CATEGORY WIDTH COGNITIVE STYLE AS A FACTOR IN ACCOUNTANTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION
This paper reports the findings of a laboratory experiment designed to investigate the relationship of category width (CW) cognitive style with accountants' perceptions of accounting information. Subjects drawn from large accounting firms in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Australia, were classified into broad, medium, and narrow categories following the test devised by Pettigrew [19]. Subjects were requested to state their level of confidence in decisions they had made after receiving (1) conventional accounting information or (2) conventional accounting information and human resources accounting (HRA) information using a one-group pretest-posttest design. The results indicated a significant relationship between CW cognitive style and the accountants' confidence in their decisions. Furthermore, CW cognitive style moderated the accounting-information/decision-making relationship.
Personality and activity preference
Previous research in different fields has indicated that people choose various jobs, learning institutions and leisure-time activities in terms of their personality structure, and to satisfy various needs. This study was designed to investigate the relationship between the two commonly distinguished personality variables of extraversion and neuroticism and the choice and avoidance of specifically social situations. Subjects were requested to indicate how much time they had spent in leisure situations over the past week; to rank order their preference for activities which reflected Murray's major needs and presses; and to rate their choice or avoidance of other abstractly described, and then stressful, anxiety-provoking, social situations on a five-point scale. It was shown, using two-way analysis of variance on factor scores derived from the factor analysis of different but related scales, that extraverts have a significantly and meaningfully different pattern of activity preferences from introverts. This finding was also true of high and low neurotics but not to the same extent. The results are discussed in terms of a major criticism of the methodology and conclusion in the person–situation debate, subject assignment in laboratory experiments and social skills training, and assessment.
Ceramic microwave antennas for mobile applications
Due to their medium to high permittivity values, ceramic microwave materials are attractive as building blocks for miniaturised antenna solutions. Further advantages are low dielectric losses and an excellent temperature stability of standard ceramic materials. Yet, the permittivity of the ceramic material also has a strong influence on the radiation efficiency and bandwidth of the antenna. This implies that in the design process a suitable compromise has to be found between the degree of miniaturisation on the one hand and the antenna efficiency and bandwidth on the other. We describe two approaches towards efficient miniaturised ceramic microwave antennas: the dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with partial metallisation and the shorting post patch antenna. We focus on design steps taken to ensure both a high degree of miniaturisation and high values of the radiation efficiency, the choice of the ceramic material and the experimental performance of the antennas.