School choice is a research topic that is often associated with public funds supporting educational alternatives. While much of the school choice research literature focuses on this category, additional types of school choice merit examination. This study examines how Catholic parents chose high schools for their children within the geographic…

Community colleges are an integral part of the postsecondary education system in the United States. Unfortunately, college completion rates continue to decline. Additionally, median income in the United States is also declining. The idea that each successive generation of students will do better than the previous one is quickly becoming a fantasy.…

The purpose of the study was to explore how social studies teachers conceptualized democracy, developed ideas about democratic citizenship, and implemented their perspectives and experiences into teaching. The study used phenomenological approach of qualitative research design. Six participants were selected using a convenient sampling method with…

In 2011, nearly 13 million nonsurgical cosmetic procedures were performed, representing a 6% increase from the previous year. Patients often present with unrealistic treatment expectations based on beauty industry standards and misinformation. In addition, due to the lack of competency standardization in this area, providers frequently deliver…

Foreign educational credential assessment is responsive to assessors' social, economic, and cultural stimuli. Academic institutions, industries, and governmental bodies treat placement specialists' recommendations as signals of cross-cultural productive capacity, giving significance to the methodology of foreign education-system analysis. A…

Information retrieval (IR) systems have tremendously broaden users' access to information. However, users need to select their needs from trillions of information indexed daily. Due to the "semantic gap" between queries and indexed terms in IR system, whether users can satisfy their needs depends on whether they use the correct terms as…

Today, the majority of American adults uses the internet and looks for health information online. Of interest in this dissertation are people who do not subscribe to mainstream views of health, and may use the internet to discover, bolster, or share their alternative views. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have named…

The "Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act" (the "Clery Act") is a consumer right-to-know law originally passed by Congress in 1900. The law requires colleges and universities receiving federal student aid to publish annually their security-related policies and crime statistics. The…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the role that available Online Travel Agency (OTA) destination information may have on a traveler's perceptions and intent in transaction decisions with that respective OTA. Specifically, this research examined a pleasure traveler's transaction perceptions and intentions with an OTA…

The purpose of this study was to determine what sources of professional knowledge are available to principals in 1 rural East Tennessee school district. Qualitative research methods were applied to gain an understanding of what sources of knowledge are used by school principals in 1 rural East Tennessee school district and the barriers they face…

First-generation college (FGC) students have been described as an underrepresented group in comparison to their continuing-generation counterparts (non-FGC students). Studying college students' socialization experiences and their use of academic resources can help us understand how to facilitate their academic success. Incorporating…

Early adolescence includes youth approximately 11-14 years of age. This age group represents a population open to learning more information about sexuality and signifies a developmental period where effective sexuality interventions may begin (Ott & Pfieffer, 2009; Grossman et al., 2014). Early adolescence is a critical period when…

This dissertation evaluates the effectiveness of a customized educational health intervention on sexual health and female cancer prevention among young women in Pakistan and evaluates the applicability of the integrated model of behavior prevention (IM) when predicting three health behaviors among this population. The study used randomized…

The Internet provides immediate access to social contacts and health information, yet older adults remain one of the least likely groups to use the Internet in the United States. Older adults can gain significantly from health information through the Internet because they have more chronic health conditions compared to other age groups. Although…

This dissertation focuses on the perceptions that young people have of federal government websites and of the U.S. government, as well as exploring possible connections between the perceptions of government and government websites. Not only is this a virtually unstudied area of e-government and youth information behavior, but it is also of…