Digital Commons Network^™

Psychometrics And Test-Enhanced Learning In A Patient-Centered Learning Curriculum, Syed Haris Ali

Theses and Dissertations

Validity and reliability of scores obtained on Multiple-choice questions (MCQs), as well as the benefits of test-enhanced learning, have been of interest to medical educator scholars. Presented in this dissertation are four composite studies on these themes. The following hypotheses were tested:

1. Increased MCQ distractor functioning increases the validity and reliability of obtained scores.

2. Correction of item writing flaws (along with enhancement of tested cognitive level) and replacement or removal of non-functioning distractors equally improves psychometric characteristics of MCQs.

3. Repeated testing via free-response items enhances the retention of knowledge of human anatomy, compared with repeated or once-testing …

The Relationship Between Labor Unions And Safety In Us Airlines: Is There A "Union Effect?", Renee Catherine Zapf

Theses and Dissertations

Every airline union claims to work for safety and presents anecdotes where greater airline safety has been achieved through union efforts. The effect unionization has on safety outcomes in U.S. commercial airlines, however, wasn’t found to be previously tested. Studies have shown that in industries such as coal mining, retail, and construction, unionization does lead to an increase in safety. This study evaluated the safety rates of 15 major US commercial airlines to compare the difference between unionized and non- unionized airlines. These safety rates were compared based on if and how long each airline’s pilots and flight attendants have …

Bedside Reporting, Melanie Krentz

Theses and Dissertations

Some might say that the complexity of health care as we know it exceeds the capacity of \ .). the human mind. As a result, the process of communication within health care organizations is equally as complex and to a large degree, challenging. Specifically, the patent handoff is particularly problematic and may be defined as " the process of transferring care and accountability for a patient from one health care professional to another'' (Jukkala, James, Autrey, Azuero, & Miltner, 2012, p.240). The aim of this paper is to introduce the notion of bedside reporting after identifying the importance and ongoing …

Privatization Of Air Traffic Control Services In The United States: A Comparison Of Past Government Privatization Efforts In The United States And Other Countries, Daniel Lindsey

Theses and Dissertations

The privatization of air traffic control (ATC) is one possible way to reduce the cost, increase the efficiency, and speed the innovation of ATC in the United States. However, studies from other countries in which ATC services have been privatized show mixed results in these areas and have often involved imposing some kind of fee-for-service pricing system. Furthermore, analyses of privatization efforts in other areas of government demonstrate that such efforts have been controversial and have not always resulted in lower service delivery costs. Therefore, a possible alternative would be to focus on reorganizing the FAA and consolidating services such …

Predicting Irregular Flight Operations Using A Binary Machine Learning Approach Based On National Meteorological Data, Martin Hellwig

Theses and Dissertations

Flight delays are caused by a multitude of external influences as well as revenue driven carrier decisions. Some factors are obvious while others remain inaccessible to the traveling public. Yet knowing of potential flight delays or cancellations in advance can significantly improve passengers’ travel experience and empower them to make informed decisions when flight irregularities occur. We combine a Naïve Bayes - based feature selection method with publicly available meteorological data and flight performance statistics to create a forecasting tool that provides passengers with an improved prediction of potential delays. After promising initial results we optimize our feature selection and …

Preventing Sleep Deprivation In Shift Nurses: What Is The Best Evidence?, Rhonda D. Wilkins

Theses and Dissertations

Insufficient sleep can lead to a variety of cognitive problems such as impaired learning ability, slow thought processes, slower reaction time, poor mood, risky decision-making, inattention, diminished communication skills, and the danger of falling asleep during critical times. Sleep deprived shift nurses are a risk for making erTors and developing health problems. The purpose of this independent study is to detennine the best evidence to prevent sleep deprivation in shift nurses.

A comprehensive review of the literature was perfonned to detennine best practices of preventing sleep deprivation in shift nurses. Literature searches using CINAHL, Medline, Medline Plus, PubMed, Cochrane Library, …

Burnout In Applied Behvior Analysis Tutors: The Role Of Personality, Stress, And Affectivity, Lindsay A. Deling

Theses and Dissertations

Using an individual and dispositional approach, the current study examined the relationship between personality (as conceptualized using the Big Five personality variables) and burnout when accounting for the stress and affectivity as mediators. Participants included 152 (140 females, 92.1%) Applied Behavior Analyst (ABA) tutors ages 20-63 (M = 27.84, SD = 6.48) who worked with children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders and who spent the majority of their work hours each week in a center-based ABA program. Participants across the United States completed the survey online, while one autism center located in the Midwest completed the survey in-person with …

The Pronominal Clitics Of Logar Ormuri, Jeremy Hawbaker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a description of the system of pronominal clitics in the Logar dialect of Ormuri, an Iranian language of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Logar dialect is based in the Logar province of Afghanistan and is near to extinction. The thesis studies grammatical constraints on the occurrence of pronominal clitics in Ormuri sentences. It also investigates discourse factors that influence when a pronominal clitic is used to refer to an entity in the situation that is being talked about, rather than a noun, an independent pronoun, or zero anaphora. My analysis is based on a corpus consisting of fifty-five …

Increasing Influenza Vaccination Rates Within The Veteran Population, Bernadette R. Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the best methods to increase vaccination rates in the Veteran population. The Veteran community is comprised of the young and old, both female and male, and individuals with a healthy or unhealthy status. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Healthy People 2020 were sites utilized, retrieving data and statistics to emphasize the need for this annual vaccination. This information iterates the need for complete compliance from every Veteran. PubMed and Cinahl allowed for a literature review of previously studied populations. This review led to a multifaceted, multi-professional approach to increasing vaccination rates among populations examined. …

Placing Wardak Among Pashto Varieties, Dennis Walter Coyle

Theses and Dissertations

Wardak is one variety of the Pashto language. Most of its approximate one million speakers live in Wardak Province, which is just south of the capital city, Kabul, of Afghanistan. While all Wardaks think of themselves as Pashtun, the Wardak speech variety is considered different from other Pashto varieties. Is Wardak a dialect of Pashto, or is there evidence for it being a variety separate from Pashto? Pashto has been developed with an alphabet going back four hundred years and an extensive literature, which includes an education curriculum that is taught in the primary schools. Does the existing literature and …

Consonant Correspondences Of Burmese, Rakhine And Marma With Initial Implications For Historical Relationships, Heidi A. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a consonantal comparison of the Burmese, Rakhine and Marma languages of Myanmar and Bangladesh, with primary focus on initial and medial consonants. Its main purposes are to provide new data from the Rakhine and Marma languages of Bangladesh and to make some initial observations about the historical relationship between the three languages based on compiled consonant correspondences.

Although much literature is available on the Burmese language as the primary representative of the Southern Burmish languages, little information is available on Rakhine and Marma. This thesis thus extends previous work on the family tree to these two close …

Verbal Fluency: Norms For The Lakota Population In Semantic And Phonemic Fluency Tasks, Larissa M. Jordan

Theses and Dissertations

The Lakota language in western South Dakota is spoken by a people group with a rich cultural and religious heritage. The Lakota language, still spoken by elderly Lakota people, is slowly vanishing as the majority of people in younger generations are no longer learning Lakota and with it the semantic knowledge of how Lakota speakers view the world. This study was completed to gather semantic information about the animals that bilingual Lakota English speakers name in English and in Lakota.

An additional objective of this study was to develop normative data for the Lakota people on phonemic (letter P) and …

Subordination In Sarikoli, Deborah Kim

Theses and Dissertations

Sarikoli [srh] is an Iranian language spoken in Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in northwest China. This thesis describes three types of subordinate clauses in Sarikoli: 1) relative clauses, 2) complement clauses, and 3) adverbial clauses. The relative clause and complement clause structures are briefly compared with those found in related Iranian and Pamir languages (Persian, Tajik, Shughni, Rushani, and Wakhi).

Sarikoli relative clauses are placed before the head noun. Common nouns, proper nouns, demonstratives, and genetic terms may be relativized, but pronouns are generally not relativized. A wide range of syntactic functions are allowed for the common argument in both …

Handshapes In Afghan Sign Language, Justin Power

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents aspects of handshapes in Afghan Sign Language [afg]. Afghan Sign Language is a Deaf sign language found in Afghanistan (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2014).

Signs in Afghan Sign Language contrast based on the handshape parameter. Furthermore, handshapes contrast based on selected fingers, thumb configuration, arrangement, and aperture. The thesis gives evidence for the selected fingers features [one], [two], [three], and [four]; for the thumb configuration features [opposed], [radial], and [contacting]; for the arrangement features [spread], [joined], and [crossed]; and for the aperture features [open] and [closed].

Of the 22 expected feature combinations, 18 are found in the …

The Phonetics And Phonology Of Bora Tone, Amy Roe

Theses and Dissertations

Bora is a Witotoan language spoken in Peru and Colombia. It has an unusual mixed tone/stress system in which L is the specified tone and H the unspecified tone. In this thesis, I describe the underlying tone patterns of noun and verb roots and show how their surface representations change in different phonological environments. I examine noun stems with seven different suffixes and one prefix and verb stems with thirteen different suffixes.

Disyllabic noun roots have three surface tone patterns: L∅, ∅L, and ∅∅. Additionally, Bora has a low boundary tone that associates to the right edge of noun phrases. …

Amiodarone Induced Phlebitis, Jill Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

Amiodarone is a commonly used antiarrhythmic medication. When administered through a peripheral intravenous catheter, Amiodarone is associated with a high risk of phlebitis. Phlebitis is characterized by inflammation, swelling, redness, and pain at the vascular point of access and along the vascular route of administration. Phlebitis can cause a delay of treatment, infection, and prolonged hospital stays. A central line is the preferred IV administration route for Amiodarone due to its potential effects of vein irritation. Often times Amiodarone is administered in an emergent setting where attaining a central line is not feasible. Therefore, peripheral IV administration is routinely used …

Extension And Applications Of The Gvvpt2 Method To The Study Of Transition Metals, Patrick K. Tamukong

Theses and Dissertations

The ground and low-lying excited electronic states of molecules of the first ( 2 Sc , 2 Cr , 2 Mn , and 2 Ni ) and second ( 2 Y , 2 Mo , and 2 Tc ) row of transition elements have been investigated for the first time with the generalized Van Vleck second order multireference perturbation theory (GVVPT2) method, a variant of MRPT. All potential energy curves (PECs) obtained in these studies were smooth and continuous; that is, they are free from wiggles or inflexion points. In order to account for relativistic effects, which become important in …

Ageism And Experience Bias In Employment Interviews, Dustin Grant Williams

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Description And Analysis Of Four Metarepresentation Markers Of Indus Kohistani, Beate Lubberger

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes and analyzes four markers of Indus Kohistani, a language spoken in Northern Pakistan that has received little attention so far. The markers discussed are lee, a "hearsay" evidential that does however not mark every reported speech, karee, a grammaticalized quotative and complementizer that is also found in purpose and reason clauses, in naming and in similarity constructions, če, a complementizer borrowed from Pashto, and loo, a marker that indicates utterances a speaker wishes her audience to convey to a third party.

Relevance Theory, an inferential theory of communication, distinguishes between utterances that are …

Legalized Marijuana: A Literature Review, Tonya Voecks

Theses and Dissertations

Marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in America and has a reputation among the public as being harmless (Moore et al., 2007). Marijuana is currently classified by the federal government as a Schedule l controlled substance with no value as a therapeutic agent; however, it is legal for medical use in 16 states including the District of Columbia and in 2012 Colorado and Washington passed a ballot providing for legalized recreational use of marijuana (Bostwick, 2012). Marijuana use has been known to cause psychosis and amotivation, which is of grave concern for healthcare workers when caring for the …

Mandatory Counseling In Post Deployment Military Members, Christine Ainsworth

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Implementing The Use Of Tranexamic Acid In The Acute Traumatically Injury Patient, Erin Beck

Theses and Dissertations

Every year, traumatic injury accounts for more than five million deaths, and millions of more hospitalizations and emergency department visits worldwide. If the trauma patient does reach the hospital, more than half of those die from hemorrhage (Roberts, Shakur, Coats, et al., 2013) .

A review of literature was performed to evaluate the use of TXA in the traumatically injured patient experiencing hemorrhage or at significant risk for hemorrhage. It was concluded the use of TXA was indicated in this patient population, and the implementation of its use in the acute care setting was appropriate.

The Theory of Symptom Management …

An Analysis Of Students' Perceptions To Just Culture In The Aviation Industry: A Study Of A Midwest Aviation Training Program (Case Study), Lazo Akram Mohammad

Theses and Dissertations

The research will focus on the discussion of the ways in which the top-down nature of Safety Management Systems (SMS) can be used to create „Just Culture‟ within the aviation industry. Specific focus will be placed on an aviation program conducted by an accredited university, with the institution in focus being the midwest aviation training program. To this end, a variety of different aspects of safety culture in aviation and aviation management will be considered. The focus on the implementation strategies vital for the existence of a „Just Culture‟ within the aviation industry in general, and particularly within the aforementioned …

Reducing Mental Health Stigma In The Army, Jacqueline R. Zent-Sieber

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Depression In Diabetes, Deborah Marie Dubois Byrd

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Social Media Implementation In Nurse Education, Leeann Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Technological advances are present in every aspect of our life and higher education is no exception. Today's college students, also known as the millennial generation, are the most technologically advanced generation. Nurse educators need to think about the technological possibilities that can be utilized in the classroom to engage the students in active learning and to improve the student outcomes. This independent project explores what is known about social media in nurse education and discusses areas for further research. Social media is being used in the nursing classroom, but many have not been researched based. This independent project discusses how …

Food Allergies Birth Through Age 5 And Nutrition, Renee Cole

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Contraceptive Counseling And The Relationship To Chlamydia Prevention And Screening, Bernice Kane

Theses and Dissertations

Contraceptive counseling is a common issue for today's health care clinicians. An important aspect of a thorough contraceptive counseling visit includes sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk history and screening. Chlamydia is the most common STI and it is especially problematic among women under the age of 25. Untreated infections, which are often asymptomatic, can result in serious complications such a pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Clinicians have a unique opportunity and responsibility to assist in the prevention of STI. Stressing responsible behavior and providing the necessary education, support, and resources are important aspects of primary prevention. Identifying risk …

Motivational Interviewing: An Effective Intervention For Faith Community Nurses, Lois J. Ustanko

Theses and Dissertations

Motivational interviewing (Ml) is an effective technique for helping clients make lifestyle changes and adhere to recommended treatment plans. Faith community nurses trained to use motivational interviewing can empower individuals to make changes which reduce their risk for complications from chronic health conditions. Findings suggest a faith community nurse who uses motivational interviewing techniques during health coaching has a greater likelihood of helping clients with hypertension make lifestyle changes that reduce the risk for complications from cardiovascular disease.

The Benefits And Barriers To Telehealth For Chronic Health Conditions, Schevell Y. Liu

Theses and Dissertations

As life expectancy increases, it is expected that the growing number of aging population will face an increase in chronic illnesses. Thus management of individuals with chronic illnesses will require establishing a primary care provider who can closely monitor these patients which may require frequent follow up visits. However, access to healthcare can pose a challenge to this specific population. In terms of access, this implies the availability of healthcare providers, transportation, and cost factors. Telehealth can be a solution to manage patients with chronic illnesses. In the case study presented, telehealth was the form of communication utilized for the …