Digital Commons Network^™

Predictors Of Healthcare Utilization Among Latinos And Non-Latino Whites : Trauma, Generation Of U. S. Residency, Perceived Health, And Protective Factors, Kristin N. Conlon

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

No abstract provided.

Dying Today: Perspectives Of The Modern Hospice Worker, Nicholas Jay Mac Murray

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

From a sociological standpoint, death is relatively difficult to research. While some individuals may describe near-death experiences, the actual act of death cannot be fully known to the living. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the nature of death and dying in the United States today. This research examines the perspective of modern hospice workers. These individuals work near death on a regular basis and therefore have a privileged understanding of what death is like in US society today. Data consist of ten in-depth interviews with hospice/ palliative-care workers in the Midwestern United States. Respondents were …

Evaluation Of Verbal Behavior In Older Adults, Amy Gross

Dissertations

Older adults make up a large and increasing portion of the population (U.S. apply those assessments to the evaluation of verbal behavior in older adults with and without dementia. The research addressed two questions. First, in what way do verbal behavior problems differ between older adults with and without dementia? Second, does language deteriorate in a pattern compatible with Skinner's analysis of functionally independent verbal operants? Thirty-one participants were categorized into Control (n=15) and Dementia (n=16) Groups based on their score on the Dementia Rating Scale-2. Verbal behavior assessments were administered to participants on two occasions, separated by one week. …

Gvsu Press Releases, 2011, Grand Valley State University

University Press Releases, 1961-Present

A compilation of press releases for the year 2011 submitted by University Communications (formerly News & Information Services) to news agencies concerning the people, places, and events related to Grand Valley State University.

Estimation Of The Centre Of Mass From Motion Capture And Force Plate Recordings: A Study On The Elderly, Sebastien Cotton, Michele Vanoncini, Philippe Fraisse, Nacim Ramdani, Emel Demircan, Andrew P. Murray, Thierry Keller

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The estimation of the centre of mass position in humans is usually based on biomechanical models developed from anthropometric tables. This method can potentially introduce errors in studies involving elderly people, since the ageing process is typically associated with a modification of the distribution of the body mass. In this paper, an alternative technique is proposed, and evaluated with an experimental study on 9 elderly volunteers. The technique is based on a virtual chain, identified from experimental data and locating the subject's centre of mass. Its configuration defines the location of the centre of mass, and is a function of …

Distress Among Indigenous North Americans: Generalized And Culturally Relevant Stressors, Melissa L. Walls, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Stress process and life-course models of mental distress emphasize socio-cultural and historical processes that influence stress exposure and the impact of stress on mental health outcomes. Drawing from these theoretical orientations as well as concepts from the historical trauma literature, we examine the effects of culturally relevant and more generalized sources of stress on distress among North American Indigenous adults, and tests for the potential cumulative and interactive effects of stress on distress across the life-course via self-reported early childhood and adult/contemporary stressors. Results of OLS regression analyses reveal positive, significant associations between general stressors and distress as well as …

The Elder Economic Security Initiative™: The Elder Economic Security Standard™ Index For Iowa, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Wider Opportunities For Women

Gerontology Institute Publications

This report addresses income adequacy for Iowa’s older adults using the national WOW-GI National Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) methodology. The Elder Index benchmarks basic costs of living for elder households and illustrates how costs of living vary geographically and are based on the characteristics of elder households, including household size, home ownership or renter status and health status. The costs are based on market costs for basic needs of elder households and do not assume any public or private supports.

Risk Factors For Driving Cessation Vary By Race And Ethnicity, Elizabeth Dugan, Frank Porell, Chae Man Lee

Gerontology Institute Publications

Driving is related to our identity and independence as well as allowing us to get needed goods, services, and social opportunities that enrich daily life. Yet with increasing age, the risk for developing threats to medical fitness to drive increases. Driving cessation is related to a long list of negative outcomes, such as: depression, social isolation, diminished access to health care, and diminished quality of life. We investigated risks for driving cessation, paying close attention to racial differences. This study used data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), 1998-2008. The study included N=46, 528 older people (age 65 and …

The Elder Economic Security Initiative™: The Elder Economic Security Standard™ Index For Colorado, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Wider Opportunities For Women

Gerontology Institute Publications

This report addresses income adequacy for Colorado’s older adults using the national WOW-GI National Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) methodology. The Elder Index benchmarks basic costs of living for elder households and illustrates how costs of living vary geographically and are based on the characteristics of elder households, including household size, home ownership or renter status and health status. The costs are based on market costs for basic needs of elder households and do not assume any public or private supports.

Elders’ Attitudes Toward Extending The Healthy Life Span, Victor G. Cicirelli

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Despite continuing debate between anti-aging researchers seeking major life span extension and concerned gerontologists and bioethicists, elders’ views have received little research attention. Study aimed to relate elders’ attitudes toward strong life span extension to psychosocial and background factors. Participants were 109 American elders (65% women) aged 60-99 (M = 77.08, SD = 9.05). Measures included attitudes toward living long and living forever, Desired Age, Death Acceptance, Goal Seeking, Internality, and background variables (age, gender, marital status, education, religion, health). Attitudes were more positive toward an extended life span than living forever (p < .01). In regression analyses, more positive attitudes were related to greater Desired Age, less Death Acceptance, greater Goal Seeking, and greater Internality, and to lower age and non-Christian religious affiliation. Qualitative analyses explored goals for various periods of additional life. Elders’ positive attitudes toward extended life need consideration by experts debating this issue.

Effects Of Two Group Approaches On Life Satisfaction And Mood Of Older Females In Nursing Homes, Bede Redpath Ryan

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two group counseling therapy interventions on levels of life satisfaction and mood disturbance of older women, age 65+, living in two Detroit-based skilled nursing home facilities. This quasi-experimental, two-treatment group design examined the pretest-posttest data of two group counseling therapy interventions, Group Art Therapy (GAT) and Group Life Stories Narrative Therapy (GLSNT). Seventeen participants completed the bi-weekly, 90-minute sessions, over a four-week period. A univariate ANCOVA with group membership as fixed independent variable was used to compare life satisfaction post scores with pre scores as covariates. Mean scores were …

Nursing Home Administrators' Personality And Nursing Home Quality: Correlations Between The Predictive Index And Cms Ratings, Kelly Anne Osbaldiston

Online Theses and Dissertations

The approximately two million residents in nursing homes are nearly totally dependent on the care they receive from the nursing homes' staff. The quality of care ranges from excellent to substandard, and the goal of this project is to understand how the top administrators' personality is related to the quality of the facility. Very little research has been done from an organizational psychology perspective on how to improve the care that residents receive in nursing homes. To help address this problem, I examined the relationship between administrator personality factors (measured by Predictive Index) and nursing home quality (measured by the …

Ovarian Hormones, Aging And Stress On Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity, Michael R. Foy

Psychological Science Faculty Works

The ovarian steroid hormones estradiol and progesterone regulate a wide variety of non-reproductive functions in the central nervous system by interacting with molecular and cellular processes. A growing literature from studies using rodent models suggests that 17β-estradiol, the most potent of the biologically relevant estrogens, enhances synaptic transmission and the magnitude of long-term potentiation recorded from in vitro hippocampal slices. In contrast, progesterone has been shown to decrease synaptic transmission and reduce hippocampal long-term potentiation in this model system. Hippocampal long-term depression, another form of synaptic plasticity, occurs more prominently in slices from aged rats. A decrease in long-term potentiation …

The Relationship Of Financial Performance, Quality Indicators, And The Role Of Nurse Executives In Virginia Nursing Homes, Jeany V. Murphy

Health Services Research Dissertations

Problem statement. The dynamic nature of the healthcare industry has triggered changes in nurse executive functions. The job has expanded into entrepreneurial roles to be able to provide the most cost effective services while maintaining good quality outcomes for the residents. The new responsibility requires a different set of knowledge and competencies that is usually achieved through advanced education. It is not known whether nurse executives in long term care in Virginia possess the skills to influence both the financial and quality outcomes of the facility.

Methods. This descriptive research study examined the relationship of the nurse executives' technical, human, …

First Elderly Client In Therapy: Factors That Influence Student Interest In Geropsychology, Cristina E. M. Filippelli

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In the coming decades, the elderly population in United States (U.S) is expected to grow significantly (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). Consequently, the number of older individuals seeking mental health services will be greater than at any other time in the history of the U.S. The field of clinical psychology, however, is unable to meet the mental health needs of the current elderly population, and this gap is expected to widen in coming years. There is an ongoing discussion within the field of professional psychology as to how to train more clinicians to work with the elderly population (Gatz …

Gvsu Undergraduate And Graduate Catalog, 2011-2012, Grand Valley State University

Course Catalogs, 1963 - Current

Grand Valley State University 2011-2012 undergraduate and/or graduate course catalog published annually to provide students with information and guidance for enrollment.

Social Gerontology- Integrative And Territorial Aspects: A Citation Analysis Of Subject Scatter And Database Coverage, Elaine M. Lasda Bergman

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

To determine the mix of resources used in social gerontology research, a citation analysis was conducted. A representative sample of citations was selected from three prominent gerontology journals and information was added to determine subject scatter and database coverage for the cited materials. Results indicate that a significant portion of gerontology research, even from a social science perspective, relies roughly equally on medical resources as it does social science resources. Furthermore, there is a small but defined core of literature constituting scholarly “territory” unique to gerontology. Analysis of database indexing indicated that broad, interdisciplinary databases provide more comprehensive coverage of …

Neural Activity, Neural Connectivity, And The Processing Of Emotionally-Valenced Information In Older Adults: Links With Life Satisfaction, Robert J. Waldinger, Elizabeth A. Kensinger, Marc S. Schulz

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

This study examines whether differences in late-life well-being are linked to how older adults encode emotionally-valenced information. Using fMRI with 39 older adults varying in life satisfaction, we examined how viewing positive and negative images affected activation and connectivity of an emotion-processing network. Participants engaged most regions within this network more robustly for positive than for negative images, but within the PFC this effect was moderated by life satisfaction, with individuals higher in satisfaction showing lower levels of activity during the processing of positive images. Participants high in satisfaction showed stronger correlations among network regions – particularly between the amygdala …

Strengths-Based Practice And Motivational Interviewing, Trevor Jay Manthey, Bryan Knowles, Dianne Asher, Stéphanie Wahab

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

There has been recent concern that many practices and programs erroneously claim to be strengths-based. In reaction some have called for researchers to make systematic comparisons to the tenets of strengths-based practice (SBP) before making the contention that an intervention is strengths-based. Motivational interviewing (MI) is an intervention which has been described as being strengths-based; however, no systematic efforts have yet been made to compare the two. This article takes a methodical approach to comparing SBP and MI to determine level of cohesion and how they might be used together. A case-example is used to illustrate how MI and SBP …

“I Would Feel Uncomfortable If My Child’S Teacher Were Gay”: Examining The Role Of Symbolic Homophobia And Political Affiliation, Michael Moore, Amy C. Moors

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Symbolic homophobia is a general negative disposition towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals, which is demonstrated in symbolic forms of prejudice rather than overt actions. Stigma towards lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals has transformed from overt forms of prejudice to slightly less blatant more subtle forms in recent years (Schafer & Shaw, 2009). Based on previous research, it is has also been shown that conservatives will have higher levels of symbolic homophobia. (Linneman, 2004), Thus, in order to assess the more nuanced forms of prejudice in relation to political affiliation, Study 1 created a scale to assess symbolic homophobia. …

The Contribution Of Set Switching And Working Memory To Sentence Processing In Older Adults, Mira Goral, Manuella Clark-Cotton, Avron Spiro Iii, Loraine Obler, Jay Verkuilen, Martin Albert

Publications and Research

This study evaluates the involvement of switching skills and working memory capacity in auditory sentence processing in older adults. The authors examined 241 healthy participants, aged 55 to 88 years, who completed four neuropsychological tasks and two sentence-processing tasks. In addition to age and the expected contribution of working memory, switching ability, as measured by the number of perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, emerged as a strong predictor of performance on both sentence-processing tasks. Individuals with both low working-memory spans and more perseverative errors achieved the lowest accuracy scores. These findings are consistent with compensatory accounts of …

A Survey Of Georgia Adult Protective Services Staff: Implications For Older Adult Injury Prevention And Policy, Sheryl M. Stasser, Judith Kerr, Patricia S. King, Brian Payne, Sarah Beddington, Danielle Pendrick, Elizabeth Leyda, Frances Mccarty

Sociology & Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Introduction:

The aging population is a rapidly growing demographic. Isolation and limited autonomy render many of the elderly vulnerable to abuse, neglect and exploitation. As the population grows, so does the need for Adult Protective Services (APS). This study was conducted to examine current knowledge of older adult protection laws in Georgia among APS staff and to identify training opportunities to better prepare the APS workforce in case detection and intervention.

Methods:

The Georgia State University Institute of Public Health faculty developed a primary survey in partnership with the Georgia Division of Aging Services’ leadership to identify key training priority …

The Relationship Of Race And Social Integration On The Health Status Of Older Adults In An Urban City, Thomas T. Jordan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Durkheim argues that an individual is more vulnerable to self-destruction the more s/he is detached from the collective. This dissertation will explore the relative impact of social integration on older adults who have transitioned into their new roles in the social structure in relationship to their physical (obesity) and psychological (stress) health status. Additionally, the dissertation examines how social integration varies in its impact from one racial group to another, and how such variations influence the health status of the older adults who are members of these groups.

This dissertation employs data from the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging and …

Meanings Of Old Age: A Story In Three Voices, Rivka Tenenbaum-Precel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the population of the Western world grows older, the need to understand the meaning of this stage in life grows in importance. Psychological research into the meaning of old age is posing questions on diverse levels, from that of individual ontogenesis to those of the family, community and society at large. Traditionally, developmental psychology has investigated different aspects of aging using measures of cognition, emotion, self-concept and well- being. Other approaches have examined the meaning of old age as embedded in cultural and social relations.

The present study uses a narrative approach to elicit the particular voices and interpretations …

Ua77/1 Alumni Relations Publications, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Publications created by and about Alumni Relations. This series includes newsletters, magazines and brochures. See UA77.4 for publications created by alumni chapters.

Patterns Of Social Activity Engagement Among Older Hispanics And Their Relationship To Sociodemographic And Health Variables, Marta B. Rodríguez-Galán, Luis M. Falcón

Sociology Faculty/Staff Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine patterns of social activity engagement in a sample of older Hispanics (Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Hispanic) and determine whether these patterns differed significantly from the comparison non-Hispanic White group. This article also analyzes how ethnicity, sociodemographic, and health variables (health problems and depression) relate to each of the activity engagement patterns. The factor analysis of social activities from the Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire yielded three factors, which describe engagement in social activities as: children and relatives active, friends and activities active, and senior services active. The results from the regression analyses …

Policy Determinants And Medicaid Managed Care, Diane Elizabeth Brandt

Dissertations

The U.S. Medicaid program is increasingly challenged by reductions in federal entitlement spending, a faltering private sector health insurance base, escalating health care expenditures and an aging and increasingly diverse population. Converging pressures on state Medicaid programs have challenged state policy makers to find new approaches to enhance program efficiency. One of these policy tools is the adoption of Medicaid managed care programs for individuals with chronic illness and disability, particularly important as these enrollees incur the highest health care costs. The increasing prevalence of chronic illness combined with the growth of households in poverty creates significant implications for Medicaid …

12-2010 Newsletter, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Library Services

Library Services Newsletters

Minnesota State University, Mankato, Library Services Newsletter for December 2010.

Chhs December/January E-Newsletter, Dr. John Bonaguro, Dean, Vashon S. Wells, Editor, Wku College Of Health & Human Services

College of Health & Human Services Publications

No abstract provided.

Winona Currents Magazine, University Advancement - Winona State University

Winona Currents

This magazine published by Winona State University’s University Advancement was intended to inform WSU Alumni, students, faculty, staff and the greater community about Alumni and the university.Major Buzz, Grand Tour, Satellite View.