Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of Program Outcomes: Assessment In Children, Cheryl M. Romano

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

In an age of increased concern for accountability and the review of services, administrators of health programs should be able to present their clinics effectiveness, and demonstrate their excellent service to the community, along with providing evidence for the continued need of such clinics. Outcome evaluation plays an integral part in providing this information, and is intended to provide information concerning the effectiveness of a particular program, thus allowing for modification, and even better outcomes.

This project addressed pre and post functioning in children referred for academic and/or behavioral difficulties, in a university of health sciences-based clinic. The aim was …

Mean Length Of Utterance In Children With Specific Language Impairment And In Younger Control Children Shows Concurrent Validity And Stable And Parallel Growth Trajectories, Mabel L. Rice, Sean M. Redmond, Lesa Hoffman

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Purpose: Although mean length of utterance (MLU) is a useful benchmark in studies of children with specific language impairment (SLI), some empirical and interpretive issues are unresolved. The authors report on 2 studies examining, respectively, the concurrent validity and temporal stability of MLU equivalency between children with SLI and typically developing children. Method: Study 1 used 124 archival conversational samples consisting of 39 children with SLI (age 5;0 [years;months]), 40 MLU-equivalent typically developing children (age 3;0), and 45 age-equivalent controls. Concurrent validity of MLU matches was examined by considering the correspondence between MLU and developmental sentence scoring (DSS), …

Determinants Of Long-Term Care Service Utilization By Mexican-American Family Caregivers, Angelica P. Herrera

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Objectives: Participation in long-term care services may prevent the deterioration of family caregivers' mental and physical health, yet research suggests that Latino caregivers may forego using long-term care services in the absence of other barriers to long-term care use (e.g., lack of insurance).

Methods: An adapted version of the Andersen Model of Health Care Service Utilization served as a framework for examining familism, acculturation, gender roles, religiosity, and knowledge and perceptions about long-term care, as potential determinants of long-term care service use, alongside other factors known for their association with long-term care use (e.g. functional status of care recipient, caregiver …

Insights From The 2006 Disease Management Colloquium, David B. Nash, Robert A. Greene, Ronald R. Loeppke, Nancy Mccall, Tracey Moorhead

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

This roundtable discussion emanates from the presentations given and issues raised at the 2006 Disease Management Colloquium, which was held May 10–12, 2006 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

An Exploration Of Artists’ Use Of Color, Kate Horn

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

The use of color creates a varied reaction from person to person within the human experience. Color has been theorized to have many different symbolic meanings. However, no definitive link between color and symbolic meaning has been found. Research about human response to color has been examined in relation to cognitive, psychological, and physiological effects. Within the field of art therapy, color is important for understanding the client’s view. However, the art therapist’s interpretation of client color use may be based on myths perpetrated in the field. In-depth interviews of three professional artists were done in order to explore the …

Recognition Of Facial Expressions Of Six Emotions By Children With Specific Language Impairment, Kristen Diane Atwood

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past several years, research has shown that children with language impairment often have increased social difficulties. The purpose of this study was to take a closer look at the relationship between language ability and emotion understanding by examining the recognition of facial expressions in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing peers. As such, this study is a follow-up investigation of the work done by Spackman, Fujiki, Brinton, Nelson, & Allen (2006). Children with SLI and their age- and gender-matched peers were asked to identify the following six facial expressions of emotion in a language-minimal …

Accuracy Of Automated Developmental Sentence Scoring Software, Carrie Ann Judson

Theses and Dissertations

Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS; Lee 1974) is a well established, structured method for analyzing a child's expressive syntax within the context of a conversational speech sample. Automated DSS programs may increase efficiency of DSS analysis; however the program must be accurate in order to yield valid and reliable results. A recent study by Sagae, Lavie, and MacWhinney (2005) proposed a new method for analyzing the accuracy of automated language analysis programs. This method was used in addition to previously established methods to analyze the accuracy of a new automated DSS program, entitled DSSA (Channell, 2006). Previously collected language samples from …

Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Words For Speech Reception Threshold Testing In Arabic, Elisha Rose Ratcliff

Theses and Dissertations

The use of speech audiometry is essential in audiological testing. One of the most important elements of speech audiometry is speech reception threshold. To provide services for the growing population of non-English speaking people, audiologists need speech audiometry materials in a variety of languages. The purpose of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate Arabic bisyllabic words for use in testing speech reception threshold. Ninety frequently used bisyllabic words were digitally recorded by a male talker of standard Arabic. These words were presented to 20 normally hearing subjects in 2 dB increments at intensity levels ranging from …

Psychometrically Equivalent Bisyllabic Word Lists For Word Recognition Testing In Taiwan Mandarin, Alycia Jane Dukes

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Taiwan Mandarin bisyllabic word lists to be used for word recognition testing. Frequently used bisyllabic words were selected and digitally recorded by male and female talkers of Taiwan Mandarin. Twenty normally hearing subjects were presented each word to find the percentage of words which they could correctly recognize. Each word was measured at 10 intensity levels (-5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Logistic regression was used to include 200 words with the steepest logistic regression slopes in four psychometrically …

Speech Reception Threshold Materials For Taiwan Mandarin, Katie Bedke Slade

Theses and Dissertations

Speech reception threshold (SRT) tools have been developed to assist in the evaluation of hearing. This study was performed to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and equate Taiwan Mandarin trisyllabic words which can be used to measure the SRT. Eighty-nine commonly used trisyllabic words were chosen and digitally recorded by native male and female speakers. The words were then presented to 20 normally hearing subjects at 14 intensity levels (-10 to 16 dB HL) with 2 dB increments. Psychometric function slopes were calculated using logistic regression. Twenty-eight words with steep psychometric function were selected and digitally adjusted to match the mean …

Assessing Effects Of Iq On Sociable And Withdrawn Behaviors In Children With Language Impairment, Amanda Lyn Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of IQ on subtypes of sociable and withdrawn behaviors in children with language impairment (LI). Research has suggested that children with LI are more likely to experience difficulty with social interaction than their typically developing peers (Brinton & Fujiki, 1999; Rice, 1991). The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (Hart & Robinson, 1996) was used to compare sociable and withdrawn behaviors in 19 children with LI and 19 children with typically developing language. IQ scores for each participant were obtained by administering the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (Bracken & McCallum, 2003). These …

Dissociation Of Automatic And Strategic Lexical-Semantics: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence For Differing Roles Of Multiple Frontotemporal Regions, Brian T. Gold, David A. Balota, Sara J. Jones, David K. Powell, Charles D. Smith, Anders H. Andersen

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

Behavioral research has demonstrated three major components of the lexical-semantic processing system: automatic activation of semantic representations, strategic retrieval of semantic representations, and inhibition of competitors. However, these component processes are inherently conflated in explicit lexical-semantic decision tasks typically used in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research. Here, we combine the logic of behavioral priming studies and the neurophysiological phenomenon of fMRI priming to dissociate the neural bases of automatic and strategic lexical-semantic processes across a series of three studies. A single lexical decision task was used in all studies, with stimulus onset asynchrony or linguistic relationship between prime and …

Samuel Taylor Coleridge And Opium., Donald John Marotta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coleridge's usual use of opium was through laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol. This thesis presents the history of and criticism regarding the poet's use of laudanum and the physical and emotional consequences the drug held for him and his writing career.

Hearing Health In Utah Special Olympics Athletes Compared To Special Olympics Athletes Worldwide: A Prevalence Study In Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities, Lisa Moses Mullins

Theses and Dissertations

The Special Olympics Healthy Athletes initiative promotes wellness of the athletes with intellectual disabilities and education for medical professionals. Healthy Athletes has created a hearing screening program, Healthy Hearing, to help athletes with intellectual disabilities get the otological and audiological care they need. This program promotes a healthy hearing lifestyle and educates medical professionals regarding the need of health care for the intellectually disabled population. The physiologic, otologic, and audiologic abnormalities often occurring in the intellectually disabled population bring special attention for the need to determine the prevalence rate of hearing loss among the athletes participating in Special Olympics events. …

Acoustic Structures In The Alarm Calls Of Gunnison’S Prairie Dogs, C. N. Slobodchikoff, J. Placer

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Acoustic structures of sound in Gunnison’s prairie dog alarm calls are described, showing how these acoustic structures may encode information about three different predator species (red-tailed hawk—Buteo jamaicensis; domestic dog—Canis familaris; and coyote—Canis latrans). By dividing each alarm call into 25 equal-sized partitions and using resonant frequencies within each partition, commonly occurring acoustic structures were identified as components of alarm calls for the three predators. Although most of the acoustic structures appeared in alarm calls elicited by all three predator species, the frequency of occurrence of these acoustic structures varied among the alarm calls for the different predators, suggesting that …

Student Demographics With Changing Admission Criteria: Is Nursing Diversity At Risk?, Jung Yoon, Kimlin Mcdaniel Keith

Master's Projects

Schools of nursing are challenged with choosing from an increasing number of applicants and the need to prepare as many successful nurses as possible to meet the nursing shortage. Strategies have included increasing student enrollment, utilizing accelerated programs, and changing admission criteria. This study describes the demographic characteristics of three classes of nursing students admitted under different criteria to the same nursing school. The value of maintaining a high level of ethnic diversity is guided by Leininger's theory of cultural care diversity and universality. Although changes occurred in the demographic constitution of each nursing class, ethnic diversity was maintained as …

Exercise Self-Efficacy, Stages Of Exercise Change, Health Promotion Behaviors, And Physical Activity In Postmenopausal Hispanic Women, Pamela Wolfe Kohlbry Phd

Dissertations

The purpose of this correlational research is to understand the relationships among the variables of exercise self-efficacy, stages of exercise change, health promotion behaviors, body mass index (BMI), health problems, and the level of physical activity in postmenopausal Hispanic women. The significance of this study is to contribute research that enhances the understanding of the relationship of psychosocial and health promotion correlates and physical activity in postmenopausal Hispanic women. On a national level, this is important because Hispanic women make up one of the fastest growing minority populations and they experience the second highest level of obesity. This research is …

Resilience And Quality Of Life In Taiwanese Survivors Of Childhood Cancer, Li-Na Chou Phd, Msn, Rn

Dissertations

Survivors of childhood cancer are at risk to develop physiologic-psychosocial complications that affect their quality of life. This study explored how the independent variables of illness-related risk (ILLRK), individual risks (IRK), protective factors (PF) and resilience (RS) affected the dependent variable---quality of life (QOL)--in Taiwanese survivors of childhood cancer. Triangulated research methodology was employed to (1) identify the statistical relationships between the variables and (2) explore qualitatively what these variables meant to the subjects and how their perceptions further explained the statistical results. Haase's (2004) Adolescent Resilience Model was used as the theoretical framework. Ninety-eight Taiwanese adolescent cancer survivors, diagnosed …

Does Culture Influence The Needs Of Critical Care Families?, Naomi Alston

Master's Projects

Purpose: This study explores ICU patient's family member needs, particularly Vietnamese and Latino families. Design: Convenience sampling at 24 bed ICU in acute care community hospital serving ethnically diverse population. Methods: Non-experimental survey with pretest-posttest design using Demographic sheet, Critical Family Needs Inventory (CCFNI), and Needs Met Inventory (NMI). Information pamphlets were distributed. Data analysis was by ethnic groups using measures of central tendency and descriptive statistics. Findings: CCFNI results indicate family members of all ethnicities experience the same priority of needs; support and information are top two needs. English, Spanish and Vietnamese pamphlets met information needs of the majority …

The National School Lunch Program: History Of The Past, Challenges Of The Present, Solutions For The Future, Hilary Annie Smith

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was initially designed to provide nutritious meals to hungry schoolchildren. Over time, it seems as though this focus has shifted to serving as a source of proper nutrition in a society of over-fed yet undernourished children. The stated purpose of the NSLP is to "safeguard the health and well-being of the nation's children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food." Currently, there are many challenges that the National School Lunch Program faces in meeting its goal of promoting healthful lifestyle practices among school-aged children. Three main challenges include …

The National School Lunch Program, Elizabeth Strasser

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The National School Lunch (NSLP) Program is a federally assisted meal program that began in 1946 and is designed to provide nutritionally balanced lunches to children. The program started slowly in 1853, in a few school districts around the United States. The efforts spread throughout different cities, and organizations were set in place to serve meals to children in schools under the supervision of the school boards.

The American Dietetic Association believes that all children and adolescents should have access to food and nutrition programs that ensure adequate food supply that promotes optimal physical. and social growth and development.

School …

Maximum Repetition Rates In Children At-Risk For Dyslexia, Amy L. Baxter

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

My senior thesis has focused on current research exploring precursor communication skills being conducted by Dr. Ben Massen at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. To that end, I worked in an acoustics lab analyzing Maximum Repetition Rates (MRR), also known as diadochokinetic rates, DDKs, in young children's speech development. This four year funded research project began in 2004.

In this paper I will provide an overview of the underlying theoretical considerations guiding the study and then describe my particular contribution to the effort, completed during Fall semester 2005 while I was a foreign exchange student.

Characteristics Of Human Figure Drawings Created By Students With Learning Disabilities, Monika L. Isip

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

Previous research concerning the artistic indicators of learning disabilities has yielded inconsistent results. Children with learning disabilities comprise a heterogeneous population, with diverse strengths and challenges. There has been a lack of research on the graphic indicators of learning disabilities, which takes this diversity into account. This study aimed at exploring the characteristics of Human Figure Drawings (HFDs) created by students with learning disabilities.

The study examined the HFDs of 2 Virginia Beach Public School 2nd graders who were identified by their parents as having learning disabilities; one child’s disability was described as being a decoding deficit and the other …

The Healing Potential Of Art: A Psychobiographical Study Of Three Artists, Amy Reahard

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

The statement that art in itself is healing may not always be true as demonstrated by the destructive, often short lives of many artists. This may appear to contradict the fundamental belief, held by many art therapists, that art is healing. Studying the fields of creativity and art history could help understand this apparent contradiction.

One way to combine the studies of creativity, the healing power of art, and art history is through the practice of psychobiography. The psychobiographer who studies the life of a prominent artist combines various psychological approaches with the literary records, art history, and visual evidence …

Art Therapy With Adults With Autism, Kimberly Dennler

EVMS School of Health Professions Theses & Dissertations

Research regarding art therapy with adults with autism is limited. The objective of this study was to understand the effect of a specific art therapy intervention upon social interaction and communication of the adults with autism. The hypothesis was that by participating in this intervention, the participants’ communication and socialization would increase and their maladaptive behaviors would decrease. Over a series of nine sessions, the five participants from Bittersweet Farms were introduced to basic techniques for working with clay.

Results were based on qualitative analysis of data from staff surveys, through the use of pre and post questionnaires; observations made …

The Total And Specific Dimensions Of Self Concept Related To Female Participation In Collegiate Athletics, Dane Bradford Beary

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if differences existed between female collegiate sport participation and non-participation, as well as female collegiate individual and team sport participation on the total, the specific dimensions of self-concept and supplementary scores as rendered by the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale Second Edition TSCS:2 (Fitts & Warren, 1996). A subject pool of N=190 participants were used. All subjects included in data analysis were female undergraduate students. A multivariate analysis of variance (M ANOVA) was utilized to evaluate effects of sports participation versus non-participation and individual versus team sports participation on self-concept. On sports participation versus …

La Story: Improving Care Management For The Chronically Ill And Chronically Underserved, Eileen Salinsky, Jessamyn Taylor

National Health Policy Forum

This Los Angeles-based site visit examined safety net and private sector efforts to improve care coordination for underserved and vulnerable populations, including the homeless, the uninsured, the undocumented, and individuals with chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma, and severe mental illness. The visit highlighted challenges and innovations in the use of disease management programs, information systems, performance incentives, and managed care as tools for improving care coordination.

Automated Grammatical Analysis Of Language Samples From Spanish-Speaking Children Learning English, Nicole Redd

Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated that automated grammatical tagging is fast and accurate for both English and Spanish child language, but there has been no research done regarding its accuracy with bilingual children. The present study examined this topic using English and Spanish language samples taken from 254 children living in the United States. The subjects included school-aged children enrolled in public schools in the United States in grades 2, 3, or 5. The present study found high automated grammatical tagging accuracy scores for both English (M = 96.4%) and Spanish (M = 96.8%). The study suggests that automated grammatical analysis has …

Toward A Formal Theory Of Flexible Spatial Behavior: Geometric Category Biases Generalize Across Pointing And Verbal Response Types, John P. Spencer, Vanessa R. Simmering, Anne R. Schutte

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Three experiments tested whether geometric biases—-biases away from perceived reference axes—-reported in spatial recall tasks with pointing responses generalized to a recognition task that required a verbal response. Seven-year-olds and adults remembered the location of a dot within a rectangle and then either reproduced its location or verbally selected a matching choice dot from a set of colored options. Results demonstrated that geometric biases generalized to verbal responses; however, the spatial span of the choice set influenced performance as well. These data suggest that the same spatial memory process gives rise to both response types in this task. Simulations of …

Perceived Barriers To Care Among Hispanic Women Who Delay Prenatal Care, Gustavo A. Moretta

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among selected demographic variables and the barriers to prenatal care perceived by English- Speaking, Hispanic women. The Health Belief Model was used as the theoretical framework to guide the development of this study.

The sample consisted of 20 participants aged 18 years to 38 years of age who had sought prenatal care at a primary care clinic in a midwest community. The participants had visited the provider for prenatal care after the twelfth week of gestation. Data were obtained using two instruments. Melnyk’s Perceived Barriers to Care Seale (1990) measured …