Bruce McCollaum Qualifying Exam Day 2 Please Answer All Questions   As part of a large, multi-year, multi-institutional grant, university institutional researchers have come together to initiate a program of research that would have 2 broad goals:   Goal 1: Explore student and institutional factors that are associated with undergraduate students’ social and academic integration attitudes toward their undergraduate institution and the effects of these attitudes on students’ intentions of dropping out of college or transferring to another institution, and use the information from the exploratory phase of the research (Goal 1) to inform the development and/or refinement of interventions, practices, methods, approaches, and/or strategies that could impact undergraduates’ social and academic integration  and their intentions to drop out from their undergraduate institutions or transfer to another institution.   Goal 2: Rigorously evaluate intervention/practice/strategy to determine the impact of these approaches on undergraduates’ social and academic integration and their persistence in their undergraduate institutions.   You have been hired as a consultant to work with this group of institutional researchers to plan this multi-year research.   At this point in the research process, the institutional researchers are considering using (1) survey methods that include attitude scales (e.g., Likert scales, semantic differentials) to measure students’ social and academic integration. Using these measures, the institutional researchers intend to use various statistical methods such as multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, and other predictive analytic models to evaluate the strength and direction of the relations between undergraduates’ social and academic integration attitudinal variables and their intentions to drop out from their undergraduate institutions or transfer to another institution.   Some of the institutional researchers in the research group are interested in going beyond describing the associations of these variables and are interested in establishing causal connections between students’ social and academic integration and their intentions of dropping out of college or transferring to another institution. To accomplish this goal, the researchers are considering (2) combining survey methods with experimental design in the form of factorial surveys.      As a consultant to this group of institutional researchers, you have been asked to provide conceptual and technical guidance on the two general research approaches briefly described above (traditional survey approach and factorial survey). The institutional researchers would like to use the results from these two approaches to inform the development and evaluation of possible interventions or policies/practices to enhance student persistence.   Begin by discussing what are attitudes and what are various approaches to measuring attitudes. As part of your discussion include a discussion of controversies, challenges, and promising advances in the field of attitude measurement. Consider the traditional survey approach and the factorial survey approach, for each of these approaches describe the strengths and limitations in terms of issues related to measurement, statistical analysis, research design and causal inference, ethical issues, and feasibility. Assume that the institutional researchers have decided on the use of a factorial survey approach to evaluate the effects of students’ social and academic integration attitudes and their intentions of dropping out of college or transferring to another institution. Your task is to propose a specific study using a factorial survey approach. For the research study, please address the specific issues below and any other issues that you believe are relevant.   What question(s) will drive the study? What is the theoretical/policy/practical/methodological importance of the question(s)? Identify the research design selected for the study and describe your rationale for the selection of this design. Describe the participants in your study (units of analysis) and how the participants will be selected? What sample size have you selected and why? Describe what data (qualitative and quantitative) you will collect and how you will evaluate data quality (validity, reliability, and fairness). Describe the procedures for data analysis that you will use, taking into account the unit(s) of analysis you have identified in (c), the structure of your data, and the research question(s) you’ve identified in (a). Discuss any ethical issues that might arise in this research. Discuss any plan you have for disseminating the results of the research and for increasing the chances that the research results will be used.  

Bruce McCollaum Qualifying Exam Day 1 Please Answer All Questions   As part of a large, multi-year, multi-institutional grant, university institutional researchers have come together to initiate a program of research that would have 2 broad goals:   Goal 1: Explore student and institutional factors that are associated with undergraduate students’ social and academic integration attitudes toward their undergraduate institution and the effects of these attitudes on students’ intentions of dropping out of college or transferring to another institution, and use the information from the exploratory phase of the research (Goal 1) to inform the development and/or refinement of interventions, practices, methods, approaches, and/or strategies that could impact undergraduates’ social and academic integration  and their intentions to drop out from their undergraduate institutions or transfer to another institution.   Goal 2: Rigorously evaluate intervention/practice/strategy to determine the impact of these approaches on undergraduates’ social and academic integration and their persistence in their undergraduate institutions.   You have been hired as a consultant to work with this group of institutional researchers to plan this multi-year research. As part of Goal 1 of this project, the institutional researchers are considering using Tinto’s model of student social and academic integration as a framework for identifying factors associated with undergraduate students’ intentions of dropping out of college or transferring to another institution.       Begin by discussing Tinto’s model of student social and academic integration and the research supporting the model. Discuss any literature reviews (systematic reviews, meta-analysis, scoping reviews, etc.) that might inform the 2 goals of the research program. Present 1 specific example of an exemplary research study representing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method research. Highlight strengths and limitations of each of these types of studies. Discuss any methodological issues that have surfaced with these research studies and how researchers are responding to these methodological issues. Discuss any other theories that might be used as a framework for this research project.    

Give two advantages for optical fiber links over the wireless link?

The needed antenna length (in meters) for a communications system uses a carrier frequency of 145 MHz is: Note: The speed of light approximately 300 million meters per second.  Each side should measure (λ/4)

It is located at one point in space and its purpose is to transform the message signal produced by the source of information into a form suitable for transmission over the channel?

Describe the difference between nonselective and selective debridement and provide a debridement method for each.

Frequency response based design: Lag Consider a unity feedback system with the plant Gp = 1 / ( (s+3) (s2 + 2s + 4) )  Here is some information from the Bode of Gp(s): At frequency ω = 0 rad/s magnitude is -21.6 dB  and phase is 0  degAt frequency ω = 2.24 rad/s magnitude is -24.7 dB   and phase is -140  degAt frequency ω = 7.85 rad/s magnitude is -54 dB   and phase is -234  degAt frequency ω = 69 rad/s magnitude is -110 dB   and phase is -266  deg Compute the gain K that will yield overshoot Mp=0.254. Using the gain K from part (a), compute the parameter α of a lag compensator so that the steady-state error to a unit step reference input is  0.02. Determine τI such that the desired phase margin does not change too much. Does the choice of τI affect the steady-state error?   Do the work on paper showing all the steps (which you’ll submit later) but type below your K,  α  and τI

Which answer best explains the key point of the following image with regard to valence electrons?

Find the normal component of acceleration, , of the object whose position is given by . Enter the value of at , rounded to two decimal places.

Find the tangential component of acceleration, , of the object whose position is given by . Enter the value of at , rounded to two decimal places.