Digital Commons Network^™

Gender Disparity In Nigerian Education: Women’S Experience Of Barriers To Equal Educational Opportunity, Eugene Okoli

Dissertations

Discrepancies between males and females in access to schooling, school completion rates, and participation in employment opportunities are still more the norm in some regions of the world than others. Limited access to education plagues women in Nigeria as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa. Disparity in access to educational opportunity is a pressing gender equity issue in Nigeria (World Bank, 2003).

Relatively few studies have focused on obtaining the viewpoints of women who experience this phenomenon. To hear the voices of these women regarding how they gained or were denied access to education in the Nigerian context, a cross-section of …

Essays On Intrahousehold Allocation And The Family: Fertility, Child Education, And Nutrition, Alemayehu Azeze Ambel

Dissertations

Understanding the constraints that households face when making decisions on fertility, education, and health is beneficial for effective interventions aimed at enhancing investments in human capital, promoting gender equity, and reducing poverty. This dissertation consists of four essays that analyze the nature, performance, and determinants of fertility, child education, and nutritional status in a developing economy.

The first essay identifies peculiar constraints, including gender preference and income uncertainty that households face when making fertility and schooling choices. The underlying assumption in the theoretical analysis is that in the absence of formal risk and capital markets, households may revert to informal …

Private Narratives In Public Places: The Experiences Of Predominantly White Gay Male Undergraduates On Lgb Classroom Panels, James Patrick Dolan Jr.

Dissertations

The scholarly literature addresses the common practice and effectiveness of using classroom panel presentations by lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) speakers to increase awareness of LGB experiences and to change attitudes. However, little is known about the experiences of the speakers themselves or how the experience may affect the speaker's sense of self or identity. From an identity as narrative perspective, the goal of this study was to learn what effect the repeated telling of a coming out story in a public setting may have on the teller's identity, the story they tell, and the meanings and feelings associated with …

A Phenomenological Study Assessing African American Women’S Perspectives On Successful Heterosexual Relationships, Shamika Yolanda Latrell Hall

Dissertations

This study seeks to understand successful African American relationships from the perspective of African American females. Recognizing the impact of structural factors on African Americans, as well as the limits of imposing Eurocentric definitions of successful relationships, this study seeks to understand how African American women themselves describe successful relationships and to identify factors that have influenced their ideas about what is required for them to have healthy, happy, long-lasting, nurturing relationships. Design of the present study is informed by findings from Stephens-Williams' (1992) study of successful African American relationships, as well as a broader review of structural, sociological, and …

A Qualitative Study Of Women Therapists’ Experiences Of Spirituality In The Counseling Process, Sharon A. Carney

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Struggling With Race: A Grounded Theory Study Of The Developing Of Awareness Of Racism, Shawn Victoria Macdonald

Dissertations

White counselors and psychologists need to have a strong understanding of racism and white privilege for effective therapeutic work with people of color. However, many white counselors struggle in various ways with multicultural training. The phenomenon of white counselors in training struggling with awareness of racism and white privilege is well-recognized but not fully understood.

A constructivist grounded theory study was conducted to explore the phenomena of "struggle" among white counselors in training who were engaged in multicultural training. 33 interviews were conducted with 17 participants who were students in master's and doctoral level counseling, counseling psychology, and related programs. …

Thereby Become A Monster: Complex Organizations And The Torture At Abu Ghraib, Janine A. Bower

Dissertations

Reasearch and theory on organizational crime and deviance suggest organizational offending includes aspects of the environment, organizational characteristics (such as tasks, structure, and processes), and cognition, and is systematically produced by the combination of these three. This research is an examination of the organization of the Abu Ghraib detention and interrogation facility in Iraq, the location of prison abuses now made infamous following their public disclosure in 2004. An ethnographic content analysis of documents was performed to probe organizational culture, structure and processes, and their intersection with individual biographies and contextual forces. While public questions focused on why seemingly ordinary …

The Effects Of Post-Secondary Education On State Troopers’ Job Performance, Stress Levels, And Authoritarian Attitudes, Carl J. Lafata

Dissertations

This study was designed to determine the effects of post-secondary education on police officers' job performance, stress levels, and levels of authoritarianism as measured by Altemeyer's (1996) Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale questionnaire. It involved the analysis of data voluntarily and anonymously submitted via an internet-based survey by 356 of the Michigan State Police's approximately 1,800 enlisted members (those members who are state-certified police officers), along with information collected from informal personal interviews held with a select group of seven of the department's senior leaders. Subsequent analysis of the collected quantitative data revealed no statistical support for the project's first two hypotheses, …

Fabricating Freddy Vs. Jason: Understanding A Motion Picture As A Social Encounter Between Fans And Filmmakers, Jason M. Rapelje

Dissertations

The break in the mass communicative chain, which separates producers and receivers from one another in both time and space, impedes researchers from studying motion pictures as social encounters. As with face-to-face encounters, producers and receivers of motion pictures depend upon the use of "rules of relevance" (Goffman, 1961) and "typifactory schemes" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) for their encounters to take place. I examine the social encounter that takes place between some of the filmmakers and fans of Freddy vs Jason through the use of these concepts, as well as a revision of John B. Thompson's (1990) methodological framework of …