Sandals Resorts International: The Quality Advantage

Founded in 1981, Sandals Resorts International is now 17 properties and 3,880 rooms, and also has become a world-class success story with one of the 10 most recognizable brand names in the international hospitality industry, according to the author, group director for human resources development and training for Sandals.

Study on Bivariate Normal Distribution

Let (X, Y) be bivariate normal random vectors which represent the responses as a result of Treatment 1 and Treatment 2. The statistical inference about the bivariate normal distribution parameters involving missing data with both treatment samples is considered. Assuming the correlation coefficient ρ of the bivariate population is known, the MLE of population means and variance (ξ, η, and σ2) are obtained. Inferences about these parameters are presented. Procedures of constructing confidence interval for the difference of population means ξ – η and testing hypothesis about ξ – η are established. The performances of the new estimators and testing procedure are compared numerically with the method proposed in Looney and Jones (2003) on the basis of extensive Monte Carlo simulation. Simulation studies indicate that the testing power of the method proposed in this thesis study is higher.

The effects of bilingual and monolingual reading videos on story recall with students who are deaf and hard of hearing

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of bilingual and monolingual videos on the reading comprehension of students with significant hearing impairments and/or deafness. Children with and without hearing losses need reading programs in which comprehension of meaning is the primary goal. This can occur only when print is represented in meaningful context, allowing children to create meaning from their own experience, background, and knowledge of language.^ Investigated in this study was whether students with significant hearing losses comprehended more information in a bilingual or monolingual instructional video format. There were three instructional videos produced: (a) the bilingual video which incorporated American Sign Language (ASL) with standard English captions, (b) a monolingual English video with standard English captions only, and (c) a monolingual ASL-only video. It was hypothesized that the effects of English captioning with ASL might serve as a bridge during instruction, increasing reading comprehension and written English for students. It was further hypothesized that this would allow students to integrate their own ASL knowledge to the printed text to construct meaning.^ Four separate analyses were conducted to see if the hypothesis was supported by the findings. However, all results indicated that there were no significant differences in students' written measures of reading comprehension recall across any of the three presentations of information (two monolingual and one bilingual condition). There were seven variables (word identification, word recall, sentence recall, story recall, written passage theme, written passage word count, and number of mature words) used to evaluate reading comprehension recall. No variable, either individually or grouped, demonstrated a significant difference between monolingual or bilingual instruction. ^