Digital Commons Network^™

Qualitative Inquiry Into Church-Based Assets For Hiv/Aids Prevention And Control: A Forum Focus Group Discussion Approach, Godwin N. Aja, Naomi N. Modeste, Susanne B. Montgomery

The Qualitative Report

Assets church members believed they needed to engage in effective HIV/AIDS prevention and control activities. We used the three-step forum focus group discussion (FFGD) methodology to elicit responses from 32 church leaders and lay members, representing five denominations in Aba, Nigeria. Concrete resources, health expertise, finances, institutional support, capacity building, and spiritual support connected to the collective interest of members were indicated as useful for church members to engage in HIV/AIDS prevention and control activities. Adequate planning and delivery of cost-effective, appropriate and sustainable health promotion programs require an understanding of perceived church-based assets.

An Exemplar For Teaching And Learning Qualitative Research, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Nancy L. Leech, John R. Slate, Marcella Stark, Bipin Sharma, Rebecca Frels, Kristin Harris, Julie P. Combs

The Qualitative Report

In this article, we outline a course wherein the instructors teach students how to conduct rigorous qualitative research. We discuss the four major distinct, but overlapping, phases of the course: conceptual/theoretical, technical, applied, and emergent scholar. Students write several qualitative reports, called qualitative notebooks, which involve data that they collect (via three different types of interviews), analyze (using nine qualitative analysis techniques via qualitative software), and interpret. Each notebook is edited by the instructors to help them improve the quality of subsequent notebook reports. Finally, we advocate asking students who have previously taken this course to team-teach future courses. We …

A Qualitative Inquiry In The Evaluation Of A Pedagogical Course From The Prospective Teachers’ Points Of View, Banu Yucel Toy, Ahmet Ok

The Qualitative Report

Qualitative inquiry has gained importance in the evaluation of educational settings because it provides in-depth information, shedding light on context, situations, or processes. In this study, a qualitative inquiry was undertaken in order to evaluate a pedagogical course from the prospective teachers’ points of view. In this case study, data were collected through focus group interviews with three groups of prospective teachers. The lack of putting theories into practice, the lack of relating the topics to teaching life, the lack of attention and participation, and the lack of a variety of materials appeared to be the most essential problems. In …

Grandparental Death: Through The Lens Of An Asian Child, Wing-Fu Lai

The Qualitative Report

Bereavement has been extensively studied over the years, yet scholarly work depicting, with the first-person perspective, the experience of childhood bereavement is severely lacking. The research question I set out to answer here is: What is it like as an Asian child to experience bereavement following grandparental death? As such, self-introspection was exercised, and this, together with the diaries and free writings generated at the time of my grandma’s death, was used as the basis for autoethnographic reflections. It is hoped that my story presented here can offer a psychological portrayal of an Asian child enduring grandparental death, and illuminate …

Group Supervision Attitudes: Supervisory Practices Fostering Resistance To Adoption Of Evidence-Based Practices, Charles T. Brooks, David A. Patterson, Patrick M. Mckiernan

The Qualitative Report

The focus of this study was to qualitatively evaluate worker’s attitudes about clinical supervision. It is believed that poor attitudes toward clinical supervision can create barriers during supervision sessions. Fifty-one participants within a social services organization completed an open-ended questionnaire regarding their clinical supervision experiences. Results suggest four key areas which appear to be strong factors in workers’ experiences and attitudes regarding group supervision: a. facilitator’s skill level; b. creativity; c. utilization of technology; and d. applicability. For organizations interested in overcoming potential barriers to adopting best practices, effectively addressing workers’ negative attitudes toward group supervision would be a worthy …

Practical Wisdom: A Review Of Foundations Of Ethical Practice, Research, And Teaching In Psychology And Counseling, Fatima A. Cotton

The Qualitative Report

In Karen Strohm Kitchener and Sharon K. Anderson’s Foundations of Ethical Practice, Research, and Teaching in Psychology and Counseling (2011) they use the term practical wisdom or prudence as a way to make right decisions in real life situation. The authors lay the foundation for conceptually dealing with ethical problems for psychologists, counselors, students, and trainees. The book is in two parts. In the first six chapters, the authors focus on the foundations of ethical reasoning. The next part focuses on the ethical issues psychologists and counselors are confronted with in their roles.

Think It, Draft It, Post It: Creating Legal Poster Presentations, Samantha A. Moppett

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

While oral presentations are the traditional mode of conveying one’s ideas at legal conferences, there is another approach that is underutilized – poster presentations. Essentially, a poster presentation is a visual display of a presenter’s idea along with an opportunity for one-on-one interaction between the presenter and the audience. Poster presentations – a relatively new form of presentation at legal conferences – provide an excellent medium for presenting research or innovative teaching ideas in an informal manner.

Given the dearth of scholarship on the topic of legal poster presentations, this article advances the discussion. Specifically, the article provides some background …

Member Checking: Can Benefits Be Gained Similar To Group Therapy?, Melissa Harper, Patricia Cole

The Qualitative Report

Member checking continues to be an important quality control process in qualitative research as during the course of conducting a study, participants receive the opportunity to review their statements for accuracy and, in so doing; they may acquire a therapeutic benefit. The authors of this article suggest that this benefit is similar to some of the components of group therapy, especially in normalizing the phenomenon being experienced. Even if the participants never meet, they can feel a sense of relief that their feelings are validated and that they are not alone.

A Search For Clarification: Contemporary Views Of The Inspiration And Authority Of The Bible In Seventh-Day Adventism, Michael Swenson

Honors Theses

Within Seventh-day Adventism there is recognizable theological diversity on a wide variety of issues. One major reason for that has to do with the different ways Adventists view the inspiration and authority of the Bible with particular suppositions. In order to elucidate the given problematic, I will present a comparative analysis of four thinkers and outline their respective perspectives: Fritz Guy, Alden Thompson, Fernando Canale, and Samuel Koranteng-Pipim. As I will suggest, each thinker represents either a progressive, moderate, traditional or literatistic approach to interpreting the Bible. By clarifying their positions I will investigate their views of inerrancy, their perception …

Never Two Ladies Lov'd As They Do: Queer Theory And As You Like It's Celia, Theron L. Calkins

Honors Theses

Though most performances of William Shakespeare's As you like it focus on the comedy of Ganymede/Rosalind's interactions with Orlando, director Des McAnuff's 2012 Stratford Shakespeare Festival production instead manifests homoerotic tension between Celia and Rosalind. Shakespeare's textual allusions provide ample evidence to support this homoerotic reading which McAnuff actualizes between Cara Rickett's Celia and Andrea Runge's Rosalind through blocking and speech inflection. My analysis encompasses a detailed investigation of this particular production as well as a study of homoerotic desire between women, faciliating a critique of the methods of queer theory by engaging and refining its generalized critical principles.

The Implications Of Arminius’ Understanding Of The Intellect On Knowledge Exchange Strategies In The Mission Of The Sda Church, Terry Dwain Robertson

Faculty Publications

Arminius differed from the Calvinism he debated in the causal role of information in bringing a person to salvation. This accounts for the distinction between an Adventist Philosophy of Education, following Arminius, in which the outcome of education is to lead the student to a saving relationship with God, a bottom-up eternal salvation perspective. A Calvinist Philosophy of Education, on the other hand, suggests that the outcome of education is to change society, a top-down, temporal perspective. Therefore, it is necessary for the Adventist Church to assume a more intentional role in providing quality information sources to emerging institutions training …

God Is Amor: Biblical Teachings For House And Home, Translated From Spanish To English, Melissa Breetzke

Honors Theses

I have transcribed and translated (from Spanish to English) a series of five video sermons by Pastor Homero Salazar to aid him in broadening his evangelistic efforts. While transcription requires structural fluency and a discerning ear, translation demands extensive conceptual consideration. Translators must weigh the tone, formality, intention, and implications of the original message and relay these concepts through linguistic equivalents in an alternate language. Some of the most interesting challenges of this project arose from changing the media from a dialogue-like video to a document for publication, requiring considerable pragmatic adjustments.

A Cultural And Social History On The Role Of Film And Societal Trends: A Case Study Of The Outlaw Jesse James, April Mae Grube

Honors Theses

The use of film as a source of history has been highly contested since the creation of narrative film in the beginning of the twentieth century. While there is no doubt that film cannt be used as a source for the accurate account of an event or an individual, historians are slowly accepting the role that films play as "cultural documents." The benefit of film in the study of popular memory and social and cultural history is best seen in the study of the development of an individual, event, or ideal over time. Because of this, Jesse James is an …

What's In A Coauthor?: (Re)Locating Joseph Denney In Composition History, Ivan Davis

Faculty Publications

This article reassesses the Fred Newton Scott and Joseph Villiers Denney collaborative textbook authorship by emphasizing Denney’s generally overlooked contributions to that coauthorship and to the field of composition generally. Through an examination of Denney’s scholarly work and his personal correspondence with Scott during the period marking their collaborative textbook writing, this article asserts that Denney, like Scott, was an innovative theorist and practitioner in his own right, and that the effectiveness of the Scott-Denney textbooks owes much to Denney’s role as coauthor.

A Feast To My Eyes: Color And Human Behavior, Erica Iris Bruso

Honors Theses

This is a study on color and how it affects emotion and human behavior. Color can both affect and express a person's mood. We see this played out by Pablo Picasso, whose Blue and Rose period paintings consisted of a dominant color expressing his emotions. Impressionist painters, such as Claude Monet, were fascinated with the variations of color that are produced in certain light conditions, different times of day, weather conditions, and seasons. By using studies on color and human behavior done by color specialists, such as Faber Birren, as well as looking back at color explorations of early painters, …

Inter-Group Communication During Hurricane Katrina: How Organizational Culture Defeats Coordination, Johanna Nielsen

Honors Theses

Interaction between groups can be understood as regulated by two communication theories: Adaptive Structuration theory which describes how a group's resources affect how it solves problems, and Functional Group Decision Making theory which describes the steps groups take to make decisions. When combined into a model, these theories provide a framework for examining how groups use resources in their interaction with each other. Research into both secondary and primary sources identified ten resources groups used to interact with other groups during the crisis response. Careful analysis determined that the Federal, State, and Private agencies' organizational cultures and social identities were …

Semiotic Analysis Of Andrews University's Official Seal, Debbie-Ann Francis

Honors Theses

This essay focuses on the significance of the symbols used within the official seal of Andrews University. The official seal of an institution describes the origins, foundations, and the authority that the institution carries. The analysis focused on these particular sections: "Andrews University," "1874," and the pyramid. A concise analysis was made on the other elements of the seal: the colors blue and gold, Corpus, Mens, Spiritus; and the cross-like structure within the middle of the seal. Past and current university personnel were consulted for interviews and for clarification of material. The results revealed that the official seal of Andrews …

To The Edge And Back Again: Tanzania As A People And A Place, Kylene Cave

Honors Theses

Every two years as part of the May Express program at Andrews University a small group of teachers and administrators take students to Tanzania, Africa on an educational tour. I attended this tour in both 2009 and 2011 and was able to use the knowledge provided by the course work as well as the personal experiences that I encountered in order to shape my own perceptions of Tanzania and its people, and the relationships that exist between their cultural practices and my own. To the Edge and Back Again: Tanzania as a People and a Place attempts to gather these …

An Evaluation Of Electrical Conductivity As A Practical Tool In Mastitis Detection At Andrews University Dairy, Carrie Mesiar

Honors Theses

An infection in a cow's udder, also known as mastitis, has been a persistent problem for the U.S. dairy community. Mastitis not only decreases milk production, but also shortens the productive life of dairy cattle and can be fatal if left untreated. Mastitis presents in both subclinical and clinical forms - clinical is easy to diagnose and treat, whereas subclinical cases are much harder to detect as they present no physical symptons, yet can still become clinical in time. At the Andrews University Dairy, part of the milking system includes electrical conductivity (EC) determination which measures the ionic composition of …

Evaluation Of Christian Record Products And Services For The Visually Impaired, Sarah Lee

Honors Theses

Christian Record for the Blind (CRSB) offers free Christian publications and services to all who are legally blind. In order to help CRSB better understand the people they serve and plan how to meet the needs of their users, CRSB conducted a major surbey through Andrews University that evaluated the products, services, and key ministry personnel of CRSB. The qualitative portion of the research was conducted through focus group interviews, which revealed themes of digital media accessibility, website quality, concerns of discrimination, disparities between Canadian and US services, and personal treatment and service of representatives.

Chaos, Fragility, And Change: Revisiting Laura Wingfield, Lydia M. Weiso

Honors Theses

The Glass menagerie (1944) by American playwright Tennessee Williams is a memory play focused on the Wingfield family of St. Louis. The play develops themes of family dysfunction, failed expectations, and various attempts to escape reality. This project focuses on the character of Laura Wingfield, an introverted, emotionally fragile character who is almost always interpreted as helpless and tragic. However, though a close critical analysis of Laura's interactions with other characters and with key props such as her glass collection, the family's Victrola and candelabra, this project shows that Laura need not be viewed as tragically as critics typically have …

No. 334: A Visual Exploration Of Race And Identity, Naudline Pierre

Honors Theses

Throughout history, humans have invented several methods of classification - most of which are unsettling. The human need to classify is one that is deeply rooted in the search for identity. The need to fit, the need to explain, and the need to rationalize the world around us is a powerful incubator in which the process of human classification takes place. Although this thesis project involves a substantial amount of research, it is essentially a documentation of my journey to finding my identity through the lens of human classification based on physical attributes. Through the research of various human classification …

Fusion In New York Politics, Bradley P. Sica

Honors Theses

This descriptive study seeks to answer the question: How does fusion function in the New York state electoral system, and how does that translate into the operations of the New York Legislature - such as, possible coalitions and the allegiances of candidates who are anomalies in the endorsement they receive? Fusion is when parties cross-endorse a candidate for political office with this support appearing on the general election ballot. Anomalies are defines as legislators who receive support from parties in addition to their own that do not occupy the same position in the left-right ideological continuum as their political registration. …

Ataraxia: A Modern Platonic Utopia, Jeremy Burton

Honors Theses

My research focuses on the effects on children raised according to the guidelines for training the Guardians of the ideal society described in Plato's Republic. I explore this concept creatively in a fictional modern Utopian community like that of B. F. Skinner's Walden Two and support this with firsthand accounts of the attempts to make Skinner's work a reality. Combined with a perspective on education in Plato along with the Hitler Youth program, this framework allows me to analyze how we use ideals and philosophy to justify our actions, and ultimately how human nature confounds our attempts to build paradise.

A Language Without Words: Music As An Agent Of Identity In Brian Friel's Dancing At Lughnasa, Catherine Tetz

Honors Theses

Music has consistently played a major role in the work of Irish playwright Brian Friel and provides a steady backdrop for Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), a memory play about a family in Northern Ireland struggling to stay together in the August of 1936. This paper examines the function of music within the context of the play to see how it heightens the themes of identity, otherness, and memory. It also examines the history and various genres of selected works from the play to further investigate how Friel's selection of particular songs reflects the emotional states and ideologies of the characters.

Spenser's Palmer: The Perversion Of Right Reason In The Fairies Queene, Book Ii, Carolyn Davis

Honors Theses

In book II of his epic romance The faerie queene (1590), Edmund Spenser narrates the journey of Guyon, the knight of Temperance, and his faithful Pamer, generally viewed as the external embodiment of Guyon's Reason. In a close reading of Palmer's behavior, from his appearance at Gloriana's court to his final destruction of the Bower, his flaws may be addressed and properly diagnosed as more than the obvious workings of righteous anger. Additionally, a faceted analysis of the Palmer allows for better distinction between the ideas that Spenser's humanistic influences and his Protestant leanings bring to his metaphorical table.

The Design And Creation Of A Portable Water Purification System, Adam Shull

Honors Theses

A portable, low-power water purification system was developed for use by aid workers in underdeveloped world regions. The design included activated carbon and ceramic candle filtration to 0.2 microns for bacteria and turbidity reduction followed by UV irradiation for virus destruction. Flexibility and modularity were incorporated into the system with AC, DC, and environmental power supply options as well as the facility to purify water from either surface or local utility sources. Initial prototype testing indicated the successful filtration of methylene blue dye to well above the 75% UV transmittance level required for virus destruction by the UV reactor.

Authored Portraits, Jason Lemon

Honors Theses

Richard Avedon's technique of portraiture has come to be known as "authored portraits." The intent behind every portrait Avedon created was to capture something different about the subject from how they normally portrayed themselves, something more intimate. My project follows in the footsteps of his techniques while adding ideas taken from the work of another photographer, Taryn Simon. Simon's work is always done in a series centered on a specific concept. She then combines each image with a brief explanatory text. My final exhibition of images will consist of a series of portraits of interracial couples paired with brief biographical …

User Involvement In Mental Health Nurse Education: A Study Of The Effect On The Interpersonal Skills Of Student Nurses, Jonathan Perry

School of Nursing and Midwifery Theses

This study makes an original contribution to the evidence base for service user involvement in the teaching of interpersonal skills. The study is a synthesis of three different types of research activity. Firstly a systematic review which reviews the evidence base for service user involvement in interpersonal skills teaching. This review used inclusion criteria that restricted its scope to research that included elements that used outcomes, either qualitative or quantitative related to mental health service users involvement in teaching interpersonal skills. Four quantitative and eight qualitative studies met the criteria for inclusion. All the quantitative studies were methodologically weak. Qualitative …

The Emerging Church—Part 3: Evangelical Evaluations, Fernando L. Canale

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.