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This study examines the results of multiple evaluations of the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program (CTSP), a state-funded voucher program, by exploring extant evaluations and literature. Attention will be given to the following research question: Does participation in the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Grant Program have the hypothesized positive effect on traditional public school students' academic achievement? Cleveland's voucher program provides an ideal contextualized setting for ascertaining the extent to which school choice programs afford poor families the same educational options available to affluent families. This study concludes that overall there are no statistically significant gains in voucher students' academic achievement. In fact, it appears that some voucher students performed slightly worse in math. The program does, however, afford low-income students the opportunity to attend private secular or religious schools in accordance with the program's initial design and intent.

In Germany, political foundations (Stiftungen) play an important role in shaping civil society through political democracy education. The foundations, however, have also committed themselves to strengthening democratic political and societal structures abroad. Their joint mission abroad is the contribution to democratic structures, information and debate in the countries and regions they are working in. They complement the official German foreign policy, but choose their own priorities and strategies. The focus of this thesis is the German political foundations as actors in democracy assistance. 'Democracy assistance' focuses less on the aspects of technical assistance but much more on political parties and the promotion of civil society as the backbone of democracy. Democracy assistance is a relatively recent international development activity of governments and international organizations. In recent years the international community has come to realize the importance of political parties and a well-functioning political party system for the process of democratisation. Here the German political foundations are working internationally as actors in democracy assistance - independent from the German government but at the same time fully state-funded. The objectives of this dissertation are to understand the work and strategies of the German political foundations as actors in the context of democracy assistance abroad, research their partner spectrums on selected countries, to identify their short comings and to give an outlook of the foundations work in the future in the fast-changing global political environment.

The thesis has one main focus, the purity laws of a religious group in Europe, an original piece of research never done before in the UK. The thesis uses diasporic theories of identity; theories of women and the body; theories of women, their bodies and patriarchal religion and theories of women, purity and pollution in religion, to explain why European Zoroastrian women continue to support six of the purity laws of Zoroastrianism in the year 2003. Purity and pollution are at the heart of the Zoroastrian religion and the research demonstrated that Zoroastrians belief in and knowledge of the six purity laws was strong in 2003.Zoroastrians are a diasporic religious group whose modern origins are in Iran and the sub-continent of India. They have been visiting and settling, from the sub-continent, in Europe, and especially in London, in small numbers since the middle of the nineteenth century.There have been three quantitative surveys of the Zoroastrian community in Europe, in 1976, 1985 and 2003, with each survey building on the last one. Thus, the analytical, quantitative research leading up to the thesis covers a period of nearly 30 years. In the 2003 survey, new questions, never posed before in academic research, were asked about six of the Zoroastrian purity laws, which yielded data for the main focus of the thesis. The women support the six purity laws more than the men and the majority of both women and men affirmed four of the purity laws and rejected two of them.The conclusion of the thesis is that the six Zoroastrian purity laws examined in this research are used in the creation of a hybrid, immanent and liminal religious identity and in some cases ethnic identity, by the women of the European Zoroastrian community; purity laws are known about and matter to these women in Europe in 2003.

The economic and human costs of diabetes in the U.S. population place an enormous burden on its healthcare system as well as on employers, diabetics, and their respective families. Many Medicare Advantage plans have responded to this burden by implementing diabetes case management programs (DCMPs) aimed at reducing inappropriate health services utilization, improving health outcomes, and containing costs. While the use of DCMPs is common to many health plans, the research regarding their effectiveness has been sparse or inconclusive. The purpose of this study was to help fill a critical gap in the research literature by evaluating the effect of a diabetes case management program known as CareContact on a Medicare population in Texas. The study population consisted of 2,972 confirmed diabetic members who were continuously enrolled in SelectCare of Texas, a Medicare Advantage plan, for the two-year period between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2006. To be eligible for this study, diabetic members had to have a minimum of 6 months without exposure to CareContact and 6 months of exposure to CareContact after the initial exposure. Twelve separate cohorts, defined by date of initial program exposure, were evaluated using a one group interrupted time series design. Cross sectional time series analysis, which combines ordinary least square regression techniques and time series analyses, was used to evaluate program effectiveness. After controlling for confounders and the effects of time, the data indicated that membership in the DCMP was associated with increased costs and increased utilization over the two-year study period. The study points to the need for further research into the effectiveness of diabetes case management programs, especially for participants of Medicare Advantage health plans.

This thesis analyses how and why culture and geography influence the allocation and licensing of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum in different nations. Based on a broad comparative study of 235 countries, an inter-disciplinary approach is used to explore regulatory frameworks and attitudes toward risk. In addition, detailed case studies of the UK, France, the US and Ecuador provide deeper insights into the main contrasting regulatory styles. Three alternative sociological theories are used to analyse and explain the results for both the in-depth and broad brush studies. The Cultural Theory of Mary Douglas and co-workers is first used to categorise countries in terms of perceptual filters. The empirical findings indicate some countries to be apparently exceptional in their behaviour. The theory of Bounded Rationality is used to investigate and explain these apparent irrationalities. Finally, Rational Field Theory shows how beliefs and values guide administrations in their RF regulation. A number of key factors are found to dominate and patterns emerge. The European RF harmonisation is unique. Following European unification, wireless regulation is divided into two major camps (the EU and the US), which differ in their risk concerns, approach to top-down mandated standards, allocation of RF spectrum to licence-exempt bands and type approval process. The adoption of 3G cellular (UMTS versus CDMA2000) and digital TV standards (DVB-T/ATSC/ISDB-T) around the world reflects geopolitical and colonial influence. The language of a country is a significant indicator of its analogue TV standard (SECAM/PAL/NTSC). Interestingly, the longitude of a country to a fair extent defines RF allocation: Africa and West Asia follow Europe, whereas the Americas approximate the US. RF regulation and risk tolerability differ between tropical and non-tropical climates. The collectivised/centralised versus the individualised/market-based rationalities result in different regulatory frameworks and contrasting societal and risk concerns. The success of the top-down European GSM and the bottom-up Wi-Fi standards reveal how the central-planning and market-based approaches have thrived. Attitudes to RF human hazards and spurious emissions levels reveal that the US, Canada and Japan are more tolerant of these radiation risks than Europe. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and USA encourage technological innovation. A practical benefit of this study is that it will give regulators more freedom to choose a rational RF licensing protocol, by better understanding the possibly self-imposed boundaries of cultural and geographical factors which are currently shaping allocation. Academically, there is utility in undertaking a cultural and geographic analysis of a topic that is mostly the domain of engineering, economic and legal analysts.