Digital Commons Network^™

Shattering Your Own Glass Ceiling: The Self-Sabotaging Behaviors Of Secondary Female Principals And Strategies Used To Overcome Them, Ashley Sandor

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this explanatory mixed methods study was to identify and describe self-sabotaging behaviors experienced by female secondary principals and to explore the impact these behaviors have on their career development. A secondary purpose of this study was to identify strategies used to overcome self-sabotaging behaviors.

Methodology: An explanatory mixed methods design was used to uncover the perspectives of 10 female secondary principals in Northern California who have experienced career impacting self-sabotaging behaviors and to examine strategies that exemplary female secondary principals use to overcome their internal barriers. The quantitative phase included a 51-item online survey about self-sabotaging …

Parental Involvement And The Academic Achievement Of Third And Fourth Grade Students During The 2014-2015 And 2015-2016 School Years, Rise’ D. Black

Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to find out if parental involvement in the study school helped to increase student academic achievement. Previous studies have shown that when parents are involved in the educational process of children, parents can expect a gain in academic achievement. This mixed method study examined the relationship between parental involvement and academic gains in reading at one suburban public school. The researcher examined how often parents met with teachers at their child’s school, conversations parents had with teachers about what they were learning in school, how often parents were involved with a parent group, how …

The Relationship Between Selected Variables And The National Council Licensure Examination For Registered Nurses: A Comparative Analysis Of Pass/Fail Performance For Traditional And Second-Degree Baccalaureate Students, Nadine Cozzo Englert

Dissertations

This retrospective study was conducted to examine the relationship between selected variables and performance on the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). Data were collected from one hundred twenty graduates of a baccalaureate program; graduates completed either the traditional four-year track or an accelerated second-degree track. Variables included scores earned on seven standardized HESI tests, grades earned in fourteen nursing courses, and grade point averages calculated at six points throughout the curriculum. Relationships between NCLEX-RN performance and student age, gender, and ethnicity were also examined. A between-subjects comparative analysis based on pass/fail performance revealed students who passed the …

The Experience Of Non-Spousal Close Intimate Relationships For Women With Breast Cancer: A Journey Of Support, Erin B. Dooley

Dissertations

An estimated 331,530 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 ("American Cancer Society," 2019, p. 10). The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological, descriptive study was to explore the lived experience of non-spousal close/intimate relationships of women with breast cancer. There are very few studies in the literature examining relationships between women with cancer other than those of partner or spouse. This study's participants consisted of six women, ages 32 to 68. Analysis of these data identified themes reflected along their breast cancer trajectory (1) The journey starts (2) Mid-journey passage, and (3) Journeys end/coming home, as well as …

Effects Of Exercise On Physiologic And Psychologic Outcomes In Patients With End Stage Renal Disease On Hemodialysis: A Quasi-Experimental Study In Lebanon, Ghada Ballout Dunbar

Dissertations

End stage renal disease (ESRD) is a public health problem that is expected to continue to rise and has overwhelming effects on individuals' psychological, physical, and emotional wellbeing. Treatment options include hemodialysis (HD), which is a lifesaving procedure for patients suffering from ESRD where a dialysis machine and a dialyzer are used to clean and purify the blood as their kidneys are not functioning normally. This patient population will suffer from muscle atrophy and weakness due to inactive lifestyle and lack of physical activity. They also question their existence, are extremely stressed, and are afraid of death.

Understanding Quality Of Life In Adolescents Living With Advanced Cancer, Cynthia J. Bell

Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to advance theoretical understanding of how an adolescent with incurable cancer prepares for end-of-life (EOL). A theoretical model was developed to link awareness, acceptance, and willingness to take action to EOL preparedness (knowledge about EOL, acknowledgement of grief and emotion, identification of the meaning of death and spirituality, and conceptualization of personal plan) and communication about EOL preferences and priorities; and to determine impact on quality of life (QOL).

Rural Pregnant Women’S Experiences With Substance Use Disorder: A Qualitative Study, Cami Weber

Dissertations

Rural pregnant women with substance use disorder (SUD) are an understudied vulnerable population that often experiences poor pregnancy outcomes (Higgins et al., 2019; Jumah, 2016; Kramlich et al., 2018; Shaw et al., 2015). Despite the high prevalence and high burden associated with SUD, rural women are less likely than non-pregnant women to seek addiction treatment and complete an outpatient treatment program during pregnancy (Shaw et al., 2015). This study aimed to give voice to rural Missouri women with SUD. The research questions explored the life experiences and motivations for seeking treatment using a qualitative, descriptive research design with grounded theory …

Undergraduate Nursing Faculty's Lived Experience Of Authentic Leadership In Nursing Education, Krystal M. Diedrichsen

Dissertations

Current nursing practice is encountering challenges with retention, burnout, and staff satisfaction. Nurses are caring for patients who are more critically ill; expected to do more with less; and experiencing increased demands of their time due to nursing staff shortages. Research has shown how Authentic Leadership (AL) can positively impact nursing practice. However, there is a significant research gap of faculty lived experiences with or without the application of AL and its overall impact on nursing education. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of undergraduate nursing faculty and current use of AL in nursing education. …

Effects Of Simulated Clinical Experiences On Empathy, Self-Confidence, And Satisfaction In Nursing Students, Dawn L. Riess

Dissertations

Empathetic communication enhances the nurse-patient relationship and improves patient outcomes and needs to be taught and evaluated during simulated clinical experiences. Experience in healthcare education has shown students' empathy levels decrease over time. The purpose of this quasi-experimental pretest posttest, study was to compare nursing students' empathy levels, self-confidence, and satisfaction with simulation between the use of the high-fidelity manikin simulator (HFMS) and a standardized patient (SP) used during their simulated clinical experience. Kolb's experiential learning theory was used to guide the study through the four phases specific to simulation and learning. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 135 nursing …

The Relationship Between Nursing Students' Test-Taking Motivation And The Exit Examination Score, Lorraine Coalmer

Dissertations

A primary objective of nursing students and nursing programs includes first-time success on the NCLEX-RN®. As the nursing shortage continues, it is essential to have qualified nursing graduates pass the NCLEX-RN ®. One approach some nursing programs have chosen to implement regarding augmenting nursing students' probability of success on the NCLEX-RN® includes the administration of an exit examination. This exit examination is tailored to mimic the NCLEX-RN® blueprint; thereby this examination may reveal the nursing students' readiness for the NCLEX-RN®.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between nursing student test-taking motivation and exit …

Examining The Relationship Among Civic Attitudes, Civic Engagement Behaviors, And A Sense Of Community In A Sample Of Nurses, Catherine Rewakowski

Dissertations

Nurses are called to advocate for those they serve, and civic engagement is a way to advocate for health-related issues. However, there is sparse evidence of frequency and types of civic activities in which professional nurses engage. A review of literature found that sense of community and civic attitudes are constructs shown to influence civic participation but are not well-studied among professional nurses. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of civic engagement among nurses by examining civic engagement activities and factors that influence engagement.

Nurse Educators' Perceptions About The Culture Of Nursing And How They Bring Students Into That Culture: A Focused Ethnography, Susan M. Strouse

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to discover nurse educators' perceptions about the culture of nursing and how they bring students into that culture.

The Lived Experience In The Clinical Setting Of Nursing Students With Disabilities, Amy Luckowski

Dissertations

With the implementation of the 504 Rehabilitation Act, the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), more students with disabilities are being admitted into universities and into nursing programs. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences in the clinical setting of nursing students with disabilities. Moustakas's psychological phenomenology was utilized to describe the meaning of the student's experiences. A purposeful sample of 13 junior and senior baccalaureate nursing students with disabilities from two northeastern baccalaureate nursing programs who had at least one semester of clinical experience were interviewed …

Female Coping With Cardiac Rehabilitation After A Cardiac Event: A Qualitative Study, Patricia B. Quigley

Dissertations

Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in American women. Cardiac rehabilitation can reduce cardiac risk, but women underutilize cardiac rehabilitation. Research has not described how women who do participate cope with integrating cardiac rehabilitation into their lives. The purpose of this research study was to explore women's coping with a Phase II (12-week) cardiac rehabilitation program by analyzing interview data for common elements and other ways of coping. A secondary purpose was to explore to what extent the women's descriptions in their interviews corresponded with Lazarus' theoretical concepts of appraisal and coping.

Exploration Of Factors That Promote Continued Volunteer Engagement Of American Red Cross Disaster Health Services Nurses, Kathleen V. Eid-Heberle

Dissertations

The purpose of the research study was to explore factors that promote continued volunteer engagement of American Red Cross Disaster Health Services (DHS) nurses.

A Quantitative Comparative Analysis Of Edd Persistence Factors, Jeffrey D. Deckelbaum

Dissertations

Whether studying physical sciences, social sciences, engineering, mathematics, humanities, or education, approximately one in every two doctoral students fail to persist to degree completion (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992; Lovitts, 2001; Tinto, 2012). A quantitative comparative study focused on two populations; students currently enrolled in the professional doctorate EdD program and former EdD students, including students who started but did not finish the program. Research-based variables, characterized as personal and program factors driving doctoral student attrition, were tested for significance. The participation criteria defined at least 80% of the program’s course content in totality was or is currently delivered online from …

Older Hispanic Women With Health Care Provider Diagnosed Osteoarthritis: Experience And Perceptions Of Culturally Competent Care, Claudia A. Oglivie

Dissertations

Arthritis is the leading cause of disability among U.S. adults over the age of 65. Osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, has an incidence rate that increases with age with the highest rates among women. Hispanic women are more affected than any other racial or ethnic group. Little is known about how Hispanic women respond to having osteoarthritis and how they manage its symptoms and limitations. Few studies have examined the specific experiences and perceptions of this population. We do not know how differences in incidence, access to care, disease burden, and activity limitations affect the treatment of Hispanic …

Adoptive Parents' Lived Experience Of Bonding With Their Adopted Infants: A Phenomenological Study, Sharon M. Bator

Dissertations

Nurses' roles facilitating bonding between adoptive parents and their infants have been premised on the idea that the experience is the same as for biological parents. Developmental theorists Bowlby (1969) and Erikson (1959) maintained that bonding between an adoptive parent and their adopted child is essential for normal growth and development. The purpose of this study was to study the experience of bonding between adoptive parents and children.

More Than Midnight Feasts?: A Gastrocritical Reading Of Enid Blyton’S Malory Towers, St. Clare’S And The Naughtiest Girl In The School Series, Rebecca Broomfield

Dissertations

Food is fundamental to life. It is also fundamental to culture; through our production, manipulation and consumption of foodstuffs, the way in which we eat has amassed a range of rituals and rules. This suggests that food can be used to indicate more than mere biological need. Food and foodways are a common occurrence throughout literature, not least children’s literature. This thesis applies gastrocriticism as a paradigm to investigate the use of food and foodways in Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, St. Clare’s and The Naughtiest Girl school series. Gastrocriticism is an emerging form of literary criticism that considers the complex …

Covid-19: A Review Of Random Testing As An Augmentation Of A Close-Contact Testing Regime In Response To The Covid-19 Pandemic, John Mcdonnell

Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the world with a huge challenge to balance the health of the population with the scale of stringent response measures. Policy makers need evidence based recommendations to inform their response to the pandemic and the ever changing landscape it creates. Testing and isolation of infected individuals plays a critical role in containing the spread of the disease, but is aimed primarily at detecting symptomatic individuals. However, asymptomatic individuals are much more difficult to detect. This study presents the augmentation of a close contact testing regime with random testing to examine the elect on the number …

Does Co-Speech Gesture Support Children’S Analogical Reasoning? An Investigation Into The Differential Effects Of Gesture On Learning, Katharine F. Guarino

Dissertations

Although the general consensus is that gesture supports learning across a wide range of learning contexts, nuances to gesture’s effects are found across the gesture-for-learning literature. The purpose of this body of research was to advance our understanding of gesture’s effect on learning. Specifically, we explored the utility of gesture in a domain that had not been considered in the gesture literature previously: analogical reasoning (Study 1). We aimed to understand whether gesture supports children’s analogical reasoning ability and why gesture might support this type of reasoning. Specifically, we investigated whether gesture could support learning through directing visual attention, thereby …

Development Of An Explainability Scale To Evaluate Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Xai) Methods, Stephen Mccarthy

Dissertations

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is an area of research that develops methods and techniques to make the results of artificial intelligence understood by humans. In recent years, there has been an increased demand for XAI methods to be developed due to model architectures getting more complicated and government regulations requiring transparency in machine learning models. With this increased demand has come an increased need for instruments to evaluate XAI methods. However, there are few, if none, valid and reliable instruments that take into account human opinion and cover all aspects of explainability. Therefore, this study developed an objective, human-centred questionnaire …

Evaluation Of Automated Eye Blink Artefact Removal Using Stacked Dense Autoencoder, Matthew Rigney

Dissertations

The presence of artefacts in Electroencephalograph (EEG) signals can have a considerable impact on the information they portray. In this comparative study, the automated removal of eye blink artefacts using the constrained latent representation of a stacked dense autoencoders (SDAE) and comparing its ability to that of the manual independent component analysis (ICA) approach was evaluated. A comparative evaluation of 5 stacked dense autoencoder architectures lead to a chosen architecture for which the ability to automatically detect and remove eye blink artefacts were both statistically and humanistically evaluated. The ability of the stacked dense autoencoder was statistically evaluated with the …

Scrolling Vs Paging: Reading Performance And Preference Of Reading Modes In Long-Form Online News, Richard Herlihy

Dissertations

This study explores the impact of scrolling and dynamic pagination in long-form online documents on reader performance and reader experience. Previous research has produced mixed results, indicating no difference between modes, or a positive effect favouring scrolling. Recent advances in web standards have enabled simpler, dynamic, performant methods of pagination to tailor content responsively to any screen, meriting renewed study in this area. This paper uses one such method to load subsequent online news pages instantly without buffering. In an online browser experiment with 38 participants, an increase in reading speed in the scrolling mode was found at a level …

Broaching The Topics Of Religion And Spirituality In Therapy: Considering The Influence Of Therapist Competence And Organizational Competence, Papa N. Adams

Dissertations

Many individuals have identified religion and/or spirituality (R/S) as integral in the construction of their worldview and important in mental health. Research has demonstrated that clinicians hold positive attitudes towards integrating R/S into therapy yet reported low levels of actually integrating R/S into therapy sessions. This study examined therapist behavior in regard to broaching discussions about R/S in psychotherapy sessions. This study proposed that clinician broaching behavior would be correlated with the clinician’s R/S competence. Furthermore, the relationship between broaching and clinician’s competence would be moderated by the R/S competence of the clinician’s environment (defined as the organizational/institutional R/S competence). …

School Leaders’ Assessment Of Teachers’ Preparedness For Culturally Responsive Teaching, Victoria Maria Siliunas

Dissertations

Societal and school inequities continue to be highlighted via widening achievement gaps that adversely impact historically marginalized groups of students and their communities. An acknowledgement of the importance of developing teachers who are prepared to work with students of culturally differing identities from their own in the day-to-day work of teaching has inspired a shift in language and practice from a more general multicultural approach to a culturally responsive teaching methodology in which a purposeful inclusion of the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of students is prioritized. Addressing challenges schools face related to cultural difference between teachers and the students they …

Leadership Styles And Effective Leadership Among Higher Education Leaders In The North American Division Of Seventh-Day Adventists, Patrice A. Wright

Dissertations

Problem

Leadership has been shown to be crucial in the success of organizations, especially in higher education. However, little research has been done about leadership styles and effectiveness in North American Division (NAD) of Seventh-Day Adventists (SDA) higher education institutions. My study examined transformational, transactional, and passive avoidant leadership styles and leadership effectiveness in these higher education institutions.

Method

To examine leadership in Adventist colleges, I used the online MLQ-5X short form. I secured participation from 12 colleges and after repeated emails secured 168 responses. I analyzed the relationship between leadership styles, several leader characteristics and leader effectiveness, using SEM, …

"The Best Man That Ever Trod Shoe Leather" And His "Crown Of Rejoicing" : The Personal Relationship Of James And Ellen White, 1845-1881, Gerson Cardoso Rodrigues

Dissertations

James White (1821-1881) and Ellen G. White (1827-1915), co-founders (with Joseph Bates) of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, were united in marriage on August 30, 1846, and lived together for thirty-five years until James died. As leaders (though Ellen White never assumed any administrative post) of the emerging denomination and putting all effort for the growth and mission of the Adventist cause, the Whites lived an intense life of writing, publishing, preaching, and traveling. Though their marriage was a blessing for both of them, the intensity of their lives, health issues, and their humanity, caused marital difficulties in some periods of …

Racial Identity, Hair Esteem, Hair Texture, And Hairstyle Choice As Correlates Of Psychological Well-Being Among Afro-Latinas In The United States, Marielsy Esther Pimentel

Dissertations

Problem

During the Colonial period, hair was one of the designated phenotypic markers of racial group membership used to assign or deny privilege. Privileges are still assigned to people based on their racial group membership and their proximity to Whiteness. As such, Hair remains a salient part of Afro-Latina women’s lives and identities, with its influences seen in the personal, social, and mental realms. How an Afro-Latina wears her hair can have legal, social, and intrapersonal consequences. The subsequent treatment of Afro-Latinas because of their hairstyle can affect how they view themselves and even how they relate to others, especially …

Self-Efficacy And Job Satisfaction As Predictors Of Burnout Among School Psychologists In The Midwest United States, Elizabeth Mcknight-Romney

Dissertations

Problem

The concept of burnout is expressed as a syndrome evidenced by chronic exhaustion, depersonalization, and a lack of personal accomplishment. Burnout or work burnout syndrome is conceptualized as a prolonged process of emotional fatigue, involving loss of motivation and expectations, generating a feeling of failure affecting personal, work, and social levels (Maslach et al., 2001). Victims of burnout usually become exhausted, cynical about work-related matters, and question their capacity or ability to perform. Job burnout includes feeling exhausted physically, emotionally, and or mentally in the context of work (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). The demanding profession of school psychology has …