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Expatriate Middle Eastern Muslim Mothers’ Stories About Sex Education In U.S. Schools: Communication Privacy Challenges And Narrative Typologies, Nada Alfeir

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This study examines the stories of expatriate Middle Eastern Muslim (EMEM) mothers in the U.S. about how they talked with their children about the sexual education classes offered in U.S. public schools. Three concepts from the Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM; Petronio, 2002) were adapted to an interpretive narrative perspective drawn on Frank's (2013) typology of narrative types. A total of 15 EMEM mothers who had lived for more than one year in the U.S. were recruited in the study. Qualitative data were collected through written stories and interviews, and supplemented by the author's observations. All written stories and interviews …

Predictors Of Academic Performance: The Roles Of Self-Compassion, Coping, Mental Toughness, Grit, And Self-Reported Stressors On Physics Final Exam Performance, Darnishia L. Morris

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The intersection of stress, persistence and success in college-aged students is progressively gaining attention in research. Analyzing how students succeed and what factors contribute to their success, failure, and ultimately the completion of their degree, is vitally important for educators and administrators in higher education to understand. Historically utilized factors such as grade point average (GPA), standardized test scores (college admissions and Advance Placement (AP) exams), and previous academic achievement (pre-requisite courses) are not the only predictors of academic performance. This study aimed to quantify contributions and inter-relationships of student perceptions, coping style, stress, mental toughness (MT), and other potential …

Effect Of Short-Storage Hrgcs On Driver Decision Behavior And Safety Concerns: Real-World Analysis And Experimental Evidence, Anne Linja

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Vehicle-train collisions at highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs) continue to be a safety concern, and despite improvements in warnings, many of these incidents are attributed to human error. In some cases, distractions other than railroad traffic, such as HRGCs with limited space between the railroad tracks and the highway intersection, may create additional cognitive burdens for drivers. We investigated the effect of HRGC type (short-storage vs. non-short storage) on driver attention and decision-making in two studies. In Study 1, we systematically analyzed 996 incidents from 2017-2019 from the Federal Railroad Administration’s Safety database. Driver decision making and outcomes were different depending …

The Perceptions, Practices, And Policies That Govern Food, Energy, And Water Consumption In The U.S. Suburban Home: “More Than My Fair Share”, William Lytle

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation addresses household consumption by advancing understandings of complex material, social, and regulatory structures that have a bearing on the future of sustainable and resilient practices at the residential scale in the United States. Interviews with 44 households in the U.S. were conducted to learn about perceptions of food, energy, and water consumption. Chapters two, three, and four utilize grounded theory and theories of practice. This inquiry yielded insights into social dynamics of household consumption, how human and more-than-human actors influence each other’s consumption, and how infrastructure and social class are interrelated. Chapter five is a policy maker’s guidebook, …

Chinese Women’S Reproductive Justice And Digital Technologies, Hua Wang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

It is well known that China has implemented a Family Planning policy. Chinese women have limited options in reproduction, and their agency is constrained by the government, the medical institutions, and the traditional Chinese patriarchal and biased culture. By utilizing rhetorical analysis as a primary methodology with a focus on rhetorical agency, this dissertation analyzes two cases where digital technologies such as social media and apps facilitate users’ rhetorical agency to counter instances of reproductive injustice. First, I focus on China’s most popular pregnancy and mothering app, Babytree, to examine how the app rhetorically positions its users to enable empowerment …

Stages Of Objective Memory Impairment Predict Alzheimer's Disease Neuropathology: Comparison With The Clinical Dementia Rating Scale-Sum Of Boxes, Ellen Grober, Qi Qi, Lynn Kuo, Jason Hassenstab, Richard J Perrin, Richard B Lipton

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: The ultimate validation of a clinical marker for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is its association with AD neuropathology.

OBJECTIVE: To examine how well the Stages of Objective Memory Impairment (SOMI) system predicts intermediate/high AD neuropathologic change and extent of neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) pathology defined by Braak stage, in comparison to the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) Scale sum of boxes (CDR-SB).

METHODS: 251 well-characterized participants from the Knight ADRC clinicopathologic series were classified into SOMI stage at their last assessment prior to death using the free recall and total recall scores from the picture version of the Free and Cued Selective …