Digital Commons Network^™

The Association Between Demographic Factors And Use Of California's Health Insurance, Chiquita Theresa Tuttle

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010 (PPACA) addressed the access to healthcare in the United States. One of the problems of this healthcare access was rooted in disproportionally lower access among minority populations. The purpose of this quantitative study, guided by the consumer behavior theory, was to examine the association between race/ethnicity and enrollment within the Covered California-?¢ (CoveredCA) Insurance Exchange. A cross-sectional study design was used to investigate the association between race/ethnicity and the use of Covered CA health benefit exchange. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between enrollment and race/ethnicity, having adjusted for …

Inclusion And Attitudes Of Adolescents In A Camp Setting, Deborah Musher

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite increased inclusion of individuals with special needs in educational and leisure settings, people with disabilities continue to experience social isolation. Research indicates that negative attitudes play an important role in contributing to this marginalization. This study examined the impact of an inclusion program at a residential summer camp on the attitudes of its typical participants. Participants in the treatment group (n = 30) experienced contact with peers with disabilities through structured, intentional programming while participants in the control group (n = 77) experienced less formal inclusive encounters. The Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes toward Children with Handicaps (CATCH) scale was administered to …

Perceptions And Behaviors Of Caribbean And South American Women Of Color Living In The United States Towards Breast Cancer, Bernadette Serena Loncke

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Breast cancer is a global public health issue, and even though the incidence and mortality rates for this disease have declined, a substantial gap in mortality rates between U.S. women of color and European American women remains. Strategies have been initiated to decrease this gap, but they have not addressed the special needs of women of color residing in the United States, who tend to be diagnosed only after they have developed late-stage breast cancer. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the perceptions and behaviors of 20 first-generation Caribbean and South American-born women of color living in …

Responding To Writing Fluency: An Activity Theory Analysis Of Teacher Preparation And Practices, Daliborka Crnkovic Padon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study examines eight first-year writing teachers’ practices, philosophies, and preparation with a specific focus on responding to students’ writing fluency. The data is illustrated through the theoretical framework of Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987, 2005), showing various contradictions between the expectations of the Composition Studies field and the actual responding practices. To understand these contradictions, I also examine the position statements issued by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), as well as the bestselling writing teacher preparation books and first-year writing …

The Effects Of Bilingualism On Auditory Selective Attention In Normal-Hearing Adults, Francisco Fernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bilingual speakers have been shown to be more adept than monolingual speakers at actively blocking useless information in the visual modalities. This advantage should be observed in both the visual and the auditory modalities using tasks of inhibitory control. However, very little is known regarding how bilingualism influences inhibitory control in the perception of auditory information. By using an auditory test of inhibition, such as the utilization of a Dichotic Listening task, bilinguals are expected to display an increased measure of cognitive ability.

The Understanding Of Implied Meaning In Monolingual And Bilingual Children, Kenah Linger

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The development of pragmatic language and how it is treated cognitively in monolingual and bilingual speakers is a topic of debate. Language pragmatic skills can include: knowing that you have to answer a question that is being asked, being able to participate in conversation by taking turns, and the ability to maintain a topic. Furthermore, the study of pragmatics has also focused on understanding how we comprehend language that is not explicit. For example, comprehending the sentence, "We'd love to have you over for dinner" involves deciding whether this is an invitation, a statement of desire, or even an empty …

Attitudes And Barriers To Intimate Partner Violence Screening And Follow-Up During Prenatal Care As Reported By Survivors In The El Paso, Texas Region, Luz Maria Luna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

About 37.1% of Hispanic women in the United States have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) (Breiding, 2014). In Texas, family violence cases among women comprised 73% of the total complaints (Texas Department of Public Safety 2012), and fatalities of women by an intimate partner totaled 102 women in 2011 (Office of Court Administration, 2013). In El Paso, Texas, the Center Against Sexual and Family Violence (CASFV) received 823 people in its emergency shelter from 2012 to 2013 and 70% of those residents were women (Center Against Family Violence, 2015). The Healthy People 2020 has assigned developmental objective IVP-39, under the …

Nature Of The Verbal Fluency Task In Concussed Athletes, Paulina Mejia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: Verbal fluency is a common test used to assess naming in individuals with brain injury. Troyer (1997) reported that naming components such as phonemic clusters and categorical switching might be more sensitive to the presence of brain injury than a reduction in the total number of words that is commonly used as a measure. Phonemic task refers to the F-A-S naming task while the semantic task refers to the animal naming task because of the frequent production of the phonemic cluster on the F-A-S and semantic clusters on the animal naming task (Troyer, 1997).

Purpose: The purpose of this …

Construcción De Subjetividades Identitarias Y Su Relación Espacial: Tres Representaciones Teatrales Del Feminicidio En Ciudad Juárez, Nidia Mariana Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ciudad Juárez, una de las fronteras más importantes de México debido a su producción industrial, adquirió renombre ya que a partir del año de 1993 se dio a conocer un alarmante aumento de violencia ejercida contra la mujer en la ciudad (misma que culminó con una ola de feminicidios). De esta manera se convirtió en un lugar de estudio y de inspiración para artistas que buscaban visibilizar dicha situación. Un ejemplo de lo anterior es el aumento en la producción literaria que hace del feminicidio en Ciudad Juárez su temática principal ha tenido un gran auge en el panorama artístico. …

Becoming Resilient: A Positive Deviance Inquiry Into The Resilience Of Mexican Immigrant Women, Maria Del Carmen Sajquim De Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The United States has approximately 12 million Mexican-born immigrants, almost half of which are female (Gonzalez-Barrera & Lopez, 2013). Research has determined that Mexican immigrants have the best level of mental health when compared to other ethnic groups in the U.S. (Alegria et al., 2008; Horevitz & Organista, 2012). Adverse living conditions resulting from immigration and time spent in the U.S. are believed to cause the loss of this advantage. The potential strengths or assets contributing to advantageous levels of mental health in Mexican-born immigrants have not been fully identified in research.

This exploratory and descriptive inquiry used an …

Rewriting, Recapturing, Reenvisioning: Writing Assessment Revisited In The Hermeneutic Sphere, Judith Ann Fourzan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation explores the use of hermeneutics in reconsidering the role of writing assessment in composition. The traditional view of writing assessment is negative. In order to change this traditional view and enable composition faculty to utilize writing assessment and a valuable and necessary tool, a hermeneutic sphere offers the best framework upon which to recast writing assessment as part of composition and writing. A hermeneutic sphere is an interpretive methodology that allows for the investigation of any and all aspects of the subject at hand - in this case, writing assessment. The hermeneutic sphere works much like a heuristic …

The Role Of Language Attitudes In Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo's Language Revitalization Efforts, Armida Hernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the United States, language preservation and revitalization efforts have taken on greater urgency as tribes spanning all across Indian Country, from Alaska to Florida, are collaborating with linguists, Native and non-Native, in a pitched fight to save their languages from decline and/or extinction. With respect to the causes of indigenous language loss, it is important to recognize that blame cannot be assigned exclusively to external pressures. Recognizing the strong interplay between language attitudes and language maintenance or loss, this study focuses on the role of language attitude in one particular Native American tribeâ??s language revitalization efforts, that of Ysleta …

Heat Seekers, Gavin Stephen Lambert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

“Every land / carves a people, marks them heavy like an / accent,” writes Gavin Lambert in his poem, “In Summer We Move Slowly,” and Lambert’s collection explores the connective tissue of that very relationship—the one between a land and its people. On the dirt roads and highways that take us along the continuum from geography to identity (part drunken road trip, part afternoon stroll, part shambling hike, part not-so reliable history tour) he takes us on a journey through a strange and familiar landscape where “Every place is sacred / or near a sacred place.”

An Environmental Justice Examination Of Hispanic Immigrants' Flood Hazard Exposure And Vulnerability In The Miami And Houston Metro Areas, Alejandra Maldonado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Research reveals that disasters are particularly debilitating for racial/ethnic minorities. However, prior studies of racial/ethnic dimensions of disaster vulnerability have lumped people together in broad categories (e.g. Hispanic) without regard for substantial within-group heterogeneity. As a result, aspects of disaster vulnerability experienced by Hispanic immigrants (distinguished from US-born Hispanics) have been concealed. Using survey data from 1,283 adult householders in the Houston and Miami Metropolitan Statistical Areas and follow-up interview data from a subset of survey respondents, this Thesis addresses that limitation by examining whether Hispanic immigrants experience heightened flood risk relative to other social groups. The Thesis is comprised …

Exploring Factors Of Initimate Partner Violence Among Men Of Mexican Origin, Bibiana Marie Mancera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects many females, particularly women of color, in the United States. Victims of IPV experience both short and long term physical and mental consequences (World Health Organization, 2014), which negatively impact the healthcare and judicial system (Lloyd & Taluc, 1999). Few qualitative studies have been conducted among men of Mexican origin (MMO), exploring unique risk factors that contribute to the higher incidence of IPV perpetration among this population. The purpose of this study was to explore IPV perpetration risk factors among MMO. The research question that guided this study were: 1) what are the issues confronting …

Happily Ever After And Other Lies My Childhood Told Me, Rachel Anna Neff

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A manuscript-length book of poetry with a critical preface centered on the idea of mythology, nursery rhymes, and foundational (Western) fictions and how the cultural norms and expectations that those texts create influence an individual, particularly with respect to gender and gender identity.

Bigear: Inferring The Ambient And Emotional Correlates From Smartphone-Based Acoustic Big Data, Harishchandra Dubey, Matthias R. Mehl, Kunal Mankodiya

Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents a novel BigEAR big data framework that employs psychological audio processing chain (PAPC) to process smartphone-based acoustic big data collected when the user performs social conversations in naturalistic scenarios. The overarching goal of BigEAR is to identify moods of the wearer from various activities such as laughing, singing, crying, arguing, and sighing. These annotations are based on ground truth relevant for psychologists who intend to monitor/infer the social context of individuals coping with breast cancer. We pursued a case study on couples coping with breast cancer to know how the conversations affect emotional and social well being. …

The Afterlife Views And The Use Of The Tanakh In Support Of The Resurrection Concept In The Literature Of Second Temple Period Judaism: The Apocrypha And The Pseudepigrapha, Jan A. Sigvartsen

Dissertations

The literature of Second Temple Period Judaism indicates there was an increased interest in and speculation about the fate of the righteous and the wicked following their physical death. This period saw the birth of multiple Jewish sects and also multiple views of the afterlife. This study will outline the numerous afterlife views and will analyse the resurrection passages appearing in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha to gain a comprehensive overview of the texts used from the TaNaKh in support of these various resurrection beliefs. This study also provides a better understanding of how the TaNaKh was read by differing …

Dominant Discourses And Language Socialization In The Literacy Practices Of A Spanish-Speaking Church, Katherine Christoffersen

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

Over the years, research has investigated language in communities, schools and homes, community programs and to a lesser degree research investigates language use in religious communities. In particular, there is a lack of research on religious language and literacy practices in Hispanic communities, especially those in the United States, although incipient work has revealed the importance of religious literacy among women Mexican immigrants (Farr, 2000) and for the socialization of children into a Mexican identity (Baquedano-López, 1997). Given the hostile local sociopolitical environment of Spanish in the state of Arizona in the Southwestern United States, the church is one of …

Cross-Language Conceptual Activation And Development Through Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The present study begins to bridge the gap between bilingual education practices and cognitive frameworks of bilingual conceptual access. A reading comprehension task was used to investigate how bilingual undergraduate students activate and develop academic information across their two languages when reading expository text. Using scientific texts, participants (N = 128) read two distinct passages pertaining to prior knowledge, as well as new, related conceptual information. At test, the participants were asked to complete true-false questions and elaborate on the reasons for their responses. A counterbalanced, mixed factorial design was used to infer how language dominance influences encoding and retrieval …

The Effect Of A Fluent Signing Narrator On Quality Of Maternal Behavior During E-Book Shared Reading Interactions With Their Children With Hearing Loss, Mar Alejandra Bonilla Yáñez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: The average high school student with hearing loss graduates reading at a 4th grade level. A factor that may contribute to the literacy development in children with typical hearing is language modeling and support surrounding shared book reading. The shared book reading experiences of children with hearing loss (CHL) and their parents may be different in quantity and quality from their peers with typical hearing. There is evidence reporting parental frustration and feeling of incompetence when reading to their CHL due to a sensory mismatch between the childâ??s and the parentâ??s mode of communication and skills. This study investigated …

Decolonizing Queer Epistemologies: Section Introduction, R Kulpa, Jm Silva

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Geography And Post-Phenomenology, James Ash, Paul Simpson

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

This paper examines geography’s engagements with phenomenology. Tracing phenomenology’s influence, from early humanist reflections on the lifeworld to non-representational theories of practice, the paper identifies the emergence of a distinct post-phenomenological way of thinking. However, there is currently no clear articulation of what differentiates post-phenomenology from phenomenology as a set of theories or ideas, nor is there a clear set of trajectories along which such difference can be pursued further. In response to this, the paper outlines three key elements that differentiate phenomenology from post-phenomenology and that require further exploration. First is a rethinking of intentionality as an emergent relation …

The German Version Of The Humor Styles Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties And Overlap With Other Styles Of Humor., Willibald Ruch, Sonja Heintz

School of Psychology

The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) is one of the most frequently used questionnaires in humor research and has been adapted to several languages. The HSQ measures four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating), which should be adaptive or potentially maladaptive to psychosocial well-being. The present study analyzes the internal consistency, factorial validity, and factorial invariance of the HSQ on the basis of several German-speaking samples combined (total N = 1,101). Separate analyses were conducted for gender (male/female), age groups (16-24, 25-35, >36 years old), and countries (Germany/Switzerland). Internal consistencies were good for the overall sample …

Drawing On Metaphors Of Teaching To Elicit Reflexive Thinking, Harriett Bessette, Nita A. Paris

Faculty Articles

This paper describes the findings of a study that involved the generation of metaphors by practicing educators to promote reflexive thought, recognized today as one of the most viable and vigorous tools for troubling and influencing P-12 educational practice (Bolton, 2010). A total of 23 educators enrolled in an advanced graduate teacher education program beyond the masters level were first asked to construct a written (verbal) metaphor to depict their lived experiences as teachers and/or learners. Participants were then asked to create an original drawing to approximate their espoused metaphor. Educators’ drawings were analyzed for apparent features and traits as …

The Spanish-English Bilingual: A Cross-Classfication Comparison Of Maze Use In Children, Jessica Valles

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

With the continual increase of bilingual individuals in the United States, there is a critical need for research that can appropriately identify unique characteristics of language production for these individuals. In particular, maze use, or errors in production have been identified as a characteristic of language that typically occurs more in bilinguals' speech production than in monolingual productions. Research comparing bilingual maze use in individuals who are typically developing with bilingual maze use individuals who are language impaired is limited. To compare these bilingual children with language impairment with to their typically developing peers, children were paired by age, grade, …

Entering The World Of University: The Literacies And Indentities Of Latino/A Youth In Their Transitions From High School To College, Luciene Soares Wandermurem

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This year-long ethnographic case study seeks to contribute to the body of literature on minoritized students' transitions from high school to college by drawing on sociocultural theories of literacies and identities to examine seven bilingual Latino/a students' academic trajectories from the spring semester of their senior year in high school through the fall semester of their first year in college. Specifically, this study explores how Latino/a youth's identities and academic aspirations were shaped by literacy practices across spaces - out-of-school, at a high school, and in college classrooms - over the course of a year. The study was conduct in …

Video Composition: Tracing Multimodal Assemblages, Zachary Aaron Warzecka

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Video Composition: Tracing Multimodal Assemblages questions and complicates current approaches to integrating digital videography, and new media at large, within academic environments. Given the field of Rhetoric and Writing Studies' persistent desire, if not struggle, to take on alternative modes of composing, the project provides an exploration of the distinct affordances, composing practices and rhetorical principles of digital videography. In particular, the Dissertation traces how videographic composing processes are taught, taken up, and even paved over within two distinct first year-writing classrooms.

In conducting grounded case studies of multimodal classrooms, the Dissertation draws disciplinary and pedagogical commonplaces into conversation with …

Secondary Mathematics Teachers' Disposition Toward Challenge And Its Impact On Teaching Practice, Yirah Mariana Valverde

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This two phase, sequential exploratory study focused on mathematics teachers' disposition toward challenge and its impact in their teaching practice and students' performance. This heavily qualitative study employed a mixed methodology to answer the following guiding research question: how do teachersâ?? disposition towards challenge affect teaching practice and what is the nature of that relationship?

During the initial phase (quantitative), two teachers who were enrolled in a graduate mathematics at a University in the southwestern U.S. were selected for the study (N=5). The goal of the class was to increase the participants' mathematical knowledge for teaching. The purposive selection was …

A Theology Of Missional Leadership In The Book Of Revelation, Gyeongchun Choi

Dissertations

Problem

Leadership styles and the attendant behavior of mission practitioners and church administrators too often demonstrate leadership attitudes and practices that reflect cultural norms while violating biblical norms. There is both historical and contemporary evidence of a predictable migration from leadership as service to leadership as control—such as autocracy, coercion, self-ascendancy, and dominance. These problems are found in leadership practices primarily informed by cultural norms apart from God’s Word. These norms vary widely and may even be practiced within the faith community thus violating biblical principles. This reality creates an urgent need for the application of biblical principles that transcend …