Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring The Lived Experiences Of Rural Women With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Richelle A. Rennegarbe

Dissertations

The purpose of this exploratory study was to describe the lived experiences of rural women with systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus). A qualitative research design was used, employing a convenience sample of 20 women with lupus. Participants were identified using a snowball sampling technique. In-depth telephone interviews with a semi-structured format were used to garner information. A phenomenological, narrative and life history approach was used to analyze the data. Seven domains—lupus concept, diagnosis response, perception of cause, lupus triggers, lupus control, living with lupus, and support were used to examine the lived experiences of participants. Twenty-one themes emerged from the data …

Exemplary Practices Which Support Achievement Gaps In Reading And Writing For Hispanic Ell Learners In Title I Twenty-First Century Elementary Schools, Melinda Gonzalez

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify and describe strategies used by public school 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade teachers to support English language learners in Title I public schools.

Methodology: This phenomenological study identified and described 14 teachers' 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade perceptions on effective strategies to support English language learners in reading and writing. Respondents were purposively chosen based on specific criteria and recommendations of an expert panel of experts and data was coded using NVIVO.

Findings: The expert panel members identified multiple strategies to support English language learners. Strategies include (a) Question higher level of …

Healing Touch And Health-Related Quality Of Life In Women With Breast Cancer Receiving Radiation Therapy, Lisa L. Schnepper

Dissertations

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies are increasing in popularity in the United States, as demonstrated by an upsurge in utilization. As early as 1940, the National Institutes of Health identified the need to explore alternative therapies for cancer. Finally, in 1998, the National Cancer Institute developed the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine to promote evaluation of complementary and alternative therapies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of Healing Touch to improve Health-related Quality of Life (HRQOL) as measured by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B) among women with early stage breast cancer …

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.

Evaluation Of A Community-Based Nurse Residency Program, Clara R. Owings

Dissertations

A secondary data analysis study was conducted to determine if newly graduated nurses benefitted from participation in a 1-year University Health System Consortium/American Association of Colleges of Nursing (UHC/AACN) nurse residency program in a community hospital. The sample included data collected from 121 newly graduated nurses who completed the Casey-Fink Graduate survey at the start of program, 6 months into the program, and again at the end of the year-long program. Data included in the study span 3 years from 2012 to 2015. Participation in a community-based nurse residency provided several benefits to newly graduated nurses. There were statistically significant …

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 …

The Lived Experience Of Observant Jewish Nursing Students: A Phenomenological Study, Toby Bressler

Dissertations

With expanding cultural diversity in the United States (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009), it is essential to increase the diversity of the nursing profession to match the patients who are being cared for in our healthcare system (IOM, 2003; Sullivan Commission, 2004). Despite improvements to the demographic composition of the nursing workforce in recent decades, the nursing workforce has remained predominantly homogeneous and to meet the current and future health needs of the public while providing culturally relevant care, the nursing workforce needs to increase its diversity (IOM, 2010). This demographic shift creates a social imperative that …

Taking Responsibility: Toward An Understanding Of Morality In Practice. An Ethnographic Investigation Of The Social Construction Of Responsibility In The Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Pamela K. Bjorklund

Dissertations

Although the nursing literature overflows with references to the myriad things for which nurses and patients are de facto responsible, nurses have never explicitly examined the social construction of responsibility in any clinical context. This ethnographic investigation of a unique, 10-bed residential treatment facility for women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) sought to identify, describe, and understand the social processes by which a particular mental health treatment community constructed responsibility. Consistent with feminist naturalism and informed by the feminist moral philosophy of Margaret Urban Walker (1998), this study utilized the naturalistic field methodology of Schatzman and Strauss (1973) and …

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 …

Perceptions Of Community Of Associate Degree Nurse Learners In An Rn-To-Bsn Online Program, Cherie R. Rebar

Dissertations

Registered Nurses (RNs), when educated in an Associate Degree (AD) program, learn in a face-to-face environment. Today's preferred standard of education for RNs is to achieve a minimum of a Bachelor's degree. For convenience while they continue working, numerous AD-prepared nurses seek online education to complete their Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree, yet have never studied in this type of learning environment, nor have they learned to forge educational relationships in a virtual setting. At the time that this study was proposed, limited research existed that studied how BSN students perceive this forum, and how it affects their …

Comparing The Effects Of Two Debriefing Frameworks; Promoting Excellence And Reflective Learning In Simulation (Pearls) Framework And Structured And Supported Debriefing Model (Gas) Framework, Krista M. Prendergast

Dissertations

Essential learning occurs during the debriefing phase of simulation-based learning experiences. Despite this knowledge, evidence regarding the most effective debriefing method is insufficient. The primary purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two debriefing frameworks, Promoting Excellence and Reflective Learning in Simulation (PEARLS) and Structured and Supported Debriefing Model using Gather, Analyze, Summarize (GAS) on student performance during simulation. This pilot study used a two group, pretest-posttest, experimental design with group randomization.

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.

Reclaiming The House: An Interpretive Study Of Nurse-Family Interactions And Activities In Critical Care, Daphne E. Stannard

Dissertations

While many studies have examined the need for nursing interventions and others have tested specific formal family interventions, few have investigated the practical or everyday family interventions of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses. The purpose of this interpretive study was to articulate the everyday activities and interventions that nurses commonly employed with families around patients' bedsides. Primary data sources included repeated interviews with six families of critically ill patients, multiple nurse-family observations, and repeated small group interviews with 24 ICU nurses.

A Qualitative Investigation Of The Development Of Teacher Leaders In The Implementation Of Grade-Level And/Or Departmentalized Professional Learning Communities Across Eight Parochial Schools, Adrienne Leigh Govero

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative methods research is to study the development of teacher leaders in the implementation of grade-level and/or departmentalized professional learning communities across eight parochial schools. When working with teacher leaders in the leading of grade-level or departmentalized professional learning teams, there are many facets involved in the growth and development of teacher leaders. Teacher leaders will be given the guidance and tools to lead their grade-level or departmentalized professional learning team effectively. Teacher leaders will use the knowledge and skills they possess related to leadership and professional learning communities with the help of building administrators to …

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 …

Improving Dysarthric Speech Recognition By Enriching Training Datasets, Sophie Cullen

Dissertations

Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder that results from disruptions in the neuro-motor interface and is characterised by poor articulation of phonemes and hyper-nasality and is characteristically different from normal speech. Many modern automatic speech recognition systems focus on a narrow range of speech diversity therefore as a consequence of this they exclude a groups of speakers who deviate in aspects of gender, race, age and speech impairment when building training datasets. This study attempts to develop an automatic speech recognition system that deals with dysarthric speech with limited dysarthric speech data. Speech utterances collected from the TORGO database are …

Real-Time Stock Market Recommendation & Prediction Using Multi Source Data, Kalpana Konety

Dissertations

Stock investors must be cognizant of both the current price of their stock and the price at which they want to sell it in the future. This does not stop investors to monitor past price patterns and apply their knowledge to the present. ’Past performance is not an indicator of future success’, as the saying goes. To put it another way, historical stock data alone isn’t enough to forecast future stock prices. Another key factor to consider in a trading strategy is the impact of market psychology. Financial data, which is a type of multimedia data, provides a wealth of …

Measuring And Comparing Social Bias In Static And Contextual Word Embeddings, Alan Cueva Mora

Dissertations

Word embeddings have been considered one of the biggest breakthroughs of deep learning for natural language processing. They are learned numerical vector representations of words where similar words have similar representations. Contextual word embeddings are the promising second-generation of word embeddings assigning a representation to a word based on its context. This can result in different representations for the same word depending on the context (e.g. river bank and commercial bank). There is evidence of social bias (human-like implicit biases based on gender, race, and other social constructs) in word embeddings. While detecting bias in static (classical or non-contextual) word …

Hybridization Of Biologically Inspired Algorithms For Discrete Optimisation Problems, Elihu Essian-Thompson

Dissertations

In the field of Optimization Algorithms, despite the popularity of hybrid designs, not enough consideration has been given to hybridization strategies. This paper aims to raise awareness of the benefits that such a study can bring. It does this by conducting a systematic review of popular algorithms used for optimization, within the context of Combinatorial Optimization Problems. Then, a comparative analysis is performed between Hybrid and Base versions of the algorithms to demonstrate an increase in optimization performance when hybridization is employed.

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 …

Market Segmentation Of Wine In Ireland: Are We Fostering A Desirable Consumption Culture?, Enea Bent

Dissertations

The aim of this research is to evaluate the wine sector in Ireland and its impact on the wine consumption culture that is being promoted here as a result. With supermarkets leading in terms of sales, this study evaluates the product offering of the various types of retailers and the attainability of the same to different demographics of consumer. A high level of government intervention in the industry is highlighted throughout the study, the intention and subsequent successes and failures are examined. A comparison to the rest of Europe and the United Kingdom is carried out to understand Ireland’s position …

A Metal-Cutting-Inspired Analytical Framework For Predicting Operating Parameters In Friction Stir Welding, Benjamin Robert Lund

Dissertations

Currently, predictive models for establishing Friction Stir Welding (FSW) process parameters that produce repeatable and robust welds are not well developed and do not account for differences between alloys. Parameter development relies primarily upon costly trial and error studies. The predicted hot working conditions of FSW vary widely with strains ranging from 2 to 100 and strain rates from 10^0 to 10^6 s^-1. These conditions lie outside the range covered by traditional testing techniques but are quite similar to conditions predicted in Orthogonal Metal Cutting (OMC), where strains range from 1 to 50 and strain rates from 10^0 to 10^6 …

Factors That Contribute To Life Satisfaction Of Parents Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In Trinidad & Tobago, Paul Gerard Richards

Dissertations

Problem

The goal of the study was to understand factors contributing to life satisfaction of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from the perspective of positive psychology. The challenges of parenting a child with ASD have been documented extensively, with these parents experiencing higher levels of stress, depression, and lower overall mental health than parents of typically developing children. Stress and hardship can lead to mental health problems for such families. A lack of research was observed about positive outcomes for parents of children with ASD; in particular, no research was available for these parents in Trinidad and …

Examining The Relationship Between Child Maltreatment, Executive Functioning, And Trauma Appraisal, Myshira Oliver

Dissertations

Problem

A current problem is that although child maltreatment has been demonstrated to be negatively associated with both executive functioning and trauma appraisal (leading to feelings of shame, self-blame, etc.), there is not an established model within the literature that explains the relationship between child maltreatment, executive functioning, and trauma appraisal. The purpose of this study was to develop a model that displayed the relationship between child maltreatment, executive functioning, and trauma appraisal. Additionally, this study sought to discover differences in trauma appraisal and executive functioning based on the type of child maltreatment experienced.

Method

This study employed a quantitative, …

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 …

Changes In Teacher Pedagogy And Student Engagement In Elementary 1:1 Classrooms, Adam Douglas Smeets

Dissertations

Technology advances at a pace that far exceeds the rate of change possible in education. Without adjustments to their pedagogy, teachers continue leveraging pedagogical practices that do not match the effective use of technology in classrooms. This qualitative, retrospective instrumental case study explores two areas of the connected elementary classroom: (1) how teachers adapt their instructional practices as a result of 1:1 device adoption at their school and (2) teacher perceptions of change to classroom communication and student engagement the adoption of 1:1 devices. The data for this study was collected through a questionnaire, three-part semi-structured interviews, and district document …

Detrimental Influences: Chicago And The Home Owners' Loan Corporation, 1933-1940, Matthew Amyx

Dissertations

This dissertation chronicles and analyzes the record of the Chicago chapter of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation in Chicago during the New Deal.

Deep Deification: Soteriology For A World In Ecological Crisis, Kathleen Mcnutt

Dissertations

What might an adequate soteriology look like for a world in ecological crisis? This dissertation constructively addresses this problem at the intersection of contemporary ecofeminist theology and Patristic soteriologies of theosis or deification. I examine ecofeminist soteriologies, drawing on the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sallie McFague, and Elizabeth Johnson in particular, and deification soteriologies, especially that of Maximus the Confessor, arguing that each of these trajectories offers both fruitful possibilities for a reconstruction of soteriology but that each also raises some problems. In bringing these two trajectories into conversation, I suggest directions for a constructive theology of salvation that …