Saturday, December 28, 2019

The Clinical Plan For Post Knee Arthroplasty Rehabilitation

The clinical scenario presented by Sarah is very interesting and has got every chance a physical therapist might face such similar situation in outpatient clinical practice. When a patient comes for post knee arthroplasty rehabilitation, the physical therapist can often get too much focused on therapy goals and overlook important clinical signs and symptoms that must be addressed and referred in a timely manner. A weight gain of 20 pounds in 18 days was not a good indication of Mr. Knee’s general health status. Presence of localized edema is common to see in knee arthroplasty patients. However, this patient has 2+ pitting edema even after taking Lasix 40 mg twice a day. The evaluation did not specify more about of swelling, whether it has any increased or decreased depends upon the time of the day. A weight gain of 2 pounds or more in 48 hours must be considered as a red flag, which may be an indication of heart failure. Vital signs assessment consistently demonstrated higher blood pressure and heart rate. The evaluation is not clearly indicative of exercise induced asthma for patient. Weight gain, consistent higher levels of blood pressure and heart rate along with exercise induced exertion can be signs of acute cardiac failure. According to King, Kingery Casey, 2012, heart failure is a common clinical syndrome characterized by dyspnea, fatigue, and signs of volume overload, which may include peripheral edema and pulmonary rales. In this case, theS how MoreRelatedEssay about Nursing Instructor3006 Words   |  13 PagesNursing Instructor PHYSICAL HISTORY: My clinical rotation was at St. Francis Hospital on the orthopedic/medical-surgical floor, 5-1. I was assigned JB for a patient 10/7 and 10/8. He was one day post-op from an elective bilateral knee arthroplasty. JB is a 69 year old Caucasian male who stands 6 feet tall and weighs 251 pounds. He has a history of hypertension, benign prostatic hyperplasia, degenerative joint disease, and renal calculi. Medications taken at home: Nifedipine 60 mg. QDRead MoreMusic and Well-Being Essay1667 Words   |  7 Pageseliminating the pre- and post-operative phases. Moreover, the choice and loudness of music played is subject to the medical team’s choices. Besides, since music is not present in the holding bay and recovery room, patients are faced with the annoyance of hearing disturbing noises produced by medical equipment and healthcare personnel communicating between themselves and other patients. This is mostly caused by the structure of the building itself, since both areas are based on an open plan. Nonetheless, theRead MoreSymptoms And Treatment Of Pain Management1791 Words   |  8 Pagesindirect ways. Persistent post-surgical chronic pain is more common in thoracic, breast, inguinal he rnia, knee arthroplasty and amputations. Acute pain can affect the psychology of the patients by causing anxiety, helplessness, sleep problems, mood problems and loss of autonomy. Elderly critically ill patients could have postoperative cognitive dysfunction due to various causes, pain being one of the most important among them. PRINICIPLES OF ACUTE PAIN MANAGEMENT In many post-surgical patients, itRead MoreGerontology Study Guide Essay3095 Words   |  13 Pagesproviders, case managers, nurse leaders, educators, patient advocates, administrators. 3. What are the American Nurses Association (ANA) Standards of Clinical Gerontological Nursing Care? A. Standard I: Assessment. a. The gerontological nurse collects patient health data. b. Enhances the nurse’s ability to make sound clinical judgments c. Culturally and ethnically appropriate B. Standard I: Assessment a. Types of assessments: Interviewing, FunctionalRead MoreMedical Test with Answers Essay example16933 Words   |  68 Pagesper day for each kilogram between 10 and 20. To determine an hourly rate, divide the total milliliters per day by 24. 19.5 kg x 50 ml/kg = 475 ml + 1000 ml = 1475 ml / 24 hours = 61 ml/hour The nurse is caring for a client who is unable to void. The plan of care establishes an objective for the client to ingest at least 1000 ml of fluid between 7:00 am and 3:30 pm. Which client response should the nurse document that indicates a successful outcome? A. Demonstrates adequate fluid intake and output.Read MoreComprehensive 1 Essay18452 Words   |  74 Pages475 ml + 1000 ml = 1475 ml / 24 hours = 61 ml/hour.nbsp; font face=Verdana color=#333333Category:nbsp; Fundamentals/font Awarded 1.0 out of 1.0 possible points. C. 13.ID: 311023617 The nurse is caring for a client who is unable to void. The plan of care establishes an objective for the client to ingest at least 1000 ml of fluid between 7:00 am and 3:30 pm. Which client response should the nurse document that indicates a successful outcome? A.   Demonstrates adequate fluid intake and output

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Online Dating and Sociopaths Essay - 1580 Words

What is a sociopath? According to R. (2012) â€Å"There are people in the world who dont care about love, and who feel no remorse, empathy or emotional attachment to others. They dont even know what these feeling are. These people are called sociopaths.† (It Wasnt a Relationship – It Was a Robbery!!, 2013) explains, â€Å"The sociopath makes a career living off others. They feed off your energy, your wealth, your social life, your friends and family, your body, everything, and if you have material possessions, they will take those too.† According to Andersen (n.d.) â€Å"[Sic] Sociopathy is not a mental illness; it is a personality disorder. The condition is highly genetic.† These days most people find their mate on an online dating sites. Most of†¦show more content†¦Andersen (2012) writes, â€Å"Charisma describes personal magnetism – sociopaths exude a mixture of enthusiasm and self-confidence that is often irresistible† (p. 15) . Andersen (2012) continues, â€Å"Charm is how sociopaths soften you up, paving the way to using you. Sociopaths work their charm through their extraordinary verbal skills. Usually they are smooth talkers – always have an answer; never miss a beat. Witty, clever, articulate – they can talk you into giving them what they want, and they know it† (p. 16). Charisma and charm are not always a bad thing however, â€Å"The problem with charisma and charm in sociopaths is the hidden agenda. These people use their magnetic personalities to deceive, manipulate and exploit.† (Andersen 2012 p. 14) Another sign that your online date may be a sociopath is an enormous ego. R. (2012) says, â€Å"They act like the smartest, richest or most successful people around. They may actually come out and tell you that.† Sociopaths believe they can do no wrong; their enormous ego prevents them from admitting they are wrong. Sometimes a big ego can be charming, but that’s not the case with a sociopath, â€Å"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) notes that sociopaths have an inflated sense of self. They are narcissists to the extreme, with a huge sense of entitlement.† (The Romantic Sociopath 2013) The next sign your online date could be a sociopath is they are overly attentive. In the beginning they fawn all overShow MoreRelatedThe Risks Of Online Dating Websites Essay2054 Words   |  9 Pages The Risks of Online Dating Websites The online world is an atmosphere that people often imagine that it is a reality. Online social websites offer the ability for people all over the globe to connect and communicate with one another, in which transformed a different aspect of being in a relationship. Modern romance has becoming significantly different than what people experienced in the past. Before, people would often meeting one another at a hangout place or through mutual friends. EverythingRead MoreEssay Criminal Behavior2234 Words   |  9 PagesCriminal Behavior Teaka De La Cruz COMM 220 February 20th 2009 Criminal Behavior The psychology behind criminal behavior has been the subject for debate dating back to renounced psychologist pioneer Sigmund Freud. Exactly what could cause a human being to act in unspeakable violent, antisocial, or sadistic behavior? In the past sociologist believed that environment contributes a huge role in predicting criminal behavior. Psychologists in the early 19th century believe genetics were theRead MoreRastafarian79520 Words   |  319 Pagesthat the government investigate the possibility of repatriation to Africa,38 and that the Ethiopian Orthodox church be invited to establish a branch in Jamaica.39 The obvious conclusion of those who conducted the report was that Rastas were not sociopaths or psychopaths but were instead suffering Jamaicans responding to the pressures of marginalization.40 As is evident in the discussion of the confrontation between Rastas and the civil authorities, the tension between the two did not dissipateRead MoreOrganisational Theory230255 Words   |  922 Pagesaesthetics of organizing One final look at organizational culture Conclusions 432 432 434 434 434 435 436 437 437 438 438 442 446 446 450 452 453 457 459 Index 466 Supporting resources Visit www.pearsoned.co.uk/mcauley to find valuable online resources For Instructors †¢ PowerPoint slides that can be downloaded and used for presentations †¢ Additional exercises For more information please contact your local Pearson Education sales representative or visit www.pearsoned.co.uk/mcauley

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Marketing strategy of Amazon Online Retail Business

Question: Discuss about the Marketing strategy of Amazon for Online Retail Business. Answer: Introduction In todays world every sector has become competitive. Starting from a grocers store to travel and tourism, everywhere various strategies are used to allure the customers towards it in order to gain more profit out of it and do a long term business in the field. In the similar way, the sector of eCommerce has also grown. Shopping for various items are being done sitting under the roofs of AC rooms. And this leisurely attitude of customers has led to the growth of the eCommerce sector (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2012). And in this sector, Amazon has been the most famous site. The strategies that the company Amazon takes on depends on various factors like internal and external environment as without these strategies a successful base would be very difficult to be achieved by a company. Since its initial start in 1994, the company has been able to achieve a turnover of approximately $108 billion in the present times housing around 230000 employees and has also been successful t o make it famous not only in its origin Seattle but also in every part of the world. In this report, the various strategies of Amazon in its origin and in India will be put light on. Origin Of Amazon A report that projected that the annual web growth would be approximately around 2200% made Jeff Bezos quit his job and formulates a plan to metamorphose the way retailing is done in 1994. In the initial period, Bezos focussed on selling compact discs, computer hardware, computer software, videos, and books. But in the later period, Bezos decided that his start-up would sell books over the web as there is a wide market for literature and the competition in this sector is also very less. Bezos decides that Seattle would be his headquarter as Seattle was near to the largest book centre in Oregon and also Seattle possessed a highly skilled workforce. In the process of raising funds for his company, Bezos initiated his venture in 1995 and rose to become the number one book-related sites in a very short span of time. Initially, all these transactions were taking place in the garage of Bezos until and unless he was satisfied that his venture would give him a profit and after this only he m oved to an office in Seattle (STRANGE, 2013). And it was highly surprising that till the end of 1996, Amazon had reached to a turnover of around $15 million, while Amazons competitor Barnes and Nobles stores were able to gather only $5 million a year. Moreover, Wall Street also accepted the store in a very warm way leading to a surge in its share from the very initial days. Despite the companys success, Bezos had always given high priority to the interests of the customers and left no stone unturned to reach out to various groups of customers. And in this process the target segments of the company grew in a large amount and made Amazon the number one retailing site. The success and popularity for Amazon can be bestowed on one factor that is technology (Rushton, 2015). Amazon created a very powerful search engine that would help customers to choose various books through keywords and also make the content available to the customers so that they would be able to make a smart choice about the book they would be interested in studying. Moreover, the customers were allowed to see the history of their purchase which was new weapons to allure the customers and make them rely on Amazon in a broader sense. Growth And International Venture: Amazon In a very fast manner Amazon grew and became one of the highly successful retail stores. Amazons amazing success in retailing can be figured out by the fact the site has accepted its millionth customer in 1997 which is just after the two years of its starting year. And after this achievement, in order to grow more numerously, Amazon started acquisitions. Bookpages of United Kingdom, Telebook of German, etc., made Amazon not an international venture, but variety also attracted a large number of customers. (Pennsylvani, 2014) And these customers affinity improved when amazon acquired Internet movie database. And then gradually, the company was able to put its clutch tight in various sectors of retailing and in various parts of the world. The company markets in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom. Amazon In India Because of less online retail marketing scope in India, amazon entered to the sands of India pretty late rounding off near to 2000s. The economic expectation at that point of time for India was around $1-2 billion and it was not interesting and alluring for a company that earned $79 billion. Moreover, another big factor is that the internet penetration of the country is very less and being the second populous country, it did not prove as a big business for the company. (Bhasin, 2015) And also a technological advance in the country was so poor at that time the company did not pose interest in the country. Despite the various issues related to country, India because of its market size could not be ignored. And moreover, the success of Filpkart and Snapdeal made Amazon enter the market of India. And then amazon entered the soils of India through a price aggregator Junglee.com that it had acquired in 1998. Though this service did not provide any revenue to the company, but the company was highly successful in finding out the demographic information about the country through it and information regarding the various choices of the people of the country. And this made the company start its venture in India in 2013 with the site www.amazon.in. The two categories that are books and media sales made Amazon launch its sale over India, but it was able to move at a high speed over the past year to offer over 15 million products in over 20 categories. Amazon in the present era doesnt sell its products; rather, it acts as third party sellers for the existing sellers in the country. Various facilities like cash-on-delivery payments, liberal return policies, free or subsidized shipping and in-house logistics made the shopping site more famous in India and gave it a very competitive soil (D'ONFRO, 2015). Since amazon is the third party sellers, the company is able to grab a large amount of profit without investing much. The company has received a large amount of appreciation from the country as it has built highly developed software centres that gave many Indians jobs. Moreover the main strategy of the company has been keeping in touch with the traditional aspects of the country (Dawson, 2015). Moreover the advertisements in the country are very important; Amazon has done its best to reach out to various age groups by advertising through radios, television, net etc. Another factor that has made Amazon very strong in the face of competition is its deep financial pockets which cant be matched by the local competitors. Things To Be Kept Under Focus While Doing Business In India The diversified choices of the people of the country must be kept in mind while doing business in India. The traditions and festivities of the country must be put in minds to sustain the development growth in business. The choices of the people and the fashion statement of the country must be noted down too. (Doshi, 2015) Moreover, the various religions of the country and the local costumes of various regions of the country must be considered on priority while choosing online retailing as prior business. Strategies Of Amazon In India: Positive And Negative The strengths of the Amazon can be taken as its established model for marketing that provides the company high returns in advent of cost effectiveness. Amazon is considered as one of the top most brands in the world and this image possesses as strength to the company for its growth structure in the Indian market. And also the companys offerings of around 15 million products hold the key to attract a large amount of customers towards it. The supplier relationships, its deep pockets reach and high experiences in retailing in all over the world makes Amazon stand straight and strong in the line of competition in the eCommerce field in India (Yglesias, 2014). But with all the advantages, Amazon also possesses various weaknesses that have the capability to destroy its business (Hume, 2012). The most important weakness is the dependence of Amazon on other sellers which can make them use their own retail system to sell their products. Amazons lack of relationships with Indian sellers also possesses a threat for the growth of business of amazon. Moreover, because of the low quality of infrastructure in India, Amazon may not be able to maintain its standards of performance as it did in developed countries leading to downfall. Reccomendations For Amazon Acquiring various local sellers and business to have its own business grow has been a more striking attitude of the online seller brand. So in order to improve its performance in India, Amazon should intake various local competitors who can enhance the productivity and growth of the company. Flipkart can be taken as an example. The topography and demography of India are very different than the other developed countries where Amazon has done business. So an effective delivery system is very important for successful growth in the online business. So amazon should prepare a better logistics for India and this logistics can be applied to all developing populous countries making Amazon the ruler of online services. Moreover, Amazon can prepare the logistics for and selling platform for all the local business makers who are not getting platform to sell their goods so that the traditionalism with indigenous can be given importance and can be used to advertise the company and also the company will get popularity from this. Conclusion Amazon has entered the online retail business of India at a very crucial and important time. Though the company has been a huge success in all the countries it had done business in, but in a country like India, Amazon has to spend man force to gather all the logistics and tactics in order to rule in a diversified country like India. Bibliography Bhasin, H. (2015). Marketing strategy of Amazon Amazon marketing strategy. Marketing strategy of Amazon. Retrieved from https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-of-amazon/ Dawson, J. (2015, May 11). Amazons International Growth Challenge. Amazons International Growth Challenge. Retrieved from https://recode.net/2015/05/11/amazons-international-growth-challenge/ D'ONFRO, J. (2015, July 25). Amazon's next big challenge: Winning India. Amazon's next big challenge. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.in/Amazons-next-big-challenge-Winning-India/articleshow/48210306.cms Doshi, P. (2015, August 07). 10 things I learnt about selling online in India that made me a marketplace millionaire in 2 months. 10 things I learnt about selling online in India that made me a marketplace millionaire in 2 months. Retrieved from https://yourstory.com/2015/08/marketplace-millionaire/ Hume, T. (2012, February 03). The secrets of doing business in India. The secrets of doing business in India. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/03/business/doing-business-india/ Pennsylvani, W. U. (2014, June 16). Year One and Counting: Amazon Aims to Strike It Big in India. Amazon Aims to Strike It Big in India. Retrieved from https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/year-one-counting-amazon-aims-strike-big-india/ Rushton, C. (2015). The History of Amazon.com. The History of Amazon.com. Retrieved from https://www.ehow.com/about_5377195_history-amazoncom.html STRANGE, A. (2013, October 16). History of Amazon Reveals Original Name and Jeff Bezos' Temper. History of Amazon. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/2013/10/15/amazon-jeff-bezos-book/ The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. (2012). Amazon: Introduction. (Columbia University Press) Retrieved from https://www.infoplease.com: https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/world/amazon-river-peru-brazil.html Yglesias, M. (2014, January). The Prophet of No Profit. How Jeff Bezos won the faith of Wall Street. Retrieved from https://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/01/amazon_earnings_how_jeff_bezos_gets_investors_to_believe_in_him.html

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

SETI Program Essays - Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

SETI Program Bertrand Russell wrote, "There are two possibilities. Maybe we are alone. Maybe we are not. Both are equally frightening (Jakosky 1)." The question of life in the universe is one that leaves many in a state of bewilderment. It becomes even more interesting when it leads to another question ? that of intelligent life in the universe. Finding other intelligent civilizations among the interstellar space would greatly affect every aspect of our existence. Conversely, not finding such a civilization would force us to examine the purpose of our own existence. To help answer the question, astronomers and scientists set up a program in search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This program, or SETI, was set up to verify, by observation that extraterrestrial life does exist. SETI tries to prove this by picking up and analyzing radio signals by means of satellites and advanced computers (Heidmann 116). The history of the SETI program is quite interesting. It started back in 1959 with the help of two famous Cornell University physicists, Guiseppi Cocconi and Phil Morrison. Both claimed that it would be possible to communicate with other potential extraterrestrial life in space by the use of techniques used in radio astronomy (Heidmann 112). Together, they voiced their belief that if other"alien astronomers" elsewhere in the universe possessed radio telescopes, that it would be possible to converse between the two (Heidmann 112-113). A young astronomer by the name of Francis Drake agreed with the theories of Cocconi and Morrison. He proposed building a radio receiver in order to listen for waves of sound being transmitted through space. It wasn't until the spring of 1960 that Drake began his first project of SETI, Ozma. In this project, he was the first to conduct a search for signals transmitted from other solar systems. For two tedious months, Drake pointed an eighty-five foot antenna in the direction of two starts the same age as our sun, Tau Ceti and Epsil. A single 100Hz-channel receiver scanned nearly 400kHz of bandwidth, for a repeated series of patterned pulses that would indicate an intelligent message (Heidmann 113-144). Unfortunately, the only sound that came from the speaker was static. Though no intelligent life was found and project Ozma proved to be nothing but a disappointment, it actually spurred the interest of others who created a feasible scientific objective ("Project Ozma"). In the 1960's the Soviet Union dominated much of the SETI program. However in the 1970's NASA's Ames Research center, located in California began to take over. After nearly a decade of study and preliminary research, the NASA headquarters fully funded and adopted the SETI program. However, five years later Congress ruled the program a foolish unnecessary scientific endeavor that wasted valuable funding. Congress then decided to not allow NASA to support SETI and terminated the funding ("History of SETI"). Despite the obstacle, the SETI program was reborn, forming the SETI Institute. It's first privately funded project, Project Phoenix, is the world's most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence that listens to radio signals being transmitted our way. The project focuses on Northern Stars by scanning only those that are sun-like and are more capable of supporting life (Heidmann 146). The Phoenix Project is only one of the many projects run for the search of extraterrestrial intelligence, but is one of the most important. Another highly significant project in the search for other life would be the project run by the Columbus Optical SETI Observatory, or COSETI. This project was formed to promote the optical search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In other words, it seeks to detect pulsed and continuous wave laser beacon signals in the visible and infrared spectrums. Until 1998 however, little, or nothing was ever said to indicate that there might possibly be a sensible optical approach to SETI. Many researchers believe that extraterrestrials, if they exist, are so sophisticated that they would use lasers for their communications rather than radio waves. It is said that by the year 2005 that most SETI activities will be of the optical kind and that the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) could also be retrofitted for COSETI. ("The Optical"). One of the more recent projects that we are faced with today is the [emailprotected] Home Project. This project allows the general public to get involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence by allowing them to use their home computers to search for signs of radio signals being transmitted to Earth from space (Kahney, "A Search"). Supposedly, anyone is able to participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. The

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

English Literature-Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift Essay Example

English Literature-Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift Essay Gulliver’s Travels]- Jonathan Swift **************************************************************** By P. Baburaj, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of English, Sherubtse college, Bhutan Author of: Language and writing, DSB Publication Thimphu Communicative English, P. K. Books, Calicut A perception on Literary Criticism, P. K. Books, Calicut ****************************************************************** The eighteenth century was an age of satire. Dryden and pope immortalized themselves by their verse while Jonathan Swift was undoubtedly the greatest British satirist in prose. The political and religious controversies of the time were conducive to the promotion of satire in an age of urbanity and refinement which not only tolerated but delighted in satire, provided, it was humorous and witty it has been remarked that satire is the fine art of calling names. In Rome Horace and Juvenal used satire for the purpose of ridiculing human affectations, follies and vices with a view of reforming society. But when the satire is too general it stands in danger of falling wide of its target and when it is directed against individuals it is likely to be debased in to personal lampoons. Swift wrote personal satires but his attacks were generally directed against common abuses and his main purpose was to reform society. Jonathan Swift was born of English parents in Dublin in 1667. He was a distant cousin of Dryden who happened to incur the lasting displeasure of Swift by his remarks: †cousin Swift you will never be a poet†. We will write a custom essay sample on English Literature-Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on English Literature-Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on English Literature-Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Distantly related to Sir William Temple, a retired politician and an elegant writer of the period Swift came to London and stayed with his wealthy relation as a poor dependent and confidential secretary. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin and was well read in the classics. Later he studied theology and was ordained priest . one of his squibs on religion offended Queen Anne and he was baulked of his promotion in the church but after her death he rose to be the Dean of St. Patrick’s in Dublin towards the close of the century. Temple happened to dabble in literature. The controversy regarding the relative merits of the ancient and modern authors roused more heat than light for some time in France and Temple made some references to it in one of his essays. Virulent attacks and counter attacks appeared in the press. It was a veritable storm in a tea cup. Swift was neither concerned with the controversy nor qualified to take an effective part in it. Nevertheless he entered in to the fray with all the weapon in his arrows – satire, humour, irony, sarcasm, ridicule and invective. In his ‘the battle of the books’ he supported Temple and ridiculed his opponents. In the famous allegory of ‘the bee and spider’, he praised the ancients as furnishing honey and wax, sweetness and light, and ridiculed the moderns as weaving flimsy webs, like the spider , with the poisonous stuff that flowered from themselves. In the tale of a tub, swift set out to ridicule the extremist in Catholicism and the fanatical dissenters and to advocate the middle course as represented by the Anglican church. For this purpose he invented an allegorical fable of three brothers who inherited a coat of a piece from their father with strict instructions regarding its use. The coat, of course, is the Christian theology. The three brothers Peter, Martin and Jack symbolise respectively Roman Catholicism, the Anglican Church and the dissenters. It is a master piece of satire, but the ultimate result of swift’s satire was to bring all religion in to contempt, though that was not his real aim. Swift’s irony can best illustrated by his short pamphlet entitled a modest proposal. He was roused to righteous indignation at the ruthless exploitation of the Irish peasantry by their absentee landlords in England. But swift opens his ‘proposal’ with a quietly deceptive tone of seriousness. He puts forth his modest proposal for the economic uplift of the poor Irish peasants; â€Å"every woman of child-bearing age is to produce as many children as possible and bring them to the market when they are one year old; Page 1 children aged one year are most delicious according to the best authorities and so they would be in great demand at an English noble man’s table. It is not difficult to see the righteous indignation beneath the apparently cold-blooded argument, the irony is devastation. Swift is the author of the pamphlets, political, religious and literary in which he sought the reform of the society of its abuses and affections. But his magnum opus is Gulliver’s travels (1726). It is at once children’s classics as well as a serious treatise in which satiric pours corrosive ridicules of he on what Swift considers to be the abuse of his age. As children’s classic it can be read as a marvelous adventure in wonderland. With an abundance of circumstantial details. e are told how a certain Gulliver happened to make several voyages into strange undiscovered countries. Swift makes certain preposterous assumptions but once the initial premise is granted what follows conforms it with mathematical precision. in his first voyage, ‘A voyage to Lilliput Gulliver was driven. Far away from his course ;he was cast ashore on an isla nd called Lilliput, where the inhabitants were about six inches tall and all the environment of animate and inanimate conformed exactly to those human dimensions. They were equipped with bows and arrows in which they were adepts. It was mathematically calculated that Gulliver would require food which 1728 Lilliputians would consume. The king was a patron of learning, he was handsome and majestic. Gulliver was carefully searched and dispossessed of his pistols and ammunitions. The courtier practiced tight rope walking and official preferment went to those who excelled in this exercise. The most accomplished of them was the filmnap, the treasurer. (the king supposed to stand for the George l and filmnap, the Whig prime minister Robert Walpole). The Lilliputians were engaged in war with the neighboring country, Belfuscu. It was easy for the Lilliputians to win with the help of their gigantically, but as soon as they accomplished they turn against him in ingratitude. Filmnap continued to be his chief enemy. Gulliver knew that he ws likely to be unjustly accused of high treason and therefore he secretly grossed over to Belfuscu and escaped from eminent danger. He returned home and stayed with his wife and family for two months. A Voyage to Brobdingnag. He was again possessed of an insatiable desire to go on another voyage. This time he was bound for India. This second voyage proved to be equally eventful and strange. All alone he happened to be cast ashore on a strange land where corn was at least forty feet high and the first person he saw appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple. He was farmer’s servant who first looked at Gulliver as a curious creature and took him to his master. This country was Brobdingnag, where the people were sixty feet in height. The skin of these giants was repulsively hard and ugly, freckled and covered all over with wrat and moles and rough hair. When one of the nurses was suckling the child entrusted to her Guilllver saw her revoltingly big breasts, which â€Å"cold not be less than ixteen feet in circumference. The nipple was about half of my head and the hue both of that and dug so verified with spots, pimples and freckles that nothing could appear more nauseous† . Many times he was in the danger of being killed by gigantic creatures of Brobdingnag but luckily for him he had nine year old nurse ,the farmer’s daughter called Glumdalclitch, who took care of him and protected him from dangers. In his greed the farmer exhibited Gulliver in market places and finally brought to Metropolis where the king and the queen took a fancy to him and took him under their special protection. But Gulliver’s kind nurse was asked to stay in the palace to take care of him. Though the Brobdingnag were physically gross and repulsive they were kind and sensible. The king observed how â€Å"contemptible a thing was human grandeur which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects like I†. the queen’s maids of honour always invited Glumdalclitch to visit them in their room with Gulliver whom they thought to be as sort of pet. â€Å"They would often strip me naked from top to toe and lay me in their bosoms, where I was disgusted because†¦.. very offensive smell came from their skins†. Gulliver had the most dangerous experience of his life when a monkey took him in his paw and fliited from one building to another with Gulliver dangling from his paw. From that day onwards Glumdiltich took greater care of Gulliver. Page 2 A Voyage to Brobdingnag The king used to enquire of the political and religious conditions of the Europe. Gulliver ironically expat iated upon the wonderful parliamentary system and elections in European nations, their standing armies and their institutions. Far from admiring these, the Brobdingnagian king was astonished, and he protested that it was only a â€Å"heap of conspiracies rebellions massacres, revolutions and banishments. The very worst effects that avarice, factions, hypocrisy, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice and ambition could produce. † â€Å"Finally the king concluded with the most ferocious attack on the state of affair in contemporary Europe, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be most pernicious race of little odious vermin that ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. Further Gulliver informed the king about the invention and use of gun powder which could destroy whole batteries of an army. The king’s ingenious remark was certainly an echo of Swift’s own opinion: â€Å"he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind, and more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together†. Gulliver speaks with approval of Brobdingnagian’s learning which consist only immortality, history, poetry, maths; to write a command upon any law is a capital crime; their style is clear, masculine and smooth, but not florid. This is Gulliver’s and (Swift’s) criticism of European civilization in his own age. When he returned home at first Gulliver had a good deal of difficulty in adjusting to himself to his wife and friends; he felt that they were all pygmies and he a giant; he felt for some time that he had lost his wife. A Voyage to Laputa Gulliver’s third voyage was to East Indies; he rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached fort St. George, Madras where he stayed for three weeks. He resumed his journey but was captured by pirates and left alone in a group of islands called Laputa. Here the important persons were so much absorbed in speculation, scientific and political that they had to have flappers who brought them back to their sense by flapping their ears and mouths. An opaque flying island often hovered over the islands when they were cut off from the sun’s light. Here Gulliver visited several islands and in the grand academy situated in Lagado he found people engrossed in various projects. One was trying to â€Å"extract sun beams from cucumber†; another was working trying on an â€Å"operation to reduce human excrement to its original food†. Yet another was trying to â€Å"calcine ice into gun powder† and so on. Most of them begged Gulliver for monetary assistance, in one of these islands there were magicians and conjurers; in another there were a group of people called Struldburgs, people who would not die was a curse rather than a blessing. Afterwards Gulliver sailed towards Japan and from there returned to England. Voyage to Houyhnhnms Gulliver’s fourth voyage took him to the land of the Houyhnhnms( pronounced as hou-in’em), a strange species of rational horses. By a curious accident he landed on Houyhnhnm land, where the first object he saw was a physically repulsive creature. Gulliver was disgusted for â€Å"upon the whole I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. And yet he could recognize in him a man like himself. The horses were the master of these debased human creatures called Yahoos. Gulliver was amazed to see the most urbane conduct in the Horses (though they were beasts) and the most bestial behavior among the human-looking Yahoos. These Horses were endowed with a fine degree of reason; their behavior was â€Å"so orderly and rational, so acute and judicious† that Gulliver at last concluded that they must needs be magicians who had thus Page 3 metamorphosed themselves. In a few months Gulliver was able to communicate in the language of the Honyhuhums. Curiously enough their language did not have words to express lies and other similar concepts; they were dignified and handsome, and their strength and speed were marvelous. On some occasions Gulliver discussed to the King that in Europe, human beings trained the horses and rode on their back and naturally roused great indignation in the king. When he went on to describe the fierce wars in Europe the king of Honyhuhums was greatly amazed at the perversion of human reason, but he consoled himself with the thought that these petty creatures could not do much mischief even if they wanted to. His amazement grew when he was told how many people in Europe were ruined by law and all advocates without exception were so accustomed to lying that they would never take up a true case. Gulliver further informed the king how in his own country a man rose to power â€Å"with prudence to dispose of a wife, a daughter or a sister† by betraying a predecessor or by pretending to a furious zeal in public assemblies against the corruptions of the court. The chief minister’s palace was a seminary to breed others in his own trade, and they excelled in insolence, lying and bribery. The yahoo in Houyhuhums land has to ‘lick his master’s feet and posteriors and drive the female yahoos to his kennel, for which he was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass’s flesh â€Å"The houyhuhums were endowed by nature with a genial disposition to all virtues†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦their grand maxim is to cultivate reason. † Their convictions were never discolored by passion and self-interest. A universal friendship and benevolence governed all their conduct, but they had no ‘fond nesses or pets. They practiced a control of their population by restricting the progeny of each couple to one male and one female colt. It was again, reason and not passion, which governed propagation. The four lessons of their education were ‘Temperature industry, Exercise and Cleanliness. ’ They trained up their youth to strength, speed and hardness. On the whole Houyhuhums maintained a high degree of decency and dignity. If they were not able to rise to great glories of the spirit, they were also incapable of descending into the depths of bestiality. Some of the Houyhuhums were afraid that because Gulliver possessed some rudiments of reasons he might try to seduce the yahoos of the land so it was decided that he must be expelled from the country. So he had a vessel constructed and he resumed his voyage. He fell into the hands of very cruel people but eventually a very kind-hearted Portuguese captain took him and put him safely on the shore of Byland, where he soon joined his wife and children. But he shuddered at the sight of them as they resembled the disgusting yahoos. â€Å"As soon as I entered my house. † Gulliver tells us, â€Å"my wife took me in her arms and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of the odious animal for so many years. I fell in a swoon for almost an hour. During the first year (of my return) I could not endure my wife or children in my presence. The very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the room. † So great was his admiration for Houyhuhumn that for some time he used to walk like a horse and neigh like a horse. The tragic denunciation of man is rounded off with comic laughter. The book concludes with an assertion that â€Å"a traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wise and better, and to improve their minds by the bad as well as the good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places. † And Swift seems to feel that the most intolerable vice among the yahoo kind is pride. In one of his letter to Alxander Pope, Swift explained his aim in writing Gulliver Travels â€Å"the chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it. † Nevertheless the book has been infinitely diverting and has established itself as a children’s classic. it is a universal favorite not because it is sought to ‘vex’ the reader’s into a realization of their individual and social follies and vices, but because the scene conceived a series of diverting situations and episodes and described them with plenty of imaginative and humorous details. In the first voyage, the diminutive Lilliputians, providing themselves on their destructive arms mere bows and arrows and their stratagems of war are ridiculous. And Gulliver could easily capture dozens of the enemy ships disregardful of the arrows which hit him. Page 4 The factions between the Big Enders and the Little_Enders been the High_heels and Low_heels, are ludicrous in the extreme. In the land of the Brobdingnagians the gigantic creatures as tall as church_steeples are equally amusing, particularly to children. The account of Gulliver’s fall through the fingers of one of the two men and his miraculous escape from death by being stuck up on the pin of her ‘stomacher’, his adventure with the monstrous monkey, which took him all over the house-tops and tree-tops with the prospect of imminent death for Gulliver, the diversion of one of the maids of honour who stretched Gulliver on her breast, and a dozen similar episodes cannot fail to fascinate the reader. It is to be admitted that the third voyage, a voyage to Laputa is not half as successful as the one before it or the one that comes after it. It is episodic and confused. But the scientific and political projects such as trying to extract sun beams out of cucumbers, food out of human excreta, and gun powder out of ice are travesties of what Swift considers to the unprofitable research-projects in his own time. The tempo rises once again when we follow Gulliver through his last voyage. This time into the land of the rational Honyhuhmns. Apart from its satiric purpose, the fourth book describes with humor and imagination the debased mankind and the rational noble Horses, who was Gulliver’s unbounded admiration for them. Since his return to England Gulliver found it difficult to adapt himself to his own species: he was repulsed, by his wife’s embraces and kisses; he walked like a horse and neighed like a horse; he built his tent in the stables and chose horses rather than human as his companions. Swift’s satire is directed as much against the Yahoo’s and the Honyhuhmns as against Gulliver himself. Certainly we shall be committing a gross mistake if we, like the 19th century critics of Swift, identify Gulliver with Swift himself, though it is true that in general places the identification is unmistakable. If we could ignore for the moment the political and moral allegory of â€Å"Gulliver’s travel† we can enjoy it as a fascinating narrative of adventures in which the imaginative frame work is amazingly filled with apparently realistic details. It is at once an imitation and a parody of the traveller’s accounts and imaginary utopia’s which enchanted the Elizabethan’s and their successors. But â€Å"Gulliver’s Travels† is much more than a children’s classic. It is a merciless satire on the political and moral conditions of Europe in eneral and of England in particular. Swift intended to ‘vex’ his contemporary into a realization of their pettiness and pride, their avarice and manners, the enormity of their follies and vices, the degradation of their institution and their needless wars of destruction. Swift did not care to point out human follies and vices with gentle humor as did Addison and Steele; on the other hand hi s righteous indignation burnt fiercely in him, he fretted and fumed at the mouth; he quashed his teeth and poured out satire and sarcasm and invective. So fierce was the onslaught and so great the disgust that he has often been branded as a misanthrope and a cynic, but as we have already seen his Modest proposal should put us on our guard. In one of his letters to his friends, Alexander Pope, he said, ‘I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter Thomas and so forth. In the first book, the political satire is transparently clear. After his disillusionment with the Whigs, Swift went over to the Torries. Ever since he stood firm as a conservative and an ardent member of the Anglican church. He was indignant at the undeserved fall and exile of oxford and Bolingbroke (with whom Gulliver often identifies himself). The Lilliputians are the English; the Blefuscudians are the French, who were often at war with each other. Bolingbroke and saved England can Gulliver had saved the Lilliputians, but ingratitude and treachery drove the benefactor out of the country. The sexual promiscuity, the political machinations and the pettiness (as represented by their size) and pride of the Lilliputians are a satire on contemporary English society. Lilliput is sometimes utopia sometimes 18th century England made utterly contemptible by the small size of the people who exhibit the same vices and follies as the English. The account of Lilliputians politics with the quarrel between the high- heels and the low-heels and between the big-enders and the little-enders, is clearly a parody of English politics, on the other hand, this chapter on Lilliputian law and education is almost wholly utopianà ¢â‚¬  (David Daichas). Page 5 In the second book, the satire is more complex. If in the first book, Swift satirized the pettiness of man and disproportionate pride and sense of importance, here Swift applies the magnifying glass to man’s disgustingly bloated vices, his repulsive physical features and bodily odour. Even the fairest of the female Brobdingnagians had disgustingly big blotches, pimples and freckles all over their skin and the offensive smell which emanated from their body indicated that man had no reason to be proud. But, the satire here is two edged. When Gulliver expatiated upon the conditions of Europe in ironic admiration of its institutions and its warfare. The virtuous king of Brobdingnag was moved to exclaim-â€Å"I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth† for their history revealed. Nothing but ‘a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very affects that avarice fraction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, just, malice and ambition could produce. It is to be admitted that this type of general satire the intended affect because everyone lays the blame at the door of others and never applies it to himself The voyage of Laputa satirises England’s tyranny over Ireland . It is easy to see in the flying island the oppressive role of England on the life of Ireland. Lindalino is anagram of Dublin. Swift ridicules th e activities of the scientific experiments under taken by the Royal Society. Which is represented here by the academy of projectors in Lagado? Swift was concerned only with the ethics of life and the experiments in science and politics appeared to him as needless waste of time in the innumerable cells of the academy, one has been working at the ridiculous project of extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers another has been encaged for long in the project of turning human excrement in to human food and yet another has been trying to convert it in to gun powder here at any rate swift satire mysteries, for if science had been discouraged by this sardonic attack on them the present marvels of scientific discovery would have been impossible. The last voyageto houyhnhnm land take us into deeper waters. Critics of swift in the 18th and 19th centuries were misled into thinking that here swift was extolling the sensible animals and branding human beings irredeemably vicious and intolerably disgusting like the yahoos. it is true that swift scorn of debased man is terrible but Gulliver is not swift the ardent Anglican dean could not have held up to our unqualified admiration the houyhnhnms who were of course rational, decent, benevolent and friendly. They limited their families to two colts- one male and the other female. They imparted instruction to their youth intemperance, industry exercise and cleanliness. The praise of these animals is intended to show how very debased man can be when he perverts his reason and yields to his passions but if the houyhnhnms escape the depths of human depravity, they also miss the glory of the human life, certainly the modern view that swift is not to be identified with Gulliver does not admit of further dispute. 3. Swift is often accused of being a pessimist, a cynical gloomy misanthrope, a seventeenth century Timon of Athens. At any rate this was the view of swift which 18 th and 19th century critics of swift had consistently maintained This view has been stoutly challenged by modern critics who have examined the book from a variety of angles. In the first two books of Gulliver’s travels in Gulliver s voyage to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, there is obvious gentility though the narrator shows his disgust at the pettiness and the squabbles of the pygmies and the grossness of the Brobdingnaginas physical features. In Brodingnaginas, the nine year old Glumdaiclits is full of tender solicitude for his safety, and is almost in tears at her fathers greed in intending to amass money buy exhibiting Gulliver at the market place. The educational system of the Lilliputians and the Brodingnaginas view of life are almost utopian. The charge of pessimism and misanthropy cannot be sustained on the basis of these two voyages. In the third book the voyage to Laputta swift seems to ridicule with unspairing the severity the scientific experiments and philosophical speculations of his time, but ridicule is not misanthropy. The charge then is made mainly on the four book. The Yahoos are undoubted caricature of human beings: they lick the feet of the horse and are happy when some piece of ass’s flesh is thrown to them. The human kind seems Page 6 to be infinitely debased when contrasted with the Horses, which, by comparison, are governed by reason. There seems to be no redeeming quality in the Yahoos and the nineteenth century critics had no hesitation to brand the satirist as a misanthrope who hated man, a pessimist who saw in him not one redeeming virtue. The voyage to the Houyhnhnms was even considered â€Å"more or less symptomatic of mental disease†. But Gulliver was saved by a Portuguese captain, who showed him great kindness and refused to accept from him his passage money. The presence of Don Pedro is alone enough to disprove the charge of misanthropy. Besides are we justified in identifying Gulliver with swift? Gulliver himself is often the victim of comic humour, when he returns home he feels disgusted with his own wife and family, he erects his residence in stables, and neighs like a horse. He is here the victim of the comic muse rather than the serious reformer of society. In this book, the Anglican clergyman appears as a preacher who believes in original sin and ridicules the eighteenth century clad about the perfectibility of man. Louis A. Landa has substantiated the view that Swift’s ‘pessimism is quite consonant with the pessimism at the heart of Christianity. † She has quoted in support of this view several passages from contemporary sermons. in my opinion†, says another modern critic, :the work is that of a Christian humanist and a moralist who no more blasphemes against the dignity of human nature than do St. Paul and some of the angrier prophets of the Old Testament†. It has been truly observed that his savage indictment of man† arises from philanthropy, not misanthropy, from idealism on what man might be, not from despair at what he is†. By P. Baburaj, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of English, Sherubtse college, Bhutan Page 7

Sunday, November 24, 2019

List College (Jewish Theological Seminary) Admissions

List College (Jewish Theological Seminary) Admissions List College Admissions Overview: With an acceptance rate of 52%, List College (a part of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America) is a somewhat selective school. Students interested in List can apply using the Common Application, which can be submitted online. Other required materials include a personal essay, scores from the SAT or ACT, letters of recommendation, and high school transcripts. For complete application instructions and important deadlines, be sure to visit the schools website. Students are encouraged to visit the campus; contact the admissions office for more information about getting a tour and seeing if List College would be a good fit. Will You Get In? Calculate Your Chances of Getting In  with this free tool from Cappex Admissions Data (2016): List College Acceptance Rate: 57%Test Scores 25th / 75th PercentileSAT Critical Reading: 650 / 725SAT Math: 640 / 690SAT Writing: - / -What these SAT numbers meanACT Composite: 28  / 32ACT English: 29  / 33ACT Math: 30 / 33ACT Writing: - / -What these ACT numbers mean List College Description: The Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies (List College) is the undergraduate school of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America located in New York City. It is closely affiliated with  Columbia University, and almost all List College students are enrolled in a dual-degree program with either Columbia or  Barnard College. The college has a 4 to 1 student faculty ratio and offers 11 bachelor of arts degree programs within the field of Jewish studies, such as ancient Judaism, Jewish history and Jewish gender and women’s studies, with the option to construct an individual interdisciplinary major. Most students choose to pursue a second bachelor of arts or a bachelor of science degree at Columbia or Barnard. Outside of academics, students are active on and off campus, participating in a variety of social, leadership and service activities at List as well as over 500 student clubs and organizations offered by Columbia and Barnard. Enrollment (2016): Total Enrollment: 371 (157 undergraduates)Gender Breakdown: 47% Male / 53% Female100% Full-time Costs (2016  - 17): Tuition and Fees: $52,660Books: $500 (why so much?)Room and Board: $14,460Other Expenses: $4,500Total Cost: $72,120 List College Financial Aid (2015  - 16): Percentage of New Students Receiving Aid: 54%Percentage of New Students Receiving Types of AidGrants: 51%Loans: 28%Average Amount of AidGrants: $26,471Loans: $6,523 Graduation and Retention Rates: First Year Student Retention (full-time students): 97%Transfer-out Rate: 16%4-Year Graduation Rate: 66%6-Year Graduation Rate: 79% Data Source: National Center for Educational Statistics If You Like List College, You May Also Like These Schools: American Jewish University: Profile  New York University: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphBrandeis University: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphBarnard College: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphBinghamton University: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphUniversity of Michigan - Ann Arbor: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphJohns Hopkins University: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphOberlin College: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT GraphCornell University: Profile | GPA-SAT-ACT Graph List and the Common Application List College uses the  Common Application. These articles can help guide you: Common Application essay tips and samplesShort answer tips and samplesSupplemental essay tips and samples

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Macro & Micro Economics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Macro & Micro Economics - Essay Example The characteristics of the market include durability, heterogeneity, high costs of transaction, long time delays, an investment as well as a consumption good, and immobility. The housing market possesses the importance of second hand transactions. According to the largest lender of the country, 5% of the total transaction is for the purchase of new properties while the rest is for purchase of either old or modern property. Two reasons can be accounted to assess the importance of the housing market for the economy of UK. The first reason states that the purchasing of houses is one of the biggest single purchases for the household and the purchased commodity represents the biggest single item of the wealth of the consumer. The changes in the prices of the houses have the potential to affect the entire economy. Current UK housing market The real estate industry is suffering from another wobble as the lenders are raising the rates of mortgage. The potential buyers are feeling the heat of consumer squeeze. Analysts are of the opinion that it is going to be a tough year ahead and the prices of the houses are taking the declining curve. The market outlook reports that the average price of the new properties failed to take the rising curve in the months of April-May, 2012. The market is driven by the release of equity. According to the nationwide house price index for the month of April, the property values have declined by 0.2 percent. It also states that the house prices are going to fall further as the households are uncertain of any possible recovery in the economy. The lenders are putting double squeeze on the home owners. The experts of the industry concluded that this is the greatest threat for the industry and it has come at the time when the economy was showing the signs of recovery. The seasonally adjusted net balance of headline price recorded a slip of 19%. The newly agreed sales value turned to negative again. The price outlook of the three months declined in the month of April and net balance witnessed a drop from -3 to -17 (RICS, 2012, p. 1). Several economists have noted that the housing market has moved out from the impacts of business cycle for the major economies including that of UK (Jones, Colin and Watkins 2009 p.1). Some writers opined that the housing market of the country is correlated with that of the economy while some others opposed it. Some writers concluded that the market is dominated by the investors and that is why demand may be artificially high or low for a long time. The interest rates act as the key economic variable for the housing market and the level of the interest rate will have impact on the demand for housing as it has the potential to determine the cost of credit for the buyers. In order to boost the economy, the interest rates have been set at a lower level. The different stages of supply and demand controls the housing market and so the market for UK is same as the market as in any other part of the World. There are two potential risks that are associated with the housing market. The first is the interest rate and the second one is mortgage indebtedness. The borrowing costs are a significant factor that determines the rates of mortgage and the ability to pay back the loans. The repayments of the mortgages become expensive as the interest rates rise and the previous crashes occurred due to this reason. The offered mortgages vary from nominal fixed rate to variable rate or index

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

The Study of Elementary and Special Education Teaching Essay

The Study of Elementary and Special Education Teaching - Essay Example hat Charles should not be denied admission into the new school and he should be accorded the necessary education services, which will ensure that he has the ability and power to attain the desired success level. Another regulation, which Charles parents need to adopt in making their accusations, is the part 2 (11), which talks of language or speech impairment that is based on communication disorder. This is relevant to Charles articulation and stuttering problem, which makes him to communicate very fast and not pause while typing. Therefore, the parents have to use this regulation to argue for provision of education services, which will enable Charles to overcome the communication disorder he is suffering from. Charles parents have to argue that Charles is not an anti-social person and nor does he cause harm to other peers. This is because he has the ability of interacting with the other peers effectively. The only challenge he has is that of communicating effectively. As such, the s chool environment has to accept his nature. The parents have also to argue that they have lived with Charles for long and they have not seen any negative effect or impact he has on the other children. In fact, Charles has responded positively in previous school where he been taught to communicate and type slowly with pauses. This is what the new school has to embrace in order to ensure that this child realizes the goals and dreams of education. Moreover, during the previous sessions where Charles has been taught, he has not depicted any form of challenge in terms of taking instructions. Therefore, the new school has to ensure that it provides instructions to Charles in an effective manner. Actually, Charles does not need to be isolated from the other children since he likes the company of... This paper makes an analyzes a boy Charles's and his parents' behaviour. They have to argue that Charles is not an anti-social person and nor does he cause harm to other peers. This is because he has the ability of interacting with the other peers effectively. The only challenge he has is that of communicating effectively. According to the paper the philosophy is aligned to Constructivism Theory as postulated by Jerome Bruner. In this theory, the learner selects information and transforms such information, constructs hypotheses, and engages in decision making process. As such, this theory is based on the need for knowledge construction based on beliefs, previous knowledge and personal experiences. Therefore, as an educator I focus on encouraging students to discover principles and knowledge on themselves. This includes proving an opportunity for students to interact among themselves and the teacher. The curriculum is developed in a spiral manner such that students are able to develop based on what they have already learned in class.One can modifies teaching strategies to encourage students to engage in information, analyzes, interpretation and prediction during the learning process. The paper makes a conclusion the author's philosophy is based on Progressivism education philosophy, which is based on the curriculum development and design. The curriculum will focus of enhancing progress and development in society and individual level capabilities. The main emphasis will be in creation of interpersonal relationships, developmental thinking skills, and improvement in learning process. As such, students will have an opportunity of creating and expressing individual ideas and appreciate differences, which may occur among them. My task would be to push students towards achieving their goals and stimulate curiosity in scientific inquiry and problem solving ideas.

Sunday, November 17, 2019

TWO page summary and critique Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

TWO page summary and critique - Article Example pproach, consisting of beginnings in which the contract is negotiated between the counselor and client, middles in which the counselor explores the story of the client, and endings in which the discussion is concluded. Finally, the counselor works out ways based on the information he/she has received to help the client. In the beginnings stage, it is important that the counselor lends a sense of empowerment to the client so that the client feels confidant and his/her tendency to narrate life episodes is optimized. In the middles stage, the counselor’s focus should be to develop a rapport with the client so that the client reveals about his/her life more. In the ending stage, the counselor should clarify any doubts with respect to understanding or recording of information with the client. Savickas’s approach creates multiple approaches for assisting people with career transitions. I find Savickas’s systematic approach to counseling quite appealing because it provides a concise yet holistic understanding of the process of counseling. It makes it easier to memorize the process and the activities it entails by categorizing it into three stages (National Guidance Research Forum, 2012). The focus of the article is the key points a counselor must pay attention toward in each stage so that the counseling session is the most productive and the client is able to benefit from the counselor’s approach. It is correct that peoples career choices are determined, to a large extent by their life experiences and social connections. Media is a very powerful projector of the norms and values, trends and traditions of a culture. In my professional career counseling, I will Savickas’s systematic approach by trying to develop a comfort level and rapport with my client. I will give the client a gift in our first meeting suited to the client’s age and gender so that the client feels good about me. I shall also provide the client with a list of questions and ask him/her if

Friday, November 15, 2019

SERVQUAL MODEL as a Service Quality Measure

SERVQUAL MODEL as a Service Quality Measure 1.0 Introduction A great deal of service-quality research in recent decades has been devoted to the development of measures of service quality. In particular, the SERVQUAL instrument (Parasuraman et al., 1988) has been widely applied and valued by academics and practicing managers (Buttle, 1996). However, several studies have identified potential difficulties with the use of SERVQUAL (Carman, 1990; Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Asubonteng et al., 1996; Buttle, 1996; Van Dyke et al., 1997; Llosa et al., 1998). These difficulties have related to the use of so-called difference scores, the ambiguity of the definition of consumer expectations, the stability of the SERVQUAL scale over time, and the dimensionality of the instrument. As a result of these criticisms, questions have been raised regarding the use of SERVQUAL as a measure of service quality. 1.1 The SERVQUAL scale When the SERVQUAL scale was developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988), their  aim was to provide a generic instrument for measuring service quality across a broad range of service categories. Relying on information from 12 focus groups of consumers, Parasuraman et al. (1985) reported that consumers evaluated service quality by comparing expectations (of service to be received) with perceptions (of service actually received) on ten dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, communication, credibility, security, competence, understanding/knowing customers, courtesy, and access. In a later (Parasuraman et al. (1988) work, the authors reduced the original ten dimensions to five: (1) tangibles (the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, and personnel); (2) reliability (the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately); (3) responsiveness (the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service); (4) empathy (the provision of individual care and attention to customers); and (5) assurance (the knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence). Each dimension is measured by four to five items (making a total of 22 items across the five dimensions). Each of these 22 items is measured in two ways: (1) the expectations of customers concerning a service; and (2) the perceived levels of service actually provided. In making these measurements, respondents are asked to indicate their degree of agreement with certain statements on a seven-point Likert-type scale (1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree). For each item, a so-called gap score (G) is then calculated as the difference between the raw perception-of-performance score (P) and the raw expectations score (E). The greater the gap score (calculated as G  ¼ P minus E), the higher the score for perceived service quality. Chapter 2: Literature Review 2.0 Introduction Despite the widespread use of the SERVQUAL model to measure service quality, several theoretical and empirical criticisms of the scale have been raised. Buttle (1996) summarised the major criticisms of SERVQUAL in two broad categories theoretical and operational. Theoretical issues comprise: Paradigmatic objections: SERVQUAL is based on a disconfirmation paradigm rather than an attitudinal paradigm; and SERVQUAL fails to draw on established economic, statistical and psychological theory. Gaps model: there is little evidence that customers assess service quality in terms of P E gaps. Process orientation: SERVQUAL focuses on the process of service delivery, not the outcomes of the service encounter. Dimensionality: SERVQUALs five dimensions are not universals; the number of dimensions comprising SQ is contextualized; items do not always load on to the factors which one would a priori expect; and there is a high degree of intercorrelation between the five RATER dimensions. Operational criticisms include: Expectations: the term expectation is polysemic; consumers use standards other than expectations to evaluate SQ; and SERVQUAL fails to measure absolute SQ expectations. Item composition: four or five items can not capture the variability within each SQ dimension. Moments of truth (MOT): customers assessments of SQ may vary from MOT to MOT. Polarity: the reversed polarity of items in the scale causes respondent error. Scale points: the seven-point Likert scale is flawed. Two administrations: two administrations of the instrument cause boredom and confusion. Variance extracted: the over SERVQUAL score accounts for a disappointing proportion of item variances. The above criticism will be discussed below. 2.1: Paradigmatic objections (Theoretical Criticisms) Two major criticisms have been raised. First, SERVQUAL has been inappropriately based on an expectations disconfirmation model rather than an attitudinal model of SQ. Second, it does not build on extant knowledge in economics, statistics and psychology. SERVQUAL is based on the disconfirmation model widely adopted in the customer satisfaction literature. In this literature, customer satisfaction (CSat) is operationalised in terms of the relationship between expectations (E) and outcomes (O). If O matches E, customer satisfaction is predicted. If O exceeds E, then customer delight may be produced. If E exceeds O, then customer dissatisfaction is indicated. According to Cronin and Taylor (1992; 1994) SERVQUAL is paradigmatically flawed because of its ill-judged adoption of this disconfirmation model. Perceived quality, they claim, is best conceptualised as an attitude. They criticise Parasuraman et al. for their hesitancy to define perceived SQ in attitudinal terms, even though Parasur aman et al. (1988) had earlier claimed that SQ was similar in many ways to an attitude. Cronin and Taylor observe: Researchers have attempted to differentiate service quality from consumer satisfaction, even while using the disconfirmation format to measure perceptions of service qualityà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ this approach is not consistent with the differentiation expressed between these constructs in the satisfaction and attitude literatures. Iacobucci et al.s (1994) review of the debate surrounding the conceptual and operational differences between SQ and CSat concludes that the constructs have not been consistently defined and differentiated from each other in the literature. She suggests that the two constructs may be connected in a number of ways. First, they may be both different operationalisations of the same construct, evaluation. Second, they may be orthogonally related, i.e. they may be entirely different constructs. Third, they may be conceptual cousins. Their family connections may be dependent on a number of other considerations, including for example, the duration of the evaluation. Parasuraman et al. (1985) have described satisfaction as more situation- or encounter-specific, and quality as more holistic, developed over a longer period of time, although they offer no empirical evidence to support this contention. SQ and CSat may also be related by time order. The predominant belief is that SQ is the logical predecessor to CSat, but this remains unproven. Cronin and Taylors critique draws support from Olivers (1980) research which suggests that SQ and CSat are distinct constructs but are related in that satisfaction mediates the effect of prior-period perceptions of SQ and causes revised SQ perceptions to be formed. SQ and CSat may also be differentiated by virtue of their content. Whereas SQ may be thought of as high in cognitive content, CSat may be more heavily loaded with affect (Oliver, 1993). Cronin and Taylor suggest that the adequacy-importance model of attitude measurement should be adopted for SQ research. Iacobucci et al. (1994) add the observation that in some general psychological sense, it is not clear what short-term evaluations of quality and satisfaction are if not attitudes. In turn, Parasuraman et al. (1994) have vigorously defended their position, claiming that critics seem to discount prior conceptual work in the SQ literature, and suggest that Cronin and Taylors w ork does not justify their claim that the disconfirmation paradigm is flawed. In other work, Cronin and Taylor (1994) comment that: Recent conceptual advances suggest that the disconfirmation-based SERVQUAL scale is measuring neither service quality nor consumer satisfaction. Rather, the SERVQUAL scale appears at best an operationalisation of only one of the many forms of expectancy disconfirmation. A different concern has been raised by Andersson (1992). He objects to SERVQUALs failure to draw on previous social science research, particularly economic theory, statistics, and psychological theory. Parasuraman et al.s work is highly inductive in that it moves from historically situated observation to general theory. Andersson (1992) claims that Parasuraman et al. abandon the principle of scientific continuity and deduction. Among specific criticisms are the following: First, Parasuraman et al.s management technology takes no account of the costs of improving service quality. It is naÃÆ' ¯ve in assuming that the marginal revenue of SQ improvement always exceeds the marginal cost. (Aubrey and Zimbler, 1983., Crosby., 1979, Juran., 1951 and Masser., 1957) have addressed the issue of the costs/benefits of quality improvement in service settings.) Second, Parasuraman et al. collect SQ data using ordinal scale methods (Likert scales) yet perform analyses with methods suited to interval-level data (factor analysis). Third, Parasuraman et al. are at the absolute end of the street regarding possibilities to use statistical methods. Ordinal scales do not allow for investigations of common product-moment correlations. Interdependencies among the dimensions of quality are difficult to describe. SERVQUAL studies cannot answer questions such as: Are there elasticities among the quality dimensions? Is the customer value of improvements a linear or non-linear function? Fourth, Parasuraman et al. fail to draw on the large literature on the psychology of perception. 2.2: Gaps Model A related set of criticisms refer to the value and meaning of gaps identified in the disconfirmation model. Babakus and Boller (1992) found the use of a gap approach to SQ measurement intuitively appealing but suspected that the difference scores do not provide any additional information beyond that already contained in the perceptions component of the SERVQUAL scale. They found that the dominant contributor to the gap score was the perceptions score because of a generalised response tendency to rate expectations high. Churchill and Surprenant (1982), in their work on CSat, also ponder whether gap measurements contribute anything new or of value given that the gap is a direct function of E and P. It has also been noted that: while conceptually, difference scores might be sensible, they are problematic in that they are notoriously unreliable, even when the measures from which the difference scores are derived are themselves highly reliable (Iacobucci et al., 1994). Also, in the context of CSat, Oliver (1980) has pondered whether it might be preferable to consider the P E scores as raw differences or as ratios. No work has been reported using a ratio approach to measure SQ. Iacobucci et al. (1994) take a different tack on the incorporation of E-measures. They suggest that expectations might not exist or be formed clearly enough to serve as a standard for evaluation of a service experience. Expectations may be formed simultaneously with service consumption. Kahneman and Miller (1986) have also proposed that consumers may form experience-based norms after service experiences, rather than expectations before. A further issue raised by Babakus and Inhofe (1991) is that expectations may attract a social desirability response bias. Respondents may feel motivated to adhere to an I-have-high-expectations social norm. Indeed, Parasuraman et al. report that in their testing of the 1988 version the majority of expectations scores were above six on the seven-point scale. The overall mean expectation was 6.22 (Parasuraman et al., 1991b). Teas (1993a; 1993b; 1994) has pondered the meaning of identified gaps. For example, there are six ways of producing P E gaps of -1 (P = 1, E = 2; P = 2, E = 3; P = 3, E = 4; P = 4, E = 5; P = 5, E = 6; P = 6, E = 7). Do these tied gaps mean equal perceived SQ? He also notes that SERVQUAL research thus far has not established that all service providers within a consideration or choice set, e.g. all car-hire firms do, in fact, share the same expectations ratings across all items and dimensions. A further criticism is that SERVQUAL fails to capture the dynamics of changing expectations. Consumers learn from experiences. The inference in much of Parasuraman et al.s work is that expectations rise over time. An E-score of seven in 1986 may not necessarily mean the same as an E-score in 1996. Expectations may also fall over time (e.g. in the health service setting). Grà ¶nroos (1993) recognises this weakness in our understanding of SQ, and has called for a new phase of service quality research to focus on the dynamics of service quality evaluation. Wotruba and Tyagi (1991) agree that more work is needed on how expectations are formed and changed over time. Implicit in SERVQUAL is the assumption that positive and negative disconfirmations are symmetrically valent. However, from the customers perspective, failure to meet expectations often seems a more significant outcome than success in meeting or exceeding expectations (Hardie et al., 1992). Customers will often criticise poor service performance and not praise exceptional performance. Recently, Cronin and Taylor (1992) have tested a performance-based measure of SQ, dubbed SERVPERF, in four industries (banking, pest control, dry cleaning and fast food). They found that this measure explained more of the variance in an overall measure of SQ than did SERVQUAL. SERVPERF is composed of the 22 perception items in the SERVQUAL scale, and therefore excludes any consideration of expectations. In a later defence of their argument for a perceptions-only measure of SQ, Cronin and Taylor (1994) acknowledge that it is possible for researchers to infer consumers disconfirmation through arithmetic means (the P E gap) but that consumer perceptions, not calculations, govern behavior. Finally, a team of researchers, including Zeithaml herself (Boulding et al., 1993), has recently rejected the value of an expectations-based or gap-based model in finding that service quality was only influenced by perceptions. 2.3: Process orientation SERVQUAL has been criticized for focusing on the process of service delivery rather than outcomes of the service encounter. Grà ¶nroos (1982) identified three components of SQ: technical, functional and reputational quality. Technical quality is concerned with the outcome of the service encounter, e.g. have the dry cleaners got rid of the stain? Functional quality is concerned with the process of service delivery, e.g. were the dry cleaners counter staff courteous? Reputational quality is a reflection of the corporate image of the service organization. While technical quality focuses on what, functional quality focuses on how and involves consideration of issues such as the behaviour of customer contact staff, and the speed of service. Critics have argued that outcome quality is missing from Parasuraman et al.s formulation of SQ (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Mangold and Babakus, 1991; Richard and Allaway, 1993). Richard and Allaway (1993) tested an augmented SERVQUAL model which they cl aim incorporates both process and outcome components, and comment that the challenge is to determine which process and outcome quality attributes of SQ have the greatest impact on choice[1]. Their research into Domino Pizzas process and outcome quality employed the 22 Parasuraman et al. (1988) items, modified to suit context, and the following six outcome items: (1) Dominos has delicious home-delivery pizza. (2) Dominos has nutritious home-delivery pizza. (3) Dominos home-delivery pizza has flavourful sauce. (4) Dominos provides a generous amount of toppings for its home-delivery pizza. (5) Dominos home-delivery pizza is made with superior ingredients. (6) Dominos prepared its home-delivery pizza crust exactly the way I like it. These researchers found that the process-only items borrowed and adapted from SERVQUAL accounted for only 45 per cent of the variance in customer choice; the full inventory, inclusive of the six outcome items, accounted for 71.5 per cent of variance in choice. The difference between the two is significant at the 0.001 level. They conclude that process-and-outcome is a better predictor of consumer choice than process, or outcome, alone. In defense of SERVQUAL, Higgins et al., (1991) have argued that outcome quality is already contained within these dimensions: reliability, competence and security. 2.4: Dimensionality Critics have raised a number of significant and related questions about the dimensionality of the SERVQUAL scale. The most serious are concerned with the number of dimensions and their stability from context to context. There seems to be general agreement that SQ is a second-order construct, that is, it is factorially complex, being composed of several first-order variables [2]. SERVQUAL is composed of the five RATER [3] factors. There are however, several alternative conceptualizations of SQ. As already noted, Grà ¶nroos (1984) identified three components technical, functional and reputational quality; Lehtinen and Lehtinen (1982) also identify three components interactive, physical and corporate quality; Hedvall and Paltschik (1989) identify two dimensions willingness and ability to serve, and physical and psychological access; Leblanc and Nguyen (1988) list five components corporate image, internal organisation, physical support of the service producing system, staff/customer interaction, and the level of customer satisfaction. Parasuraman et al. (1988) have claimed that SERVQUAL: provides a basic skeleton through its expectations/perceptions format encompassing statements for each of the five service quality dimensions. The skeleton, when necessary, can be adapted or supplemented to fit the characteristics or specific research needs of a particular organization. In their 1988 paper, Parasuraman et al. also claimed that the final 22-item scale and its five dimensions have sound and stable psychometric properties. In the 1991b revision, Parasuraman et al. found evidence of consistent factor structure à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ across five independent samples. In other words, they make claims that the five dimensions are generic across service contexts. Indeed, in 1991, Parasuraman et al. claimed that SERVQUALs dimensions and items represent core evaluation criteria that transcend specific companies and industries (1991b) [4]. 2.5: Number of dimensions When the SERVQUAL instrument has been employed in modified form, up to nine distinct dimensions of SQ have been revealed, the number varying according to the service sector under investigation. One study has even produced a single-factor solution. Nine factors accounted for 71 per cent of SQ variance in Carmans (1990) hospital research: admission service, tangible accommodations, tangible food, tangible privacy, nursing care, explanation of treatment, access and courtesy afforded visitors, discharge planning, and patient accounting (billing)[5]. Five factors were distinguished in Saleh and Ryans (1992) work in the hotel industry conviviality, tangibles, reassurance, avoid sarcasm, and empathy. The first of these, conviviality, accounted for 62.8 per cent of the overall variance; the second factor, tangibles, accounted for a further 6.9 per cent; the five factors together accounted for 78.6 per cent. This is strongly suggestive of a two-factor solution in the hospitality industry. The researchers had initially assumed that the factor analysis would confirm the [SERVQUAL] dimensions but this failed to be the case. Four factors were extracted in Gagliano and Hathcotes (1994) investigation of SQ in the retail clothing sector personal attention, reliability, tangibles and convenience. Two of these have no correspondence in SERVQUAL. They conclude the [original SERVQUAL scale] does not perform as well as expected in apparel speciality retailing. Three factors were identified in Bouman and van der Wieles (1992) research into car servicing customer kindness, tangibles and faith [6]. The authors were not able to find the same dimensions for judging service quality as did Berry et al. One factor was recognized in Babakus et al.s (1993b) survey of 635 utility company customers. Analysis essentially produced a single-factor model of SQ which accounted for 66.3 per cent of the variance. The authors advance several possible explanations for this unidimensional result including the nature of the service, (which they describe as a low-involvement service with an ongoing consumption experience), non-response bias and the use of a single expectations/perceptions gap scale. These researchers concluded: With the exception of findings reported by Parasuraman and his colleagues, empirical evidence does not support a five-dimensional concept of service quality. In summary, Babakus and Boller (1992) commented that the domain of service quality may be factorially complex in some industries and very simple and unidimensional in others. In effect, they claim that the number of SQ dimensions is dependent on the particular service being offered. In their revised version, Parasuraman et al. (1991b) suggest two reasons for these anomalies. First, they may be the product of differences in data collection and analysis procedures. A more plausible explanation is that differences among empirically derived factors across replications may be primarily due to across-dimension similarities and/or within dimension differences in customers evaluations of a specific company involved in each setting. Spreng and Singh (1993) have commented on the lack of discrimination between several of the dimensions. In their research, the correlation between Assurance and Responsiveness constructs was 0.97, indicating that they were not separable constructs. They also found a high correlation between the combined Assurance-Responsiveness construct and the Empathy construct (0.87). Parasuraman et al. (1991b) had earlier found that Assurance and Responsiveness items loaded on a single factor and in their 1988 work had found average intercorrelations among the five dimensions of 0.23 to 0.35. In testing their revised version (Parasuraman et al., 1991b), Parasuraman and colleagues found that the four items under Tangibles broke into two distinct dimensions, one pertaining to equipment and physical facilities, the other to employees and communication materials. They also found that Responsiveness and Assurance dimensions showed considerable overlap, and loaded on the same factor. They suggested that this was a product of imposing a five-factor constraint on the analyses. Indeed, the additional degrees of freedom allowed by a subsequent six-factor solution generated distinct Assurance and Responsiveness factors. Parasuraman et al., (1991a) have now accepted that the five SERVQUAL dimensions are interrelated as evidenced by the need for oblique rotations of factor solutionsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦to obtain the most interpretable factor patterns. One fruitful area for future research, they conclude, is to explore the nature and causes of these interrelationships. It therefore does appear that both contextual circumstances and analytical processes have some bearing on the number of dimensions of SQ. 2.6: Contextual stability Carman (1990) tested the generic qualities of the SERVQUAL instrument in three service settings a tyre retailer, a business school placement centre and a dental school patient clinic. Following Parasuraman et al.,s suggestion, he modified and augmented the items in the original ten-factor SERVQUAL scale to suit the three contexts. His factor analysis identified between five and seven underlying dimensions. According to Carman, customers are at least partly context-specific in the dimensions they employ to evaluate SQ. In all three cases, Tangibles, Reliability and Security were present [7]. Responsiveness, a major component in the RATER scale, was relatively weak in the dental clinic context. Carman also commented: Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry combined their original Understanding and Access dimensions into Empathyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ our results did not find this to be an appropriate combination. In particular he found that if a dimension is very important to customers they are likely to be decomposed into a number of sub-dimensions. This happened for the placement centre where Responsiveness, Personal attention, Access and Convenience were all identified as separate factors. According to Carman, this indicates that researchers should work with the original ten dimensions, rather than adopt the revised five-factor Parasuraman et al., (1988) model. 2.7: Item loadings In some studies (e.g. Carman, 1990), items have not loaded on the factors to which they were expected to belong. Two items from the Empathy battery of the Parasuraman et al., (1988) instrument loaded heavily on the Tangibles factor in a study of dental clinic SQ. In the tyre retail study, a Tangibles item loaded on to Security; in the placement centre a Reliability item loaded on to Tangibles. An item concerning the ease of making appointments loaded on to Reliability in the dental clinic context, but Security in the tyre store context. He also found that only two-thirds of the items loaded in the same way on the expectations battery as they did in the perceptions battery. Carman supplies other examples of the same phenomena, and suggests that the unexpected results indicate both face validity and a construct validity problem. In other words, he warns against importing SERVQUAL into service setting contexts without modification and validity checks. Among his specific recommendations is the following: We recommend that items on Courtesy and Access be retained and that items on some dimensions such as Responsiveness and Access be expanded where it is believed that these dimensions are of particular importance. He also reports specific Courtesy and Access items which performed well in terms of nomological and construct validity. Carman (1990) further suggested that the factors, Personal attention, Access or Convenience should be retained and further contextualised research work be done to identify their significance and meaning. 2.8: Item correlations Convergent validity and discriminant validity are important considerations in the measurement of second-order constructs such as SERVQUAL. One would associate a high level of convergent validity with a high level of intercorrelations between the items selected to measure a single RATER factor. Discriminant validity is indicated if the factors and their component items are independent of each other (i.e. the items load heavily on one factor only). Following their modified replication of Parasuraman et al.,s work, Babakus and Boller (1992) conclude that rules for convergence and discrimination do not indicate the existence of the five RATER dimensions. The best scales have a high level of intercorrelation between items comprising a dimension (convergent validity). In their development work in four sectors (banking, credit-card company, repair and maintenance company, and long-distance telecommunications company) Parasuraman et al., (1988) found inter-item reliability coefficients (alphas) varying from 0.52 to 0.84. Babakus and Boller (1992) report alphas which are broadly consistent with those of Parasuraman, varying from 0.67 to 0.83 (see Table III). In their 1991b version, Parasuraman et al. report alphas from 0.60 to 0.93, and observe that every alpha value obtained for each dimension in the final study is higher than the corresponding values in theà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦original study. They attribute this improvement to their rewording of the 22 scale items. Spreng and Singh (1993), and Brown et al., (1993) are highly critical of the questionable application of alphas to difference scores. They evaluate the reliability of SERVQUAL using a measure specifically designed for difference scores (Lord, 1963). Spreng and Singh conclude that there is not a great deal of difference between the reliabilities correctly calculated and the more common [alpha] calculation, an observation with which Parasuraman et al., (1993) concurred when they wrote: The collective conceptual and empirical evidence neither demonstrates clear superiority for the non-difference score format nor warrants abandoning the difference score format. 2.9 Expectations (Operational Criticisms) Notwithstanding the more fundamental criticism that expectations play no significant role in the conceptualization of service quality, some critics have raised a number of other concerns about the operationalization of E in SERVQUAL. In their 1988 work, Parasuraman et al. defined expectations as desires or wants of consumers, i.e. what they feel a service provider should offer rather than would offer (emphasis added). The expectations component was designed to measure customers normative expectations (Parasuraman et al., 1990), and is similar to the ideal standard in the customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction literature (Zeithaml et al., 1991). Teas (1993a) found these explanations somewhat vague and has questioned respondents interpretation of the expectations battery in the SERVQUAL instrument. He believes that respondents may be using any one of six interpretations (Teas, 1993b): (1) Service attribute importance. Customers may respond by rating the expectations statements according to the importance of each. (2) Forecasted performance. Customers may respond by using the scale to predict the performance they would expect. (3) Ideal performance. The optimal performance; what performance can be. (4) Deserved performance. The performance level customers, in the light of their investments, feel performance should be. (5) Equitable performance. The level of performance customers feel they ought to receive given a perceived set of costs. (6) Minimum tolerable performance. What performance must be? Each of these interpretations is somewhat different, and Teas contends that a considerable percentage of the variance of the SERVQUAL expectations measure can be explained by the difference in respondents interpretations. Accordingly, the expectations component of the model lacks discriminant validity. Parasuraman et al. (1991b; 1994) have responded to these criticisms by redefining expectations as the service customers would expect from excellent service organizations, rather than normative expectations of service providers, and by vigorously defending their inclusion in SQ research. Iacobucci et al. (1994) want to drop the term expectations from the SQ vocabulary. They prefer the generic label standard, and believe that several standards may operate simultaneously; among them ideals, my most desired combination of attributes, the industry standard of a nominal average competitor, deserved SQ, and brand standards based on past experiences with the brand. Some critics have questioned SERVQUALs failure to access customer evaluations based on absolute standards of SQ. The instrument asks respondents to report their expectations of excellent service providers within a class (i.e. the measures are relative rather than absolute). It has be