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Analysis Of The Retention Level Of A Foreign Language Among High School Students After Graduation, Obed Barrientos

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education ETD Archive

This applied dissertation was designed to measure student retention levels of the Spanish that they learned during high school. The researcher compared the scores of participants who took Spanish in college to the scores of participants who did not attend college. In addition, the purpose of the study was to (a) see if motivation had an impact on retention, (b) see if high school grade point average correlated with retention, and (c) investigate specific topics of the curriculum that former students remembered the most. The researcher tested former students who graduated from high school between 2002 and 2011.

Students completed …

Robust Peacekeeping? Panacea For Human Rights Violations, Kofi Nsia-Pepra

Peace and Conflict Studies

This paper examines the conviction that robust peacekeeping—a strong and forceful peacekeeping force—works better than traditional UN peacekeeping mechanisms in reducing human rights violations, specifically, civilian killing, in areas of deployment. I seek to analyze both the operational and internal characteristics of UN peacekeeping operations in an effort to understand the hindrances to achieving the objective of protecting human rights. Specifically, the study examines the contributions of key structural variables, including the mission type, weapon type, rules of engagement, mission strength, and major power participation controlling for other intervening variables using negative binomial and logit regression models. The empirical results …

Grounded Theory Methodology: Positivism, Hermeneutics, And Pragmatism, Lars-Johan Age

The Qualitative Report

Glaserian grounded theory methodology, which has been widely adopted as a scientific methodology in recent decades, has been variously characterised as "hermeneutic" and "positivist." This commentary therefore takes a different approach to characterising grounded theory by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of: (a) the philosophical paradigms of positivism, hermeneutics, and pragmatism; and (b) the general philosophical questions of the aims of science and the issue of choosing a scientific methodology. The commentary then seeks to position grounded theory methodology in terms of these philosophical perspectives. The study concludes that grounded theory methodology contains elements of positivism, hermeneutics, and pragmatism. In coming …

Understanding The Evolving Roles Of Improvement-Oriented High School Teachers In Gilgit-Baltistan, Takbir Ali

The Qualitative Report

In this paper the author presents a framework for understanding how improvement-oriented high school teachers' accounts of change experiences portray their evolving roles as change agents in school reform. The data on which this paper is based come from a one-year long in-depth study (doctoral thesis research project) in which the author set out to investigate how improvement-oriented teachers pursue important changes in the realm of classroom, school and community; how the teachers-initiated changes can be characterized; and how the teachers' roles evolve with their change practices. The researcher employed qualitative case study methodology, using in-depth interviews, classroom observations, post-observation …

Competing Cultural Worldviews In The United States: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Essential Core Elements Of Transnationalism And Transculturalism, Mark P. Orbe, Darlene K. Drummond

The Qualitative Report

The objective of this study was to explore inductively the complex ways in which everyday discourse reflects larger - and often competing - cultural worldviews. A phenomenological framework was used to analyze transcripts generated through 13 focus group discussions involving 100 individuals. This particular analysis highlights how individuals who adopted a transnational worldview worked to transform cultural divisions through criticism of existing labels that failed to capture the multicultural nature of their identifies. Alternatively, individuals who adopted a transcultural worldview worked to transcend traditional cultural divisions through a rejection of traditional labels that worked against one unified social identity. The …

Does Recreational Reading In Native Language Influence Foreign Language Learning Process?, Selami Aydin

The Qualitative Report

Limited studies have been conducted on the effects on recreational reading in native language on foreign language learning, whereas no findings exist on the effects of recreational reading in Turkish as a native language (L1) on English as a foreign language (EFL) learning. Thus, this study aims to investigate the effects of recreational reading in L1 on the process of learning EFL. The sample group consists of 70 learners and a background questionnaire, interviews, oral presentations, classroom discussions, essay papers, and responses to examination questions were used for data collection. The results indicated that recreational reading in L1 has some …

Mind The Gap: Unexpected Pitfalls In Doing Classroom Research, Amanda A. Baker, Joseph J. Lee

The Qualitative Report

Inherent in classroom research are the inevitable, and often unanticipated, challenges experienced by researchers. This article moves beyond the main issues highlighted in the literature and identifies some of the problems the authors encountered when conducting two common methodological procedures, classroom observations and stimulated recall interviews (SRIs), as part of our dissertation research investigations. The paper first surveys what the literature describes as the main areas of concern with these two procedures. It then pulls away from these resources to explore actual difficulties we experienced that we believe are inadequately addressed in the literature. Using illustrations from our dissertation projects, …

Doctoral Students' Conceptions Of Research, Rod Pitcher

The Qualitative Report

In this paper I report a study of the conceptions of research held by a sample of doctoral students at an Australian research-intensive university. I take a unique approach by using metaphor analysis to study the students' conceptions. The students in this study were recruited for an on-line survey in which they answered questions relating to their conceptions of research. I arrived at four categories that I have labelled research is explorative, research is constructive, research is spatial, and research is organic.

A Revolutionary Collage Of Same Sex Attraction Stories, Marcela Polanco

The Qualitative Report

Tony E. Adams' (2011) book presents what could be considered a revolutionary, humanizing understanding of same-sex attraction. This is accomplished by providing a relational understanding of "the closet" and experiences of coming into, living in, and coming out of the closet. It is a production of significant social relevance, denouncing the marginalizing effects of the domains of heteronormativity. While highly scholarly, his evocative storytelling makes this book accessible to an interested reader regardless of his or her degree or area of specialization.

How To Conduct Qualitative Research On The Patient's Experience, Ronald J. Chenail

The Qualitative Report

From a perspective of patient-centered healthcare, exploring patients' (a) preconceptions, (b) treatment experiences, (c) quality of life, (d) satisfaction, (e) illness understandings, and (f) design are all critical components in improving primary health care and research. Utilizing qualitative approaches to discover patients' experiences can provide valuable information for practitioners and investigators alike. In this paper, the author describes how researchers can select from among five major qualitative designs (i.e., primary qualitative research, qualitative evaluation, collaborative inquiry, mixed method, and qualitative meta-study) and five preeminent qualitative methodologies (i.e., descriptive, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and narrative) to create studies to meet their …

Compatibility Between Text Mining And Qualitative Research In The Perspectives Of Grounded Theory, Content Analysis, And Reliability, Chong Ho Yu, Angel Jannasch-Pennell, Samuel Digangi

The Qualitative Report

The objective of this article is to illustrate that text mining and qualitative research are epistemologically compatible. First, like many qualitative research approaches, such as grounded theory, text mining encourages open-mindedness and discourages preconceptions. Contrary to the popular belief that text mining is a linear and fully automated procedure, the text miner might add, delete, and revise the initial categories in an iterative fashion. Second, text mining is similar to content analysis, which also aims to extract common themes and threads by counting words. Although both of them utilize computer algorithms, text mining is characterized by its capability of processing …

Dialogic Exchanges And The Negotiation Of Differences: Female Graduate Students' Experiences Of Obstacles Related To Academic Mentoring, Sharon Hayes, Mirka Koro-Ljungberg

The Qualitative Report

This study, framed by social constructionism, investigated the dialogic exchanges and co-construction of knowledge among female graduate students, who met to discuss the ways in which the differences between mentors and mentees might be negotiated in order to develop and maintain mentoring relationships that benefit both partners. Ten female graduate students, with qualitative research experience, participated in individual interviews and focus groups. Findings indicated our participants were open to the differences expressed, focusing on commonalities, rather than accentuating or suppressing stated differences. This negotiation of difference enabled our participants to co-construct more complex and legitimate understandings of mentoring. Collectively, our …

The Medical Essay As An Invitation For Interdisciplinary Exploration, Edwin Stieve

Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why Democracy Needs The Humanities, Ben Mulvey

Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Vagueness And Fuzzy Logic, Darren Hibbs

Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Effective Pedagogical Approach To Understanding Qualitative And Quantitative Organic Chemistry By Using A Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, Sagir Patel

Undergraduate Student Symposium

One main objective of organic chemistry courses is to show students how much of a desired organic product is synthesized in the reaction mixture. Here, we report how a Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) instrument can be applied to a set of common organic chemistry experiments for identifying the main product, any minor product(s) and quantifying the product yield. GC-MS is a powerful analytical instrumentation tool capable of detecting, identifying and quantifying many volatile organic compounds. The GC-MS technique is routinely used in chemistry research and manufacturing laboratories. Despite its wide application in organic chemistry and ease of use, many colleges …

Analyzing Hotel Room Cleanliness On A Microscopic Level, Ahmad Khalid, Kodi Stevens

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The cost of a hotel room is usually correlated to the quality of the hotel room and the quality of services provided during one’s stay; e.g. the cleanliness of the room and the thoroughness of the cleaning staff. The cleaner a hotel is the more desirable it is. The goal of this experiment was to analyze hotel cleanliness at the microscopic level to determine if pathogenic micro-organisms were present. Samples were taken from telephones, toilet seats, remotes, toilet flushers, bath tubs and doorknobs from five different hotels and grown at room temperature on nutrient agar plates, counted and then isolated. …

The Effect Of Thimerosal-Containing And Thimerosal-Free Pediatric Flu Vaccine On Gene Expression In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Christie Rubio

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Mercury-based preservatives including thimerosal, typically added to some vaccines, may pose health concerns as mercury toxicity has been implicated in many human diseases. In this study, microarray technology and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were used to examine the potential effects of a typical dose of thimerosal-containing vaccine (TCV) or thimerosal-free (TFV) pediatric flu vaccine on gene expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a model organism that shares roughly 30% of its genome with humans. Yeast were grown in three treatments: standard media (YEPD), YEPD plus TCV, and YEPD plus TFV. Microarray gene expression data were examined for variability both within …

The Effects Of Categorization On Memory, Logan Armstrong

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of categorization on our ability to remember events and objects. This is an important question because little research has tested the notion that the ability to categorize helps produce better memory. Morris & Baker-Ward (2007) studied a similar question when they examined whether having the vocabulary to describe an experience affected the ability to remember that experience. Specifically, they tested whether infants who had learned their colors prior to participating in an experiment involving different colored bubbles would recall the experiment better than those who learned the colors after the …

On Parmenides’ Reality, Nathaniel Dolan

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The treatment being submitted here for the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Student Symposium began quite simply in the form of a journal entry submitted as one of the required elements of Dr. Toscano’s Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 1010) in the 2010 fall term. The professor’s review and critique of that original work (which was comparably brief compared to this final edition) produced remarks from Dr. Toscano that motivated me to reevaluate my own interpretations of the proposition on Reality put forth by Parmenides of Elea in the fifth century BCE. Having studied philosophy as a personal interest …

More Than Just A Memory, Sebastian Acosta-Nijamkin

Undergraduate Student Symposium

“More than just a memory” is a film about love and friendship. Ethan is confronted with a tough decision: whether to tell the girl he loves how he really feels, or whether to accept the fact that she loves someone else and that Ethan will only be a friend in her eyes. Throughout the film, Ethan is driving in a car, and flashbacks of the night where he chose to be just a friend keep entering his mind. That night he made a choice -- a choice that would change his life forever. The film is directed by Sebastian Acosta-Nijamkin.

Transcriptome Analysis Of Lagenidium Giganteum, Jennifer L. Grant

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Mosquitoes are carriers of numerous diseases for instance, malaria and west-Nile virus. Lagenidium giganteum is a parasitic organism during larval stage that infects and kills mosquitoes. In time, this could be proven to be useful in bioengineering to create an environmentally safe insecticide. Molecular research was performed in order to determine the imperative genes in Lagenidium giganteum that hinder the development in mosquito larvae. A culture of Lagenidium giganteum was used to extract RNA and initiate a transcriptome analysis. Large scale sequencing led to the annotation of 20,000 transcripts. PCR amplification was performed using a Qiagen PCR kit in order …

Cognitive Inhibition In Bilinguals Vs. Monolinguals, Juliana Acosta, Raquel Chocron, Jacqueline Pablos

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Bilingualism has been linked to enhanced cognitive abilities and these enhanced abilities are believed to be mediated by the same frontal lobe system that controls language output in bilinguals. Moreover, recent research suggests that this bilingual advantage may be moderated by degree of balance between the two languages such that those who are equally proficient in their two languages show the best performance on cognitive tasks compared to unbalanced bilinguals and monolinguals. For instance, results from one study revealed that balanced bilinguals showed significantly fewer errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) than unbalanced bilinguals. Thus, the purpose of …

Budding Brain, Kurshaad Cheenibas, Smit Patel, Adam Adbulhafid, Patrick Cao

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Mathematics is used to illuminate the world around us by describing what we see through various models. Models can range from simple linear models of gravity and line weaver Burk to complex models such as models of storms. Simple models are easy to use but lack the accuracy in prediction that more complex model provide. The difference between this dynamic model and statistical model are descriptive while dynamic model are predictive. Descriptive model make sense of data and predictive model use the data you have to make prediction. This research seeks to uncover cross disciplinary nature of dynamic model and …

A Regression Study Of The Relation Between Rocks And Fish Assemblages, Kaitlyn Brucker

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The objective of this study is to see if the amount of rock in a given transect is related to the fish that inhabited the area. A regression analysis is conducted to find the relation between the two variables, rocks and fish. Besides finding the model, the analysis includes the confidence interval for the coefficient s, residual plots, predicted intervals of the number of fish for selected values of the amount of the rock, and identifying outliers and influential points by looking at various statistics, such as RESIDUAL, STUDENTIZED RESIDUALS, COVRATIO, and DFFITS.

Adhesion Of Transferrin To Tisifilcon A Contact Lenses, Darshan Solanki, Stephanie Brinon

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Tear proteins are known to deposit differently on contact lenses of different materials, causing lens wearer comfort to be compromised. We examined the adhesion of transferrin to contact lenses made of tisifilcon A, a rigid gas-permeable silicone hydrogel (FDA Group III). Lenses were incubated 2.0 mg/ml solutions of human holo-transferrin for 1, 2, 3, and 4 days, and protein adhesion was determined by bicinchoninic acid assay. Transferrin adhesion increased from day 0 to day 3 and then dropped after days 4 and 5. This pattern resembled transferrin adhesion to lenses made of polymacon (FDA Group I), alphafilcon (FDA Group …

Tmnt: Dynamic Models Of Cancer And Hiv, Christina Gobin, Emily Nguyen, Fayssa Salomon, Arash Nasajpour

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Differential equations are used to build dynamic mathematical models for systems and nonlinear phenomena, which dynamically change with time. Ordinary differential equations describe a relation that contains functions of only one independent variable, and one or more of their derivatives with respect to that variable. Applications of those models are found in biological systems. In one study, homogeneous mathematical models are used to describe the interactions between cancerous cells and the immune system. Modeling using differential equations will allow better understanding of the behavior and spreading of those malignant cells. The models will investigate the dynamics of populations of cancer …

The Impact Of Psychological Stress On An Acute Stress Challenge: An Investigation Into Biochemical, Social And Personality Correlates, Tatiana Viena, Isabelle Barbu

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Stress exposure activates a variety of physiological coping systems. While acute stress responses are considered important for healthy coping, overexposure to stress results in an alteration of the functioning of the stress (HPA) axis, leading to a variety of deleterious psychological and physiological effects. For that reason, understanding and explaining these mechanisms is essential. Here, we sought to determine whether chronic psychological (examination) stress would result in a decreased ability to mount an acute stress and immune response. We also assessed locus of control and social support measures. Thirty subjects participated in 2 sessions (baseline and examination week) in which …

The Effects Of Traditional Weight Training Versus Crossfit On Various Measures Of Physical Performance: A Case Report In A 25 Year Old Healthy And Fit Female, Inna Dumova

Undergraduate Student Symposium

The purpose of this case study was to determine the effects of the CrossFit Workout versus Traditional Weight Training on various performance indices. During the 4-week experimental periods for each of the workouts, the subject consumed a standard Mediterranean diet. Each workout was conducted 3 times per week during those 4 weeks. No pre-workout stimulants were used in either of the workout regimens. Tests were done at the end of the experimental periods to determine the effects each workout had on strength and performance, which were compared to the pre-workout “control” data. Significant changes were found in the vertical jump …

The Effects Of Sugar Substitutes On Gene Expression In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Hannah Bromberg

Undergraduate Student Symposium

Sugar substitutes are marketed as being healthier than sucrose (table sugar). Within this experiment, information about how table sugar and three different sugar substitutes, Splenda (sucralose-based), Truvia (stevia-based), and Equal (aspartame-based), affect gene expression in yeast was examined. Since the genomes of yeast and humans are approximately 30% similar, the specific genes selected for analysis in yeast overlapped with genes that are expressed in humans. Thus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker’s yeast) was used as a model eukaryotic organism in order to examine the effects of sugar substitute exposure on gene expression. The yeast was grown under four different conditions: 1) A …