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Home Health Care Nurses’ Experiences And Perceptions Of Providing Care To Older Adults During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Descriptive Study, Joan R. Dugas

Open Access Dissertations

Home health care nurses were essential front line healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Research in this area has primarily focused on the experiences of nurses in the acute and long-term care settings. This study aims to: (1) gain an understanding of the subjective experiences and perceptions of home health care nurses providing care to OAs during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) elucidate aspects affecting the care provided to OAs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Twenty nurses were interviewed between July 2022 and September 2022. The interviews were semi-structured and were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four …

The (Mis)Formation Of Identity In Joseph Conrad’S Novels: Ideology, Community, And The Self, Youngji Cho

Open Access Dissertations

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and The Secret Agent contain two broad themes: on the one hand, they critically portray the dominant influence of society or societal ideologies on the individual from a socio-political standpoint; on the other hand, they focus on the (dis)illusion of the protagonists regarding their own “ideal” identities from a personal standpoint. Rather than addressing one or the other, as many previous studies of Conrad’s novels have done, this dissertation argues for the intimate continuity between socio-political ideologies and personal identity by finding the point of contact between these two seemingly disparate issues. …

The Effect Of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy On Value Consistency During A Weight Loss Program, Leah Dorfman

Open Access Dissertations

In the last decade, the prevalence of obesity has increased significantly in populations worldwide. It is well established that overweight and obesity are associated with a host of deleterious health consequences. Standard Behavioral Therapy (SBT) for weight loss has been demonstrated to yield only modest outcomes with poor long-term maintenance. Therefore, efforts must be made to improve upon what is currently considered to be best practices in weight loss interventions, especially with a goal of improving retention and long-term maintenance. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a behavioral and cognitive intervention that implements both acceptance and mindfulness processes, and commitment …

Queer And Trans Inclusion In Finnish Teacher Education And Educational Research, Megan C. Jones

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation presents findings from a case study on queer and trans inclusion in a Finnish graduate program in educational research. The study was also able to expand to include experiences and perspectives from teacher education programs at the same university. This research serves an incredibly timely purpose of bringing issues of queer and trans inclusion to light in a context that is marketed as having idealistic educational practices and programs. Overall findings indicate that even in Finland, a country often looked at as an exemplary model of educational reform, there is a lack of queer and trans inclusion in …

A Case Study Of Noncredit To Credit Pathways At Community Colleges, Amy Grzybowski

Open Access Dissertations

A high school diploma is no longer the path to financial stability; a person needs at least a postsecondary degree or credential to earn a median income (Carnevale, et al. 2019). Community colleges need to work to create opportunities for all students, including those that may enter school as an adult, and not straight from high school, to attain a certificate or degree. This study examines two public community colleges in the United States that have both noncredit and credit programs that are in different stages of advancement of clear, articulable pathways. The purpose of this qualitative case study was …

Experiences Of White Women Graduate Students In A Diversity And Inclusion Badge Program At A Predominantly White Institution In A Time Of Whitestream Racial Reckoning, Stefanie Argus

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore how white women engaged with interrogating whiteness, race, and racism after completing a multi-session diversity program designed for graduate students. This qualitative research project tends to the following research question: What are the lived experiences of white women who complete a diversity and inclusion program for graduate students?

For this research project, white women who are graduate students participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Using critical whiteness theory, a feminist research framework, and interpretive phenomenological analysis, this study identified commonalities in experiences among participants (Creswell & Poth, 2018; van Manen, 2014). As is …

Computational Close Reading: A Critique Of Digital Literary Methodology, Damiano Consilvio

Open Access Dissertations

Computational Close Reading intervenes in digital humanities and American literary scholarship to negotiate a significant institutional and disciplinary problem: the devaluation of close reading and interpretation in digital humanities applications to literary studies in favor of more distant modes of reading. To remedy this issue, I pursue a core question meant to bring the literary and the digital into a more perfect confluence, as a demonstration of possibilities meant to run counter to these preconceptions about computational reading: how “close,” if close at all, can digital technologies bring us to the interpretive elements of literary texts? I argue that they …

“If You Are Trying To Help Students, You Should Probably Ask Them How You Can Help”: Testimonios Of Latina/O/ Hispanic College Students Who Persisted To Graduation, Joise Garzon

Open Access Dissertations

Latinx student enrollment in higher education institutions has been increasing and will continue to rise (McFarland et al., 2018), yet Latinx students have lower degree completion rates than their peers from other racial and ethnic backgrounds (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Higher education institutions need to learn directly from the lived experiences of this diverse population of students to better support their college completion efforts (Arbelo-Marrero & Milacci, 2018; Flink, 2018). The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of Latinx students who persisted to graduation at a four-year Hispanic Serving Institution by examining two research …

Middle Children Of History: Male-Authored Post-1960s Fiction & The Nihilism Of White Male Protagonists, Emma C. Baughman

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the phenomenon of the white male nihilist as a recurrent character in British and American fiction post-1960. The utilization of this archetype by predominantly white male authors during this time period is symptomatic of the social, political, and economic changes that fundamentally altered the perception of the white masculine mythos in much of the Western world after the end of World War II. Because the perception of whiteness and masculinity is a primary signifier of the period’s changing value, my project approaches fictional texts of white male nihilism as objects of socio-cultural analysis that constitute a genealogy …

Concept Maps For Middle School Computer Science Assessment, Gabriel De Pace

Open Access Dissertations

Concept Mapping has long been used in academic settings for various pur- poses but has been underutilized for assessment. Creating the concept map task and scoring the maps have been barriers to their widespread acceptance, but these difficulties are mitigated with automation and simple tools for the teacher to use. The aim of this work is to show that concept maps can be used effectively as computer science assessments in secondary schools. Ultimately, they can be used to measure student knowledge and to complement other forms of classroom assessments. We used the Code.org CS Discoveries Units 1-3 Curriculum taught in …

What Is Classical Education? Using Curriculum Theory To Define A Classical Approach To K-12 Schooling, Jessica Lynne Richardi

Open Access Dissertations

Results indicate that classical schools tend to value and emphasize coredisciplines such as English Language Arts and mathematics as well as Latin. Nearly half the schools in the study reported use of the Core Knowledge Sequence to deliver core content. Curricular goals and overall purpose appear to vary by school, but classical schools across the affiliation groups in this study prioritize character formation, articulate expression, and a disposition toward truth, goodness, and beauty. Approximately half of the classical schools in the sample report use of the trivium to and consider it a model for cognitive development. An emphasis on learning …

Analyzing Factors That Contribute To Attrition Of Underrepresented Undergraduate Students In Computer Science, Noura Albarakati

Open Access Dissertations

In recent years, women and underrepresented minority students have made significant advances in traditionally White male-dominated majors. Nevertheless, they are still underrepresented in most STEM majors. Consequently, many institutions in Higher Education are exploring ways to deliver environments that support those underrepresented students’ retention in science and engineering. This study sheds some light on women and minority students’ underrepresentation in computer science by exploring factors associated with their retention in the field.

This dissertation starts with an exploratory analysis that examines the attrition rate of underrepresented students who switched to other majors compared to their majority peers and investigates any …

Longitudinal Investigation Of Childhood Trauma And Emotiondriven Impulsivity, Svetlana Goncharenko

Open Access Dissertations

Exposure to childhood trauma is associated with numerous adverse psychological, physical, and behavioral health consequences. This highlight childhood trauma as a major public health problem. Addressing important gaps in the existing research, the proposed study clarifies the bidirectional and unique prospective associations between childhood trauma and both negative and positive emotion-driven impulsivity. This study utilized a sample of 11,872 participants from the ABCD study and conducted Cross Lagged Panel Models to evaluate the bisectional associations between childhood trauma and positive and negative emotion-driven impulsivity. Findings showed that earlier childhood trauma was associated with higher levels of later negative and positive …

Cognitive Reappraisal Vs. Acceptance: A Comparison Of Emotion Regulation Strategies To Reduce Anxiety, Ciara James

Open Access Dissertations

Emotion regulation consists of the skills and cognitive strategies used to alter different aspects of emotion, including the subjective and temporal experience of emotion, outward expression of emotion, the ways in which an emotional experience is interpreted, or the emotion-eliciting stimuli itself. Previous research has identified reappraisal, reframing the perception of an emotion-eliciting event to change the emotional experience, and acceptance, allowing the presence of thoughts following an emotional experience to pass through the mind in a nonjudgmental fashion, as adaptive strategies to use when managing negative emotions. The present study compared the efficacy of reappraisal and acceptance in reducing …

Brain Health Perceptions Questionnaire: Further Development And Refinement, Caitlin Michelle Ogram Buckley

Open Access Dissertations

The promotion of brain health is often perceived through an illness model, as research tends to focus on neurodegenerative disease risk reduction. However, research indicates that healthy individuals can potentially improve their cognitive performance through the adoption of health-promoting behaviors such as diet, exercise, and the management of cerebrovascular risk factors. There remains a need for validated instruments measuring the public's perceptions about cognitive health, a need this study addressed by further refining a quantitative measure of brain health knowledge and beliefs, the Brain Health Perceptions Questionnaire (BHPQ). Principal Components Analysis resulted in a 23-item questionnaire composed of five subscales …

The Experiences Of Nurses As Double Duty Caregivers For A Family Member At The End Of Life: Interpretive Description, Sandra A. Basley

Open Access Dissertations

This study explored the experiences of nurses providing end-of-life care for family members while continuing to work as a nurse. As the delivery of healthcare changes in our country, we are seeing a transition to community-based client care. As a result, there are more people with complex, advanced illnesses being cared for in the home by family members and friends. Family caregivers are the primary source of support for older adults with chronic illness and disability. These family caregivers take on many responsibilities, and often experience physical, emotional, psychological, and social distress because of the demands placed on them. A …

The Bolstering Effects Of Psychological Capital On Community College Students, Kyle Normand Gamache

Open Access Dissertations

Community colleges have an important, civic mission to serve the educational needs of the public. Often, community colleges will serve a disproportionate number of students belonging to ethnic minority groups and students of lower socioeconomic status (Cross & Atinde, 2015). Unfortunately, community college students experience lower levels of academic success, often displaying lower academic achievement and degree completion (Dougherty et al., 2017; Rosenbaum et al., 2017). Many studies have sought to understand college student success and investigate ways to bolster student attainment. Research in the field of organizational psychology has developed theories related to psychological capital (PsyCap), psychological constructs that …

Chronicling A Pandemic: Understanding The Experiences Of Secondary School Teachers During The March 2020 Shutdown, Timothy Kenney

Open Access Dissertations

The COVID-19 shutdown in March of 2020 moved teachers into emergency remote teaching. Emergency remote teaching (ERT), which is a temporary shift of instructional to an alternative delivery mode due to crisis (Hodges et al., 2020, p. 6), caused teachers to deal with a pedagogy they had never anticipated (Yildirim, K., & Elverici, S. E., 2021), often done with little guidance from administration (Trikolis & Papanastasiou, 2020). ERT also isolated teachers from their students and colleagues (Green et al., 2020; Hart & Nash, 2020) all of which led to a decreased sense of professionalism and efficacy (Reich et al., 2020). …

An Interpretative Phenomenological Study Of Undergraduate Student Wellness: Exploring Generation Z Student Wellness Experiences During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kristen Pepin

Open Access Dissertations

Qualitative research exploring undergraduate student wellness during a pandemic was scarce prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and is still lacking. Studies investigating student wellness during pandemics often fracture the concept by quantitatively researching specific wellness dimensions (Cao et al., 2020; Galea et al., 2020; Tang et al., 2020) as opposed to exploring the construct from a holistic perspective. Additionally, few studies aim to understand how undergraduate students make meaning of wellness and their lived wellness experiences, specifically during a pandemic. Furthermore, emerging research (Huckins et al., 2020) corroborates the extant literature that posit student health behaviors were declining in …

Risk Prediction Of Opioid Use Disorder (Oud) Using Electronic Health Records, Wenqiu Cao

Open Access Dissertations

The opioid epidemic has emerged as a public health crisis, attracting increasing nationwide attention. Electronic health records (EHRs) provide rich resources to investigate and predict the risk of opioid use disorder (OUD) in real-world settings due to its diversity of data types and wide range of information. In thisdissertation, I conducted three studies to investigate the association between OUD and different factors in EHR, including demographics, comorbidity, laboratory test results, medications, and opioid prescription, and develop predictive models to predict OUD risk using features from EHR data.

In Manuscript 1, we used penalized logistic regression models to predict OUD in …

Simultaneous Alcohol And Marijuana Use: Associations With Alcohol Consequences Among At-Risk Youth, Daniel Delaney

Open Access Dissertations

Emerging research has examined simultaneous alcohol and marijuana (SAM). SAM use has been found to be associated with heavier substance use and adverse consequences. However, research so far has not focused on younger at-risk youth, or accounted for race and ethnicity as influencing SAM use or associated consequences. This study examined SAM use and alcohol-related consequences and risky behaviors in a diverse (N=576; 54% White, 24.7% Hispanic, 12.7% Black) sample of at-risk youth (9-18 years old) recruited from juvenile detention and community mental health centers. SAM use was more prevalent than alcohol or marijuana use alone in these settings. Analyses …

Feasibility And Acceptability Of The Ebb And Flow Parenting Program, Maria Catherine Difonte

Open Access Dissertations

It is well-documented that parenting impacts childhood outcomes, and research has found specific positive parenting strategies that are associated with increased child resilience, well-being, and functioning (Williams et al., 2009). In-person and online programs aim to increase use of these strategies and have led to significant improvements in child outcomes and parental self-efficacy and adjustment (Webster-Stratton, 1981; Sanders, 1999; Morgan et al., 2018; Khanna et al., 2017). While findings are promising, work is needed to assess the preventative roles of single-session psychoeducational parent training programs in reducing the emergence of diagnosable concerns in children, yet research in this area is …

Longitudinal Clustering Of Health Behaviors Within The Framingham Heart Study, Nathan L. Baumann

Open Access Dissertations

Health risk behaviors (HRB) have been shown to impact non-communicable chronic disease (NCI) over the lifespan, which are among the leading causes of mortality within the United States. Treatment of NCI includes both pharmacological and behavior change intervention. Though behavior change recommendations are common in the treatment of NCI, our understanding of the long-term trajectory of HRB and how they cluster are not yet fully understood. The current study seeks to elucidate the clustering of specific health behavior changes over the lifespan, bolstering the potential for taking preventative measures as well as fostering positive health behavior change more broadly in …

Dyadic Experience Of Emotion Regulation For Families With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Coral L. Shuster

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation was constructed to better understand the role that emotion regulation(ER) difficulties have in the lives of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three research methods were utilized and are presented in this order: secondary data analysis, systematic literature review, and a cross-sectional observational study. The secondary data analysis (chapter one) aimed to understand the association between family conflict, child ER, parent perceived stress, and ASD-related social responsiveness in a sample of 2,229 children included in a nationwide longitudinal study. Findings suggest that higher social responsiveness scores predict more ER difficulties as reported by a parent. Parent perceived …

Co-Constructing Self-Compassion, Amanda Ashley Roy

Open Access Dissertations

The present study sought to explore the process by which thirty graduate or undergraduate students, university or college staff, community members, and employed or interning peer recovery specialists aged 19-64 utilize and define self-compassion through the use of virtual interviews and online surveys. Constructivist Grounded Theory and Convergent Mixed Methodology techniques revealed that participants utilize and define self-compassion in holistic and mindful ways with a large focus on self-care. Data also indicate that numerous factors can impact a person’s decision to respond compassionately, including the type of situation, if others are involved, and age. No gender differences were observed, though …

The Development Of An Inclusive Three-Item Gender Instrument, Angela Astorini

Open Access Dissertations

Existing gender instruments are not inclusive and sensitive to all persons of transgender and/or gender diverse experience (TGDE), individuals whose gender identity does not align with their sex assigned at birth according to the heteronormative sociocultural construct of gender (Flores et al. 2016; Meerwijk & Sevelius, 2017). The goal of this study was to use a mixed methods approach to develop a new three-item gender instrument that collects information from participants on their sex assigned at birth, gender identity, and the gender they live as in their day-to-day life (lived gender). This gender instrument would aid researchers and health professionals …

Do Good To Feel Good? Investigating Civic Engagement Among Non-College Young Adults, Natalie Fenn

Open Access Dissertations

Young adulthood is a period of transition during which individuals could greatly benefit from health promotion tools. Civic engagement has been touted as one potential form of health promotion given its association with positive well-being. However, researchers have primarily examined civic engagement as a health promotion tool among older adults and adolescents, and less is known about its mental health implications for young adults. Additionally, findings are more mixed among women and those from lower-socioeconomic populations perhaps because civic engagement is conceived as an extra burden. Less-educated individuals are less likely to civically engage and more likely to demonstrate mental …

Using Constructivist Grounded Theory To Unpack How White Women In Stem Become Committed To Racial Justice, Desiree Forsythe

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation presents findings from a constructivist grounded theory study on the process in which white women in STEM commit to racial justice. The research here captures not only the complexity of racial justice activism in white women, both the participants and my own, but is also grounded in the current events of the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted during a particularly brutal string of murders on Black people by law enforcement in the United States. This dissertation serves to unpack how white supremacy is both rejected and embodied by those attempting to commit to racial justice and to …

Risk And Protective Factors Associated With Opioid Use After In-Patient Detoxification, Megan M. Drohan

Open Access Dissertations

Objective: To identify risk and protective factors for return to opioid use post inpatient detoxification in a sample of persons with opioid use disorder (OUD).

Design and Methods: This study used data from a larger randomized controlled study following 206 eligible individuals who entered in-patient detoxification for OUD. Participants entered the study as part of the observation arm and were assessed for six months following in-patient detoxification. Timeline follow-back assessment was used to identify if and when participants returned to opioid use post-detoxification. A series of bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to identify risk and protective …

Environmental Context And Expectancy Of Alcohol Use On Changes In Reflection-Impulsivity And Craving, Christina T. Schulz

Open Access Dissertations

The present study primarily aimed to (a) determine the effects of environmental context and the expectancy of alcohol consumption on changes in reflection-impulsivity (R-I), a state behavioral aspect of impulsivity and (b) test R-I as a mediator of the association between environment, expectancy of alcohol consumption, and subjective craving for alcohol in a sample of college-aged heavy drinkers. Participants were 81 (76.5% female) college students between the ages of 21 and 29 (M = 21.86, SD = 1.87) who were classified as heavy drinkers. Participants first completed measures of alcohol use, trait impulsivity, behavioral R-I, and subjective craving for …