-making towards organizations that are structured around rank-based expectations. We find that relative to non-veterans, veterans anticipate greater belonging, interest, and prefer to choose organizations that are structured around rank-based expectations of scope compared to other organizations. Thus, across two experiments, we not only demonstrate that people associate rank with scope, but that veterans and n (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kentaro Fujita (Advisor); Mike DeKay (Committee Member); Duane Wegener (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Bioethics

Clinical ethicists have become increasingly integrated at hospitals across the United States since the 1980s, prompting sustained efforts to professionalize the field of clinical ethics including the introduction of core competencies, a professional code of ethics, and a certification program. Despite these important milestones, the field still lacks a clear, unified scope of practice and discussions about the roles clinical ethicists ought to assume in health care are ongoing. Up until now, discourse has largely focused on what clinical ethicists can contribute to the health care environment; such a utility-based orientation to the efforts of clinical ethicists has resulted in the emotional impact of clinical ethics work on clinical ethicists going largely unrecognized. This dissertation establishes a foundational understanding of the emotional experiences of clinical ethicists, drawing on qualitative interviews with 34 clinical ethicists in the United States conducted between May and September of 2023 as well as a detailed conceptual analysis of burnout, moral injury, and moral distress as studied in other health professions. Results from this research suggest that clinical ethicists are assuming a significant emotional burden as a result of their clinical ethics work stemming from a variety of factors, including their regular exposure to ethically challenging situations, the variety of expectations placed on them by others, the diversity of the roles that they are playing in decisions regarding patient care, and the increasingly therapeutic nature of their work. Furthermore, the experiences of clinical ethicists are not sufficiently captured by existing terminology; this dissertation introduces the concept of secondary moral distress to describe the negative emotional impact that results from assuming a therapeutic role in a morally distressing situation. This work ultimately suggests that the burden assumed by these professionals is reason for significant concer (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Monica Gerrek (Committee Chair); Marsha Michie (Committee Member); Esther Bernhofer (Committee Member); Oliver Schirokauer (Committee Member); Mark Aulisio (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Health Care; Medical Ethics; Medicine

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Public Health

The nurse practitioner (NP) role has emerged as a key role in primary care in the United States. NPs can help meet growing primary care needs, contribute to greater access to care for patients, and provide care that is of high quality, leads to high patient satisfaction, and is cost-effective. While many stakeholders in the fields of nursing and primary care have argued for further expanding NP scope of practice, others, predominantly medical organizations, have questioned this approach. NP practice is governed at the state level, but it is also influenced by organizational level factors, like institutional policies, which can influence the NP practice environment. Therefore, organized medicine's opposition, in combination with varying state laws and regulations, as well as organizational barriers have prevented NPs from practicing to the full extent of their education and training in many states. Thus, the overall goal of this dissertation is to provide further clarity around the integration of the NP role into the delivery of healthcare services in the United States via three specific aims. Aim 1 provides an evidence-based overview of the terms used in the existing literature to describe NP integration into primary care and determines characteristics of distinct models of care. This first aim will help reduce confusion around the labeling and operationalization of terms, it will further allow health professionals to work towards common goals, and it will provide a foundation for future outcomes research around NP-physician models of care. Aim 2 examines why some states have achieved full NP scope of practice authority while others have not. This second aim can help guide state policy makers and NP professional organizations in their lobbying efforts and decision making around future NP policy efforts. Further, understanding why some states have achieved full scope of practice authority while others have not is critical as NPs working in full scope of practice stat (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennifer Hefner (Advisor); Judith Tate (Committee Member); Tasleem Padamsee (Committee Member); Tory Hogan (Committee Member) Subjects: Health Care Management; Nursing; Public Health

Master of Music (MM), Ohio University, 2022, Music Therapy (Fine Arts)

Unique for being the only professional document created in collaboration between the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) and the Certification Board for Music Therapists (CBMT), the Scope of Music Therapy Practice plays an important role in clarifying boundaries, training, and skills for the music therapy profession (AMTA & CBMT, 2018). Other documents which inform the role of music therapists in the United States include the AMTA Standards of Practice, the AMTA Advisory on the Levels of Practice, the AMTA Standards for Education and Clinical Training, the AMTA Code of Ethics, the CBMT Board Certification Domains, and the CBMT Code of Professional Practice. Also, the AMTA Professional and Advanced Competencies list knowledge and skills needed to be a professional or advanced clinician. Overall, these documents outline knowledge, skills, and training requirements needed for a Board Certified-Music Therapist (MT-BC) and have been found to overlap with themes in existing research thought to be factors in professional identity development (Adams et al., 2006; Brewer, 2017; Bruscia, 1987; McIntyre, 2018). Currently there is no knowledge in the literature in music therapy which explores the history nor intent of the AMTA and CBMT Scope of Music Therapy Practice document. Furthermore, although research addressing professional identity development in music therapy is growing, no current research takes into consideration the role of regulatory documents as an influencing factor (Brewer, 2017; Bruscia, 1987; Kim, 2011; McIntyre, 2018). The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the intent and development behind the AMTA and CBMT Scope of Music Therapy Practice document as well as its relationship to the AMTA Professional Competencies and the CBMT Board Certification Domains. Furthermore, how the Scope of Music Therapy Practice document, in addition to other influential documents in the field, are currently being utilized in professional practice and tr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kamile Geist (Advisor); Laurie Keough (Committee Member); Andrew Holbrook (Committee Member) Subjects: Music; Therapy

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2022, Chemistry

Flavin-dependent halogenases carry out regioselective aryl halide synthesis in aqueous solution at ambient temperature and neutral pH using benign halide salts, making them attractive catalysts for green chemistry. BorH/BorF and AbeH/AbeF are two-component systems where BorF and AbeF are flavin reductases that reduce FAD to FADH2, which is then used by halogenases BorH and AbeH to regioselectivity chlorinate tryptophan in the biosynthesis of indolotryptoline natural products. We have expressed and purified BorF as a homodimer from E. coli and verified its flavin reductase activity by monitoring the oxidation of NADH to NAD+ at 340 nm in the presence of BorF and FAD. BorF can also reduce FMN and riboflavin in vitro and are selective for NADH over NADPH. Initial velocity studies in the presence and absence of inhibitors showed that BorF proceeds by an ordered sequential kinetic mechanism in which FAD binds first. Fluorescence quenching experiments verified that NADH does not bind BorF in the absence of FAD, and BorF binds FAD with a higher affinity than FADH2. The pH-rate profile of BorF was bell-shaped with a maximum kcat at pH 7.5, and site-directed mutagenesis of BorF implicated His160 and Arg38 as contributing to the catalytic activity and the pH dependence. To investigate the substrate scope of BorH and AbeH, both halogenases were expressed and purified and tested for their ability to halogenate a set of 27 aromatic compounds using chloride, bromide, and iodide as halogen sources. Of the 27 substrates tested, BorH was able to chlorinate and brominate 10 of them and AbeH was able to chlorinate and brominate 6 of them, including compounds with indole, benzene, and quinoline cores. Relative activities for the alternative substrates ranged from 5-54% of the BorH tryptophan chlorination activity. In an effort to identify novel FDHs with a different substrate scope than previously characterized enzymes, bioinformatic searches of sequenced human microbiome meta (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John J. Bellizzi (Committee Chair); Deborah Chadee (Committee Member); Dragan Isailovic (Committee Member); Timothy Mueser (Committee Member) Subjects: Biochemistry; Chemistry

Doctor of Healthcare Administration (D.H.A.), Franklin University, 2022, Health Programs

Population aging challenges communities to establish appropriate services and supports to meet the needs of the growing number of older adults. Gerontologists are professionals and academics with a graduate degree in gerontology who have received education in core aging competencies. U.S. states have not established a licensing process for gerontologists, which hinders their ability to secure positions currently held by licensed social workers in aging services; however, there is a shortage of social workers and gerontologists are a viable solution for filling the supply gap. The impetus to credential practitioners in the field of health services stems from the need to ensure professional competence and integrity as well as to establish formal procedures for accountability. This concept is known as fitness to practice. Ohio regulations mandate area agencies on aging to employ only licensed nurses and social workers to provide case management services; however, Pennsylvania and New York do not have the same restrictions on the credentials of direct-service personnel. The aim of this study was to better understand Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York participants' interpretation of fitness to practice and the role of gerontologists in aging service delivery. Convenience sampling was employed to collect data through semistructured interviews with aging services administrators, and a comparative analysis was conducted to evaluate themes across the 3 states. The findings suggested that either licensure or robust training coupled with policies and procedures are both worthwhile pathways for ensuring the fitness to practice of aging services case managers, including gerontologists. An essential precursor to both pathways is a well-established scope of practice, standards of practice, and code of ethics for gerontologists, which should be defined by a community of practice that consists of key stakeholders. These stakeholders should be united in the goal of advancing the pro (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Karen Lankisch (Committee Chair); Alyncia Bowen (Committee Member); Bora Pajo (Committee Member) Subjects: Aging; Gerontology; Health Care Management

DNP, Otterbein University, 2022, Nursing

Autonomous nurse practitioners are an effective and useful member of the healthcare team, particularly when given a less restrictive scope of practice at the state level. The autonomous nurse practitioner can help improve patient outcomes/needs as a decision-making health care team member. Ohio nurse practitioners treating worker's compensation patients are limited in treating the injured worker not because of the nurse practitioner scope of practice, but because of the bureaucratic paperwork worker's compensation requires of its patients/providers. The purpose of the project was to conduct a needs analysis regarding a legislative change proposal for the practice authority of nurse practitioners treating the Ohio worker's compensation patient. This quantitative study was completed by conducting chart reviews of worker's compensation patients evaluated by the nurse practitioner evaluating any disparities between work restrictions recommended by the nurse practitioner versus the physician. The target population for this study included nurse practitioners treating Ohio worker's compensation patients in the Occupational Medicine setting. Patient chart reviews were conducted, reviewing the work restriction instructions given by the nurse practitioner and included only initial injury evaluation patients that had a required Medco-14 form. The charts were randomly selected from the past schedules of the two practicing occupational nurse practitioners in a rural Ohio county. Of the 70 random charts reviewed, 100% had no discrepancies between the nurse practitioner work recommendations and that of the physician. Allowing nurse practitioners to sign Medco-14 forms will increase patient access to care, which in turn results in better patient outcomes.

Committee: Joy Shoemaker DNP (Advisor); Amy Hotler DNP (Committee Member) Subjects: Health; Health Sciences; Medicine; Nursing; Occupational Health

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Linguistics

This thesis reports development of a new, broad-domain quantifier scope corpus including all of the factors, for use training and testing the system. Training materials, a work process, and the annotator-facing data format were each designed to reduce barriers to entry and safeguard accuracy, with revisions resulting from an inter-annotator agreement study and error analysis. The thesis discusses appropriate measures of agreement for scope annotations, both between human annotators and between predicted and gold labels. For appropriate calculation of chance-corrected agreement between human annotators, an inter-annotation distance metric is introduced and justified. For evaluation of automated predictions, where human-like constraints on the structure of a set of predictions are not enforced, results are evaluated both for small-scale accuracy and for compliance with these holistic constraints. The scoping data of the corpus are developed into a natural language understanding task suitable for automatic prediction, framing it as a span pair classification problem, with outscoping treated as a semantic dependency between words. This thesis reports the application of the RoBERTa language model to this task. The model encodes properties of lexis, syntax, and semantics that correlate with human scoping judgements (`scoping factors'). Previously published scope-annotated corpora and scope prediction systems either do not cover all of the scoping factors, do not apply them to the full set of quantifiers, or do not represent the full range of subject-matter domains in which humans routinely predict quantifier scope. Predictions from the RoBERTa system are shown to be more accurate than the majority-prediction baseline, to a degree not due to chance. The system successfully complies with the holistic constraints. The system's principal shortcomings are its relatively small improvement over the baseline, its dependence on some other system to screen p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Schuler (Advisor); Micha Elsner (Committee Member); Michael White (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2021, Management

This research explores difficult decisions by victims to report an incident of workplace violence, and difficult audit scope decisions made by auditors. It includes a qualitative study revealing the role of fear in reporting incidents of workplace violence, showing fear can deter individuals from doing the right thing, and the financial auditors' scope of testing of information technology (IT) in an integrated audit. The notion of fear in the workplace was further studied with an experimental design to measure the auditors' assessment of scope for testing when facing complex IT environments with highly skilled and hostile client teams, and a third experimental design exploring how systems thinking can be an intervention. The findings indicate that less experienced and younger individuals are more prone to fear due to seniority and authority gaps. Such fear may deter them from reporting workplace violence when they are victims or witnesses. Similarly, fear causes unskilled auditors to perform less testing on IT controls and components despite common logic and guidelines from auditing standards when faced with highly complex IT environments. The findings also reveal that systems thinking can be an intervention to counter, or in certain cases, reverse, such an effect. When provided during the auditor's audit scope planning phase, systems thinking training causes auditors to perform the same or greater level of IT testing in a complex IT environment compared to non-systems thinking, or “reductionist thinking” auditors. When used appropriately, systems thinking skills can enhance an auditor's judgment in complex situations. This implies that systems thinking can be applied to other complex audit situations.

Committee: Anthony C. Bucaro (Committee Chair); Richard J. Boland Jr. (Committee Member); Philip A. Cola (Committee Member); James E. Gaskin (Committee Member) Subjects: Accounting; Information Technology; Management; Organizational Behavior

PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Nursing

An important clinical relationship within our healthcare system is that between the certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) and the anesthesiologist. What constitutes the phenomenon of collaboration has been intensely debated between CRNAs and anesthesiologists. The issue of collaboration is intertwined with consideration of scope of practice, supervision, autonomy, and job satisfaction. A deep examination of history brings forward the relationship between Agatha Hodgins and George Crile who together revolutionized the practice of anesthesia. Nurse Anesthetist Agatha Hodgins was the director of the Lakeside School of Anesthesia and George Crile a world-famous surgeon. The collaboration between Crile and Hodgins resulted in some prolific accomplishments that influence clinical practice to this day. This collaboration between Hodgins and Crile and the use of George Crile's considerable clout was the impetus that tipped the legal scales in support of nursing's first specialty - anesthesia. This relationship is an illustrative moment in history that allows for a forward-looking example of collaboration, shedding light into how to approach the phenomenon of collaboration. The purpose of this historical research study was to investigate the relationship between Agatha Hodgins and George Crile using post structuralism as a thematic guide to uncover how this collaboration informs future nursing practice. This study employed Joan Wallach Scott's theory of using gender as a category of analysis to investigate nursing's place in the history of healthcare in the United States with an emphasis on past and present interpretations of this history. This research contributes to the literature by uncovering those areas in anesthesia practice where the optimization of collaboration can lead to the better utilization of healthcare resources to vulnerable and marginalized populations.

Committee: Pamela Stephenson Ph.D, RN (Committee Chair); Denice Sheehan Ph.D., RN, FPCN (Committee Member); Timothy Scarnecchia Ph.D (Committee Member); Lori Kidd Ph.D, RN (Committee Member); Kenneth Bindas Ph.D (Other) Subjects: American History; Health Care; Nursing

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Nursing

Background and Aims: Nurse practitioners (NPs) represent a growing healthcare provider workforce, which is poised to assist with the shortages of physicians and growing demand for healthcare services driven by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Restrictions to NP scope of practice may present a barrier to meeting this need. This research sought to determine if NP scope of practice laws were altered in response to passage of the ACA and to examine changes in the number of NPs, to test for differences in the delivery of ambulatory care in the United States, and to characterize ambulatory practice by state-level NP scope of practice post-ACA passage. Methods: This research was a mixed-methods retrospective study. State level data on NP scope of practice legislation was created using annual legislative reports and analysis guided by regulatory theory. The Area Health Resource File was used to calculate annual NP counts per 100,000 population by state from 2010 to 2014. The National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and National Hospital Ambulatory Care Survey (NHAMCS) were combined and weights applied to make national estimates of ambulatory care from 2007 to 2012. The 2012 NAMCS was the first time state-level estimates could be made with this data. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics and differences between categorical (chi-square) and continuous (t-test) variables were calculated. A regression model was fit to determine predictors of NP counts. Results: From 2010 to 2014 seven states passed full practice authority legislation, an over three-fold increase in adoption of this legislation compared to the previous 10 years. All seven states chose to adopt Medicaid expansion and five of the states mentioned the ACA or issues with access to care. The numbers of NPs per 100,000 population increased over time (2010-2014) but broadening of scope of practice was not a predictor of NP count. The most acceleration in NP counts occurred in Sout (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pamela Salsberry (Advisor); Margaret Graham (Committee Member); Sandra Tanenbaum (Committee Member) Subjects: Health Care; Nursing

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

The teaching of singing is, by its very nature, a humanistic endeavor. The instrument being trained is part of the human body and thus part of a human being. Many pedagogic perspectives attempt to separate the instrument from the artist for the sake of isolating vocal technique. But, since it is impossible to remove the instrument from the singer's body, it must be addressed as a part of the singing artist. A human being is an intricate creature that has many interrelated parts that can have great effect on one another; if one aspect of a person is changed, it will inevitably influence other aspects of that person to varying degrees. This complexity necessitates the inclusive awareness of all aspects of that person in any endeavor that seeks to alter a person's body, mind, or spirit. Teaching singing with an individual's needs and complexities in mind is, by definition, humanistic. A voice teacher's scope of practice has always been vague, which has been both beneficial and detrimental to the profession. There are ethical guidelines provided by professional organizations and suggested practices throughout the literature, but the profession is not one that requires specific training, certification, or legal licensure, and therefore cannot easily be regulated or unified in scope or method. Regardless of teaching style, teachers may find that they need to play many roles beyond that of vocal technician when working with a voice student; a humanistic approach to teaching singing makes this inevitable. But it is important that voice teachers understand the boundaries of their practice along with those of related professions so they may provide their students with appropriate guidance and resources, and refer knowledgeably to other professionals as needed. The Clinical and Educational Model of Wellness, though intended for use by counselors, is perfectly designed to help voice teachers assess the needs of their students, and to create and execute goals tha (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: J. Robin Rice (Advisor); Paul Granello (Committee Member); Scott McCoy (Committee Member); Mark Rudoff (Committee Member) Subjects: Counseling Education; Fine Arts; Music; Music Education; Pedagogy; Performing Arts

DNP, Otterbein University, 2015, Nursing

Problem Statement: Recent passage of the Affordable Care Act has made the imminent concern of poor patient/provider ratios a reality. Unfortunately, despite increasing numbers of advanced practice registered nurses graduating annually, the access to healthcare issue continues. Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) are limited in the care they can provide as a result of Ohio law. The Ohio Nurse Practice Act requires APRNs to work in a collaborative relationship with a physician and also requires that prescribing practices be guided by an inclusionary formulary (Nurse Practice Act, 2014). Thus, APRNs in Ohio cannot practice to their fullest scope of education and training. Purpose: The overall goal of this DNP project is to encourage APRN advocacy efforts that will hasten health policy change leading to full practice authority for Ohio APRNs. The objectives of this project include evaluating the knowledge base of Ohio pediatric nurse practitioners (PNP) regarding advocacy, evaluating whether or not Ohio pediatric nurse practitioners desire full practice authority and determine the current level of PNP involvement as health policy advocates. The project will also aid in determining the best method for dissemination of information related to health policy. Methods: A mixed methodology design was used and included the collection of quantitative and qualitative data to investigate APRN knowledge and involvement in advocacy, particularly the desire for full practice authority via a survey questionnaire. Participants were recruited from the Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) list serve of members. Inclusion criteria: Nurse practitioners working with pediatric patients and membership in Ohio NAPNAP. Members were emailed a link to a Survey Monkey® and completion of the survey implied consent to participate. The questionnaire consisted of nineteen questions that allowed for investigation of involveme (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jacqueline Haverkamp DNP (Advisor); Barbara Nash MS (Committee Member); Janice Lanier JD (Committee Member) Subjects: Nursing

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

Contingent valuation (CV) has been used extensively to value non-marketed environmental resources and public policies. Despite its sound theoretical background as a direct measure of welfare change and its ability to measure nonuse values, the validity of CV hypothetical estimates of value is still under immense debate. Of equal importance is the issue of equity or income distribution impacts of environmental change and how to incorporate equity into public policy analysis without sacrificing economic efficiency. This dissertation focuses on studying the theoretical validity of dichotomous choice CV as well as the distributional effects of river contamination and clean up including stated preference evaluation of environmental improvements. The study case is restoring the Lower Mahoning River in Northeast Ohio through dredging of toxics and/or selected dam removal. First, theoretical validity of the CV estimates is examined through the use of split sampling to test for scope, sequence, and context effects. Then, comparisons among different treatments are conducted using both the likelihood ratio test and the difference in median WTP t-Test. Results indicate that WTP is insensitive to the scope of the proposed restoration project in the whole sample. However, scope effects are significant among past users of the river. Additionally, there is mixed evidence of order and context effects. It is concluded that sensitivity to scope in contingent valuation could be dependent on the type of the public good being valued (e.g., scope versus scale valuation) and on the characteristics of the individuals being surveyed especially with respect to familiarity with the resource in question. Second, income distribution impacts of river contamination and clean up are examined through stratification of the sample using income and location of the household as a proxy for race. Results show that poor people and minorities in urban districts along the Mahoning River might have been unju (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Fred Hitzhusen (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays on the economics of agricultural biotechnology. In the first essay, “A Model of Diffusion of Genetically Modified Crop Technology in Concentrated Agricultural Processing Markets - The Case of Soybeans”, a dynamic model of diffusion of a genetically modified crop technology is developed and simulated. The model accounts for factors specific to agricultural markets, such as oligopsony power of crop processors, grower characteristics, and identity preservation requirements. It is found that market power of crop processors decreases the equilibrium adoption levels and prolongs the diffusion period. Producer uncertainty and perception of the risks associated with planting GM crops increases equilibrium adoption levels but lengthens the diffusion period, and producer heterogeneity with respect to new crop profitability may have different effects on the diffusion process. The second essay is called “Valuation of International Patent Rights for Agricultural Biotechnology”. In it, the choices that biotechnology companies make about marketing different genetically modified (GM) crops in different countries with highly uncertain returns are modeled as a real option problem of the entry decision solved at a micro-level by individual firms. A computational solution to the model produces distributions of entry probabilities that are determined by different market and regulatory environments. These proportions are compared to the actual data on incidences of biotech firms entering foreign markets with different GM crops, and conclusions about the distribution of patent values, returns evolution, and efficiency of local IPR protection are drawn. In the third essay, “Patent Policy Analysis for the Case of Agricultural Biotechnological Innovations”, certain peculiarities of the process of development of agricultural biotechnological innovations are considered, in particular the distinction between an R&D race for an event discovery and subse (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ian Sheldon (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Psychology

This dissertation represents an investigation into the role of model complexity in structural equation modeling (SEM) and how traditional notions of model fit, which do not typically consider complexity, are inadequate for summarizing the success or failure of a model. Model fit is traditionally summarized in an index which communicates the agreement between a given model and a particular data set. However, demonstrating that a given model could have generated a given data set is not sufficient to show that it is a good model. Because complexity partially determines the ability of a model to fit data, model complexity should not be ignored when evaluating model fit. The importance of model complexity is examined in the SEM context by simulating correlation matrices and applying a series of models which differ in complexity. First, it is shown that models differing in the number of free parameters can fit the same random data differentially well by a simple criterion of good fit. Second, models with the same number of free parameters, but which differ in functional form, are found to fit the same data differentially well. Third, it is found that restrictions placed on parameter range have an impact on model complexity. Because traditional fit indices usually correct for model complexity due only to the number of free parameters, these findings have important implications for how models are assessed and compared in the SEM paradigm.

Committee: Robert MacCallum (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, Psychometrics

MA, Kent State University, 2009, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Expectation states theory employs several scope statements to specify the situational conditions that must be met for any test of the theory to be considered valid (Foschi 1997). Collective orientation and task orientation are two such scope conditions, and they are frequently implemented as selection criteria for a participant to be included in a study's analytic sample. While excluding participants who fail to meet scope conditions is certainly theoretically consistent, researchers have yet to establish whether or not this practice has any direct influence on observable experimental outcomes. Previous research and theory suggest that increasing task and collective orientation strengthens the relationship between status and influence. In this paper I employ meta-analysis to compare studies within the expectation states tradition in which participants are excluded for failure to meet scope conditions to studies in which no scope condition-based exclusions are made. Results suggest that studies in which researchers exclude participants for scope violations demonstrate a decreased baseline tendency to reject influence. I argue that differences in the ways that researchers implement scope conditions affect the comparability of studies conducted in the expectation states paradigm, which in turn compromises the capacity for cumulative research. Further, I contend that adopting a more universal approach to the measurement and application of scope conditions would be methodologically and theoretically beneficial to expectation states research.

Committee: Will Kalkhoff PhD (Advisor); Andre Christie-Mizell PhD (Committee Member); Richard Serpe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2007, Urban Studies and Public Affairs

Goals of social equality, eradication of poverty, and national security have peppered U.S. educational history. In response curricula, policies, and processes are constantly evolving to meet perceived needs. Nowadays “academic achievement” and “accountability” are of greatest interest to stakeholders. While students are tested for proficiency in a myriad of subjects and schools are held responsible for the outcomes, we are just beginning to understand the conditions that must exist within a school to ensure students are able to learn—what it takes for schools to be “ready.” This study extends what has been recently learned about schools' readiness for children, as defined by the National Education Goals Panel and measured by an abridged version of the High/Scope Ready School Assessment (2005). It examines the relationship of social context to schools' readiness for children. Social context data is drawn from the Ohio Department of Education and the U.S. Census databases. Multiple linear regression analysis is employed to assess the effect the independent variables have on school readiness.

Committee: Sonia Alemagno (Advisor) Subjects: