Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Evaluation
- Creators: T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics
Description
There is a serious need for early childhood intervention practices for children who are living at or below the poverty line. Since 1965 Head Start has provided a federally funded, free preschool program for children in this population. The City of Phoenix Head Start program consists of nine delegate agencies, seven of which reside in school districts. These agencies are currently not conducting local longitudinal evaluations of their preschool graduates. The purpose of this study was to recommend initial steps the City of Phoenix grantee and the delegate agencies can take to begin a longitudinal evaluation process of their Head Start programs. Seven City of Phoenix Head Start agency directors were interviewed. These interviews provided information about the attitudes of the directors when considering longitudinal evaluations and how Head Start already evaluates their programs through internal assessments. The researcher also took notes on the Third Grade Follow-Up to the Head Start Executive Summary in order to make recommendations to the City of Phoenix Head Start programs about the best practices for longitudinal student evaluations.
ContributorsArmfield, Jessica Ann (Author) / Duggan, Mary Anne (Thesis director) / Dumka, Larry (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
In the mid-1970s, social scientists began observing marital dyad conversations in laboratory settings with the hope of determining which observable features best discriminate couples who report being either satisfied or unsatisfied with their relationship. These studies continued until about a decade ago when, in addition to increasing laboratory costs slowing the pace of new data collection, researchers realized that distressed couples were easier to quantitatively describe than nondistressed couples. Specifically, distressed couples exhibit rigid patterns of negativity whereas couples who report being maritally satisfied show minimal rigidity in the opposite direction \u2014 positivity. This was, and is, a theoretical dilemma: how can clinicians understand and eventually modify distressed relationships when the behavior of satisfied couples are less patterned, less predictable and more diverse? A recent study by Griffin and Li (2015), using contemporary machine learning techniques, reanalyzed existing marital interaction data and found that, contrary to expectation and existing theory, nondistressed couples should be further subdivided into two groups \u2014 those who are predictably positive or neutral and those who interact using diverse and varying levels of positive and negative behaviors. The latter group is the focus of this thesis. Using these recent findings as discussion points, I review how the unexpected behaviors in this novel group can maintain and possibly perpetuate marital satisfaction.
ContributorsAbdul-Quadir, Hasana (Author) / Griffin, William A. (Thesis director) / Li, Xun (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
There is a widespread inequality in health care access and insured rates suffered by the Latino, Spanish-speaking population in Arizona, resulting in poor health measures and economic burden. The passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 provided mechanisms to alleviate this disparity, however, many Latino communities lack accessible information and means to gain access to health insurance enrollment. Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) is a community based organizing that provides many services to low-income communities across Arizona, one of which is the CPLC Insurance Program. In collaboration with the Community Action Research Experiences (CARE) at Arizona State University, the program was studied to help address the need of a LOGIC model and evaluation plan to determine its effectiveness. Interviews with three executives within CPLC were conducted in conjunction with a literature review to determine the inputs, strategies, outputs, and outcomes of the LOGIC model that drive CPLC Insurance's mission. Evaluation measures were then created to provide the necessary quantitative data that can best show to what degree the program is achieving its goals. Specifically, the results indicated the key outcomes that drive the LOGIC model, and an evaluation plan designed to provide indicators of these outcomes was produced. The implications of this study are that the suggested data collection can verify how effectively the program's actions are creating positive change, as well as show where further improvements may be necessary to maximize effectiveness.
ContributorsCunningham, Matthew Lee (Author) / Fey, Richard (Thesis director) / Dumka, Larry (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2016-05