title: Precision teaching and fluency: the effects of charting and goal-setting on skaters’ performance

authors: Pocock, Trudy Louise

subjects: precision teaching

abstract: This research involved three successive studies where precision teaching methods were used to increase roller skaters performance rates of basic skating skills. The first study compared precision teaching methods both with and without the use of charting in a group design, and compared both within-subject and betweensubject differences for 12 skaters. Results showed that charting did not increase performance rates over that seen when charting was not used. The second study was a group design which compared two different types of goals, or performance aims, on skaters‟ performance. No difference was found between the two groups of 5 skaters when one group used a fixed, difficult goal and a second used a flexible, easier goal. In the final study, a single-subject design was used and 8 skaters completed a control condition where no goals were set before a goal was introduced for 4 skaters. It was found that an immediate increase in performance rates occurred following the introduction of the goal. Overall these three studies showed that skaters improved their performance rates over sessions, even in the absence of charting and/or goals, demonstrating that precision teaching can be applied to the sport of roller skating.

text: Precision teaching and fluency: the effects of charting and goal-setting on skaters’ performance This research involved three successive studies where precision teaching methods were used to increase roller skaters performance rates of basic skating skills. The first study compared precision teaching methods both with and without the use of charting in a group design, and compared both within-subject and betweensubject differences for 12 skaters. Results showed that charting did not increase performance rates over that seen when charting was not used. The second study was a group design which compared two different types of goals, or performance aims, on skaters‟ performance. No difference was found between the two groups of 5 skaters when one group used a fixed, difficult goal and a second used a flexible, easier goal. In the final study, a single-subject design was used and 8 skaters completed a control condition where no goals were set before a goal was introduced for 4 skaters. It was found that an immediate increase in performance rates occurred following the introduction of the goal. Overall these three studies showed that skaters improved their performance rates over sessions, even in the absence of charting and/or goals, demonstrating that precision teaching can be applied to the sport of roller skating.

year: 2010

title: Boarders, Babes and Bad-Asses: Theories of a Female Physical Youth Culture

authors: Thorpe, Holly Aysha

subjects: Youth culture

abstract: Young women occupy unprecedented space in contemporary society. Their professional ambitions, educational achievements, practices of cultural consumption, and participation in sport and leisure all offer evidence of a new position for young women. This thesis analyzes female snowboarders as exemplars of young women in contemporary society and popular physical culture. Many young women today play sport and engage in physical activity with a sense of enthusiasm and entitlement unknown to most of their mothers and grandmothers. Against this background the female snowboarder is an excellent barometer of the nature of contemporary youth and popular culture, of the changes in those cultures including the development of niche female cultural industries, and of the emerging opportunities available to middle-class women in Western society.

Women's snowboarding, however, is a complicated and multidimensional phenomenon interwoven with numerous political, cultural, social and economic events and processes. In this thesis I set out to capture the complexity of female snowboarding by systematically contextualizing and interrogating the lived experiences of female boarders through drawing upon six critical social theoretical perspectives: Marxist political economy, post-Fordism, feminism, hegemonic masculinity, Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodiment, and Foucauldian theorizing. In applying these theories, I select key concepts and engage them in conversations with my insider cultural knowledge of snowboarding, numerous periods of fieldwork, and an extensive base of artifacts and sources collected over five years.

In this thesis I extend academic understandings of female youth culture via the case study of women in snowboarding, and offer a valuable critique of contemporary social theories used to explain many different social phenomena that involve tensions and power relationships between the genders. While no single theory or concept proved adequate to deal with the multidimensional phenomenon of the female boarder, each having its shortcomings and offering quite different insights, several reveal important commonalities in relation to some key concepts in critical sociology, viz, structure, agency, culture, the body and embodiment, gender and power. These commonalities, I argue, offer future directions for theorizing about, and advancing our understanding of, young women in popular physical culture.

text: Boarders, Babes and Bad-Asses: Theories of a Female Physical Youth Culture Young women occupy unprecedented space in contemporary society. Their professional ambitions, educational achievements, practices of cultural consumption, and participation in sport and leisure all offer evidence of a new position for young women. This thesis analyzes female snowboarders as exemplars of young women in contemporary society and popular physical culture. Many young women today play sport and engage in physical activity with a sense of enthusiasm and entitlement unknown to most of their mothers and grandmothers. Against this background the female snowboarder is an excellent barometer of the nature of contemporary youth and popular culture, of the changes in those cultures including the development of niche female cultural industries, and of the emerging opportunities available to middle-class women in Western society.

Women's snowboarding, however, is a complicated and multidimensional phenomenon interwoven with numerous political, cultural, social and economic events and processes. In this thesis I set out to capture the complexity of female snowboarding by systematically contextualizing and interrogating the lived experiences of female boarders through drawing upon six critical social theoretical perspectives: Marxist political economy, post-Fordism, feminism, hegemonic masculinity, Pierre Bourdieu's theory of embodiment, and Foucauldian theorizing. In applying these theories, I select key concepts and engage them in conversations with my insider cultural knowledge of snowboarding, numerous periods of fieldwork, and an extensive base of artifacts and sources collected over five years.

In this thesis I extend academic understandings of female youth culture via the case study of women in snowboarding, and offer a valuable critique of contemporary social theories used to explain many different social phenomena that involve tensions and power relationships between the genders. While no single theory or concept proved adequate to deal with the multidimensional phenomenon of the female boarder, each having its shortcomings and offering quite different insights, several reveal important commonalities in relation to some key concepts in critical sociology, viz, structure, agency, culture, the body and embodiment, gender and power. These commonalities, I argue, offer future directions for theorizing about, and advancing our understanding of, young women in popular physical culture.

year: 2007

title: Prevalence of sociodemographic factors in a cohort of diabetes mellitus: A retrospective study

authors: Erandathi, Madurapperumage A.

subjects: complications of diabetes

abstract: Exploring the sociodemographic factors of a cohort is a vital phase in revealing significant aspects of the societal health status. The health care sector utilises the results of exploratory analysis of the sociodemographic nature to fulfil various purposes such as constructing health care policies, allocating adequate resources, imposing necessary medications and many more. A large and growing body of evidence shows that understanding the pervasiveness of sociodemographic factors: age, ethnicity, gender, reveal crucial information. Therefore, this study aims to disclose the knowledge through analysing the sociodemographic details of a New Zealand diabetes cohort. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic fatal disease that occurs due to the inability to control proper blood sugar levels, which causes multitudinous acute and chronic complications. Diabetes became a high prevalence disease in the region of Waikato. Analysing the cohort of diabetes patients associated with complications of diabetes illustrate the prevalence of complications of diabetes among the patients. The dataset of the study has been collected from the Waikato district health board. This study intends to report the initial scanning of the dataset profile with visualising the resulting patterns of sociodemographic details from the samples and their association with complications of diabetes. The Sankey diagrams use to visualise the results of exploratory data analysis. The resulted graphs of the data screening descriptively illustrate the characteristics of the cohort associated with demographic factors. Maori population shows higher percentage (0.68) of diabetes patients than the other ethnicities, while having narrower age expansion (13-95) with early onset age, compared to others (20-103). Males (0.61%) are more vulnerable to diabetes than females (0.55%). Additionally, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases are common among the diabetes patients’ in the Waikato region. Maori male population is highly vulnerable to diabetes. This study will be beneficial in constructing and analysing the demographical categories of the cohort to comparatively study the pervasiveness of the diseases among resulting classes.

text: Prevalence of sociodemographic factors in a cohort of diabetes mellitus: A retrospective study Exploring the sociodemographic factors of a cohort is a vital phase in revealing significant aspects of the societal health status. The health care sector utilises the results of exploratory analysis of the sociodemographic nature to fulfil various purposes such as constructing health care policies, allocating adequate resources, imposing necessary medications and many more. A large and growing body of evidence shows that understanding the pervasiveness of sociodemographic factors: age, ethnicity, gender, reveal crucial information. Therefore, this study aims to disclose the knowledge through analysing the sociodemographic details of a New Zealand diabetes cohort. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic fatal disease that occurs due to the inability to control proper blood sugar levels, which causes multitudinous acute and chronic complications. Diabetes became a high prevalence disease in the region of Waikato. Analysing the cohort of diabetes patients associated with complications of diabetes illustrate the prevalence of complications of diabetes among the patients. The dataset of the study has been collected from the Waikato district health board. This study intends to report the initial scanning of the dataset profile with visualising the resulting patterns of sociodemographic details from the samples and their association with complications of diabetes. The Sankey diagrams use to visualise the results of exploratory data analysis. The resulted graphs of the data screening descriptively illustrate the characteristics of the cohort associated with demographic factors. Maori population shows higher percentage (0.68) of diabetes patients than the other ethnicities, while having narrower age expansion (13-95) with early onset age, compared to others (20-103). Males (0.61%) are more vulnerable to diabetes than females (0.55%). Additionally, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases are common among the diabetes patients’ in the Waikato region. Maori male population is highly vulnerable to diabetes. This study will be beneficial in constructing and analysing the demographical categories of the cohort to comparatively study the pervasiveness of the diseases among resulting classes.

year: 2022