Comics in Special Collections: Purposeful Collection Development for Promoting Inclusive History

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They Lie Now In Small Packets Upon The Desk, A Position Hardly...

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. They lie now in small packets upon the desk, a position hardly appropriate for what they contain. In the clutter and waste that surround them they appear to be almost another pile of insignificant odds and ends. Occasionally will be extracted from this wasteland and examined but these brief glances hardly do justice to the memories they evoke

Employer engagement: a human resource management perspective

This paper asks which types of employers, under which conditions, are most likely to engage with active labour market policy (ALMP) initiatives that seek to reduce unemployment. With reference to strategic human resource management theory, it is proposed that: i) organisations that rely heavily on a large supply of low wage, low-skill labour for their core operations are most likely to engage; and ii) of such organisations, those that place a strategic premium on customer service are more likely to develop strategies to retain and internalise the long-term unemployed as core employees. The paper tests this theoretical proposition by drawing on secondary data to map out the general picture of UK employer engagement, and by analysing a small number of interviews with employer engagement managers in welfare-to-work organisations. The paper finds strong support for the first proposition, but more qualified support for the second. Related to the second proposition, the paper suggests that, in practice, employers implement three principal engagement strategies: i) new facility resourcing; ii) decentralised externalisation; and iii) mid-range internalisation

Three Essays on Asset Price Forecasting

This dissertation is a collection of essays examining current issues in asset price forecasting. The first chapter of this dissertation discusses the relationship between investor sentiment and excess stock return. This essay takes a novel approach in estimating investor sentiment use social media posts. In this study, I construct daily, equity-specific, investor sentiment indexes from Twitter and test the efficient market theory. We use a multinomial inverse regression to build the dictionary of relevant words and phrases for construction of the indexes. We find that our investor sentiment measure has a positive and statistically significant effect on individual stock returns. These findings are robust to different models and specifications. Chapter 2 examines the ability of international sector predictors to forecast US housing price inflation. Under floating exchange rate regimes, the Dornbusch model predicts shocks to domestic or foreign economies will be reflected in exchange rates. When exchange rates are fixed, shocks are likely to affect the net foreign asset holdings. In this study, I examine the role of the exchange rates and the net change in foreign asset holdings in improving US real estate inflation forecasts. I conduct in-sample and out-of-sample comparison of forecasting models relative to an autoregressive baseline model. I find that inclusion of foreign sector variables can improve the US real estate inflation forecasts by up to 40 percent. This improvement is mostly driven by changes in the net foreign asset holdings at longer horizons. The results are robust to samples at the metropolitan level although with different gains. Chapter 3 continues with this line research. Here, I determine the ability of net capital inflows from regions to forecast US housing inflation. Over the last decade, there has been a high correlation between balance of payment measures (Current Account deficits and Net Financial Accounts). The international finance theory has focused on determining the cause of this relationship. Specifically, this theory has found that deregulation in credit markets, accommodative US monetary policy, and fixed exchange rates caused US housing prices and balance of payments measures to move together. In 2015, BEA released new estimates of balance of payments measures in line with international standards, such that now bilateral financial account data has been created. In this study, I use a number of components from bilateral financial account data, to forecast US housing prices. Further, to empirically test the implications of the international finance theory, I use factor analysis methods to create an bilateral financial account index to forecast US housing prices. Overall, I find that many of these measures are able to produce improved forecasts of up to 50 percent

The impact of blogging on K-12 student learning: engagement, self-expression, and higher-order thinking

Blogging has become an increasingly important instructional tool in education. The purpose of this literature review is to explore the impact of blogging on K-12 student learning with special emphasis on engagement, self-expression, and higher-order thinking. The review analyzed thirty scholarly articles that incorporated perspectives on best practices associated with blogging. Special attention was given to empirical research with sound research design, and the scope was limited to sources published between 2004 and 2014. The results of the review find that blogging can increase student engagement by cultivating a student-centered online environment that motivates students to write for an audience. Furthermore, when paired with effective instructional design, the review found that blogging can promote student self-expression and create opportunities for higher-order thinking

Coping and psychological well-being in informal carers of stroke survivors with aphasia

This dissertation considers coping and psychological well-being in informal carers of stroke survivors with aphasia. Firstly, a literature review examines the main problemsreported by this group of carers, the coping strategies they use to manage these problems, and the links between coping and psychological well-being. This is followedby an empirical paper which reports on a study investigating how informal carers of stroke survivors with aphasia cope with communication problems, and examining thelinks between coping and an aspect of psychological well-being - depressive symptoms. Further, this study also explores the question of how best to measure how carers cope with communication problems, by including questions specifically developed for this topic alongside a traditional coping inventory. As expected, the results demonstrated a relationship between coping strategies and depressive symptoms in this group of carers. The use of avoidant coping strategies was associated with increased symptoms of depression. No links were found between problem-focused coping strategies and depressive symptoms, however it was shown that coping by ‘positive reframing’ was linked with reduced levels of depressive symptoms. The study also found that a traditional style coping inventory gives a useful assessment of the pertinent coping strategies used by informal carers of stroke survivors with aphasia to manage communication problems. However this is usefully supplemented by more specific questioning about the use of avoidance and withdrawal. The study concludes with a discussion of the clinical implications of the results and where future research in this area would be beneficially directed