Justification of a 13th and 14th year level business program for Berkshire County, Massachusetts

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University, 1948. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

The Moderating Influence of Social Media on the Relationship Between Perceptions of Police and Community Violence Among African American Men

African American males experience homicides significantly higher than other groups throughout the United States. More African Americans are victims of violence, especially deadly violence, compared to any other racial or ethnic group. While research has been conducted on the association between perceptions of police and violence among African American men ages 18 to 44, no research exists on whether social media use moderates this association among African American men ages 18 to 44. This quantitative, cross-sectional study included 45 African American men. The Past Feelings and Act of Violence (PFAV) instrument, the Perceptions of Police (POP), and the Social Media Use Integration Scale were used to measure violence, perceptions of police and social media use, respectively. Overall, participants did not have high levels of violence, had poor perceptions of police, and did not have high dependence on social media use. Study results showed a significant association between perceptions of police (F=5.271; p=.027) and community violence, where perceptions of police explained 30% of the variance in community violence scores. This study also showed that social media use did not moderate the association between perceptions of police and violence. In addition to continuing to research what factors moderate the association between perceptions of police and community violence, findings in this study could inform strategies and interventions that seek to change African American men\u27s perceptions of police. Interventions should focus on improving relationships between African American men and law enforcement, as well as work to improve perceptions that African American men have regarding police

Monetary and Non-Monetary Punishment in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism

In this paper we replicate and extend the experiment of Fehr and Gaechter (2000) that analyzes the effect of an opportunity to punish others on the level contributions in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism. The punishment is costly for both the players distributing and those receiving the punishment. Like Fehr and Gaechter, we find that agents often engage in non-credible costly punishment behavior in order to reduce earnings of others who contribute low amounts to the public good. The availability of punishment increases average contributions sharply. Here, we also introduce a second treatment, identical to the first treatment, except that the "punishment" is non-monetary. The assignment of "non-monetary" punishment points does not reduce the payoff of any agent, but it can be used to register disapproval of others' contribution levels. We find that the existence of the possibility of "non-monetary" punishment alone increases the average level of contributions and earnings, though by less than the monetary punishment. This suggests that the increase in cooperation observed by Fehr and Gaechter is not only due to the possibility of monetary penalties, but also from the opportunity of others to express their disapproval of free riding behavior. It illustrates the importance of peer pressure on individual behavior in teams.experimental economics; free-riding; peer pressure; personnel economics; public goods; punishment

A Response to William A. Fischel

This response paper addresses Dr. Fischel\u27s critique of four points about the American Planning Association\u27s (APA) amicus curiae brief: (1) The APA is not concerned about the overall impact of growth management systems that restrict the pace of development and therefore boost the cost of housing on a metropolitan basis; (2) a monetary damages remedy for an interim taking from excessive land use controls is a better solution than the builder\u27s remedy, which is court permission to allow the plaintiff/ developer to construct a housing project in which housing units are set aside for low- and moderate-income persons; (3) mandatory inclusionary zoning allows communities, once they have fulfilled their fairshare objective, to act in an exclusionary manner toward market rate development; and (4) exclusionary zoning is somehow justifiable because everyone does it

Improving Faculty Perceptions of and Intent to Use Simulation: An Intervention Project

Human patient simulation is an innovative teaching strategy that can facilitate practice development and preparation for entry into today\u27s healthcare environment for nursing students. Unfortunately, the use of human patient simulation has been limited due to the perceptions of nursing faculty members. This project sought to explore those perceptions using the Theory of Planned Behavior attributes of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral controls. A two phase project explored the use of an educational workshop intervention to change faculty perceptions and potentially improve intent to use human patient simulation by the nursing faculty. While the educational workshop intervention demonstrated statistically significant improvement in the area of attitudes, there were no significant improvements of subjective norm or perceived behavioral controls. However, it is important to note there were improvements in all three attributes between the pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys. This project also was unable to find a single statistically significant attribute that contributed to the intent to use human patient simulation by the participants, indicating a combination of all the attributes may be the predicting source. The use of an educational workshop does improve components of each attribute, which may improve intent to use human patient simulation according to the Theory of Planned Behavior