Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Religion And Semiosphere: From Religious To The Secular And Beyond, Rajka Rush

Dissertations

Religion is a system of structural ideas that involve the natural ability of the mind to engage itself into the process of unlimited semiosis which can be defined as an existential openness of one's consciousness to the universe as a system. This primary religious consciousness becomes limited by language, symbolic, and cultural constraints. The religious semiotic space is a sub-cultural system open to culturally and cross-culturally encoded idioms and concepts. These cultural potentials are interpreted and settled by the religious exegesis expressed in the behavioral patterns of the symbolic actions that reflect a specific worldview of the closed community controlled …

Development Of An Instrument To Identify The Virtues Of Expert Nursing Practice: ‘Byrd’S Nurses Ethical Sensitivity Test’ (Byrd’S Nest), Lisa Marie Byrd

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop and analyze the psychometric properties of Byrd’s Nurse’s Ethical Sensitivity Test (Byrd’s NEST). An instrument to evaluate nurses’ ethical sensitivity in practice by examining choices of action in ethical dilemmas based on nursing virtues: compassion, fidelity to trust, moral courage, justice, self-confidence, resilience, practical reasoning, and integrity (Benner, Tanner, & Chelsa, 1996; Volbrecht, 2002). Benner’s theory of skill acquisition-novice to expert was the theoretical framework for this research which surveyed for correlations between a nurse’s ethical sensitivity and educational level, years of experience, certification, and work setting. Until now, there have been …

Motivational Factors That Influence African American Women To Serve As Michigan State Legislators, Rogenia Goza

Dissertations

Problem. The purpose of this study was to discover factors that influence the political career choice of African American women legislators to serve in the State of Michigan Congress. Therefore, this study focused on motivations that affected three African American women legislators' political experiences.

Method. This study used a case-study approach, and the end result is a multi-faceted case study of the political experiences of three State of Michigan African American women legislators. The techniques used in the ethnographic research---interviews, observations, note-taking, and reviews of public and personal documents---were intended to increase understanding of the observed phenomena. Data …