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Every year, thousands of children are referred to psychologists for cognitive assessments yet how testing is experienced is under-researched. This study aimed to explore children's views on and understanding of cognitive assessment focusing on how they describe their experience of the WISC-IV. Interviews with eight children referred for cognitive testing in a paediatric setting were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Five main themes were generated. Overall there was a sense that reasons behind the process of testing were benign; to help with a problem or discover something wrong. Cognitive testing was seen as distinct from other testing experiences e.g. in hospital and school. Children described a mixed experience of cognitive testing which they experienced as unusual. This unusual experience was mainly related to the varied difficulty of tests both across and within sub-tests. Children found this difficult to manage. Elsewhere children seemed to appreciate qualities of the testgiver and described learning from the actual test experience. Not surprisingly, children described having mixed feelings related to testing. Children dealt with testing differently, some used humour and others dismissed the tests as easy or boring. Children appeared to normalise their experience by talking about testing as related to the known phenomena of school. Children's wider experiences of coping with hospital procedures seemed to mirror strategies they used to manage doing the cognitive assessment. This could perhaps indicate that the paediatric context of having cognitive assessments is protective. The paediatric context may limit the transferability of this study's findings. There was an overriding sense of uncertainty about testing including while undergoing the test and about what to expect before testing and how test results might impact on their lives. One means children seemed to manage this uncertainty was to position the test as powerful and trying to help. Children described having different needs for information about testing. The findings suggest that this should be explored with children before testing occurs. Further implications for research and practice are discussed.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have become a powerful resource for studying health outcomes. In time-to-event settings, EHRs are usually subject to interval censoring on the true time of the event. It is common to consider the outcome to be the time of diagnosis. Standard survival analysis tools for right-censored data, such as the Cox proportional hazards model, are commonly used to estimate covariate associations with the time-to-event in such settings. Patients may, however, have access to multiple health care providers across different systems. If patients seek care from external health systems (a phenomenon we call system migration), the diagnosis times within the observed system may be erroneously prolonged. No work has considered the performance of the Cox model under system migration. In this dissertation, we show that system migration related to the outcome of interest results in biased estimates of hazard ratios from the Cox model. We develop an extension to the Cox model that adjusts for system migration by 1) estimating the probability of system migration for each patient and 2) uses multiple imputation to adjust diagnosis times for patients identified as migrating across systems. A vital part of this method involves developing a prediction model from patient-specific system usage patterns for estimating the probability of system migration. To improve prediction assessment, we develop an estimator for time-dependent sensitivity and specificity in the recurrent event setting with unbalanced data across subpopulations. Finally, we consider the choice of time scales for assessing the relative risk of disease diagnosis. We compare the appropriateness of two commonly assumed time scales that define risk sets in the Cox model: the age time scale and the time-on-study time scale. Previous research has suggested that the age time scale, corresponding to birth as a time origin, is most appropriate for epidemiological studies. However, simulation studies have suggested that the time-on-study time scale with covariate adjustment for baseline age is more robust to misspecification of the time scale. We investigate the performance of the Cox model under each time scale under varying degrees of model misspecification and further assess the robustness of each approach when modeling time-varying covariates.

The services of monolayer culture in probing underlying mechanisms around cancer cell biology are extensive and have resulted in novel findings that are too numerous to reference in this paper alone. Rather, broadly speaking, 2D has provided a cornerstone in understanding and exploration of high-throughput pharmacological screens, cellular level imaging, methods of studying metastasis, response to chemotherapy agents, and a great deal more. However, recent research in the field of cancer biology demands us to consider the TME, and to supplement current 2D models by migrating towards 3D methodologies. Improved development of 3D platforms and their further integration into the realm of cancer biology is vital for continued scientific progress of the field. Herein, we present the advancement and novel application of a microfluidic-based 3D collagen droplet platform for utilization with ex vivo PDX MPNSTs. The platform is then utilized for a single and dual drug screen to probe for potential future therapeutic agents based on cellular viability over time. We culminate these studies by presenting a repository of ex vivo PDX MPNSTs across multiple research organizations.

A comprehensive review of research of instructional approaches investigated descriptive and intervention writing studies, both short-term and longitudinal, that has been conducted to examine the writing skills of students with and without disabilities. Various instructional studies investigated the effectiveness of instruction on the writing skills of students with disabilities and their peers. The prior knowledge the writers brought to the writing task and the students' metacognitive ability were factors involved in writing. Presented were the textual factors of the writer's knowledge of both general and specific writing structures that affect the writing process. The impact of instructional procedures is examined. Methodological issues in writing research with secondary school students with learning and behavioral problems were analyzed. This study compared two highly dissimilar approaches of teaching writing: Writer's Workshop, a writing process approach, versus Expressive Writing, a rule-based strategy approach. Expressive Writing (Engleman & Silbert, 1985), the rule-based strategy approach is based on the Direct Instruction Model developed by Siegfried Englemann and his colleagues. This writing instructional method focuses on teaching specific rules and strategies to students so that each student can apply the strategies to his or her writing. Writer's Workshop (Calkins, 1986, 1981; Graves, 1983), the writing process approach including rehearsal, drafting, revising, and editing phases, is based on a social contextualist perspective. The cognitive process of the writer was the emphasis of the process approach to writing. In this study 21 secondary students with mild mental retardation, specific learning disabilities and other health impairments in a rural high school (13 males, 8 females, 16 African Americans and 5 Caucasians, ranging in age from 14.6 to 18.6 years) were randomly assigned to treatment groups: Expressive Writing or Writer's Workshop instruction. Two weeks of 45-minute daily instructional sessions were implemented. The two groups were compared on two essays, two curriculum-based measures and a maintenance essay. To determine whether students demonstrated a preference for either instructional method, an attitude/satisfaction scale was administered. Results of this study suggest that students with mild mental retardation, specific learning disabilities or other health impairments can benefit from small group writing instruction. Students did not show a preference for either instructional method.

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate how environmental preference for the built environment, either in-situ or based on visual representations (e.g. visualisations of final architectural design), may be affected by three distinct variables. One of them is emotion, operationalised as the mood people are in at the time of the evaluation and the way people feel with regards to the environment. A second variable considers the participants' attention and how they may be influenced by task instructions. The third variable, intrinsically related to the second one, is how environmental preference may be influenced depending on the perspective taken at the time of the evaluation. The main research questions in this thesis are: a) How does emotion influence environmental preference? b) What is the impact of perspective-taking on environmental preference? c) What are the benefits of using emotional reactions to the environment as predictors of preference? These main research questions are addressed using both quantitative and qualitative methods, mainly quantitative, underpinned by a pragmatic approach. The unit of analysis in this thesis is the person who evaluates or judges an environment or a representation of it. Five studies are presented in this thesis. Study 1 (n=10) reports the results from interviews with practising architects in the city of Aberdeen. These results show that when designing architects take two distinct perspectives: a prescriptive inferential perspective and a self, referential perspective. These interviews are used to set the context within which this thesis operates: the presentation of design to people with no expertise in architecture and built environment disciplines. The remaining four studies directly address this thesis' main research questions. In Study 2 (n=133), Study 3 (n=146) and Study 5 (n=64) the effects of perspective-taking on different dependent variables are experimentally tested. The dependent variables are: perceived restorativeness (Study 2), environmental preference as measured via informational variables (Study 3), and the emotional reactions people have to representations of the environment (Study 5). Results of these studies show that perspective-taking carries an interpersonal perception bias whereby taking a perspective other than the self results in different environmental evaluation outcomes, but that this process can also be affected by formal training. The influences of emotion on environmental preference are directly explored in Studies 4 (n=32) and 5 (n=64). The results show that mood can have an influence on environmental preference by influencing the emotional reactions people have to the environment, but that these influences vary over time. Overall the thesis shows that perspective-taking and emotion have a range of influences on environmental preference in a built environment context, that these are important at the point at which architecture and built environment professionals design environments, and that timing of environmental evaluations in longitudinal assessments can make the difference between positive and less positive evaluations. This thesis' results are discussed in light of existing knowledge and some recommendations are made for future research and practitioners in architecture and built environment disciplines.

This thesis aims to explore the potential impact of Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) as a conceptual design tool on the design methodology of final year students. Many design studies have focused on sketching and its relationship with creative thinking to validate CAAD programs as a design tool. On the contrary, this study argues that the continued primacy of traditional tools as the predominant conceptual tools needs more evidence in the contemporary design practices. That is to say, the relative importance of CAAD alongside other media, such as sketching, model making and verbalisation must be recognised before the forthcoming leap in CAAD programs development. To illustrate these ideas, the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and Built Environment was used as a case study to explore CAAD’s role in the educational context, the studio in general and the final year studio in particular. A mixed methods approach was employed to carry out two studies: a case study and a protocol study. A case study approach was utilised to understand the modern context whereby CAAD is used by the students despite CAAD not being an integrated part of the project model. The case study was also used to document the reasons behind students’ tendency of using CAAD at the conceptual phases of the design process. Mixed methods were used to collect data at three different intervals of the two semesters; before starting the studio project, while working on the project and after submitting the final project. The methods used include a questionnaire survey, structured reflection interviews, and a focus group. A protocol study was conducted to understand the impact of CAAD on selfcommunication using the think aloud method under the same experimental conditions using CAAD program(s) as the only external representation. The case study findings clarified the effects of the traditional context of the studio and the project model on CAAD’s utility within students’ design processes and identified the lack of CAAD professional skills, and the integration of CAAD as a knowledge base. The protocol study findings provided a greater understanding of the cognitive processes in designing and design performance while using CAAD, as well as acknowledging the possibility of a cyclic conceptual process. The potential impact of CAAD on the design process was further categorised. The empirical exploration provides CAAD research with new insights, instigating more useful ways of teaching and learning by an appropriate integration of CAAD programs and design methods in a situated manner where students can enhance their design processes creatively. It is proposed that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate CAAD and their implications for education.

This thesis investigates the roles of identity and personality in the home making process. Well-known approaches to identity typically define context in social or temporalterms, largely neglecting the physical environment. Personalisation of the dwelling has been argued to function in self-definition and self-presentation, yet only a small body of research corroborates such theories. Personalisation of the dwelling therefore presents an ideal context within which to explore identity processes in the physical environment. The thesis argues that the connection of identity to a dwelling has strong psychological implications for dwellers. Such implications are investigated, particularly in relation to meanings of home. The first study explores psychological and social drivers on the personalisation process through interviews with people who have converted farm buildings to home use. In the second study, attitudes towards home making behaviours are investigated in relation to social and personal identity orientations. The study explores whether such identity-based personality traits influence the way in which the dwelling is used as a means of self-definition. In the third and final study in-depth interviews are carried out with people living in typical Aberdeenshire dwellings. These interviews explore the ways in which identity and personality are connected to the dwelling and how these contribute to the process of home. Quantitative findings suggest that only a small relationship exists between identity orientations and personalisation. However qualitative findings in particular from the third study show a strong link between various aspects of identity and the dwelling. The ways in which identity is connected to the dwelling vary as a function of personality differences. Importantly these connections contribute to the process of home. This research constitutes contributions to a number of research areas, in particular home research and research exploring the role of personalisation and possessions. The research brings together identity, personality and home - areas which have not previously been explored together in great detail. The thesis presents a valuable framework within which to study the interactions of place, personality and identity processes and therefore makes an important contribution to a number of academic fields, in particular environmental psychology and built environment research.

The main aim of this thesis is to utilise the transactional approach from environmental psychology for the study of sustainable housing. The interdisciplinary field of environmental psychology has recognised for some time the importance of considering human behaviour not only in terms of personal psychological processes, but also in terms of the broader social and physical context in which behaviour occurs. This need to consider phenomena at different levels of analysis sits comfortably with the transactional-contextual approach described within environmental psychology. However, although the transactional approach is often affirmed by environmental psychologists, many studies do not in fact fully conceptualise human behaviour in the physical and social context. The phenomenon investigated by this thesis is 'sustainable housing'. As such, the phenomenon of 'sustainable housing' is first conceptualized within this thesis using person-in-environment as the unit of analysis, with the main focus being the relationship between individual environmental preferences and sustainable housing design. The first aim of the thesis was to outline a theoretical framework for conceptualising the person-in-environment relationship with respect to sustainable housing. This was done by building up a conceptual model from the literature in such a way that the 'transactional whole' is elaborated in much more detail than would normally be the case for a closely defined study of environmental attitudes or aesthetic preference. The individual component of the model is built around the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), which is expanded to include environmental perception and preference. The conceptual framework is then explored and developed using case studies that illustrate the importance of considering the individual, the socio-cultural context, and the environmental aspects of sustainable housing together. The first case study (N=74) looked at the psychological aspects of sustainable water and wastewater management within the domestic context. The findings suggest that greywater and rainwater systems are by and large fairly acceptable as a concept to the general public, although there are several concerns regarding the safety of such systems. There were more concerns raised about the idea of compost toilets, concentrating particularly on issues of odour and hygiene, with many people not believing that such toilets would be hygienic or odour-free. The second case study (N=844) examined the effect of building materials on environmental perception and behavioural intention. The results clearly demonstrate that the material used as cladding for house façades significantly influence people's attitudes and preferences towards particular houses. The findings of this study begin to show a link between environmental preference and behavioural intention. Subjective commentary clearly demonstrates that associative meanings are inferred from cladding materials. Following on from the second study, the third case study (N=108) examined the change in inferred meaning associated with a change in cladding material. Participants in this study were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. Two factors were varied between the experimental conditions: the exterior façade material (timber or render), and the description ('standard' or 'sustainable'). Attitudes were found to be a significant predictor of behavioural intention for the survey where the house was described as sustainable. Interestingly, there were differences within the 'sustainable description' surveys which were related to the cladding material, with subjective norms being more strongly associated with behavioural intention when render was the cladding material. Therefore, environmental meaning is considered to be a moderating variable in the theory of planned behaviour. When the house was described as 'standard', environmental preference turned out to be a much better predictor of behavioural intention than any of the three TPB components. The final chapter discusses the major findings from the three case studies in relation to the conceptual model built up from the literature. The empirical data was found to provide considerable validating support for the conceptual model, and two refinements were made to the model following the three case studies. Suggestions are also made concerning ways in which the approach outlined can be taken forward, both within the academic domain of environmental psychology, and also into other areas, such as sustainable housing.