Digital Commons Network^™

Effective Postdischarge Communication From Nursing Staff To Mental Health Patients, Paula Renee Garrison

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractMental health patients have a history of decreased follow-up appointments, poor diet, and medication noncompliance after discharge from inpatient facilities in addition to multiple co-morbidities, making a return to the community difficult. The practice problem was an increase in hospital readmissions of mental health patients within 30 days postdischarge due to inadequate post-discharge education and follow-up communication. Using Rodgers’s recovery on mental health theory and Revan’s action learning theory, a staff education program was developed to educate 10 nursing staff and two social workers on how to effectively implement postdischarge communication at 3 days and 30 days after discharge from …

Young Adults’ Community Trust And Participation In A Community Service Center In Indonesia, Adhytiawarman Gautama Putra

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the field of national security, Indonesia has community service centers known as the community police communication forum, or FKPM, an informal institution formed by community members to assist the police in implementing community policing (CP). FKPM can be found in various regions of Indonesia. The purpose of this study was to obtain the opinions of young adult members about FKPM regarding their trust and participation in FKPM activities. Fifteen active FKPM members participated in telephone interviews. The results showed that the young adults in this study believed in FKPM but lacked information about FKPM programs and activities in their …

Employee Retention Strategies In The Quick Service Restaurant Industry, Jason Gorham

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Organizations whose managers cannot retain their employees often experience additional hiring and training costs, a loss of continuity and productivity, and risk damaging employee morale. Some managers in the quick-service restaurant industry (QSRI) lack strategies to retain employees, thereby adding to an organization’s expense. Grounded in the transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this single case study was to explore employee retention strategies in the QSRI. The eight participants were managers of two restaurants in the QSRI located in the Midwest who have successfully implemented employee retention strategies. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and a review of company documents …

Maritime Cybersecurity Strategies For Information Technology Specialists, Angela Mizelle Griffin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Dependence on digital technology increases cyber-related risks for maritime industries. As a result, the U.S. Coast Guard network is challenged with maritime cybersecurity, both economically and for national security. Grounded in the general systems theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies information technology (IT) specialists use to implement standard practices for ensuring cyber security. The participants included six IT specialists who have successfully implemented standard practices for maritime organizations in Virginia and West Virginia. Data were collected from individual semistructured interviews and a review of 12 external organizational documents available to the public from IT …

Increasing Employee Motivation Through Job Satisfaction And Empowerment, Alicia Banks Myers

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Leaders with high employee dissatisfaction have excessive absenteeism, complaints, and attrition, leading to low employee motivation. Dissatisfied employees are directly linked to customer dissatisfaction, resulting in decreased sales revenue. Grounded in Herzberg’s motivation–hygiene theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore motivation strategies that three department store managers have used to increase job satisfaction and empowerment in a retail store in South Carolina. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and company documents, including employee handbooks, strategic plans, and business forecasts. The three primary themes that emerged using thematic analysis were (a) effective leadership attributes, (b) understanding …

Electric Cooperative Managers’ Strategies To Enhance Organizational Commitment To Increase Employee Productivity, Michael Edward White

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Lack of effective leadership strategies contributes to a reduction in employee engagement and productivity. Managers are concerned about the lack of effective leadership strategies because it negatively affects employee engagement and productivity, reducing organizational growth. Grounded in Bass’s transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore effective leadership strategies used to enhance employee engagement and increase productivity. Five managers from an electric cooperative in Northwest Florida who implemented effective leadership strategies participated in the study. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of organizational documents. Data were analyzed using Yin’s five-step approach. …

Associations Between The Use Of Bed Nets And Malaria Infection On The School Performance Of Juveniles In Ghana, Ans Bumbokuri

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Millions of malaria cases are reported yearly in sub-Saharan Africa, events which adversely influence children’s school performance. The purpose of this quantitative, cross-sectional study was to investigate the effectiveness of major malaria control policies in reducing malaria cases as a means of improving academic performance among school children in the greater Accra region of Ghana. A secondary data set was obtained from the 2014-2016 data from the Ghana Malaria Indicator Survey (GMIS). Findings indicated that bed net use and malarial episodes in children of participant recorded a p-value of 0.43 which is a significant association between the variables. The likelihood …

Ligo Detector Characterization In The Second And Third Observing Runs, D. Davis, J. S. Areeda, B. K. Berger, R. Bruntz, A. Effler, R. C. Essick, R. P. Fisher, B. Martinez, Karla E. Ramirez, P. Godwin

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications

The characterization of the Advanced LIGO detectors in the second and third observing runs has increased the sensitivity of the instruments, allowing for a higher number of detectable gravitational-wave signals, and provided confirmation of all observed gravitational-wave events. In this work, we present the methods used to characterize the LIGO detectors and curate the publicly available datasets, including the LIGO strain data and data quality products. We describe the essential role of these datasets in LIGO–Virgo Collaboration analyses of gravitational-waves from both transient and persistent sources and include details on the provenance of these datasets in order to support analyses …

Hard Battles Over Soft Law: The Troubling Implications Of Insurance Industry Attacks On The American Law Institute Restatement Of The Law Of Liability Insurance, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

ALI Restatements of the Law have traditionally exerted significant influence over court decisions and the development of the common law. During the past two decades, however, the ALI has seen an upsurge in interest group activity designed to shape or even thwart aspects of the Institute's work. Most recently, the Restatement of the Law of Liability Insurance (RLLI) has been the focus of not only criticism of particular provisions but a concerted effort by members of the insurance industry to demonize the project as a whole and bar use of the document by courts.

The vehemence of insurer opposition seems …

Incarcerated Activism During Covid-19, M. Eve Hanan

Scholarly Works

Incarcerated people have a notoriously difficult time advocating for themselves. Like other authoritarian institutions, prisons severely curtail and often punish speech, organizing, and self-advocacy. Also, like other authoritarian institutions, prison administrators are inclined to suppress protest rather than respond to the grounds for protest. Yet, despite impediments to their participation, incarcerated people have organized during the pandemic, advocating for themselves through media channels, public forums, and the courts. Indeed, a dramatic increase in incarcerated activism correlates with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just as the COVID-19 pandemic highlights injustice in other areas of criminal legal practices, it reveals both …

Adding Context And Constraint To Corpus Linguistics, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

In Part I, I discuss the reasons why corpus linguistics should not be considered in isolation from contextual factors, as the latter often illuminate meanings that cannot be found from simply chronicling the usage of a given word. In Part II, I demonstrate, through the lens of three Supreme Court cases, that corpus linguistics does not aid interpretation when the words of a statute or document are clear, but their application to the facts at hand is not. My critique of corpus linguistics mirrors the larger, long-running, and ongoing debate of the merits of a more textual approach to interpretation …

What Is The Meaning Of "Plain Meaning", Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

The American approach to construing texts (statutes, regulations, contracts and documents generally) stresses decision through determining the “plain meaning” of the document based on the court’s reading of the text. Where the court finds plain meaning on the face of text, it generally refuses to consider additional contextual information or extrinsic evidence of meaning.

Notwithstanding its status as the dominant approach to interpretation, the plain meaning concept has not been well defined or operationalized. Despite judicial confidence in the plain meaning approach, courts have wisely been willing to sidestep it and eschew the rather clear facial meaning of text when …

Intersectionality, Police Excessive Force, And Class, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

Recent uprisings over the failure to hold police officers responsible for killing civilians—from Ferguson, Missouri to nationwide George Floyd protests—show the importance of excessive force as a social problem. Some scholars have launched racial critiques of policing as resulting from explicit or implicit racial bias. This Essay is the first to demonstrate that an intersectional analysis of both race and class helps explain both aggressive policing and the Court’s permissive excessive force doctrine.

This Essay identifies several take-aways from intersectionality theory’s basic insight that unique senses of self-identity and unique stereotypes form at places where categories of identity meet. First, …

The Specter Of Malpractice: When Law Firm General Counsel And Risk Management Professionals Are Confronted With Potential Malpractice Claims And Ethics Violations, Joseph R. Tiano Jr., Nancy B. Rapoport, William J. Siroky

Scholarly Works

Every day, law firm general counsel and other law firm risk management professionals face a very practical, very vexing problem. The problem is what to do when hearing that a serious ethical mistake or impropriety may have occurred—but without any concrete confirmation that something problematic has, in fact, happened. This essay discusses the most important initial steps and questions that the firm’s general counsel or other risk management professional must address in this confounding situation where the “specter of malpractice” is present. We call this the “specter of malpractice” because a malpractice claim has not yet fully materialized (and it …

The Deborah Jones Merritt Center For The Advancement Of Justice, Claudia Angelos, Mary Lu Bilek, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

When invited to write an essay on clinical legal education honoring our friend, we were struck by the importance of a focus on clinical legal education in any collection of work paying tribute to Professor Deborah Jones Merritt. Legal education has benefited from a fifty-year movement for clinical education. This movement necessarily interrogates and seeks to overcome the anachronistic, inherited Langdellian paradigm that dominates and continues to define the curricula and policies of our law schools. But the movement for clinical education has been exponentially confounded by contemporary legal education’s shape as a pyramid of statuses and privileges accumulated over …

Smart Cars, Telematics, And Repair, Leah Chan Grinvald, Ofer Tur-Sinai

Scholarly Works

Recent years have seen a surge in the use of automotive telematics. Telematics is the integration of telecommunications and informatics technologies. Using telematics in cars enables transmission of data communications between the car and other systems or devices. This opens up a wide range of possibilities, including the prospect of conducting remote diagnostics based on real-time access to the vehicle. Yet, as with any new technology, alongside its potential benefits, the use of automotive telematics could also have potential downsides. This Article explores the significant negative impact that the growing reliance on telematics systems could have on competition in the …

Trademark Enforcement And Statutory Incentives, Leah Chan Grinvald

Scholarly Works

The combination of the recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Romag Fasteners v. Fossil Group, Inc., and the diamond anniversary of the Lanham Act provides good grounds to reflect on how trademark enforcement and statutory incentives have evolved through the years. Although enforcement of one’s trademarks through the use of the courts can be traced back to England in the 1790s, trademark litigation and other enforcement activities have exploded, in relative terms, since the enactment of the Lanham Act in 1946. Although not subject to an easy empirical correlation, this trend suggests that the statute has had an impact on …

Sex, Crime, And Serostatus, Courtney Cross

Scholarly Works

The HIV crisis in the United States is far from over. The confluence of widespread opioid usage, high rates of HIV infection, and rapidly shrinking rural medical infrastructure has created a public health powder keg across the American South. Yet few states have responded to this grim reality by expanding social and medical services. Instead, criminalizing the behavior of people with HIV remains an overused and counterproductive tool for addressing this crisis-especially in the South, where HIV-specific criminal laws are enforced with the most frequency.

People living with HIV are subject to arrest, prosecution, and lengthy prison sentences if they …

The History Of Congressional Apportionment, Charles M. Biles

Trade & Scholarly Monographs

NEW REVISED SECOND EDITION.

The Congressional apportionment problem is deceptively easy to state: How many seats in the U. S. House of Representatives does each state get? To answer that question, Charles Biles, award-winning Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Humboldt State University, examines the math and politics that has shaped government and power from the founding of the country to the modern day.

Employing an interdisciplinary approach that stems from his research in mathematical modeling and the modeling of natural resource systems, Biles tells a flowing evolutionary tale of how slight changes in calculating apportionment has wrought massive shifts in …

Internet-Based Cognitive–Behavioural Therapy For Tinnitus: Secondary Analysis To Examine Predictors Of Outcomes, Hansapani Rodrigo, Eldré W. Beukes, Gerhard Andersson, Vinaya Manchaiah

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Objectives The current study examined predictors of outcomes of internet-based cognitive–behavioural therapy (ICBT) for individuals with tinnitus.

Design Secondary analysis of intervention studies.

Setting Internet-based guided tinnitus intervention provided in the UK.

Participants 228 individuals who underwent ICBT.

Interventions ICBT.

Primary and secondary outcome measures The key predictor variables included demographic, tinnitus, hearing-related and treatment-related variables as well as clinical factors (eg, anxiety, depression, insomnia), which can have an impact on the treatment outcome. A 13-point reduction in Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI) scores has been defined as a successful outcome.

Results Of the 228 subjects who were included in the …

Barriers In Implementing A Unified Collaborative Policy To Combat Female Sex Trafficking In Edo-State,Nigeria., Grace Chikaodili Uzochukwu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractHuman trafficking has been a historical and global concern as well as a global crime against humanity that violates individual rights, freedom, and privileges. Human trafficking has become a growing phenomenon in Edo State, Nigeria, while the existing policy to combat it has proved ineffective. There was a gap in understanding strategies for the unification of the policies at the level of Edo State, Nigeria, and the level of the United Nations (UN) to ensure better outcomes in the fight against human trafficking. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore perceived barriers to implementing collaborative policy unification …

Experiences Of Spanish-Speaking Patients Using Interpreter Services With Their Physicians, Rafael Raul Caycho

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the United States, many patients cannot speak English well enough to communicate with their medical providers. Many of these patients use professional interpreter services offered by their medical organizations to help with communication, which can lead to miscommunication due to the translation process between patients, interpreters, and physicians, and to incorrect diagnosis and poor health outcomes for the patient. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of Spanish-speaking patients who used interpreter services with their physicians. The transmission model was the theoretical framework used to explore the experiences and outcomes for the participants. In this study, …

Strategies Required For Complying With North American Free Trade Agreement, Daniel Arthur Chavez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The failure of U.S. small home textile business owners to comply with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regulations can have adverse business outcomes. Small U.S. textile owners must comply with NAFTA regulations to sustain business operations. Grounded in the resource-based view theory, the purpose of this qualitative, multiple case study was to explore strategies small home textile owners use to comply with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regulations when trading with Mexico. The participants were four owners of SMEs located in the greater New York City area who use successful strategies to export to Mexico. The data were …

The Predictive Relationship Between Probation/Parole Officer Factors And Recidivism Rates Among Female Offenders, Crystal Clark

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe purpose of this quantitative, longitudinal, correlational study was to examine if probation officers’ (POs) knowledge of the post release needs of the female offender, their use of positive feedback with the offender, and their supportive relationship with offender were significantly predictive of recidivism at 3 years post release in a sample of 363 female offenders under probation/parole in the state of Michigan between 2011–2014. The study was guided by the PO as coach theory. Data obtained from archival data sets from the Probation/Parole Officer Interactions with Women Offenders, Michigan, 2011–2014 study were utilized in the study. One binomial logistic …

Goal And Strategy Formation For Persistence For Men Of Color At A Community College, Owen G. Devance

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

At a community college, the first-year student persistence rates for men of color, especially Black men (61.6%), were lower than for White students (70.3%). The purpose of this study was to determine if men of color at the community college had high goals and self-efficacy strategies already in place or whether they receive application guidance in setting high goals and developing self-efficacy strategies in the admissions/enrollment process during the first year. Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy was the framework used to guide this study. The research questions explored setting goals at the community college during the admissions process or during the …

Impact Of Diversity Trainings On Commitment And Exploration Of Ethnic Identity, Donna Louise Dockery

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Increased attention continues to be given to diversity and social justice in the field of psychology. With the increased attention, training has been seen as the primary method of changing behaviors and biases. To date, literature on the effectiveness of workplace diversity training on organizational and employee outcomes was lacking. The purpose of this study was to explore the efficacy of diversity trainings on the commitment and exploration of ethnic identity of nonminority individuals in the workplace. The theoretical foundation was Helm’s theory of White racial identity, which was used to examine the various ways identification with White culture influences …

Systematic Review Of The Barriers To Breastfeeding For Non-Hispanic Black Women, Ketty N. Floyd

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Breastmilk provides the optimal food for newborns and contributes to improved lifelong health. A community hospital in the Eastern United States serving non-Hispanic Black (NHB) women has a breastfeeding exclusivity rate of only 8%, which is low compared to the state’s exclusivity rate of 40%. A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify the breastfeeding barriers for NHB mothers and to identify strategies to address them. Guided by Fishbein and Yzer’s integrative model and the SQUIRE 2.0 knowledge reporting framework, 30 articles were appraised using Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt’s hierarchy of research and the Caldwell, Henshaw, and Taylor qualitative …

Strategies To Mitigate Natural Disaster Impact In The Auto Maintenance Business, Charles Oluande Ogutu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Many small business owners lack strategies to mitigate natural disasters. Damage caused by natural disasters usually costs millions of dollars in injuries or lost lives, disruption to operations, and property damage. Small business owners who fail to plan and prepare for disaster frequently face closure when disasters strike. The goal of this study was to explore strategies independent auto maintenance business owners use to mitigate natural disasters. Holling’s organizational resilience theory grounded this qualitative multiple case study. Five purposively selected participants who implemented disaster mitigation strategies from Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana participated in this study. Semistructured interviews were used to …

Job Burnout And Turnover Intentions Among Telecommuting Call Center Agents, Gigianna Griffin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Telecommuters have been shown to have higher job satisfaction and job performance and lower turnover intentions and job-related stress than office-based workers. The association between telecommuting, job burnout, and turnover intentions of call center agents has not been fully investigated. The purpose of this study was to determine if telecommuting is associated with job burnout, and turnover intentions among call center agents. Maslach and Jackson’s burnout theory was used as the theoretical framework. Data were obtained from a convenience sample of 89 nontelecommuter and 63 telecommuter call center agents in the United States via an online survey. This nonexperimental correlational …

Eye Gaze Technology For Nonverbal Students With Cortical Visual Impairment, Hannah Sykes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe problem that this study addressed was eye gaze technology for nonverbal students with cortical visual impairment (CVI). There are no studies examining educators’ viewpoints on the usefulness of eye gaze technology for communication and language development of nonverbal students with CVI. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore what educators think about the usefulness of eye gaze technology on communication and language development for nonverbal students with CVI. The conceptual framework applied to this basic qualitative study was based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and John Dewey’s pragmatism theory. The …