Digital Commons Network^™

Expressions Of Cultural Worldviews In Psychotherapy With Clients Who Have Experienced Trauma: A Qualitative Study From A Terror Management Perspective, Christopher Ogle

Theses and Dissertations

People who have experienced trauma involving serious threats to physical integrity can react in accordance with various response trajectories, including posttraumatic growth (PTG). PTG is characterized by positive psychological change following trauma that goes beyond a return to pre-trauma functioning as the result of reorganizing one's conceptualization of his or her phenomenological world (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). This study was interested in factors that contribute to PTG from a terror management theory (TMT) perspective. TMT, based on existential philosophy, posits that people defend against the knowledge that everyone must eventually die and the accompanying anxiety by investing in cultural worldviews …

Voicing Across Cultures: The Role Of Communication Style And Relationships In Employee Voice And Subsequent Influence, Anna-Katherine Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Constructive input from a diverse workforce can enhance firm performance. However, cultural norms and differences in communication behavior expectations may prevent concerns and suggestions from being expressed, or from being implemented when they are expressed. The purpose of the current study is to bridge the Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Communications, and International Management literatures in an attempt to understand how subordinates with different communicaton norms voice and how (or whether) managers use the content of the voiced messages. Two models are presented examining prohibitive and promotive voice as central variables in the relationship between subordinate communication style and subordinate influence …

A Prospective Study Of Differential Sources Of School-Related Social Support And Adolescents' Global Life Satisfaction, James D. Siddall

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the cross-sectional and prospective relationships between three sources of school-related social support (parent involvement, peer support for learning, and teacher-student relationships) and early adolescents’ global life satisfaction. The participants were 597 middle school students from one large school in the Southeastern United States who completed measures of school social climate and life satisfaction on two occasions, five months apart. The results revealed that school-related experiences in terms of social support for learning contributed substantial amounts of variance to individual differences in adolescents’ satisfaction with their lives as a whole. Cross-sectional multiple regression analyses of the differential contributions …

Effect Of Physiological Oxygen Levels On Osteogenic Differentiation Of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells, Suchit Sahai

Theses and Dissertations

Regenerative medicine presents exciting strategies for healing critical-size bone defects through the implantation of cells and biocompatible scaffolds. Most in vitro studies are performed in atmospheric oxygen conditions (~20%), which do not accurately mimic the CSD microenvironment. Due to damage to the vasculature at CSDs, oxygen levels fall into the hypoxic range (<5%), which can impact viability, proliferation and differentiation of the cells employed for bone regeneration. Understanding the cellular responses to hypoxia has grown primarily from study of individual molecular factors. The master regulator of adaptive responses to low oxygen availability is the nuclear factor, hypoxia-inducible factor-1. HIF-1 is a heterodimeric protein, stable below 6% O2 condition in the nucleus and has been shown to play a role in angiogenic-osteogenic coupling. We have developed a responsive, fluorescent, hypoxia detection system and determined whether HIF activity can be tracked in both 2-D and 3-D cultures. Adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) were selected due to their broad utilization in tissue engineering strategies and characterized the influence of HIF signaling on its phenotype. The work done identified that of hypoxia impaired osteogenic differentiation of ASCs in both 2-D and 3-D cultures and HIF-1 did not mediate this effect. Ischemic preconditioning (IPC) strategy and varied protocols used represents a clinically feasible manipulation of cell preparation to help the survival of implanted ASCs and accelerate osteogenic differentiation at physiological oxygen levels.

Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, And Diaspora, 1970s-1990s, Tiffany Nicole Florvil

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation, "Writing Across Differences: Afro-Germans, Gender, and Diaspora, 1970s-1990s," explores the birth of the Afro-German movement, including its two organizations: The Initiative of Black Germans (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, ISD) and Afro-German Women (Afro-deutsche Frauen, ADEFRA) in West and then reunified Germany. In it, I uncover the efforts of Black Germans to organize a diasporic and literary movement to confront discriminatory discourses and practices that simultaneously ignored them and positioned them as "Others" in postwar German society. Through their diverse literature and coordinated events, Black Germans enacted membership in the African diaspora, articulating and claiming an identity that supported a …

An Alternative Path: The Intellectual Legacy Of James W. Carey, Matthew Ross

Theses and Dissertations

The following is an inquiry into the intellectual Legacy of James W. Carey. This study locates, classifies and critiques the three most salient currents of his work: (1) His critique of the intellectual history of mass communications and the positivism of the media 'effects tradition,' (2) his North American cultural studies alternative to the dominant ways of knowing in his discipline, (3) and his technological criticism. All three of these currents are discussed and evaluated in terms of Carey's contribution to the discipline. While Carey was neglectful is his analysis of institutions and issues of political economy, the author argues …

Social Media, A New Revolution In The Field Of Marketing: The Effect Of Information Sharing, Peer Pressure, Entertainment And Emotional Connection On The Attitude Towards The Brand And In Turn The Purchase Intention From The Brand, Sradha Narendra Sheth

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media has today become one of the fastest and strongest networking and communication tools. Companies realizing the importance of this new marketing revolution have also ventured into the world of social media. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social media marketing on user's attitude towards the brand present on social media and their purchase intentions from the brand. The relevance of this study will provide great insights to retailers with regard to using multiple social media sites and their features to successfully market their products, retain and grow their customer base.

Putting Place Back Into Displacement: Reevaluating Diaspora In The Contemporary Literature Of Migration, Christiane Brigitte Steckenbiller

Theses and Dissertations

In order to improve the engineering properties of soft soils, materials, such as cement and fiber, can be introduced to the soil mass. Currently, design criterion for a cement-soil mixture requires only the measurement of unconfined compressive strength. This simple measurement may not be adequate to describe the behavior that results from differing field loading conditions. A series of consolidation tests and unconfined compression tests were conducted with special attention being paid to the effects of curing time and vertical curing stress. It is shown that the introduction of cement into soft soils results in decreased compressibility and increased unconfined …

Ulysses In The Age Of Digital Remediation, Melissa Hart Higgins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an in-depth study of the implications of digital technologies and information literacy for the reading and scholarly study of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Because the reading experience of Ulysses depends heavily on both its physicality and the interaction of the reader with the text, the changes in reading practices and scholarly study brought about by digital adaptations and hypermediations of this novel can offer new modes of understanding and characterizing readers relationships with text, as well as how the readers' digital interactions with Ulysses might engender or inhibit potential interpretations.

Each of the three chapters in this …

Online Communities Of Practice And Teachers Perceived Sense Of Efficacy: A Mixed Methods Study Of National Association Of Agricultural Educators Communities Of Practice Users, Robin Mclean

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this convergent design mixed methods study was to assess the perceived sense of efficacy of teachers who use the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) Communities of Practice, an online community for pre-service teachers, secondary educators, and university professors in agricultural education. The convergent design used the quantitative Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale and a qualitative case study with the data collected in parallel, analyzed separately and then merged at the end of the study for comparisons. Significant differences in perceived self-efficacy were not noted between mentor and neighbor users within the community. Communities of Practice content …

The Experiences Of Hispanic International Students As Interviewees In A Cross-Cultural Interview Project, Ren S. Carbutt

Theses and Dissertations

In the field of world language education, it has long been affirmed that language and culture are inseparable. It has also often been asked how teaching language and culture in an inseparable way is to be accomplished. One solution that has been proposed is ethnographic interviews. Other studies have demonstrated that interviewing native cultural informants is beneficial for language students. This study examined whether such interviews are also beneficial to the native informants. The participants in this project, sixteen native speakers of Spanish, were each interviewed three times by a pair of Spanish students who employed ethnographic techniques as a …

Investigation Of Possible Novel Peptide Inhibitors To Bag-1 Based On Peptidyl-Biomimetics, Jonathan Brunn

Theses and Dissertations

In this Master’s Thesis Research the results can be summarized from two major tasks: (1) In our first task, we utilized our two protein system (BAG-1 and HSP 70) as part of beta testing of a computational software 1 that can take three dimensional x-ray crystallography information about protein complexes and predict the strength of atom –atom interactions between amino-acid residues Open Contact predicts binding hotspots that can be used to identify short amino acid chains or peptides that mimic that particular binding segment of the larger protein. These peptides are called pepidyl-biomimetics. The peptide can potentially act as an …

Haunting The Imagination: The Haunted House As A Figure Of Dark Space In American Culture, Amanda Bingham Solomon

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary America the haunted house appears regularly as a figure in literature, film, and tourism. The increasing popularity of the haunted house is in direct correlation with the disintegration of the home as a refuge from the harsh elements of the world. The mass media populates society with dark images and subjects, portraying America as a dark place to live. Americans create fictional narratives of terror and violence as a means of coping with their own modern horrors. Their horrors are psychologically displaced within these narratives. The haunted house is therefore a manifestation of contemporary anxieties surrounding the dissolution …

Does Social Network Opinion Matter? How Implicit Theories And Social Network Opinions Can Influence Romantic Relationship Dynamics, Lauren Whitney Colvin

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined whether someone’s implicit theories of relationships (ITORs) has an effect on whose opinion and what type of opinion has more influence on their romantic relationship dynamics. Individuals high in destiny beliefs view relationships as either meant to be or not meant to be. Individuals high in growth beliefs think relationships take work to maintain and that problems can be overcome. Combined these form orientations- cultivation orientation where the individual is high growth/low destiny and evaluation orientation which is high destiny/low growth. I analyzed an archived dataset where participants completed Sinclair’s (2008) Social Network Opinion Scale, Lund’s …

Addressing Sample Bias And Representativeness At The Kinlock Site (22su526) A Freshwater Mussel Shell Ring In The Mississippi Delta, Joseph Alan Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

Applied zooarchaeology provides baselines which can be used in modern conservation biology to better understand how faunal communities have changed over time. This goal can only be accomplished, however, by first accounting for the multiple biases present within the archaeological record, and how they may affect sample representativeness. Taxonomic analysis was conducted on freshwater mussel shell from the late prehistoric (ca. A.D. 700 - 1200) Kinlock site, Sunflower County, Mississippi. Species-area curves and biodiversity indices demonstrate that random sampling of surface clusters of shell, up to about 4,000 valves, provides an adequate picture of the overall surface assemblage. Comparison of …

Designing A Russian Language Learning Course For Brigham Young University Independent Study, Jacob R. Burdis

Theses and Dissertations

In 2010, Brigham Young University Independent Study (BYU IS) sponsored a development project for the creation of a second-year high school Russian language learning course. The objectives of the course were to implement the five standards for foreign language learning as constituted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages: communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. The design project is an attempt to implement these principles in an independent distance learning course, with particular emphasis on encouraging meaningful communicative learning in authentic, real-world tasks and contexts. The product of the design is a course deliverable completely online through …

Promoting Blogging To Improve Interpersonal And Presentational Writing Skills While Increasing Cultural Competency In An English Language Learning Setting, Terese Cox

Theses and Dissertations

Instructors of English Language Learners (ELLs) often focus on writing as one of the primary skills acquired in the university second language classroom. This thesis examines the role of blogging in improving interpersonal and presentational writing while also increasing students' cultural competency. It describes how to create and use a web source to promote blogging in the classroom. A classroom web source to accompany Interchange 3 as well as sixteen lessons with accompanying materials and rubrics comprise a substantial portion of this thesis to practically show how blogging might be incorporated into an ESL classroom. Each lesson enforces and highlights …

One Woman Writing: A Case Study, Linda Marie Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

After struggling to learn academic writing in college and taking a leave of absence because I could not learn it fast enough, after listening to other Black women who also struggled to learn academic writing in college and who also took a leave of absence because they could not learn it fast enough, and after watching Black female students in my college composition classes struggle to learn academic writing and the technology associated with it and dealing with their resistance and their literal or figurative withdrawal from my classes, I decided to talk to three Black women about their experience …

A Translation And Cultural Adaptation Of The Japanese Version Of The Outcome Questionnaire 45 (Oq), Risa Takara

Theses and Dissertations

The need for psychotherapy outcome research is growing in Japan as the societal demands for psychotherapy have increased in recent years. Although researchers in Japan recognize the importance of integrating clinical practice and empirical research in evaluating psychotherapy outcome, most Japanese studies to date have relied heavily on qualitative case studies (Haebara, 1997; Kanazawa, 2004; Tanno, 2001). With the help of six translators and 116 native Japanese pilot respondents, this study adapted the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ; Lambert et al., 1996), one of the most common quantitative measures of clinical outcome, for use in Japan. The translation of the original OQ …

A Comparison Of The Effects Of Negative Communication And Spirituality On Relationship Quality Among Different Groups Of Latino And Anglo Couples, Sergio Benjamin Pereyra

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the direct relationship between actor/ partner effects of negative communication, spirituality and relationship quality and also examined negative communication when mediated by spirituality among four types of couples. The sample included 300 heterosexual Anglo couples (AC), 319 heterosexual female Anglo/ male Latino couples (FAML), 292 heterosexual female Latina/ male Anglo couples (FLMA), and 177 heterosexual Latino couples (LC) who completed a survey questionnaire known as the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE). Variables from this questionnaire that were used in the study included measures of negative communication, spirituality, and relationship quality. Results from Structural Equation Modeling indicated that negative communication …

The Portrayal Of Older People In Marketing Materials For Senior Centers, Jason Robert Gillespie

Theses and Dissertations

This content analysis examined 128 senior center brochures and newsletters to determine how older people (those 65 years and older) were portrayed. Findings indicated that portrayals of older people in this medium that targets older people and their caretakers exclusively were overwhelmingly positive. Older people were portrayed favorably in terms of health status, personality descriptors related to level of happiness, interaction with others, mental state, as well as body image and overall evaluation. In several other categories such as energy level and activity level they were portrayed neutrally, and not a single category was dominated by negative portrayals. In fact, …

Parent And Professional Perspectives About Autism Spectrum Disorders In South India: Beliefs, Practices, And Parent-Professional Relationships., Neeraja Ravindran

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experience of parents and professionals living in a large metropolitan city in South India who were raising and/or working with a child with an autism spectrum disorder. The study explored the unique perspectives of parents and professionals regarding their beliefs and practices about autism, as well as the nature of the parent-professional relationship. Nineteen parents (all mothers) and 21 professionals were interviewed in person at four schools, an early intervention program, a hospital clinic, and a physician’s office. Themes were developed using qualitative software, and reliability was established through multiple …

School Culture: A Sequential Mixed Methods Exploratory Meta-Analysis, Cynthia Pritchett

Theses and Dissertations

This multi-national study used systematic review as a data collection technique to determine the current field of empirical studies that posit a definition of school culture and its characteristics. The data gathered from a qualitative synthesis and analysis of the acquired studies informed school culture taxonomy. The taxonomy presented domains, classes, categories, characteristics, and elements, which became the variables for meta-analysis. This adapted methodological process resulted in a valid and generalizable definition of school culture. The adapted sequential mixed methods exploratory approach used in this study resulted in the generation of grounded theory. The grounded theory is a definition of …

Playing Against The Rhythm: The Intersection Of Gender And Performative Space In Iran, Leila Rafei

Theses and Dissertations

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, women have been legally prohibited from singing or playing a musical instrument solo in public. The government has sought to control women’s performative space by using concepts of permissibility and ideological compatibility. In the past decade, however, Iran has seen the birth of an underground music culture, in which women sing and play illegally. Underground and diasporic female musicians have carved new spaces that subvert state regulations on cultural purity and nationalism, deterritorializing and deconstructing notions of national space and culture. Women musicians have thus demonstrated the failure of the state to successfully regulate …

Visual Attention, Color Processing And Physiological Measure Differences In Males And Females With Substance Abuse And Opiate Addiction, Jo Ann Petrie

Theses and Dissertations

A biological marker of the addictive state would be a major breakthrough in objectively assessing the efficacy of treatment outcomes. Given its role in the mesolimbic system and drug reward, most biological marker studies for addiction focus on measures related to dopamine (DA). Dopamine is also implicated in some disorders of visual attention and plays a modulatory role in the processing of color in the retinal DA pathway. For example, visual processing in the retina has been shown to co-vary with DA levels during cocaine withdrawal. In this electroencephalographic (EEG) study, we studied event related potentials (ERPs) and reaction time …

Power By Possession: Cuban-American Types And Collecting In The Agüero Sisters, Ashley Noelle Walton

Theses and Dissertations

Although many other ethnic and cultural studies have moved beyond essentialist labels and categories, Cuban-American studies persists in categorizing the people belonging to the cultural group in terms of how much time they have spent in Cuba, thus creating a hierarchy of "authentic" Cuban-ness. Isabel Alvarez Borland gives a comprehensive overview of Cuban-American literary categories, and through her description we can see how these categories may lend themselves to stratification. These categories include: the first generation, the second generation, the one-and-a-halfer, and the ethnic writer. To say that one generation of Cuban exiles is more or less authentically Cuban discounts …

The Role Of Calcineurin In Dendritic Remodeling And Epileptogenesis In A Rat Model Of Traumatic Brain Injury, John Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), a leading cause of death and disability in the United States, causes potentially preventable damage in part through the dysregulation of neural calcium levels. This dysregulation likely affects the activity of the calcium-sensitive phosphatase, calcineurin, with serious implications for neural function. To test this possibility, the present study characterized the role of calcineurin in a rat model of brain trauma, the lateral fluid percussion injury model. Golgi-Cox histochemistry revealed an acute post-TBI loss and delayed overgrowth of dendritic spines on principal cortical cells. The spine loss appeared to require calcineurin activity, since administering a calcineurin inhibitor, …

Impact Of Western Cultural Values As Presented In The Egyptian Movies, Mariam El Shenawi

Theses and Dissertations

The social identification and cultivation theories & the impact of Western cultural values as presented in the Egyptian movies: signs of the Western cultural values are noticed in some Egyptian movies. Watching television everyday affects the educated Egyptian’s perception of their culture and the Western culture. This study looks at the cultivation theory and social identification theory and their relation to educated Egyptian’s perception of the image of the US and Egypt. It examines the recent Egyptian movies reflection on the Egyptian lives’ details of eating, talking and speaking. The researcher uses cultivation and social identity theories to check how …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Culturally Proficient Practices In An Elementary School, Pamela S. Simone

Theses and Dissertations

The problem addressed in this study was that leaders at an urban elementary school had not examined the implementation of culturally proficient practices, nor the challenges, barriers, or support needed for implementation. The purpose of the study was to inform instructional and leadership practices involving culturally proficient instruction. This was a mixed methods study with 24 teachers involving the examination of responses to 3 data collection instruments as well as document analysis of school policy, vision, mission, leadership team structures, and the teacher handbook. Three questions were answered through the study: (a) What culturally proficient instructional practices, if any, do …

Exploring Cultural Intelligence: An Exploratory Study Of The Impact Of Cultural Intelligence On Team Effectiveness In A Multinational, Organization Development Graduate Program, Jack P. Schlafer

Theses and Dissertations

This exploratory study focused on the impact of cultural intelligence (CQ) on team effectiveness (TE) in a multinational, organization development graduate program. This field study included preliminary measures of both CQ and TE, an educational and focus group intervention for enhanced CQ skills, and post-CQ and TE reassessment. The results suggest that CQ skills, specifically Metacognitive CQ and Behavioral CQ, had a positive relationship on a team's ability to meet objectives and satisfy customers' needs in cross-cultural engagements. Curiously, Metacognitive CQ seemed to have diminished a team's ability to deliver results in a timely manner. Demographics such as age negatively …