Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating Sexual Fantasy And Sexual Behavior In Adolescent Offenders, Hayley Lauren Tews

Dissertations and Theses

Juvenile sexual offenders (SOs) have been found to account for a significant proportion of sexual offenses. A critical gap has been identified in our knowledge regarding the role of sexual fantasy and sexual behavior in juvenile sexual offending, even though these variables have been identified as an important treatment target for this population. Specifically, it is not clear if SOs differ significantly from juvenile non-sexual offenders (NSOs) in their sexual fantasies and sexual behavior and as such, if reports of fantasies and past sexual behaviors should be used as a target for sex offender specific treatment. This study explored differences …

Hearing The Voices Of Bicultural And Bilingual Teachers: Using A Case Study Approach To Explain The Professional Identity Development Of Early Career Native Chinese Mandarin Teachers, Jing Chen

Dissertations and Theses

Increasingly, Native Chinese Mandarin teachers have been migrating to the United States and taking positions as Mandarin teachers in U.S. schools. Many have needed support for professional identity development as bicultural and bilingual teachers given their new social cultural context. The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the experiences and professional identity development of early-career Native Chinese Mandarin teachers in one Northwest Pacific city. Using a theoretical framework of social cultural theory in education and the bicultural identity integration construct, I conducted a multiple case study of four early-career Native Chinese Mandarin teachers in four different school …

Residence Life As Learning Organizations: An Inquiry Into Organizational Elements That Support Integration Of The Residential Curriculum, Heather Kropf

Dissertations and Theses

Student learning and success is tied to the learning goals and mission of each institution, including environments outside of the classroom. Students are more diverse than ever in terms of their lived experience and their culture, identity, and how they engage in learning. Research has indicated that students spend the majority of their time outside the classroom, where they are learning through informal and formal environments. This has significance and opportunities for student affairs practitioners who desire to create student learning environments. In fact, residence life curricular approaches have demonstrated positive learning experiences for students.

However, implementing a learning-based curricular …

Perceptions Of Students Of Color About Their Experience In An Alternative High School: A Phenomenological Inquiry, Massene Mboup

Dissertations and Theses

Public schools in Oregon have been struggling to include students of color and teachers of color for so long. Students of color represent more than one third of the school population, yet remain underserved, underrepresented, and over disciplined. Most of their teachers and support staff are White; the teachers of color represent less than 8% of the teaching staff. The students of color attend comprehensive high schools that generally ignore them--or push them out. Some students of color end up in alternative schools.

My problem of practice was the oppression of students of color in urban schools. Specifically, my research …

An Examination Of Daily Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors, Perceived Supervisor Responsiveness And Job Satisfaction, Luke Daniel Mahoney

Dissertations and Theses

Balancing both work and non-work life is increasingly recognized as a challenge for employees, and supervisors are in a position to support employees in their efforts to do so. Supervisors who exhibit family-supportive behaviors in support of employees who juggle work and family roles show benefits for employees in terms of well-being and job outcomes. The purpose of this study was to take a more fine-grained look at family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) using daily surveys in order to advance understanding of how family-supportive behaviors work within-person. Another aim of the study was to examine perceived supervisor responsiveness (PSR) for the …

Cultural Wealth And The Racialized Experiences Of Persisting Latinx Business Students In A Predominantly White Institution: A Study On Sense Of Belonging, Rebecca Sue Sanchez

Dissertations and Theses

The changing landscape of higher education calls for a shift in approach to ensure that all students are given not just the opportunity but also the environment in which to succeed. In order to facilitate the growing demand for a diverse workforce, universities must work to retain students and support them sufficiently as they move toward graduation. Student persistence rates from year one to year two show markedly different rates based on race and ethnicity with the lowest persistence rates associated with Latinx and Black students. National projections of college attendance by race and ethnicity predict that Latinx students will …

"It Puts A Face To All The Knowledge We've Gotten" : A Program Of Research On Intimate Partner Violence Surrogate Impact Panels, Kate Louise Sackett Kerrigan

Dissertations and Theses

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the most pressing and consequential social problems facing the United States. The current response to IPV in the U.S. is most often a form of tertiary prevention, targeted at individuals directly responsible for (referred to here as "justice involved individuals" or JIIs) and harmed by IPV (referred to here as "survivors"). U.S. institutional responses to IPV are implemented through the criminal justice system. The inherent contradiction in grounding IPV intervention approaches such as BIPs within a social system that itself uses coercion, threat of punishment, and retribution to maintain order and control over …

Re-Engaging Individual Capacities In Service Of Civic Capacity: A Model Of Holistic Civic Engagement Education For The University, Jane Gerald Carr

Dissertations and Theses

A healthy democracy requires active civic engagement. Effective civic involvement can be encouraged by education that helps students learn to respect diverging viewpoints and build skills such as critical thinking about policy frameworks. In higher education, we have seen progress in teaching for civic engagement despite pressures to focus narrowly on career preparation. However, it is important to build on this work in two ways. First, the noncognitive and holistic dimensions of civic engagement have not been thoroughly considered in designing civic education. Second, the field could reach its goals more effectively by adopting teaching strategies that directly help students …

Study Of Satisfaction Of Inpatient Discharge Based On Nurses’ Perceptions, Hong Lin

Dissertations and Theses

Patient satisfaction plays an important role in providing quality health care, and discharge satisfaction is part of overall patient satisfaction since it reveals how patients feel about their stay. In this paper, we evaluated inpatient discharge satisfaction based on nurses’ perceptions. An anonymous survey was used to evaluate how satisfied the patients were when being discharged from the acute care hospital with survey questions answered by nurses who work on medical-surgical floors. Data was collected from the questionnaires and analyzed using Excel.

Towards Wide Implementation Of Dance Therapy In Mental Health, Pin-Wen Chou

Dissertations and Theses

In recent years, Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) has been increasingly mentioned in the field of mental health counseling. Despite the progress of DMT in terms of studies showing its efficiency for various forms of mental health conditions such as depression and trauma, the implementation of DMT amongst mental health therapists is still not as widespread as other forms of therapies such as verbal and art therapies. In this project, we aim to determine the underlying causes of its low implementation by surveying a set of populations, specifically mental health patients, mental health therapists that do not specialize in dance/movement therapy, …

Physical Therapy With Adjunct Therapies In Patients With Chronic Pain And Disability Post-Motor Vehicle Accidents, Lakshmi Subramanian

Dissertations and Theses

This project is a thorough literature review of studies concerning physical therapy interventions in conjunction with adjunct treatments for patients post-motor vehicle accidents focused on the therapy’s efficacy as related to functional outcome measures. Physical therapy is frequently treatment of choice for patients after minor motor vehicle accidents. However, most patients seek concomitant therapies like acupuncture, chiropractic, epidural steroid injection, and psychological counselling. This paper seeks to gather data on the efficacy of different treatment modalities when used in conjunction with each other. Often patients are traumatised or develop anxiety about driving requiring counselling and therapy. The vast majority of …

Untangling The Factors That Affect Student Retention: A Quantitative Study Of The Relationships Among First-Year Seminar Program Characteristics And Instructor Type (Full-Time And Part-Time), Christina Marie Shafer

Dissertations and Theses

Each fall first-year college students have met and overcome many challenges and transitions. However, one-third of first-year students who enter college in the U.S. do not return for their second-year. Making the first-year a critical juncture for students, administrators, and institutions. First-Year Seminars were created to help assist students with their transition to college and have been identified as an effective initiative to aid in first-year retention.

What role do institutions play in addressing the issue of retention? Some say that those who teach the Seminars matter. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among Seminar characteristics …

Peers' Academic Coping As A Resource For Academic Engagement And Motivational Resilience In The First Year Of Middle School, Daniel Lee Grimes

Dissertations and Theses

Beginning middle school is a difficult transition for many young adolescents. Academic coping skills and the ability to exhibit motivational resilience in the face of potential academic adversity can contribute to the success with which students navigate this transition. Students' peer group affiliations are known to have the ability to contribute positively to students' academic engagement, motivation, and achievement at this time. The current study explores the potential of a student's peer group members' use of eleven ways of academic coping to affect the change in student academic engagement over the course of the first year of middle school. Data …

Life Satisfaction In Division Iaa And Division Iii Football Players, Krista Haunani Francisco

Dissertations and Theses

Level of life satisfaction is not something of which many sit down and take appraisal. However, levels of life satisfaction, especially low levels of life satisfaction, can have a direct effect on health. Low levels of life satisfaction cause an increase in self-reported stress. Inversely, high levels of stress cause a decrease in life satisfaction. This decrease in life satisfaction is associated with poor mental and physical health outcomes. A majority of student-athlete healthcare is centered around the physical aspects of health, with mental health just recently becoming a concern. It was apparent through the research for this study that …

Narrowing The Cognitive Distance Between Engineers And Customers: A Novel Approach, Based On Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping, Byung Sung Yoon

Dissertations and Theses

During concept development, product developers consider product users and their future experience, cost, development and manufacturing efficiency, product function/quality, and differentiation of the product in the market. Development teams often struggle to adequately address all of these considerations, due to the following reasons: (1) Differences in technological and experiential knowledge, methods used, and communication styles that make it difficult for customers/user, marketing, and engineering to communicate effectively. As a result, important factors may not be sufficiently considered. (2) Product design factors, including technological alternatives, functions, features, benefits, and customer value are interdependent: in some cases, customers are willing to sacrifice …

Leveraging Eelectronic Health Records To Develop Cardiovascular Risk Profiles For Primary Prevention With Youth Living With Hiv In Multidisciplinary Adolescent Hiv Care Settings, Sitaji Gurung

Dissertations and Theses

Background: HIV infection has shown to be associated with increased risk for, and earlier occurrence of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Emerging evidence suggests that detectable viral load (VL) and CD4 ≤ 200 contribute substantially to increased risk of CVD. Cigarette smoking is prevalent in at least 40% of those with HIV, and significantly more common compared to the general population. As many as 33% of adolescents are overweight, and this excess weight leads to lipid abnormalities, and increases in metabolic syndrome. With the newer formulation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) agents available as a component of single tablet regimens (STR), it is …

Exploring How Community College Transfer Students Experience Connection In A Commuter University, Christa Michelle Zinke

Dissertations and Theses

Over the last 40 years, the expansion of the U.S. community college system resulted in a growing number of students choosing to begin their undergraduate education at a two-year institution and then transfer to a four-year institution. However, many students struggle to establish connection after transferring, especially if they transfer into a commuter university. For many college students, feelings of engagement and connection influence their persistence decisions. Using Tinto's (1975; 1993) and Astin's (1984) theories of student persistence as a framework, the purpose of this in-depth interview study is to explore how commuter community college students who transfer to Portland …

Rebranding Empire: Consumers, Commodities, And The Empire Marketing Board, 1926-1933, Ashley Kristen Bower

Dissertations and Theses

The Empire Marketing Board (EMB) was a British government organization established in 1926 by the Conservative Party, under the authority of Colonial Secretary Leopold Amery. Its goal was to encourage Britons to "Buy Empire," namely, to buy products from the Dominions and colonies of the British Empire. To encourage consumption, the EMB funded scientific research and economic analyses, as well as publicity for Empire trade in the form of posters, films, educational materials, and government-sponsored events. The Empire Marketing Board attempted to sell the concept of "Empire" to the masses as a new cooperative project which stressed the value of …

Led Down The Garden Path: Cognitive Processing Of English Language Idioms, Daniel Alan Vandehey

Dissertations and Theses

The discourse community surrounding the study of idioms often disagree regarding the proper classification of idioms. Some scholars believe that the figurative meaning of many idioms cannot be determined through the deconstruction of their lexical parts, and therefore should be classified as an irreducible lexical unit. Others believe that even though the figurative meaning of some idioms are obscured, people process these opaque idioms as they would a metaphor, constructing meaning through an integration process that includes the component pieces of the idiom, the surrounding context, and the message receiver's knowledge network. This study forwards research concerning whether idioms should …

Competing Narratives: The Struggle For The Soul Of Egypt, Ahmed El Mansouri

Dissertations and Theses

In January 2011, Egypt witnessed an uprising against ex-military president Hosni Mubarak, which resulted in his removal after ruling Egypt for thirty years. Yet, while the revolution targeted Mubarak, it also targeted to end the era of military rule, which started in 1952 with President Gamal Abdel Nasser, then was passed down to Anwar Sadat in 1970 and later to Hosni Mubarak in 1981. Thereafter, dissatisfied with existing national policies, political leaders and revolutionaries battled to redefine Egyptian national identity by contesting the writing of a new Egyptian constitution. The debates over the constitution exhibited an ample of destructive communication …

Robust Maximum Flow Network Interdiction Problem, Darshan Rajesh Chauhan

Dissertations and Theses

In this thesis, a maximum flow-based network interdiction problem considering uncertainties in arc capacities and interdiction resource consumption is solved. The problem consists of two entities with opposing objectives: the goal of the adversary is to maximize the flow of illicit drugs through the network, while the goal of the interdictor is to minimize the maximum flow by completely interdicting arcs given a specified amount of resources. Lack of complete information about the usage patterns of the transportation network by the adversary results in an uncertain estimate of arc capacity and resources required for interdiction by the interdictor. To account …

The Miseducation Of Marianne Dashwood: Jane Austen’S Politicization Of Sentimental Discourse, Kevin Frazelis

Dissertations and Theses

Examining the love triangle between Marianne Dashwood, Colonel Brandon, and John Willoughby provides new insight into how Austen decided to politicize the notion of the novel to demonstrate the inherent flaw in how sentimental novels to depicted romances bared a threat to women. I work against the conventional opposition of "good" versions of masculinity versus "poor" versions to posit a notion that instead, most masculinities are unstable and a detriment to the fairer sex. In this essay, I will argue that Sense and Sensibility disclose Austen's anxieties regarding sentimentalism because, from this perspective, Marianne Dashwood's character arc illustrates the author's …

Bird Of The Air And Sweetness Of The Snowe, Steve Mendoza

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Oscar Wilde's Fiction: Views On Life And Art, Robert C. Derosa

Dissertations and Theses

Oscar Wilde depicts different views on life and art. The stories selected have common themes of wealth (monetary/non-monatary), love, devotion, self-destruction and death:: The Picture of Dorian Gray, "The Happy Prince," "The Devoted Friend," "The Selfish Giant," and "The Rose and the Nightingale." These four fairy tales tie in nicely with Wilde's novel to show the true value of life and art.

The Cultural Dual Identity In Cristina Garcia's Dreaming In Cuban And Julia Alvarez's How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Azahria John-Otway

Dissertations and Theses

Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban and Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents are two novels that explore the effects immigration can have on the development of one's identity, respectively. Throughout both novels, it is understood that in order for an immigrant to have a sense of belonging, an exploratory journey of the self must be made. In making this journey, literally and figuratively, the immigrant person begins to appreciate their homeland and immigrated home, thus feeling a sense of belonging and accepting they are of a cultural dual identity.

Emergent Women's Global Political Leadership: Progress Despite Constraints, Aoife Meehan

Dissertations and Theses

“Emergent Women’s Global Political Leadership: Progress Despite Constraints” seeks to trace why and how female political leaders emerge at the global level. Evidence points to certain cultural factors, often expressed by laws, constraining or supporting women as they seek political advancement. Data shows women leaders are emerging more and more, though slowly, as political leaders around the world. Reviewing women’s participation and representation regionally and nationally in parliaments, as ministers, and as heads of governments and states confirms that women can and do emerge as political leaders. Finally, learning about and examining women leaders themselves, their style and substance, proves …

Does Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status Moderate The Association Between Adhd And Overweight/Obesity?, Ayanna N. Gilmore

Dissertations and Theses

This study aimed to examine whether neighborhood-level socioeconomic status (NSES) moderated the Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)-overweight/obesity association. Participants (N=568; mean (SD) age = 20.74 (3.20) years; 70.8% female) were part- time or full-time students attending the City College of New York. They were recruited through an online platform and participated in the study in exchange for course credit. Eligible participants were required to self-report their height, weight, from which body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Participants were categorized as Low BMI (Underweight or Typical BMI) or High BMI (Overweight or Obese BMI). Participants self-reported current ADHD symptoms using the ADHD-EF Index …

Does Overweight/Obesity Moderate The Association Between Adhd And Internalizing Difficulties In Young Adults?, Breanna Badripersaud

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s objective was to investigate if ADHD symptoms and BMI are associated with internalizing impairments of depression, anxiety, stress and lower self-esteem in college students. It was predicted that higher ADHD symptoms would be associated with elevated depression, anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem, especially if BMI fell in the overweight/obese range. Undergraduate students [N= 580; Mean (SD) age= 20.7 (3.10)] from an urban campus completed an online survey comprising self-report measures of demographics, height/weight, attention and hyperactivity/impulsivity (Barkley Deficits Executive Functioning Scale ADHD- Executive Function Index), depression, anxiety, stress (all using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale) and self- …

Socioeconomic And Racial/Ethnic Disparities In Adhd And Alcohol Use Among College Students, Laurie Pierre-Paul

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Epidemiology Of Somatic Depression And Eating Disorders: The Relationship Between Depressive Subtypes And Symptoms Of Disordered Eating, Anita M. Sicignano

Dissertations and Theses

Depression is known to affect females in much greater numbers than males, with about three times as many women having the disorder as men (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A similar gender disparity can be seen in eating disorders, where up to nine in ten sufferers are female (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Studies have shown that most of the gender difference in depression occurs as a result of women experiencing a form of depression involving a number of body-centric symptoms, including headaches, weight changes, fatigue, and insomnia, which has been termed “somatic depression” (Silverstein et al., 2013). Some of the symptoms, …