Digital Commons Network^™

Hazard Vulnerability In Socio-Economic Context: An Example From Ecuador, Lucille Richards Lane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How people pereceive the risks associated with natural hazards contributes to their willingness to take protective action. Such action may be constrained by prevailing socio-economic and place-specific conditions that restrict or inform the choice of protective measures available to the individual. Vulnerability to the impacts of extreme geophysical events increases when the range of alternatives is limited or misinformed.

Many evacuees from a potentially violent volcanic eruption in Ecuador returned to their home town of Banos while it was still under an evacuation order in 2000 and considered to be a high risk area by officials. The research examined four …

Effects Of Bilingualism, Noise, And Reverberation On Speech Perception By Listeners With Normal Hearing, Dashielle M. Febo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accurate perception of spoken English is influenced by many variables, including the listener's native language, reverberation, and background noise. Few studies of speech perception by bilingual listeners have carefully controlled for second language proficiency and even fewer have presented speech in everyday listening environments that contain noise and reverberation. In the present study, detailed language background, language proficiency information, and individual language samples were collected and the speech stimuli were presented in a variety of quiet, noisy, and reverberant listening environments.

The effects of noise and reverberation on the perception of American English monosyllabic words was examined for two …

Scavenger: A Junk Mail Classification Program, Rohan V. Malkhare

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem of junk mail, also called spam, has reached epic proportions and various efforts are underway to fight spam. Junk mail classification using machine learning techniques is a key method to fight spam. We have devised a machine learning algorithm where features are created from individual sentences in the subject and body of a message by forming all possible word-pairings from a sentence. Weights are assigned to the features based on the strength of their predictive capabilities for spam/legitimate determination. The predictive capabilities are estimated by the frequency of occurrence of the feature in spam/legitimate collections as well as …

Factors Associated With Adolescent Suicidal Gestures, Heidi Jennifer Liss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Incidence of suicide has been shown to increase dramatically during adolescence. Despite an established pattern of depression and hopelessness leading to suicide in adults, no such pattern emerges in the adolescent literature. Recent investigations suggest that impulsivity may play a key role in adolescent suicide attempts. This study examined the role of impulsivity in adolescent suicidal gestures, as well as the relationships among demographic variables, anger expression, impulsivity, and suicidal behavior. A total of 100 participants (ages 11-17; 71 females and 29 males) were recruited from 2 inpatient crisis centers for children. The Children’s Depression Inventory, Hopelessness Scale for Children, …

Leading Learning Through Imposition Of Leadership Learning Standards, Raymond D. Jorgensen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the impact of an imposed standards movement on attitudes and behaviors of a team of line leaders. A case method was employed to describe, to explain, and to draw conclusions about results of standards imposition. Standards were designed and implemented by an executive leadership team frustrated with lack of effective leadership practices of a line leaders team under their supervision. The investigation took an historical perspective, chronicling the story of the company, emerging leadership challenges, and executive leadership responses leading up to the research.

The line or team leaders of an educational software company served as participants. …

The Incidence Of Positional Nystagmus In Healthy Participants Revisited, Terri L. Schneider

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of nystagmus found in healthy individuals during the positional testing subtest of the standard vestibular test battery. Positional testing involves moving the patient's head, and sometimes the entire body, into a variety of positions while observing eye movement. The hypothesis of the current study was that a relatively low percentage of participants would display nystagmus during positional testing used routinely in clinical diagnostic procedures. The findings were then compared to those of an earlier study in which 82% of normal, healthy individuals were reported to exhibit nystagmus during this testing. …

A Comparison Of Job Stressors And Job Strains Among Employees Holding Comarable Jobs In Western And Eastern Societies, Cong Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, comparisons on job stressors and job strains have been made between American and Chinese employees. Data were collected from two jobs differing in social status: university professors and university administrative and support staff. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The quantitative part involved traditional Likert scales for measuring job stressors (e.g., lack of job autonomy, interpersonal conflict, and organizational constraints), and job strains (e.g., turnover intention, frustration, negative emotions, job dissatisfaction, depression, and physical symptoms). The qualitative part was an open-ended questionnaire asking about a stressful job incident. Independent t-tests were used to compare the United …

System Integration And Testing Using Object Oriented Programming Based Control, Prashant P. Datar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Various techniques are used in the process of software development. The requirements of the system being designed and the constraints dictate the selection of a particular method to be used. This thesis attempts to explain the various types of development techniques available to software designers and programmers. It places specific emphasis on the Object Oriented style of design that is presently widely used in all areas of industry.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) involves a number of new concepts that make software design and development more modular. The actual problem is broken down into a number of smaller components and the …

Upper Ocean Upwelling, Temperature, And Zonal Momentum Analyses In The Western Equatorail Pacific, Robert William Helber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The air-sea interaction thermodynamics of the western equatorial Pacific, the Earth's largest region of warm SST, is a major component of the global climate system. Along the equator, warm pool thermodynamics and momentum are influenced by equatorial ocean visco-inertial boundary layer dynamics that occur within a few degrees of the equator because of the sign reversal of the Coriolis force. Designed to study this system, COARE Enhanced Monitoring Array (EMA) observations of temperature, salinity, velocity, and surface meteorology were centered at 0, 156°E from February 1992 through April 1994. They sampled variability on the equator over larger space/time-scales than the …

Belonging In Parent-School Partnerships: Perspectives Of Parents Of Middle School Students With Autism, Michael Wayne Riley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to contribute to understandings of parent-school relationships involving parents of students with autism by exploring notions of belonging with a small group of parents. The purpose of the study is to describe the experiences of middle school parents of children with autism. From these descriptions, I examined how parents of students with autism might contribute to understandings of belonging in school-family partnerships and enable schools and families to collaborate more effectively. This study addresses an apparent gap in understandings of belonging of parents of children with autism in their relationships with their child's school. …

Informed Consent: Its Origin, Purpose, Problems, And Limits, Nancy M. Kettle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The doctrine of informed consent, defined as respect for autonomy, is the tool used to govern the relationship between physicians and patients. Its framework relies on rights and duties that mark these relationships. The main purpose of informed consent is to promote human rights and dignity. Some researchers claim that informed consent has successfully replaced patients' historical predispositions to accept physicians' advice without much explicit resistance.

Although the doctrine of informed consent promotes ideals worth pursuing, a successful implementation of these ideals in practice has yet to occur. What has happened in practice is that attorneys, physicians, and hospital administrators …

Effect Of Presentation Modality On Predictions Of Children’S Communication Ability In The Classroom, Mary Aguila

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The modified Goodman scale, a hearing loss classification scale, is commonly used to describe audiometric findings for both children and adults (Haggard & Primus, 1999). This scale uses one or two word descriptors for hearing level categories and is based on a pure tone average (PTA), the average of hearing thresholds at 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz. Although these categories were developed from clinical and educational observations (Goodman, 1965), degree of hearing loss has not been shown to reliably predict the educational or language performance of children with hearing impairment (Martin & Clark, 1996). This study was designed to evaluate …

The Effects Of Animated Textual Instruction On Learners' Written Production Of German Modal Verb Sentences, Elizabeth A. Caplan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of animation for a technology-assisted German grammar presentation on modal verbs. The premise was that many intangible concepts of dynamic grammar involve syntactic components that possess visuo–spatial characteristics. It was further speculated that these characteristics could be more effectively represented by animated versus static instructional presentations.

The supposition that animation would lend pedagogical advantage was supported by dual coding theory (Paivio, 1971, 1990), which posits two functionally separate representational systems, the verbal and the nonverbal, with dynamic mental imagery residing solely in the nonverbal system. The strength of dually coded information is that it is …

The Presence Of Binaural Interaction Component (Bic) In The Auditory Brainstem Response (Abr) Of Normal Hearing Adults, Man Sze Wong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of the binaural interaction component (BIC) in a large sample of normal hearing adults, and to measure the absolute latency and amplitude of the BIC as a function of the click rate of the stimulus and the electrode montage. The BIC is obtained by subtracting the auditory evoked potential waveform obtained with binaural stimulation from the waveform obtained by adding the responses from the left and right monaural stimulation. The tested hypothesis was that the recordings of the BIC vary among normal hearing individuals, and BIC latency and amplitude values …

Analysis Of States Gun Control Restrictions, Xiaofeng Cheng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the policy effects of several state gun control restrictions in the United States. The study employs the data of gun related crimes and gun control restrictions from Statistical Abstract of Criminal Justice Handbook through five years (from 1995 to 2000). Although many scholars have studied previously gun control policy effects on crimes, they always focus on the total violence level and ignore to compare the policy effects of different gun control laws. The present study examines intensively gun related crimes and compares several gun control policies.

Pooled data is employed to access the effects of gun control …

Selection Of Clinical Trials: Knowledge Representation And Acquisition, Savvas Nikiforou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When medical researchers test a new treatment procedure, they recruit patients with appropriate health problems and medical histories. An experiment with a new procedure is called a clinical trial. The selection of patients for clinical trials has traditionally been a labor-intensive task, which involves matching of medical records with a list of eligibility criteria.

A recent project at the University of South Florida has been aimed at the automation of this task. The project has involved the development of an expert system that selects matching clinical trials for each patient. If a patient's data are not sufficient for choosing …

The Role Of Audiology Assistants In A Clinical Setting, Joseph K. Duran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The employment of audiology assistants to relieve masters and doctoral level audiologists of routine tasks is a timely and controversial topic in our field. Berardino (2000) examined the roles of audiology assistants within Veteran’s Administration (VA) Hospitals using an e-mail survey that was sent out to VA audiologists. The results of that survey suggested that the majority of VA audiologists were in favor of the participation of audiology assistants in the clinic to varying degrees. The purpose of this survey was to determine the current attitudes of audiologists and otolaryngologists toward the role of audiology assistants in the hearing health …

The Diffusion Of New Media Scholarship: Power, Innovation, And Resistance In Academe, Judith R. Edminster

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) are an evolving genre of graduate student research that is gaining widespread acceptance among universities in the international community. ETDs are also beginning to diffuse slowly among American universities; however, a number of issues continue to work against more rapid adoption among intitutions in the United States. This dissertation examines ETDs as an evolving electronic research genre by (1) historicizing the situated development of its predecessor, the traditional print dissertation, in nineteenth century German and American Universities; (2) reporting on the current state of the Networked Digital Library of Electronic Theses and Dissertations, an initiative …

Public Participation In Environmental Management: Seeking Participatory Equity Through Ethnographic Inquiry, John V. Stone

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reports the activities, methods, and key findings of a doctoral research project in applied anthropology and an environmental anthropology fellowship. The research project was conducted through the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, while the fellowship was sponsored jointly by the Society for Applied Anthropology and the United States Environmental Protection Agency and was conducted through the Great Lakes Fellowship Program of the Great Lakes Commission, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Together, these projects demonstrated the utility of an ethnographic approach called Risk Perception Mapping (RPM) to the public consultation and social research interests of the Commission …

Development Of An Aural Rehabilitation Cd-Rom, Sierra Macdonald

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A need has been established for aural rehabilitation (AR) sessions throughout the years. The literature reviewed here demonstrates that new hearing aid users do benefit from a structured follow-up AR program. However, this need is often not met for a variety of patient and audiologist related factors. Therefore, an AR program that could be viewed at home has been suggested. I have developed a prototype for a CD-ROM based aural rehabilitation (AR) program. Included in the program are communication and speechreading strategies, which are the most prevalent materials in AR. The instructional and interaction portions of the prototype were created …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between The U-Titer Ii And Hearing Aid Benefit, Maura Koenig Kenworthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to measure the effects of audiologic intervention on self-perceived quality of life in the elderly hearing-impaired population. The tested hypothesis was that hearing aid use would result in improved quality of life as measured by utilities. In this study, utilities were obtained using the U-Titer II, an interactive software program designed to measure an individual's health state preference or utility. This study also examined the issue of numeracy, which is described as an understanding of basic probability, and its effect with an individual's ability to accurately complete utilities.

Data from 54 individuals …

The Goal Of This Study Was To Examine Differences In The Psychological Characteristics Of Patients Admitted To The Hospital For Acute Or Chronic Myocardial Infarction (Mi) Or Unstable Angina (Ua). Depression, Anger, Anxiety, Curiosity, Defensiveness, Social Support, And Coping Were Evaluated For 165 Patients (86 Mi And 79 Ua), Who Were Tested On The Cardiology Stepdown Ward Of Tampa General Hospital. The Following Psychological Measures Were Administered To These Patients: The Beck Depression Inventory (Bdi), The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Staxi-2), The Rationality/Emotional Defensiveness (R/Ed) Scale, The Adult Form Of The Coping Responses Inventory (Cri-Adult), The Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (Isel), The Illness Perception Questionnaire (Ipq), The State-Trait Personality Inventory (Stpi), And The Structured Clinical Interview (Scid-I) For The Dsm - Iv. Significantly More Chronic Patients Than Acute Patients Met Criteria For Depression As Measured By The Scid Following Admission To The Hospital, And More Ua Than Mi Patients Also Met These Criteria. However, No Differences Were Found Between The Acute Vi And Chronic Mi And Ua Patients Two Weeks Prior To Admission. Results Of This Study Also Indicated That Chronic Patients And Ua Patients Reported A Greater Frequency Of Illness Symptoms And Tended To Cope With Their Heart Disease Through Avoidant Strategies. Chronic Patients Endorsed Higher Levels Of State And Trait Anger Compared With Acute Patients, And Ua Patients Were Less Likely To Believe That Their Illness Could Be Cured Or Controlled (Control Of Cure) Than Mi Patients. Based On The Results Of This Study, It Appears That Avoidance Coping May Be An Insufficient Strategy For Addressing Negative Emotions Of Chronic Patients And Ua Patients. In Addition, Perceived Lack Of Control Over The Success Of Treatment May Be Related To Depression For Ua Patients. These Findings Have Important Implications For The Development And Implementation Of Interventions Designed To Address Perceived Control Over Treatment Effectiveness And Coping Skills For Negative Emotions In The Treatment And Rehabilitation Of Cardiac Patients., Gregory J. Spirakis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the stability of hearing aid benefit, as measured by the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB; Cox & Alexander, 1995), between three months post hearing aid fitting and at next the annual audiological re-evaluation. The annual re-evaluation was at least, and as close to nine months as possible, after the previous audiological. The maximum time between the two evaluations was 18 months. Thirty-six hearing aid patients participated in this study. The participants were both male and female, and were fitted monaurally or binaurally with hearing aid(s). All participants had sensorineural hearing …

The Relationship Between Self-Perceived Benefit As Measured By The Aphab, Cosi And Cphi And The Presence Of Apd In An Elderly Population, Michelle L. Bleiweiss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The self-perceived hearing aid benefit of 38 participants was examined. Of the 38 subjects, 8 were found to have an auditory processing disorder as measured by the Dichotic Sentence Identification (DSI). When compared to the non-APD subjects, there were essentially no significant differences on the APHAB or COSI outcome measures. However, two of the 5 scales of the CHPI did show significant differences. In conclusion, these results do not support the notion of APD having a negative effect on hearing aid benefit. No finding in this study was robust and although there were several trends supporting that APD may impede …

Effects Of Deadline Contingencies In A Web-Based Course On Html, Tina L. Majchrzak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current learner-centered trends, such as supplying students with content on demand (CoD), coupled with research findings that indicate distributed practice is superior to massed practice in terms of increased memory function and that the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) is superior to traditional instruction in terms of academic achievement, content retention, and student satisfaction, prompted an investigation merging these two lines of research. Although PSI is more feasible today based on advances in technology and students prefer its self-paced component, they often procrastinate. In fact, this problem is resurfacing in distance education courses and is reflected in low completion rates …

Safe At Home: Agoraphobia And The Discourse On Women’S Place, Suzie Siegel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My thesis explores how discourse and material practices have created agoraphobia, the fear of public places. This psychological disorder predominates among women. Throughout much of Western history, women have been encouraged to stay home for their safety and for the safety of society. I argue that agoraphobic women have internalized this discourse, expressing fears of being in public or being alone without a companion to support and protect them; losing control over their minds or their bodies; and endangering or humiliating themselves. Therapeutic discourse also has created agoraphobia by naming it, categorizing the emotions and behaviors associated with it, and …

Building Online Learning: System Insights Into Group Learning In An International Online Environment, Naomi Rose Boyer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The virtual world exists as a dimension between concrete physical reality and abstract fictional fantasy. This cyber essence has become a place of commerce, social development, and educational pursuit. To build an understanding of the Kingdom of the Internet, the resulting case study sought to explore the community learning experiences of groups involved in an international online distance education program to create a tale of the process of a system. An assumption in this research was that the program under study was framed within a social learning context. Therefore, the recommendations and findings must be considered within this context and …

The Effect Of Mulching On Herbaceous Wetland Creation Areas In West-Central Florida, Christopher J. Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wetland mulching is the transfer of soil (often from a wetland area which is going to filled or otherwise impacted) on to the surface of a wetland creation area. The primary intent of mulching is to transfer wetland vegetation in the form of seeds and propagules, from the natural wetland to the creation area. This technique also is used to transfer organic matter and microbial fauna existing in the soil to the creation area. My study examines the effects that wetland mulching has on: 1) percent organic matter in the soil, 2) the wetland affinity of plant communities present, 3) …

Development Of An Audiological Test Procedure Manual For First Year Au.D. Students, Patricia I. Carr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A student manual of audiological procedures with accompanying laboratory assignments does not presently exist at the University of South Florida (USF). In the first year of the four year Au.D. program at USF, students are enrolled in Audiology Laboratory Clinic I, II, and III, in consecutive semesters. Groups of four to six students meet weekly for a 3-1/2 hour clinical laboratory session to receive training in test instruction, test procedures, test application, and test interpretation. The purpose of the first year Audiology laboratory clinic sessions is to prepare the student for clinical experience in year two of the Au.D program …

Creating Healing Spaces, The Process Of Designing Holistically A Battered Women Shelter, Lilian Menéndez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My interest in the environment has led me to study the effects of space on people, both natural and man-made. This project explores how architects and designers can design spaces conducive to the healing process. The emphasis of this thesis is on my design methodology, with the hope that this project will help other designers in their struggle to create spaces that heal the body, soul and spirit.

To develop this project, I chose a shelter for battered women as the building type. This shelter is theoretically located in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Its main goal is to create an environment …

A Tutorial: Use Of The Who Icidh-2 For Determining Aural Rehabilitation Goals, Nancy Muscato Patterson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to implement the newly revised International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICIDH-2) developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), to establish specific aural rehabilitation goals. Five graduate clinicians in speech language pathology and audiology interviewed ten participants with adult onset hearing loss. A modified version of the General Questions for Participation and Activities (i.e., a structured interview technique) from the ICIDH-2 Checklist, was developed. Prior to completing this checklist, the students attended a brief training session to become familiar with the major components of the ICIDH-2, specifically the ICIDH-2 Checklist. Completion of the …