Digital Commons Network^™

The Story Speaks For Itself: A Thematic Information Analysis Of An Intended Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Spouses And Parents Bereaved By The Death Of Special Forces Members Killed In Combat, Marion A. Smyth

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The Australian Special Forces (SF) members have faced considerable adversity with combat deployments to Afghanistan as an elite operational unit of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). There have been 40 combat deaths since 2001 and despite the significant research available on bereavement and violent death, to date there is a gap in the literature to guide the provision of bereavement support for spouses and parents of those SF members killed in action. Contemporary qualitative research into combat related bereavement has found a number of themes which gave meaning to bereavement outcomes found in the non-SF context and recommended that future …

Rising To The Challenge: Exploring The Transition From Primary To Secondary Education In A Western Australian School, Elizabeth Joan Wenden

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The ‘Rising to the Challenge: Exploring the transition from Primary to Secondary education in a Western Australian School’ study explored the positive predictors of primary to secondary school transition of a cohort of Year 7 students (n=182) at a school in Western Australia. The transition from primary to secondary school is an important process in the lives of adolescents aged around 11-13 years old. It is a challenging and exciting time that coincides with social, emotional, physical and cognitive changes of the adolescent stage of development. Enabling a positive transition to secondary school can give adolescents the support they need …

The Impact Of Nursing A Significant Other In The Course Of Employment, Tania Arnold

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis describes the experiences of nurses and midwives working in metropolitan hospitals who cared for a significant other in their role of employment.

The absence of research directly related to this topic guided the exploration of individuals’ experiences to establish base line knowledge relating to this phenomenon.

This study used descriptive research to provide information relating to the personal and professional effects on nurses who were required to, chose to or had no choice but to care for a significant other in their role of employment. An on-line survey gathered demographic, Likert scale responses to evaluate impact on care, …

Women’S Experiences Of Pregnancy Loss: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Esther Lea Kint

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Over the past three decades, research has proliferated on the incidence of grief severity following pregnancy loss, with many research studies citing the existence of ‘complicated’ and ‘unresolved’ grief. It is argued that this emphasis on grief severity has overshadowed other aspects of the bereavement experience that might differ from grief as it has been defined. Understanding the experience of loss in pregnancy instead of categorising it, would allow for new and varied understandings of the meaning women attribute to their experience of losing a baby. Furthermore, paying attention to women’s interpretations and understandings of pregnancy loss provides valuable insight …

The Shifting Voice: Investigating Accent And Dialect Training For West Australian Actors, Luzita Fereday

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This masters research examines accent and dialect training for actors in the Western Australian context and seeks an understanding about what aural, embodied and cognitive attributes an actor needs in order to move from one accent to another. In particular, this research explores the characteristics of Australian dialects as grounds for the acquisition of the Standard British accent or Received Pronunciation.

The purpose of this research was to identify the expertise required when teaching an accent to acting students in pre-professional levels of tertiary training. This practice-led approach to the research included interviewing, observation, the circulation of questionnaires, and my …

Living After Confronting Death; Story Telling During The Recovery Trajectory Of Intensive Care Unit Survivors: An Interpretive Biographical Approach, Beverley Anne Ewens

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Aim: To create new meaning of the experiences of intensive care survivors during early recovery and the meaning of “self” during this time. To add to the understanding of how support should be focussed for survivors during recovery.

Background: Survival from a critical event/illness and intensive care unit experience is increasing, as is associated physical and psychological complications. Complications are due to the severity of illness, the intensive care experience itself and the nature of the treatments which promote survival. If complications remain untreated increased health care service uptake and reduced quality of life can ensue. Despite the …

Writing Into The Apocalypse - An Examination Of The Method Of Writing Into The Dark Within The Context Of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: An Exegesis, Brendan Ritchie

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This Creative Writing thesis consists of an original novel, titled Carousel, and an exegesis examining the practice-led method of writing without a narrative plan.

Carousel explores the lives of four young adult characters who find themselves trapped inside a giant shopping complex in post-apocalyptic Perth. A central creative decision that informed the process of writing Carousel was to write without knowledge of the narrative destination. Within this research, I have termed this practice ‘writing into the dark’.

The initial focus of the exegesis is to define and explore what it means to write into the dark. Here the exegesis …

Antenatal Clinic: Using Ethnographic Methods To Listen To The Voices Of Pregnant Adolescents, Deborah Ireson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Aim: This research aims to explore the motivating reasons and external influences that affect pregnant adolescents’ reasons for attending an antenatal clinic. Background: Pregnancy during adolescence has been researched from perceived ‘poor’ decision making during pregnancy and postnatal perspectives involving high-risk outcomes for mother and baby. Antenatal clinic attendance by pregnant adolescents is often characterised by late and infrequent attendance, limiting midwifery contact with this inexperienced group. Gaps in the literature exist where the real-time voices of pregnant adolescents offer their current experiences of antenatal clinic as a relevant means to inform midwifery practice.

Research design: Using ethnographic methods, this …

Wellbeing Of Singapore’S Youths, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

Given Singapore’s focus on human capital investment in its residents, the nation’s youths have experienced increases in their financial, educational, and physical wellbeing. However, how have our youths fared in their emotional and mental wellbeing? Figures from the World Values Survey show reported a gradual decline in life satisfaction for both general population and youths. Data from four waves of the National Youth Survey confirms this trend. This chapter explores and examines the non-economic channels that may have countered the positive influence of economic success on the wellbeing of youths, namely, changing family structure, heightened stressors, shifting life goals, time …

Aggregate Consumption And Debt Accumulation: An Empirical Examination Of Us Household Behavior, Yun K. Kim, Mark Setterfield, Yuan Mei

Research Collection School Of Economics

The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a significant contraction in US consumption spending, as households began deleveraging following a period marked by historically high levels of household borrowing. These events call into question the canonical life-cycle theory of consumption, with its benign view of debt as a neutral instrument of optimal intertemporal expenditure smoothing. This paper draws attention to an alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption spending in which current income, household borrowing and household indebtedness all affect current consumption. Central to the analysis is an empirical investigation of US consumption spending since the 1950s. The results of …

Job Stress Among Female Residents During Postgraduate Training At A University Hospital In Karachi, Pakistan, Madiha Hashmi, Fauzia A. Khan, Khan S, Ali S. K

Department of Anaesthesia

Background: Postgraduate medical training is a stressful experience for both male and female doctors but previous studies have shown that stress might be more prevalent amongst female residents. Since women make up 70-80% of medical graduates in Pakistan we conducted this study to determine the prevalence of stress among female residents during postgraduate training and identify the most common stressors.

Methodology: All female residents enrolled in postgraduate training programmes at the Aga Khan University meeting the inclusion criteria were recruited and informed written consent was obtained. Job Stress Inventory (JSI) was used to identify symptoms and sources of job stress. …

Psychological Wellness And Health-Related Stigma: A Pilot Study Of An Acceptance-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Intervention For People With Lung Cancer, Suzanne K. Chambers, B A. Morris, S Clutton, E Foley, L Giles, P Schofield, D O'Connell, J Dunn

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

People with lung cancer experience health-related stigma that is related to poorer psychosocial and quality of life outcomes. The present Phase 1 study applied mixed methods to test the acceptability of an acceptance-focused cognitive behavioural intervention targeting stigma for this patient group. Fourteen lung cancer patients completed a 6-week Psychological Wellness intervention with pre- and post-test outcome measures of psychological and cancer-specific distress, depression, health-related stigma and quality of life. In-depth interviews applying interpretative phenomenological analysis assessed participants' experiences of the intervention. Moderate to large improvements were observed in psychological (ηp 2=0.182) and cancer-specific distress (ηp 2=0.056); depression (ηp 2=0.621); …

Teacher Emotion Research: Introducing A Conceptual Model To Guide Future Research, Leanne Fried, Caroline Mansfield, Eva Dobozy

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This article reports on the development of a conceptual model of teacher emotion through a review of teacher emotion research published between 2003 and 2013. By examining 82 publications regarding teacher emotion, the main aim of the review was to identify how teacher emotion was conceptualised in the literature and develop a conceptual model to illustrate the findings. Interestingly, few papers explicitly defined ‘emotion’ or ‘teacher emotion’ but described the functions of emotion (such as providing information) and influences on emotion (such as personal characteristics), so these were also used to build the conceptual model. The literature also highlighted the …

Indonesian Teachers’ Implementation Of New Curriculum Initiatives In Relation To Teaching Writing In Lower Primary School, Sulfasyah, Yvonne Haig, Caroline Barratt-Pugh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper reports an investigation of teachers’ implementation of a new Indonesian curriculum, the Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP), meaning school-based curriculum. The specific context chosen was the teaching of writing in Year 2 in the primary schools of Makassar City, Indonesia. The teachers’ implementation was examined through the lens of the KTSP’s key constructivist-based concepts. Using qualitative methods, the study found that the teachers’ implementation of the new writing curriculum reflected a traditional view of teaching, despite the intent of the KTSP to move away from this approach to one that better reflected a constructivist approach. The study also …

Scaffolding To Improve Writing Skills In A Computer Science Literacy Course, Wu He, Harris Wu, Li Xu, Kurt Maly

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Writing has been recognized as an important skill in the technology field. This paper reports a study that uses a scaffolding approach to improve student writing skills in a computer science literacy course. While the quantitative results do not show a significant impact of scaffolding in individual paper assignment on the subsequent group wiki assignment, the student feedback in end-of-semester evaluations strongly indicated that scaffolding indeed helped improve their writing.

Front Matter - Table Of Contents - Preface

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Communicating To Change Communication: Alcoholics' Romantic Partners' Mutual-Aid Group Attendance In Relation To Communication With Their Alcoholic Partners, Venla Kuuluvainen, Pekka Isotalus

Iowa Journal of Communication

Although the strain that a romantic partner's alcoholism puts on a relationship is well documented, less is known about the ways in which individuals deal with a malfunctioning relationship of this kind. This qualitative study explores one way of coping with a partner's alcoholism: attending Al-Anon, a world-wide network of mutual-aid groups for alcoholics' friends and families. This paper will look at Al-Anon members' perceptions of their communication experiences at Al-Anon in relation to their communication with their alcoholic partners. The research material is composed of interviews with Finnish Al-Anon members (n=19), as well as their writings (n=128), which have …

Communication And Female Date Initiation: Differences In Perceptions Based On Asesertiveness Of Initiator, Lindsey K. Odom, Erin Sahlstein Parcell, Benjamin M. A. Baker, Valerie Cronin-Fisher

Iowa Journal of Communication

First dates represent an important event in the early development of dating relationships. Commonly, date initiation is a behavior in which men take control in heterosexual relationships; however, more women are conducting this task. Women initiating dates, as opposed to men, has traditionally been viewed as a deviation from American cultural norms for expected behavior. The deviation in behavior could have negative repercussions for women, which was investigated for the current study. College-aged participants (n = 232) completed an online survey regarding their perceptions of two hypothetical women who initiated dates (i.e., one where her assertiveness was high and one …

Southeast Polk High School's Suicide Culture: Analysis Of Communication And Community Resilience Strategies, Molly D. Wells

Iowa Journal of Communication

This paper analyzes the response to the outbreak of student suicides at Southeast Polk High School in Pleasant Hill, Iowa, during the 2008-09 school year, by applying the theoretical framework of the communication and community resilience approach to crisis management. The key strategies of the communication and resilience framework were applied to assess the efforts of the school district to adapt and build resilience. It was identified that the school district succeeded in implementing two out of the five recommended strategies. The framework highlighted the need to consider suicide as a crisis and to employ all the strategies in order …

Review Of The Sage Handbook Of Family Communication, Donna R. Pawlowski

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Safety Culture Monitoring: A Management Approach For Assessing Nuclear Safety Culture Health Performance Utilizing Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis, James Harold Warren Jr.

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Nuclear power plants are among the most technologically complex of all energy facilities. This complexity reflects the precision needed in design, maintenance and operations to harness the energy of the atom safely, reliably and economically. Nuclear energy thus requires consistent, high levels of organizational performance by the highly skilled professionals who operate and maintain nuclear power plants (Nuclear Energy Institute [NEI], 2014, p. 1).

A key element for achieving consistent, high levels of performance in a nuclear organization is its safety culture. Nuclear safety culture is for an organization what character and personality is for an individual: a feature that …

Annual Report Of The Registrar 2014/2015, University Of Northern Iowa

Institutional Effectiveness & Planning Documents

Contents:

--- Definitions
--- Some Comparisons
--- Summary of Attendance
--- Attendance by Session
--- Full-Time Equivalency Enrollment
--- Degrees Granted
--- Degree Summary
--- Program Certificates
--- Miscellaneous Enrollment Information
--- Degrees Granted by College, Degree and Racial/Ethnic Classification

"If You Is White, You's Alright....": Stories About Colorism In America, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines the inefficiencies of Missouri municipal courts that came into sharp focus following the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Norwood details and expands on her lone dissent in the Final Report of the Municipal Division Work Group—a group created by the Missouri Supreme Court to address the alleged abuses of black and poor residents in Missouri. Norwood argues for consolidating failing municipal courts to create larger, more functional, and just courts.

Free Online Resources Not To Miss For Teaching Middle School Mathematics, Clayton M. Edwards

Curriculum & Instruction Faculty Publications

Do you need an infusion of richer tasks into your middle level mathematics classroom? Ask yourself the following questions:

-- Have you been using the same text for your mathematics curriculum for multiple years?

-- Has the promise of your text being “Iowa Core compatible” failed to come to fruition? • Are you a new middle school mathematics instructor and feel stuck with the materials present when you first got your job?

-- Are your middle school students generally lacking excitement towards any curricular choices you make or materials you use?

-- Do you wish your students would show and …

Human Trafficking And Labor Migration: The Dichotomous Law And Complex Realities Of Filipina Entertainers In South Korea And Suggestions For Integrated And Contextualized Legal Responses, Yoon J. Shin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article examines the complex legal situation of Filipina "entertainers" in U.S. military camp towns in South Korea: the individuals located at the intersection of human trafficking and labor migration. The Article investigates how the dichotomous law fails to recognize these entertainers as either trafficking victims or as migrant workers. The law therefore denies proper legal rights and remedies for the serious rights violations they suffer in the destination state. This research demonstrates that these migrants have diverse needs, aspirations, and transnational experiences that embrace both victimhood and agency. It illuminates the fundamental problems of the current global anti-trafficking regime, …

Religious Rights In Historical, Theoretical, And International Context: Hobby Lobby As A Jurisprudential Anomaly?, S. I. Strong

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The United States has a long and complicated history concerning religious rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. has done little to clear up the jurisprudence in this field. Although the decision will doubtless generate a great deal of commentary as a matter of constitutional and statutory law, the better approach is to consider whether and to what extent the majority and dissenting opinions reflect the fundamental principles of religious liberty. Only in that context can the merits of such a novel decision be evaluated free from political and other biases.

This …

2015 Biennial Faculty Activities Report, University Of Northern Iowa, University Of Iowa, Iowa State University

Institutional Effectiveness & Planning Documents

Report of faculty activity broken down by rank and compared to the other Regents institutions

Building Cathedrals: Mission Statements In Academic Libraries, Rebecca A. Nous

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Articulating an organization’s mission using a mission statement is a common method of communicating purpose, attitude, and priorities with stakeholders. While mission statements have been widely studied and written about in business literature, mission statements in libraries have not been studied as deeply. A survey of Association of Research Libraries library directors was conducted in 2014 to determine the current state of academic library mission statements, how they are being created, how they are informing the work of the library, and library directors’ satisfaction with their library’s mission statement.

Analysis Of Road Sprint Cycling Performance, Paolo Menaspa

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Sprint cycling ability is a key determinant of road cycling performance, with many races designed specifically for sprinters. The ability to excel in the final sprint is relevant for both individual riders and teams. Despite the importance of sprints within professional road cycling, the characteristics of professional road sprints and sprinters have yet to be extensively described. Thus, the overall objective of the five research studies contained within this doctoral thesis was to describe road cycling sprint performance and improve the general understanding of the physical, technical and tactical factors associated with such performances.

The first two descriptive field studies …

The Clinical Utility Of Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation In Individuals With Huntington’S Disease, Travis Miles Cruickshank

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Background

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characterised by a progressive loss of cognitive function, motor control and psychiatric features. Individuals also display a variety of systemic features. Progressive neuronal dysfunction and neuronal cell death are thought to underlie the onset and progression of many clinical features of HD.

Despite scientific progress, there is still no cure or disease modifying therapy for HD, and available pharmaceutical agents only provide partial relief of motor and psychiatric features. An emerging body of evidence indicates that lifestyle enrichment may delay the onset and progression of clinical features, and exert favourable effects …