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Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Ethnic-Racial Minority Former Foster Youth Who Identify As Queer, Cristian A. Lemus

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the lived experiences and meaning making of former foster youth of color who identify as both ethnic-racial minorities and as either gender or sexual minorities. A total of three participants took part in this study. All participants identified as a former foster youth with at least one foster care placement in the United States, as an ethnic-racial minority, and as a gender or sexual minority. In the lived experiences of the participants three themes, and several subthemes, emerged: identity, cultural prejudice, and power dynamics. The findings supported the hypothesis former foster …

Class, Family Involvement, And Asian American Four And Two-Year College Students’ Experiences Of Advantage And Disadvantage, Blair Harrington

Doctoral Dissertations

While the significance of familial support in college receives substantial and growing attention, Asian American college students’ experiences of such support remain unclear. In a series of three articles that draw on a total of 140 intensive semi-structured interviews, this dissertation explores the effect class has on students’ experiences of three different types of familial support: 1) students’ receipt of parental support, 2) students’ provision of parental support, and 3) students’ receipt of sibling support. The first article “The Power of Class and Not Institution Type: Asian American Four and Two-Year College Students’ Receipt of Parental Support” employs a …

The Use Of Simulation With The School Of Nursing And Health Professions (Sonhp) Prelicensure Students To Support Affirming Practice With Transgender Communities, Genevieve Charbonneau

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how prelicensure nursing students are prepared to address healthcare disparities with transgender patients, specifically through simulation scenarios at the University of San Francisco School of Nursing and Health Professions Simulation Center.

A critical review of current literature reveals how microaggressions against transgender communities create and sustain barriers to equitable healthcare. The qualitative study was designed to explore the lived experience of prelicensure nursing students who are actively seeking to understand the healthcare needs of transgender patients in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This was a qualitative research study including data that suggests that using simulation scenarios featuring …

From Predator To Prey: The Edification Of Stigma Management In The Small-Dollar Loan Industry, Nick Mmbaga Mmbaga

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I focus on how entrepreneurs in a stigmatized industry – the Small-Dollar, or “Payday” Loan industry – manage industry stigma and evaluate the extent to which they employ strategies to mitigate this stigma. This dissertation is an ethnographic, participatory observation study, where I engage with lenders as a customer, borrowing and paying back loans from different small-dollar establishments. I find that, in response to being subject to multiple elements of stigma, industry representatives, entrepreneurs, and employees used a variety of strategies, in part, based on the policies initiated against their industry that resulted in different strategies employed …

Developing A Broader Understanding Of Subjective Age: A Mixed Methods Investigation, Gretchen A. Petery

Doctoral Dissertations

Subjective age (SA), a self-construal of age often measured by asking how old a person feels (e.g., felt age, FA), has been proposed as an alternative to chronological age (CA) in organizational research. Indeed, prior research reveals that SA has predictive abilities above and beyond CA on work relevant outcomes such as stress, retirement intentions, and health. Younger adults tend to report feeling older than their CA; this switches to feeling younger than CA sometime around mid- to late-twenties, although there is considerable variability in the size and direction of FA-CA differences at all ages. Yet, relatively little is known …

An Examination Of Household Food Security’S Measurement, Report And Experience By Gender, Jaime Foster

Doctoral Dissertations

Food insecurity, defined as the inability to access sufficient food for an active, healthy life, affects 14.3 percent of United States. Food Security (FS) has been measured annually using the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Household Food Security Module (HFSM) since the 1990s; however, responses to this self-report measure may vary by household member. Thus, this study aims to 1) determine how gender is related to differences in interpretation and report of FS using the HFSM; 2) determine if gender is related to interpretation of terms relevant to FS measurement, and; 3) pilot test a qualitative technique novel to the …

Attitudes And Barriers To Women’S Participation In A Proposed Community-Based Conservation Program In Western Belize, Amanda Shay Kaeser

Doctoral Dissertations

World conservation issues have been addressed in many ways around the world. The use of community-based conservation (CBC) as a method to reduce harmful practices has gained in popularity in the past few decades. This dissertation reports results from a pre-analysis of a proposed CBC program in western Belize. Through qualitative interviews with 47 stakeholders, and a quantitative survey with 486 Belizean women, we determined that a CBC program designed especially for women should be successful. Some of the aspects of a program that women expressed a desire for was more conservation and forest education. However, contrary to our assumption …

The Discursive Construction Of Language Teaching And Learning In Multiuser Virtual Environments, Douglas W. Canfield

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to broaden how researchers within computer-assisted language learning (CALL) make sense of and examine psychological and power constructs at play in language courses conducted in 3D multiuser virtual environments. 18 students and 2 teachers in 8 formal English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in the 3D multiuser virtual environment of Second Life participated in a discourse analysis study to explore the theoretical and analytic ways in which critical discursive psychology could function to explore how teaching and learning are performed as interactional events in a community of language teachers and learners in Second Life by investigating …

Newly Licensed Registered Nurses' Experiences With Clinical Simulation, Carrie Ann Bailey

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how new graduate nurses perceive the value of simulation in making the transition into professional practice. This study will use a descriptive qualitative approach with a sample of first year nurses. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model serves as this study’s conceptual framework. For the current study, the sample consisted of 10 newly graduated, female nurses with less than one year of experience working in the hospital setting were interviewed. Data analysis included interviews and transcription by the researcher. Finally, participants were asked about themes to increase rigor. Four themes emerged from this research: …

Taking It To The Streets: A Multimethod Investigation Of Street Credibility And Consumer Affinity Toward Street Credible Endorsers, Delancy Howard Sterling Bennett

Doctoral Dissertations

Celebrity endorsers are featured in 10 to 20 percent of commercials in the United States (Agrawal and Kamakura, 1995). While firms have invested significant capital in celebrity endorsers, they traditionally shy away from those who have been involved in illegal or immoral acts (Briggs, 2009; Creswell, 2008). However, the rules of endorser selection appear to be changing. Recently, a new type of endorser whose celebrity is built in part upon criminal activity or violent history has emerged. These celebrities, often rappers, successfully endorse major brands such as Vitamin Water and Chrysler. They are frequently described as having another form of …

"These Rights Go Beyond Borders And Pieces Of Paper": Urban High School Teachers And Newcomer Immigrant Youth Engaging In Human Rights Education, Juliet A. Schiller

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study explored the ways that two ninth and tenth grade teachers and their newcomer immigrant students engaged in HRE using elements of critical pedagogy at an urban pubic high school. Research data included eight months of classroom observations and interviews with two teachers and nineteen of their students across four of their classrooms. In this study, the complexity of engaging in HRE with newcomer students was brought to light as two teachers enacted their vision of critical pedagogy, human rights content and learning goals, as well as English language instruction.

The findings in this study conveyed that engaging …

Definitions Of Labor: A Study Of Working-Class Graduate Student Writing Instructors, Casie Janelle Fedukovich

Doctoral Dissertations

“Definitions of Labor: A Study of Working-Class Graduate Student Writing Instructors” presents six narratives of self-identified working-class graduate student writing instructors. Broadly, it explores their individual definitions of class and the pedagogical import of these definitions. Chapter One introduces the topic through radical reflexivity, as the researcher queries her own positioning in relationship to the working-class identity, before moving to detail methods and methodologies. Chapter Two provides a literature review beginning with early scholarship on Impostership Studies and moving through single-authored and collected working-class academic autobiographies. Chapters Three through Eight present the individual narratives of the participants. These interpretive chapters …