An investigation of the corporate responsibility report assurance statements of the Big Four banks in Australia

The corporate responsibility report demonstrates an organisation’s commitment to sustainability. Currently, not much is known about the quality of the assurance statements of the corporate responsibility reports of banks in Australia. This research study fills the gap in the literature by investigating the corporate responsibility report assurance statements of the Big Four banks in Australia. The assurance statements are evaluated against the criteria provided by O’Dwyer and Owen (2005) and Perego and Kolk (2012). The results reveal that although the assurance statements, on average, meet the criteria highly, there are areas that need improvement. Keywords: assurance, bank, AA1000AS, ASAE 3000, ISAE 3000 JEL Codes:G21, M14, M4

A Wrestling Program for High School Physical Education

This thesis examines the information needed by teachers to plan and teach wrestling at the high school level, including objectives of a wrestling program, class organization, methods of instruction and evaluation, facilities and equipment needed, and specific wrestling maneuvers and skills

The Bodily Movements of Liars

We measured the continuous bodily motion of participants as they lied to experimenters. These lies were spontaneous rather than elicited, and occurred for different motivations. In one situation, participants were given the opportunity to lie about their performance on a maths test in order to win money. In another, they witnessed one experimenter accidentally break a laptop. When asked what had happened, participants were motivated to lie and deny any knowledge. Across these situations, participants lied 61% of the time, allowing us to contrast the body movements of liars with truth tellers as they answered neutral and critical questions. Those who lied had significantly reduced bodily motion. In one case this motion appeared before the experimenter had even asked the critical question. We conclude that a person’s bodily dynamics can be indicative of their cognitive and effective states, even when they would rather conceal them

Correlation energy of the spin-polarized electron liquid by quantum Monte Carlo

Variational and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (VMC and DMC) methods with Slater-Jastrow-backflow trial wave functions are used to study the spin-polarized three-dimensional uniform electron fluid. We report ground state VMC and DMC energies in the density range $0.5 \leq r_\text{s} \leq 20$. Finite-size errors are corrected using canonical-ensemble twist-averaged boundary conditions and extrapolation of the twist-averaged energy per particle calculated at three system sizes (N=113, 259, and 387) to the thermodynamic limit of infinite system size. The DMC energies in the thermodynamic limit are used to parameterize a local spin density approximation correlation function for inhomogeneous electron systems.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.1022

The development of a psychosocial parent education programme for British Tennis

Although there currently exists an in-depth empirical understanding of parents experiences and involvement in youth sport, there is an absence of published field-based intervention research specifically with sport parents (Harwood & Knight, 2015). In order to address this gap in the literature, this thesis developed a psychosocial parent education programme for British Tennis. The first study identified the education and support needs of tennis parents operating within British high performance centres (study one). Adopting a grounded theory design, data were collected through informal chats, observations, and formal interviews with parents, coaches, and ex-youth players (n=29) during a six-month period of fieldwork. Findings revealed how parents education and support needs occur across multiple levels of functioning (i.e., social, organisational, developmental, and intra-interpersonal) and are influenced by the developmental stage that parents operate in. This theoretical framework was then used as the basis for a group-based tennis parent education programme (study two). Using a qualitative organisational action research framework seven workshops were run over a 12-week period for parents with children between the ages of 5 and 10 years. Participant diaries, social validation feedback forms, and post programme focus groups (n=19) revealed perceived improvements in parents knowledge, affect, and skills across a range of learning objectives. In an attempt to improve accessibility and extend participation, the final study utilised a convergent parallel mixed methods design to examine the effectiveness of an online education programme for British tennis parents (n=38) and their perceptions of engaging in the programme (study three). Quantitative findings revealed positive directional changes in tennis parent efficacy, general parent efficacy, emotional experiences, and achievement goal orientations after completing the programme. Qualitative data provided complementary and unique insights into what worked, how, and why. Taken together, the studies within this thesis are the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of face-to-face and online sport parent education programmes. Findings also extend and advance existing recommendations and guidelines in relation to the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of education programmes for sport parents. In particular, studies illustrate the importance and value of providing sport parents with accessible, proactive, structured, and developmentally appropriate education and support which addresses their stage-specific needs