Digital Commons Network^™

Managing Elderly Patients With Dementia Using Evidence-Based Non-Pharmacological Interventions In The Ed Setting, Rita Anue Cho

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Persons with dementia frequent emergency departments (EDs), but ED staff lack understanding of cognitive impairment and evidence-base management of these symptoms, which sometimes results to unsafe encounters, aggression, agitation and assault with or without injuries. As a result, staff may resort to physical or chemical restraints to maintain safety for patients, staff, and the milieu. It is essential for staff in the ED to understand the disease process, recognize behavioral triggers, and apply evidence-based non-pharmacological interventions. The purpose of this project was to provide education to ED staff to enhance their understanding of cognitive disorders and dementia in the elderly …

Black Faith-Based Organization Leaders And Their Role In Mental Health, Alyssa Te'rese Green

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Blacks age 65+ have more mental health issues than others but underutilize mental health services because of stigma. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to identify what leaders in Black faith-based organizations believe their role is in supporting their congregants in accessing/attaining mental health services and how they provide support to their elderly congregants who may not have social support that could identify mental health issues. The health belief model and theory of planned behavior were used to explore mental health knowledge and support for the elderly congregants of faith-based organizations. Semistructured interview data from 10 Black religious …

Caregiving And Mental Health Among Mothers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Makayla Elise Techentine

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to reliance on family members or friends to care for the sick, resulting in a burden of informal caregiving stressors and relationship to mental health. Guided by the stress process model, this quantitative, cross-sectional study aimed to assess the relationship between caregiving stressors and the mental health of mothers of children aged 18 years or younger who were serving as informal caregivers. Secondary data from the 2020-2021 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (N = 1,772) considered the independent variables related to caregiving stressors, including hours spent caregiving, time since becoming a caregiver, personal care …

Telling On Themselves: A Qualitative Study On The Linguistic Markers Of Deception In High-Stakes Speech, James Butcher

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Deception detection in forensic and legal settings has historically relied on behavioral and nonverbal cues. Extensive research has demonstrated that these indicators are unreliable and prone to bias. This reliance has a significant impact on investigations, legal outcomes, and public trust. Although linguistic research has identified individual markers of deceptive speech, limited attention has been given to how multiple linguistic cues interact in real-world, high-stakes contexts. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how pronoun shifts, avoidance language, and equivocation cluster together during high-stakes deceptive speech. Truth-default theory (TDT) served as the theoretical foundation, and critical discourse analysis …

Juvenile Justice Professionals’ Perceptions Of Prevention Programs In West Central Florida, Terry Rachelle Harmon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

What Strategies Do Some It Leaders Use To Prevent Ransomware Attacks On Healthcare Computer Networks, Sherraine Michelle Houston

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Intentions And Use Of Telehealth Among Afro-Caribbean Immigrants In Florida, Patsy Patricia Lindo-Wood

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many researchers have documented the benefits of telehealth in managing cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. However, acceptance and use of telehealth among immigrants in the United States were low compared to other users, and little is known about Afro-Caribbean immigrants and their telehealth acceptance and use. Guided by the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, this study explored how performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions shape behavioral intentions and telehealth use among Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Port St. Lucie, Florida. A generic qualitative design with a purposive sampling strategy was used to interview 17 Afro-Caribbean …

Leadership-Mediated Retention Strategies To Sustain Workforce Capacity And Performance In Public Health, Meredith Winslow Wilkins

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Workforce retention challenges continue to affect public health leaders by contributing to staffing shortages, reduced organizational capacity, and disruptions in service delivery. Public health leaders are concerned with employee turnover because it affects workforce stability, organizational performance, and the ability to meet community health needs. Grounded in Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore effective workforce retention strategies used by public health leaders to retain skilled staff and strengthen organizational capacity and revenue. The participants were eight public health leaders in the Northeast region of the United States with responsibility for workforce management and …

Parental Participation And Engagement In North Carolina Medicaid Enhanced Mental Health Services For Children And Adolescents, Jonathan Andrew Traylor

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Parental participation and engagement (PPE) are positively associated with improved treatment outcomes for children receiving mental health services; however, parental involvement remains inconsistent among culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged families served through North Carolina Medicaid enhanced mental health services. Barriers to communication, collaboration, and sustained engagement may limit parents’ active participation in treatment planning and service delivery. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore PPE among culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged parents whose children received North Carolina Medicaid enhanced mental health services. The ecological perspective of human development constituted the theoretical framework for this study. Data were …

Defining Contractile And Age-Specific Remodeling In Atrial Fibrillation, Hannah Cizauskas

Dissertations

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common cardiac arrythmia worldwide and is characterized by hallmarks including electrical, fibrotic, and hemodynamic remodeling, each of which can cause or be caused by alterations in the contractile apparatus. However, there is little known about contractile remodeling in AFib. While our current understanding of AFib lacks contractile remodeling, it also largely ignores the contribution of aging-induced remodeling. Aging is the strongest risk factor for AFib development, with most patients diagnosed with AFib over the age of 70, and aging also involves the three molecular hallmarks of AFib, which could explain increased susceptibility of AFib …

Navigating Loss: Policy & Practice Within Student Affairs Support Of Bereaved Students, Jessica Renee Brown

Dissertations

This study examines how student affairs professionals interact with and support bereaved students through policy and practice. Suffering the loss of a family member or loved one while enrolled in college can have adverse effects on a student’s ability to persists through their studies and various student affairs offices and officers are charged with providing care and support to this unique population as they navigate their grief journey. While some studies exist on the prevalence of grief among students on college campuses and the effects that loss can have their academics and mental health, there is little research on how …

Design And Fpga Deployment Of Quantized Convolutional Spiking Neural Networks For Ecg Arrhythmia Classification, Olamilekan Banjo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wearable ECG monitors enable continuous cardiac surveillance, yet most remain limited to basic heart rate metrics or coarse atrial fibrillation detection, relying on cloud-based analysis that introduces latency, connectivity dependence, and battery drain. Deploying advanced multi-class arrhythmia classification directly on-device is constrained by the tight memory, power, and computational budgets of wearable hardware. This dissertation presents a Quantized Convolutional Spiking Neural Network (QCSNN) for real-time ECG arrhythmia detection on edge hardware, developed across three progressive phases.

Phase 1 introduces a separately trained two-stage QCSNN architecture — a binary classifier cascaded with a four-class classifier — trained directly via surrogate gradient …

Extracellular Vesicle-Mediated Transfer Of Gsdme-Nt Pores As A Mechanism Of Inflammation Propagation, Bifeng Xiao

Master's Theses

Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes that initiate inflammatory signaling through activation of caspase-1, cytokine maturation, and cleavage of Gasdermin D (GSDMD). Cleaved GSDMD forms membrane pores that contribute to cytokine release and pyroptotic cell death. Recent evidence suggests that extracellular vesicles (EVs) may facilitate the intercellular transfer of inflammatory mediators. This study investigated whether GSDMD N-terminal fragment (GSDMD-NT) associates with EV-enriched fractions and contributes to inflammation propagation. Doxycycline-inducible HeLa cells expressing FLAG-tagged GSDMD-NT were used to generate EV-enriched fractions. Western blot analysis detected GSDMD-NT-associated material within EV fractions, while EV marker analysis supported successful enrichment of EV-associated material. Exposure of recipient …

Systematic Errors In Judging The Performance Of Others, Michael J. Benson

Psychology ETDs

The well-documented tendency of people to be poor estimators of their relative abilities can be problematic in real life. These errors in are highly asymmetric: the worst performers dramatically overestimate their relative ability, whereas the best performers underestimate theirs (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). There are two possible causes of this misjudgment of relative ability: 1) participants are poor estimators of their own performance, or 2) participants are poor estimators of the comparison group’s performance. Kruger and Dunning (1999) attributed overestimation in the worst performers to the former problem but attributed the underestimation in the best performers to the latter problem. …

Preparing General Education Teachers For Implementing Accommodations In Inclusive Classrooms, Katherine J. Ramirez

PhD in Education

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of general education teachers and their perceptions of preparedness to implement accommodations after attending specialized, targeted training. The study included one research question, which focused on the teachers’ perceived preparedness to implement accommodations after attending specialized training. The study was influenced by the work of Mezirow (1997) and Meyer et al. (2014) and incorporated transformative learning theory and universal design for learning (UDL) elements. The researcher used convenience sampling to select seven general education teachers who taught inclusion classes in Central Florida to participate in the study. …

The Impact Of Sports Participation At Differing Levels On Young Women's Self-Esteem, Carly Petrower

ETD Collection

Women’s participation in sports has long been associated with health benefits; however, its impact on psychological well-being, particularly self-esteem, among young women remains unclear. In this work, the relationship between sports participation and self-esteem among young women at three levels: youth, high school, and collegiate was examined. A total of 40 participants across all competition levels were included in the study, and both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and an open-ended survey were used. Responses found that self-esteem levels were moderate. Moreover, one-way ANOVA revealed no significant differences in self-esteem across women following regression …

In Search Of A Childhood Psychopathology Factor From The Rorschach: Findings From An Inpatient Population, Sarah Jane Levin

ETD Collection

The general psychopathology factor represents a higher-order dimension of psychopathology that reflects an individual’s overall level of psychological disturbance across diagnostic categories (Caspi et al., 2014; Lahey et al., 2012). Although prior research has largely relied on self-report measures to assess the p-factor, performance-based measures may provide complementary insights into underlying cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal processes. The present study examined whether Rorschach variables could serve as indicators of broad psychopathology in a sample of 5-17-year-old children and adolescents admitted to inpatient psychiatric care over a 20-year period. Archival data was analyzed to determine which Rorschach variables differentiated the clinical sample …

Risk And Protective Factors Associated With Posttraumatic Stress And Chronic Pain, Dominique Noelle Legros

ETD Collection

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can co-occur with chronic pain, and this co-occurrence has been linked to negative outcomes such as increased severity of either condition over time. Although theoretical literature has focused on the factors that contribute to this co-occurrence, limited empirical research has examined factors that predict the presence of posttraumatic stress (PTS) and chronic pain together. Thus, the purpose of this correlational study was to expand our understanding in this area by exploring risk (i.e., avoidance coping and anxiety sensitivity) and protective factors (i.e., social support, self-efficacy, and self-compassion) of both PTS and chronic pain while accounting for …

Staying The Course: A Mixed-Method Exploration Of Social And Emotional Learning Skills For First-Year College Student Retention, Verna Henry

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

Across the nation, thousands of first-year college students begin their journey full of hope, yet far too many do not reach their second year. Only 74% of full-time students continue, and fewer than seven in 10 remain at the same college. For many, the struggle is not simply academic. It is emotional, social, and deeply personal. Students who face challenges with time management, stress, and self-regulation are often overwhelmed, uncertain, and at risk of dropping out before achieving their goals. To help ease this transition, many colleges offer first-year experience courses that connect students to tutoring, counseling, and campus resources. …

Beyond Behavior Control: Teacher Identity And Relationship-Based Classroom Management In Elementary Classrooms, Alayna Marrero

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Classroom management is one of the most challenging responsibilities teachers face, yet many educators enter the classroom feeling underprepared to address complex student behaviors while also creating supportive learning environments. This capstone explored the question: How can professional development focused on teacher identity and relationship-based classroom management support elementary teachers in creating supportive, consistent, and positive classroom environments? Through a review of current literature, this project examines the connections between teacher identity, student-teacher relationships, classroom climate, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and effective professional development. Influential scholars including Beauchamp and Thomas, Jennings and Greenberg, Hamre and Pianta, Gregory et al., Perry …

Decision Model For The Application Of Circular Economy In The End-Of-Life Management Of Power Transformers, Maha Mansour Nadhari

Theses

Power transformers are critical assets within utilities characterized by high capital and material intensity and long operational lifetimes. Traditionally, end-of-life management strategies for these transformers are very linear, limited to recovery or basic recycling and disposal. Although circular strategies can be integrated into the end-of-life management of these transformers, a key challenge to implementation is the absence of a structured, multi-criteria framework that can support decision-making in this context. This study addresses this gap by developing a decision model using a hybrid Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference …

Learning-Based Multi-Objective Operation Of Microgrid With Renewable Uncertainty And Demand-Side Management, Zeina Bahij

Theses

A microgrid is a small-scale power grid that can operate in either the grid-connected mode or the islanded mode. It consists of energy generation and storage devices for both power and thermal demands, where the thermal energy from the exhaust heat that cannot be transmitted over long distances can be utilized locally. The supply side may include dispatchable generation units with adjustable outputs and energy storage, alongside non-dispatchable renewables that depend entirely on resource availability. On the demand side, thermal loads are satisfied through waste heat recovery from exhaust gas (to maximize overall system efficiency) and direct fuel combustion. Electrical …

Benchmarking Spatial Niche Identification Tools On High-Resolution Xenium Single-Cell Transcriptomic Data, Sabiq Shahab

Theses

Spatial niche identification tools recover the tissue microenvironments that shape cell function, but existing benchmark studies typically rely on a single accuracy metric or focus on a single tissue type. This thesis benchmarks six niche identification tools, including Seurat, NicheDE, BANKSY, scNiche, Novae, and Quiche, which span composition based, spatial embedding, differential expression, graph fusion, foundational model, and differential abundance approaches. A five dimension evaluation framework was used to evaluate the six tools, which was applied across three resolutions using two 10x Genomics Xenium datasets with contrasting spatial organization, including a HER2+ breast cancer tumor and the mouse brain. While …

Meridian, Rachel Seaton

Theses

Meridian is an ambient tabletop object that translates physiological data into a continuously evolving visual landscape. Rather than presenting emotional information through charts or notifications, it exists as a quiet environmental presence that can be understood through peripheral awareness. A simulated biometric system drives a particle field whose movement reflects physiological variation, producing eight distinct visual signatures. The visual system is governed by four parameters: field density, field disturbance, signal trace, and signal duration, which together shape the behavior and persistence of the particle field. The teardrop form was selected for its ability to convey both the passage of time …

Assessing The Imprint Of Eccentricity In Gravitational-Wave Signatures, Natalie Malagon

Theses

The gravitational wave signal from merging compact binaries encodes information about their orbital and intrinsic properties. Over the last few years, state-of-the-art waveform models have begun to incorporate the effects of orbital eccentricity into their estimated signal. Over a similar period, many groups have applied these waveforms to characterize whether the imprint of eccentricity is present and, if so, measure this time-evolving property (at a suitably-defined reference point). In this work, we present a comprehensive analysis of 173 confident sources identified in the O1 through O4a observing runs of the International Gravitational Wave Network (LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA). Using the RIFT parameter inference …

Too Big, Too Soon: Investigating Black Hole Masses In High-Redshift Jwst Agn Using Belmac, Katrina Mcmaster

Theses

The masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in high-redshift quasars are commonly estimated using virial mass estimations calibrated on active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the local universe. However, when applied to new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations at high redshift, these methods often yield SMBH masses that exceed theoretical growth limits, implying the need for heavy black hole seeds or periods of high mass accretion rates, also known as super-Eddington accretion. This tension highlights potential limitations of the virial approach at early cosmic times. This work investigates an alternative method for estimating high-redshift SMBH masses using the Broad Emission …

Modernizing Civic Building Design For Emergency Shelter Operations: An Architectural Framework With Proposed Design Guidelines For 21st-Century Shelter Readiness, Enrique M. Peralta

Theses

The frequency and severity of climate-related disasters are rising globally, resulting in the displacement of millions of individuals each year. Although this is a worldwide issue, the present research concentrates on the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state region, where severe storms, flooding, prolonged power outages, and other natural hazards frequently necessitate the activation of emergency shelters. While schools, community centers, and other civic buildings are commonly designated for emergency shelter operations, these facilities were not originally designed to accommodate displaced groups during such events. This study focuses on the immediate sheltering period following a disaster, defined as the …

Building Adaptive Leaders: Examining The Relationship Between Undergraduate Co-Curricular Leadership Roles, Change Readiness, And Leadership Self-Efficacy, Reneldo N. Randall

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

The contemporary workforce is characterized by ongoing organizational change, requiring individuals to demonstrate adaptability and the capacity to lead within evolving conditions. Institutions of higher education increasingly emphasize leadership development as a mechanism for preparing students for these demands; however, limited empirical research has examined how participation in formal co-curricular undergraduate leadership roles relates to students’ readiness to engage with organizational change. This study addresses the gap by examining the relationship between leadership self-efficacy and resistance to change among undergraduate student leaders.

Guided by the Leadership Identity Development (LID) model, this quantitative study employed a non-experimental, correlational design. Data were …

Trauma-Informed And Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices To Support Multilingual Learners In K-12 Classrooms, Emily Johnson

Graduate Teacher Education

This Capstone paper examined how trauma-informed (TI) and culturally responsive (CR) belonging of multilingual learners (MLs) in K-12 classrooms. This study evaluated the intersection of TI education and CR teaching as a framework to support MLs. With MLs representing approximately 10% of the U.S. student population (NCES, 2024), schools faced an urgent need to address the academic, linguistic, and social-emotional challenges due to adverse childhood experiences, migration-related stress, displacement, and cultural adjustment. The literature review included qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and intervention-based studies examining MLs, refugee-background students, teacher perceptions, professional development, school-based interventions, and CR instructional practices. This paper explored how …

Automated Scoring Of Prosody In Oral Reading Fluency: Integrating Acoustic And Sentence/Chunk-Level Silence Features With Machine Learning, Kuo Wang

Education Policy and Leadership Theses and Dissertations

Prosody, the ability to read with appropriate variation in pitch, duration, pausing, and stress, is an important (and challenging to measure) dimension of oral reading fluency (ORF) and comprehension. ORF prosody is currently measured through human raters and rubric-based scoring systems (e.g., the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) or the Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MDFS scales). The rating process is labor and resource-intensive and introduces rater bias. Recent work has shown acoustic features to predict prosody ratings; however, their models had low generalization performance on cross-domain data (unseen passages and student samples).

The present study investigated the automated assessment of …