Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Strangers In Victorian Novels: A Psychoanalytical Study Of Their Repressions, Functions And Aspirations, Mohammad Ahmed Al-Abdulrazaq

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The aim of this study is to examine the stranger characters in three Victorian Novels, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. The exploration of the characters is based on the analysis of their psyche to understand how they are utilized by the Victorian writers. The study highlights how the fictional strangers can assist in the course of the action of the novel and function as a stimulus by which the actions and thoughts develop plausibly and feasibly. Utilizing the views of Freud, Erikson and others the study will allow for …

Understanding And Improving Pacing Strategies During Standard Distance Triathlons In Age Group Athletes, Sam Shi Xuan Wu

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Pacing is an integral aspect of performance during all exercise, including multi-sport events such as triathlon. However, to date, the optimal pacing strategies to adopt over an entire triathlon, as well as during each specific discipline (i.e. swim, cycle and run), is not well understood. Therefore, the primary purpose of this thesis was to identify and understand current pacing strategies adopted by highly performing triathletes across different triathlon distances. This research aids in identifying pacing strategies that may improve overall performance during triathlon.

In the first study, the influence of sex and race distance on the age-related declines in the …

Tasha: A Practice-Based Problematisation Of Australian Comedy Cinema’S Representation Of Gender, Family And Nationhood, Vanessa Barnett

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Between 2007 and 2012, 140 fictional feature films were financed with the assistance of Australian film funding bodies. Of these 140 films, only 31 featured female protagonists and of these 31 films, only 8 were comedies (see Appendix B). These figures show statistically, Tasha, the creative film component of this research project, is not a typical Australian comedy film; it is the story of Tasha, an unemployed girl from Girrawheen in her early twenties, who has lost her sense of identity. As Australian films such as Little Fish¸ Candy, Jedda and Muriel’s Wedding would suggest, this is certainly …

Learning From The Experts: Qualitative Study Of The Lived Experience Of Mental Illness, Zdenka Bartova

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Severe mental illness has a profound effect on the affected individuals yet it does not necessarily prevent them from leading a meaningful and fulfilling life, and therefore recovering. Recovery has received a great interest in clinical and consumer research yet little is known about how those individuals who do not primarily identify with recovery respond to the concept and come to accept it as something that is personally meaningful. Using a qualitative approach following the principles of Gadamer’s (1975) hermeneutics, the present study explored people’s subjective experience of mental illness with the aim of identifying factors related to their views …

Feeling The Fleshed Body: The Aftermath Of Childhood Rape [Thesis], Brenda Downing

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The point of propulsion for this research is my raped and censured body with its somatic aftermath narrative. This doctoral research project is a feminist and creative investigation that sought to uncover and articulate the long term somatic impacts of childhood rape as they manifest in the adult female body. I employed a multi-modal, complementary, and embodied methodology using a combination of autoethnography, somatic inquiry, writing-as-inquiry, and performance-making-as inquiry. In addition to my autoethnographic explorations, I gathered information from other women raped in childhood, as well as information from women’s healthcare professionals. Drawing on the autoethnographic and participant information gathered, …

Religion, Heritage, And Power： Everyday Life In Contemporary China, Asan Xue

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the religious life of ordinary people in the town of Dongpu, this research explores the relationships between: religion and state power; Chinese ritual (li, 礼/禮) tradition and Christian culture; and religion and intangible cultural heritage in contemporary China.

This research found that both the practitioners of Chinese rituals and the Christian community deploy tactics to resist and negotiate with the hegemonic official culture through spatial and religious practices in their everyday life. Chinese ritual practices dedicated to deities and ancestors are defined as idol worship in the doctrine of Christianity and denigrated …

Comparison Of The Physical, Physiological And Perceptual Demands Of Small-Sided Games And Match Play In Professional Football Players, Stephen Hissey

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The physical and technical requirements of a range of small-sided football (soccer) games (SSGs) have previously been examined in order to compare their requirements to competitive match play. SSGs are used to combine the technical, tactical and physical components of normal match play in training in order to make the training sessions specific to football. However, most previous research has focused on youth players and it is known that the playing patterns, and thus session outcomes, are different for elite players. Consequently, research examining elite players is required in order to improve our understanding of the use of SSGs in …

An Investigation Of Technique And Equipment Factors Associated With Clubhead Speed In Golf, Christopher Joyce

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

If golfers achieve long hitting distances whilst maintaining their accuracy they will gain a competitive advantage. To increase hitting distance, faster clubhead speed is required and this can potentially be achieved through a number of factors. Firstly, anthropometric factors such as height and physical factors such as trunk rotational power have been previously considered to be of importance. However, biomechanical factors such as; the X-factor (separation of the trunk-pelvis alignment when viewed in the transverse plane), have been a major focus of recent research. Further, the interaction of the golfer with the implement they hit with i.e. the golf club …

A Leap In The Dark: Identity, Culture And The Trauma Of War Mediated Thorough The Visual Arts Of North-East European Migrants And Émigrés To Australia After 1945, Eileen Whitehead

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis explores the contribution to the cultural life of post-war Australia by migrant artists from north-eastern Europe. It researches the lives and work not only of displaced artists arriving in the mass exodus from Europe after the Second World War, but also second and third generation artists descended from original migrant families, and much later émigré artists.

Art histories written to date about the post-war period provide little coverage of the contributionto the art and culture of Australia by migrant artists from north-eastern Europe. The coverage in the literature written about the visual art produced by established Australian artists …

University Student Support Systems, Help-Seeking Behaviour And The Management Of Student Psychological Distress, Richard Bostwick

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The issue of student management and retention remains one of the most pertinent considerations for any university. In a climate of increasing awareness of mental and physical health issues, university policy development needs to adapt to ensure all students engage with and utilise support services effectively. It would appear that there are various influences on a student’s university experience, including learning abilities and styles, impact of life events and situations, for example, housing and finance, availability of support services and the ability of an individual to seek out appropriate help. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in combination with the Health Belief …

Raising Teacher Sensitivity To Key Numeracy Competencies In The Early Years, Kelly Norris

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Mathematical competence is a key capability for success in adult life, and yet many students do not achieve functional levels of numeracy during their school lives. Furthermore, many teachers report that they lack the confidence in teaching mathematics that they have for teaching literacy. Research indicates that it is possible to predict which students are likely to have difficulties in mathematics as early as the Pre-Primary year, and interventions can be provided which are effective in minimising such difficulties. The assumption framing this project is that raising teachers’ understanding of and thus sensitivity to markers of the skills most predictive …

What Remains Is The Book: The Idea Of The Book In And Around Electronic Space, Andy Simionato

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study is to question the idea of the book in general and how this idea is transforming in electronic space, understood as a space of flows as distinct to a space of places (Castells, 1989, p. 349). In order to question the idea of the book in electronic space we must begin at its ending, or more specifically, at a point in the histories of the book that is widely understood as representing a closing of a parenthesis - that began with the invention of the printing press, up to the end of print—spanning some 500 …

Sighting Circus: Perceptions Of Circus Phenomena Investigated Through Diverse Bodies, Katrina Lavers

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is an investigation into modern circus from its beginnings in 1768 through to present day contemporary circus arts. Eight diverse bodies in modern and contemporary circus are explored. These eight bodies act as different lenses to focus enquiry into gaps or ruptures in the grand narratives of circus, to reveal previously missing voices and histories and to set in place new approaches to perceiving circus phenomena.

In The Political Body, the phenomenon of embodied protest is identified and explored in relation to contemporary circus works. The importance of the engaged spectator is identified in determining political, poetic …

A Stirring Of Cultures: The Contest For Place, Belonging And Identity In Australia, Garry Stewart Henderson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The creative work, The Wounded Sinner, and the accompanying exegesis, form a volume of writing that considers aspects of place and belonging in a contemporary Australian context through the agencies of Aboriginality, migration and homelessness. While these issues are present and, at times, contentious in the structure of modern Australian society they have roots in past eras of empire building, racism and the movement from agrarianism to industrialisation. The characters are drawn from my own experiences and, as such, validate both the creative work and give the exegesis substance.

Jeanie Bayona is an Aboriginal woman who was raised, from …

Redefining Internal Audit Performance: Impact On Corporate Governance, Razimah Binti Abdullah

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

One of the preventive measures to situations akin to world financial crises increasingly forwarded is effective internal audit function (IAF) (e.g., Imhoff, 2003; Mohamad & Muhamad Sori, 2011). Internal audit, a component of corporate governance, continues to evolve due to changes in business strategies and requirements placed on it by legislators. The roles of internal auditors and audit committees (ACs), the key personnel in IAFs, are changing to a more value-added approach as business strategies move towards corporate sustainability and organisational excellence. Suggestions forwarded to improve the performance or determining the quality of IAF include effective involvement of ACs in …

The Identity Of The Heart Patient In The Context Of The Gift Economy: Heartnet And Media Framing, Lynsey Uridge

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This health communication research examines the identity levels of the heart patient on a therapeutic website HeartNET through an empirical investigation of site interactions as manifestations of a gift economy. The thesis also explores the media’s representation of heart health in both television and print.

This research utilised a longitudinal qualitative ethnographic and netnographic approach involving twenty-six participants who completed two in-depth interviews. The first one-on-one interview occurred during the early stages of the participants’ heart journey, explored their heart story and use of interactive technology for heart health support. The second interview occurred six to twelve months later, and …

Tego - A Framework For Adversarial Planning, Daniel Ashlock, Philip Hingston

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study establishes a framework called ∗-Tego for a situation in which two agents are each given a set of players for a competitive game. Each agent places their players in an order. Players on each side at the same position in the order play one another, with the agent's score being the sum of their player's scores. The planning agents are permitted to simultaneous reorder their players in each of several stages. The reordering is termed competitive replanning. The resulting framework is scalable by changing the number of players and the complexity of the replanning process. The framework is …

Exploring A Visual/Sonic Representational Continuum, Lindsay Vickery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper explores the relationships between sound and its visualisation, focussing upon the issues surrounding representation and interpretation of music through both performative and machine processes. The discussion proceeds in the context of five recent works by the author exploring the representation of sound and musical notation and their relationship to and with performance: unhörbares wird hörbar (the inaudible becomes audible) [2013], EVP [2012], Lyrebird: environment player [2014], Nature Forms I [2014] and sacrificial zones [2014]. Issues examined include: re-sonification of spectrograms, visualisation of spectral analysis data, control of spatialisation and audio processing using spectral analysis data, and reading issues …

Reaching Perinatal Women Online: The Healthy You, Healthy Baby Website And App, Lydia Hearn, Margaret Miller, Leanne Lester

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Overwhelming evidence reveals the close link between unwarranted weight gain among childbearing women and childhood adiposity. Yet current barriers limit the capacity of perinatal health care providers (PHCPs) to offer healthy lifestyle counselling. In response, today's Internet savvy women are turning to online resources to access health information, with the potential of revolutionising health services by enabling PHCPs to guide women to appropriate online resources. This paper presents the findings of a project designed to develop an online resource to promote healthy lifestyles during the perinatal period. The methodology involved focus groups and interviews with perinatal women and PHCPs to …

Freedom In Surrender, Vahri G. Mckenzie

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: The work is an artists’ profile of Claudia Alessi published in dancewest, the WA edition of the Australian Dance Council magazine. Alessi is a leading independent dancer and choreographer. It draws on my case study of Alessi to show how embodied knowledge and physical sensation inform her current choreographic process, and the transmission of this knowledge. As a dancer and researcher I use archival, field research and self-reflection to ask: how do we make creative processes explicit when they’re experienced as sudden insight?

Contribution: I was invited to contribute a series of artists’ profiles to dancewest. The research draws …

“Keeping It Together, Keeping Their Heads Above Water”: Western Australian Child Health Nurses’ Understanding Of Resilience In Postpartum Mothers, Rachael O. Collins, Julie Ann Pooley, Myra F. Taylor

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Assessing the well-being of postpartum mothers is an important aspect of postnatal nursing care. For this reason, Child Health Nurses (CHNs) are charged with the responsibility of identifying postpartum mothers who do/not manifest resilient behavioral qualities. However, little is known about CHNs’ conceptualization of resilience or how they assess resilience in postpartum mothers. This exemplar study addressed this knowledge shortfall by conducting semi-structured interviews with eight practicing CHNs. The study’s findings reveal that although CHNs’ conceptual understanding of resilience is congruent with current theoretical thinking, some variance does exist in the ways in which CHNs assess postpartum resilience, particularly, in …

Inclusive Services For Children And Families From Cald Backgrounds In An Australian Context, Margaret Sims, Anna U. Targowska, Judith C. Kulisa, Susan C. Teather

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The current Australian government is proposing an agenda focused around social inclusion in an attempt to address the complex issues associated with inequality evident in this country. Despite valiant attempts, many agencies struggle to offer inclusive services, particularly to families who have migrated to Australia from culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) backgrounds. In this study, we surveyed a range of programs identified by key informants as offering inclusive service delivery with the aim of identifying those aspects of their practice they believed facilitated successful inclusion. We then attempt to position our findings within recently emerging critiques of the concept of …

Stability And Accuracy Of Long-Term Memory For Musical Pitch [Journal Article], Alyce K. Hay, Craig P. Speelman

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Existing research gives an inconsistent picture of the nature of the cognitive processes underlying memory for musical information. A study was conducted to investigate the stability and accuracy of long-term memory for pitch amongst individuals who have not had musical training. Excerpts from well-known pop songs were used as stimuli. Participants heard one long sequence of excerpts, each of which had been raised or lowered in pitch by one semitone, or left unaltered. After hearing each excerpt, participants were asked to detect whether it was different from the original version of the song they remembered. Participants were significantly worse at …

Development Of A Patient-Administered Self-Assessment Tool (Satp) For Follow-Up Of Colorectal Cancer Patients In General Practice, Irene M. Ngune, Moyez Jiwa, Alexandra Mcmanus, Jeff Hughes, Richard Parsons, Rupert Hodder, Fiona Entriken

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Treatment for colorectal cancer (CRC) may result in physical, social, and psychological needs that affect patients’ quality of life post-treatment. A comprehensive assessment should be conducted to identify these needs in CRC patients post treatment, however, there is a lack of tools and processes available in general practice. Aims: This study aimed to develop a patient-completed needs screening tool that identifies potentially unmet physical, psychological, and social needs in CRC and facilitates consultation with a general practitioner (GP) to address these needs. Methods: The development of the self-assessment tool for patients (SATp) included a review of the literature; face …

Visual Recognition Difficulties: Identifying Primary School Students' Directional Confusion In Writing Letters And Numbers, Janet E. Richmond, Myra F. Taylor

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Occupational therapists often assess primary school learners for letter and number reversal tendencies using scales which require recognition of reversed letters and numbers; however, these scales do not generally look at learners’ written production of letters and numbers to measure their reversal tendencies. This study aimed to determine whether learners reverse the same letters and numbers in reading and in writing. Method: This study utilised the Richmond Reversal Rating (RRR) Scale to identify which language symbols 118 primary school learners found difficult to recognise as being reversed when reading a series of letters and numbers and writing 20 letters …

The 'Oldest Tricks In The Book' Do Not Work! Reports Of Burglary By Duma Detainees In Western Australia, Natalie J. Gately, Jennifer Fleming, Nathalie Mcginty, Anthony M. Scott

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Foreword : Research investigating the methods and motivations of burglars has typically focused on incarcerated offenders. The Australian Institute of Criminology’s Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program provided an opportunity for the authors to explore the methods and motivations of those actively involved in committing burglaries, whether or not they had actually been caught or detained for that offence. The findings support Routine Activity Theory, indicating that offenders consider a number of factors in determining whether a property will be targeted for a break and enter offence. As might be expected, opportunistic burglars choose easy to access properties, stay …

Developing Bilateral And Spatial Concepts In Primary School-Aged Children: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Anker Bilateral Spatial System, Janet Richmond Dr, M Taylor Dr, S Evans

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background: Visual-spatial and visual-motor perceptual difficulties contribute to school-aged learning problems. Hence, a need exists to address children’s visual-spatial and visual-motor perceptual difficulties as early as possible in the child’s school career. Thus, this study reports on the evaluation of the Anker Bilateral Spatial System’s (ABSS) effectiveness in remediating primary school children’s perceptual difficulties.

Method: Thirty-one children (17 boys and 14 girls) aged 6 to 12 years who had been identified by their classroom teacher as having observable visual-spatial and visual-motor perceptual difficulties participated in a 10-week pre/posttest intervention study. The study’s pre/posttest assessments included the Developmental Test of Visual-Motor …

The Internet: Friend, Foe Or Target?, Jonathan D. James

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In this concluding chapter, I give an overview of how the Internet, a byproduct of our times, is shaping our culture and society in profound ways. I note some of the major concerns and perils of the Internet age and I conclude by pointing out how and why certain countries are targeting the Internet in terms of increased regulation and surveillance.

The Impact Of Genetic Disease On The Family: Examining The Relationship Between Psychological Well-Being, Social Support, And Spirituality In Unaffected Carriers Of Leber’S Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, Jonathan W. Dator

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The current research was undertaken to explore the psychological well-being of mothers and siblings of an individual with vision loss symptoms due to Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy and whether perceived social support and spiritual involvement and beliefs served as protective factors as these family members coped with their child or sibling acquiring a disability. One hundred seventeen participants, 65 mothers and 52 siblings completed a Demographic Questionnaire, the Outcome Questionnaire-45, the Impact of Event Scale, the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support via an online internet survey. The data revealed that both mothers …

Diet And Effects Of Environmental Stressors On The Altricial Nestlings Of Double-Crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax Auritus), Jacob G. Randa

Biological Sciences

Double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) are a common species of altricial waterbird found across much of North America. As a piscivorous colonial waterbird, cormorants are often persecuted due to perceived impacts on fisheries. In this study I examined the diet of cormorant nestlings at five cormorant colonies in central North America to answer two questions: 1) Is nestling diet reflective of opportunistic feeding behavior, thus diminishing the likelihood of negative impacts to the fishery? and 2) How do diet and environmental stressors effect the development of cormorant nestlings? By analyzing the caloric content of nestling diet and quantifying environmental stressors such …