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Bullying continues to exist in schools and students want teachers to take an active role in prevention and intervention. Prior research has explored why teachers do not intervene in bullying, but a gap exists in the research in regard to how the personal characteristics of teachers are related to their approach to bullying. This research addresses this. Studies on the perspectives and characteristics of pre-service and in-service teachers were conducted. The research tested the hypothesis that certain characteristics of teachers will be related to teachers being more willing to intervene in bullying situations and be related to teachers' attitudes about bullying. It was determined that pre-service and in-service teachers differed in their attitudes and approaches to bullying. Pre-service teachers perceived bullying as more serious. Pre-service teachers tended to also rate themselves as more feminine than in-service teachers. Pre-service teachers also indicated that they were not prepared to handle bullying incidents, as they lacked confidence. Pre-service also had views that differed from in-service in regard to the school climate and environment and how bullying would be handled. There were some differences in thinking styles that predicted preferred interventions. Both types of teachers viewed physical bullying as more serious than relational aggression. Some differences existed in recognizing bullying in scenarios containing a student with a disability compared to a student without a disability. The results suggest that the ideal training for teachers in how to handle bullying may be training that is tailored specifically for the type of teacher (i.e. pre-service versus in-service).

I tested the hypothesis that pet-to-owner personality-matching may improve pet-owner satisfaction on an instrument I designed. If a prospective pet owner adopted a dog with similar personality characteristics, the pet owner may be more satisfied with the pet and less likely to relinquish it. The 88 participants had self-selected their dog. The participants worked in a veterinarian clinic/hospital, zoo, grooming parlor or were employed as university faculty or graduate students. The survey consisted of 45 questions about the dog and 45 questions about the participants. A satisfaction rating and demographic survey were used. Out of the 45 traits for a possible human-to-pet match, there were four matches. The one slightly moderate correlation is stated below, followed by three weak correlations. These results do indicate a trend in human-to-pet matches. Both humans and dogs are willing to share possessions and make an attempt to get along with others. Both enjoyed running outside together. The dog owner is not likely to leave trash such as wrappers around, and the dog does not chew up items, so the living space is clean. Further, there was a trend for people highly satisfied with their pets to own a dog that had certain behaviors. These included dogs that greeted them by running up to them, shared toys and food, and refrained from tearing up items. A trend existed to show that people who were highly satisfied with their dog had particular personality characteristics themselves. They were more motivated to exercise rather than lounge on the sofa, but were not likely to go running outside without a pet. Further, they tended to be satisfied with the routine of everyday life. These people seem well adjusted in that they are not likely to tear up anything when anxious or insist on getting their own way in situations of everyday life. Despite the few significant results, the research provides an important contribution to the literature in that it demonstrates the challenge of isolating personality of dogs and prospective owners for the purpose of matching them during pet adoption. This study is helpful in advancing the idea of certain personality matching that might be effective to some slight degree for some who share the aforementioned traits. However, overall, this study did not achieve the desired significance level. It had limitations regarding statistical power in that there were few who were not satisfied with their dog, including even some who had returned a dog. More participants who returned dogs were needed to be able to have enough power to analyze this population separately The goal is to reduce the number of dogs relinquished.