Digital Commons Network^™

Representation Of The Elderly In Counselor Education Textbooks, Alicia V. Fahr

Dissertations

The counseling profession requires multicultural competence in meeting the needs of diverse groups. The responsibility for training counseling students to work effectively with the elderly falls upon counselor educators. Textbooks convey cultural values and contribute to what is learned by students. Specifically,textbooks may contribute to how counseling students think about older adults and aging issues. This study was designed to determine how older adults and aging issues are represented in counselor education texts.

The textbooks used most frequently by 11 randomly selected master's degree programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2001) were identified …

Leadership Competency Needs Of U.S. Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, John Nathaniel Vinson

Dissertations

College campus police administrators operate in a complex administrative environment that produces difficult leadership challenges. In order to manage these challenges, police administrators need to possess certain leadership competencies. This study fills a gap in the academic literature by examining the perceptions of campus law enforcement administrators in the United States as to the kinds of leadership challenges they face, and the nature of the leadership competencies needed to manage these challenges. A nationwide survey of college campus police administrators at four-year colleges and universities was conducted to (1) explore their perceptions regarding the major leadership challenges they currently face, …

Remembering The Mendiola March: Understanding The Role Of Experience And Accounts In The Construction Of History, Megan C. Mullins

Dissertations

This research project investigates the relationship between personal experiences of events and public descriptions of events. Specifically, the researcher develops a case study around a 1987 march and demonstration for land reform in the Philippines. Specifically, this research includes a discourse analysis of published, public accounts as they appeared in a national newspaper and the personal interviewee accounts of the event as remembered by U.S. participants and witnesses. Interviewees were involved in social and political work on hunger and other social justice issues as coordinated with ecumenical groups. The theoretical contributions of symbolic interaction, cultural theory and discursive practices of …

Levittown, Pennsylvania: A Sociological History, Chad M. Kimmel

Dissertations

I take the suburban community of Levittown, Pennsylvania, as my field of study. I use primary documents to tell the history of this community, a story filtered through a sociological perspective, one that is firmly grounded in the sociology of C. Wright Mills. "All sociology worth the name," argued Mills, "is historical sociology." An important voice in this story is that of the original Levittown resident--those individuals still living in their homes after 50 years.

As a sociologist, my task is to uncover and make real the interrelationships between biography (the individual resident) and history (the community of Levittown and …

Taiwanese Female Counselors’ Experiences Of Managing Work And Family Roles And Responsibilities, Joy Yuyin Huang

Dissertations

Mental health professionals work in emotionally demanding environments when they work with clients who have emotional problems and interpersonal conflicts. Self-care and managing family and work responsibilities are concerns of great importance for mental health professionals to maintain quality in their services. This is of special concern for Asian female counselors who play important supportive roles for their families. As a result, Asian female counselorsnot only work with clients but also assume heavy family responsibilities, yet there is a dearth of literature on this specific group (Leong, 2002; Saso, 1999; Lee, 1998).

This qualitative study using grounded theory methods explored …

Deconstructing Fordism: Legacies Of The Ford Sociological Department, Georgios Paris Loizides

Dissertations

Institutional theories of organizations state that organizations reflect society's wider values and norms. Less attention has been placed on the questions of whether and how private interest organizations influence wider societal values and norms. This study examines archival material, as well as published primary and secondary sources, relating to the history of the Ford Motor Company, in particular its Sociological Department, in an effort to assess the company's progressive era project to instill in its workforce a particular set of values and attitudes, which were seen by Ford as healthy, and appropriate. Though we are used to seeing Henry Ford …

The Social Construction Of Rape Research: Exploring Epistemologies And Evaluating Methods, Edith M. Fisher

Dissertations

The most widely known national study of rape found that one in four college-age women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. Conservative writers have criticized that study for overestimating the possible prevalence of rape in the U.S. My research uses more sensitive instruments and administration techniques, seeking to estimate the prevalence of rape in the lives of women at a large midwestern public university. I address questions about the validity of previous rape research and compare methods of collecting sexual violence information by questionnaire (322 mailed surveys and 300 interviewer-administered surveys). Additional interviews with 62 of the …

Controversial Maternal Roles Of Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse Cases, Rhonda Elliott Mcgee

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine Child Sexual Abuse case files, to determine which "maternal role": (a) protector, (b) co-victim, (c) co-perpetrator/conspirator, or (d) perpetrator was the most common in court cases studied in this research. The researcher also sought to find: (1) The most dominant maternal role in reference to percentage; (2) The effect, if any, of certain "role types"; (3) And the consequences and/or effects of selected variables (e.g. age, race, and gender) had in family court decisions and adjudications.

The target population consisted of forty-one cases of Child Sexual Abuse cases, adjudicated by the Family …

Assessing The Gender Component In Coronary Heart Disease; A Comparative Analysis Of Osteopathic And Allopathic Rural Physicians' Medical Approaches To Diagnosing And Treating Female Coronary Heart Disease, Victoria S. Curtis

Dissertations

Heart disease is the number one killer among women in the United States. This dissertation examines how the knowledge base of rural physicians affects his/her approach to diagnosing female heart disease. It compares the knowledge base of doctors trained in osteopathic medicine with doctors trained in allopathic medicine to determine if knowledge base affects how women are diagnosed in comparison with men. Current data suggests that a male model of recognized heart symptoms is most often used to diagnose heart disease, that women and men experience different cardiac symptoms, and those physicians more often overlook and/or misdiagnose women presenting with …

Academic Performance, Persistence, And Cultural Congruence Of African American Males Attending Predominantly White Colleges And Universities, Darrell Johnson

Dissertations

The continued lack of success for African American males attending predominantly White colleges and universities is alarming and unsettling. Other racial minority groups are making positive gains relative to their post-secondary educational experiences. However, the African American male lags behind in virtually every index of success in higher education. This trend could produce serious social, economic and cultural implications for the African American community and the entire country.

For African Americans, a strong sense of culture is important to their ability to achieve high levels of mental and psychological functioning, particularly in environments they perceive to be hostile or unwelcoming. …

A Comparison Of Kinetic Family Drawings Of Firstborn And Second-Born Siblings, Lynn Anderson

Dissertations

Problem. While the Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) is a popular assessment tool for clinicians, research on developmental issues and how siblings draw their families is lacking. The purpose of this study was to (a) describe the way siblings perceive themselves and their family interpersonal relationships as expressed in the KFD; and (b) to describe possible developmental age differences in the KFD.

Method. The KFD and a Family Dynamics Interview Schedule were administered to 50 pairs of first- and second-born children from Southwestern Michigan, ages 5-14. The data were analyzed quantitatively by the Wilcoxon Sign Test and Chi-Square, using …