The new career mentality and psychological contract : integrative theory and measurement

The purpose of this dissertation was to summarize and integrate several theoretical notions of the so-called new career mentality with the concept of the psychological contract; the ultimate goal was to successfiilly operationalize the individual adoption of this new mentality. A theoretical precursor to the psychological contract, employment goals (Shore and Tetrick, 1994), was used as a measurement framework. Three types of employment goals were operationalized: relational, transactional, and personalized. While relational and transactional psychological contracts have enjoyed extensive attention within the psychological contract literature, the personalized employment goals construct was created to reflect the rich theoretical base surrounding the new career mentality. Three iterative studies were conducted to develop the employment goals subscales. A Pilot Study was conducted with 262 undergraduate students, Study One included 302 participants drawn from three distinct samples, and Study Two was conducted using 310 respondents, again from three separate samples. In each of these three studies, iterative versions of the employment goals subscales were administered in questionnaire format, as were several individual difference, attitudinal, and behavioral measures

Barriers, control and identity in health information seeking among African American women

Qualitative research methods were used to examine the role of racial, cultural, and socio-economic group (i.e., communal) identities on perceptions of barriers and control related to traditional and internet resources for seeking health information. Eighteen lower income, African American women participated in training workshops on using the internet for health, followed by two focus groups. Transcripts were analyzed using standardized coding methods. Results demonstrated that participants perceived the internet as a tool for seeking health information, which they believed would empower them within formal healthcare settings. Participants invoked racial, cultural, and socio-economic identities when discussing barriers to seeking health information within healthcare systems and the internet. The findings indicate that the internet may be a valuable tool for accessing health information among lower income African American women if barriers are reduced. Recommendations are made that may assist health providers in improving health information seeking outcomes of African American women

The Role of Public versus Private Health Insurance in Ensuring Health Care Access & Affordability for Low-Income Rural Children

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have played a critical role in ensuring access to health insurance coverage among children and have been particularly important sources of coverage for rural children. More than 35.5 million children were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP in September 2016—accounting for just over half of total Medicaid and CHIP enrollment. Given the large proportion of rural children covered by public insurance, it is critically important to understand the role of that coverage in ensuring access to affordable healthcare for rural children. Using data from the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children’s Health, this study examined rural-urban differences in children’s access to care, and their families’ perceived affordability of that care among those enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP and those covered by private insurance. Findings indicate that public coverage supported access to care for low-income rural children and low-income rural families reported fewer problems paying medical bills for their child’s care. CHIP is up for reauthorization in 2017 and decisions about the program’s future should consider the potential implications for affordability of healthcare services among rural children

The teacher labour market, teacher turnover and disadvantaged schools:new evidence for England

We study the market for teachers in England, in particular teacher turnover. We show that there is a positive raw association between the level of school disadvantage and the turnover rate of its teachers. This association diminishes as we control for school, pupil and local teacher labour market characteristics, but is not eliminated. The remaining association is largely accounted for by teacher characteristics, with the poorer schools hiring much younger teachers on average. We interpret this market equilibrium allocation as either deriving from the preferences of young teachers, or as reflecting the low market attractiveness of disadvantaged schools

Molecular evolutionary consequences of island colonization

Island endemics are expected to have low effective population sizes (Ne), first because some may experience population bottlenecks when they are founded, and second because they have restricted ranges. Therefore, we expect island species to have reduced genetic diversity, inefficient selection, and reduced adaptive potential compared with their mainland counterparts. We used both polymor- phism and substitution data to address these predictions, improving on the approach of recent studies that only used substitution data. This allowed us to directly test the assumption that island species have small values of Ne. We found that island species had significantly less genetic diversity than mainland species; however, this pattern could be attributed to a subset of island species that appeared to have undergone a recent population bottleneck. When these species were excluded from the analysis, island and mainland species had similar levels of genetic diversity, despite island species occupying considerably smaller areas than their mainland counterparts. We also found no overall difference between island and mainland species in terms of the effectiveness of selection or the mutation rate. Our evidence suggests that island colonization has no lasting impact on molecular evolution. This surprising result highlights gaps in our knowledge of the relationship between census and effective population size