Digital Commons Network^™

Factors That Increase Social Worker Longevity In Child Welfare Services, Heather Lovejoy

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

High social worker turnover rates have impacted Child Welfare Services (CWS) for many years and remains a consistent issue. Retaining child welfare social workers is important to effectively serve clientele involved with CWS. This study sought to identify factors that increase social worker longevity in CWS. Using a post-positivist approach, the researcher gathered qualitative data from employees who previously and currently work for CWS in southern California through interviews. The researcher interviewed ten participants. Of those participants, four are no longer employed with a CWS agency and six remained employed with CWS, all with different lengths of employment and came …

Introduction Of Probiotics To Improve Eczema Symptoms In Children In One Pediatric Primary Care Practice: A Quality Improvement Project, Christie Potter

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

Background: There is emerging interest in alternative approaches to treating children with eczema because there is currently no allopathic cure. Non-pharmacological approaches are regarded as generally safe, well tolerated, and cost effective. Eczema is a chronic, relapsing inflammatory, itchy skin condition that adversely affects quality of life in many individuals, including children. Eczema interferes with sleep, leads to secondary skin infections, and causes intractable itching. Topical steroids are the current standard of practice in treating patients but, evidence suggests that they can cause unwanted side effects and can lead to serious systemic reactions. The purpose of this quality improvement project …

Brutality Behind Bars: A Look At Prison Violence In Ecuador, Zulema Alejandra Palacios Jaramillo

Graduate Masters Theses

Prisons are frequently perceived as spaces where those unwanted by society are placed. Thus, they are often purposefully ignored and left under-served. This is the reality of prisons and inmates in Ecuador, where violence has reached unprecedented levels, raising concerns about its causes. As this thesis shows, violence inside prisons is not an isolated incident only provoked by the restrictive nature of detention centers, or the character of inmates, but rather a manifestation of a complex mix of institutional, organizational, criminological, and social factors at play in the country. This thesis aims at understanding, from a conflict resolution perspective, what …

Cultivating Community: Investigating Performances Of Community In Ecovillage Settlements, Alex Lockwood

Dissertations

This dissertation considers the subject of ecovillages, intentional ecologically-oriented sustainable communities developed in the U.S., and the different understandings of community involvement, structure, and challenges that members of these communities confront in their efforts at managing these time and labor-intensive settlements. Informed by the work of performance ethnographers and critical phenomenologists, I consider twelve interviews I conducted on-site and electronically with people living in ecovillage settlements. Taking these interviews and my own observations from on-site visits to two ecovillages as entry points, I conducted a phenomenological analysis informed by a critical phenomenological ethos of these accounts, highlighting five motifs that …

Relationship Between Rehabilitation Counselors’ Experiences, Burnout, And Professional Collaboration During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sharika Lawanda Sproling

Dissertations

Sharika L. Sproling, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Rehabilitation, presented on [March 31, 2023], at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.TITLE: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REHABILITATION COUNSELORS’ EXPERIENCES, BURNOUT, AND PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMICMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Thomas UptonThe purpose of this quantitative study is to explore the relationships between rehabilitation counselors’ experiences, burnout, and professional collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. These counselors represent an understudied population at risk of burnout, especially regarding its relationship to collaboration. Prior research has established how burnout can occur at the individual and organizational levels, and those who provide direct care have a greater risk …

Decoding The Public Service Announcements (Psas) Of Hiv/Aids: Evaluating Botswana's Aids Messages And Their Impact On 15 - 24 Ages, Enole Ditsheko

Dissertations

The study is grounded in the concept of “Start where the people are” (Nyswander, 1956) which suggests that effective health campaigns that promote prevention strategies to enhance the quality of life for those targeted must be rooted in the prevalent cultural practices and religious values of the receivers of the slogans, themes, and taglines. Health campaigns that superimpose the values of the outsiders promoted as universalized solutions have limited effectiveness.

Sub-Saharan Africa has only 1.3 billion people out of an estimated eight billion of which China and India each recording above two billion, cumulatively accounting for more than half of …

Evaluating The Impact Of A No-Show Policy: A Quality Improvement Project, Adrianne S. Harding

DNP Projects

Significance and Background: No- shows are a global problem that creates a significant challenge for the healthcare system. When a patient misses an appointment, it decreases health care staff productivity, creates a waste of resources and it negatively impacts revenue (Lance et. al, 2021). Current evidence supports interventions that incorporate voluminous data and artificial intelligence with strategies such as overbooking, appointment notification systems and financial incentives to reduce outpatient no-shows (Oikonomidi et al., 2022). This project will evaluate the impact of a no-show policy and provide insights to improve primary care attendance and inform decisions.

Purpose: To evaluate an outpatient …

Effects Of Functional Network Model Definition On Biomarker Outcome Prediction, Xinyang Feng

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning (ML) models are widely used to investigate the human connectome and to predict and understand behavior, emotion, and cognition. Prior research has organized pediatric connectome data using adult functional network models. However, this assumes that adult functional network models are appropriate and useful for prediction developmental outcomes from pediatric connectome data. We hypothesize that the application of adult brain network models could result in poor model fit, limiting the generalizability of results. Here, we test whether prediction of biological age is improved by concordant brain network models matching underlying functional connectome data. To quantify the difference in age …

Adapting Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Ro-Dbt) For Adolescents: Preliminary Testing Of Mechanisms Of Change, Molly Fennig

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Background: Overcontrol is a phenotype characterized by inflexibility, perfectionism, and a need for control or structure, which increases risk for disorders such as anorexia nervosa, social anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Given high comorbidity and limited efficacy of current treatments for these disorders, Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adolescents (RO DBT-A) attempts to improve outcomes by targeting overcontrol as a transdiagnostic mechanism. This study aimed to test preliminary efficacy of telehealth-delivered RO DBT-A in targeting overcontrol as a mechanism of psychopathology in a heterogeneous clinical sample. Method: Participants were female adolescents (ages 13-21; 83% white; 80% non-Hispanic/Latino) who presented with …

Storm Surge Risk Assessment In Coastal Communities In The Rio Grande Valley: An Application Of Gis-Based Spatial Multicriteria Decision Analysis With Analytical Hierarchy Process, Dean Kyne

Sociology Faculty Publications

Cameron County, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley, maintains records of storm surges associated with noticeable property damage, fatalities, and injuries. This study investigates storm surge inundation risk in Cameron County using storm surge hazard datasets from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with American Community Survey 2019 block group datasets. Using a GIS-based spatial multicriteria decision analysis with an analytical hierarchy process method, the study estimates that storm surge water levels could be above 6.1 m (20 ft) in category 4 and 5 hurricane events, whereas about 37% of the county’s population (159,659 people) could be …

Evaluating The Use Of A Specialised Technological Application On Students Learning Growth, Paul Taylor, Aya Khattab, Amanda Yousef

International Graduate Program for Educators Master's Projects

From experience, students usually drop in their achievement levels only when faced with a situation that is beyond their control. Situations that impact them are either physical, mental, or both, such as bullying, family sickness, or death. The global pandemic that swept the world was a situation that has globally affected all human beings. This impact was substantial not just from a humanistic perspective of well-being but also economically and academically. The economic and human impact was an experience that could be seen directly within the schools of Qatar. Large swathes of children were showing lower academic levels than was …

Evaluating The Use Of A Specialised Technological Application On Students Learning Growth, Aya Khattab, Ayatalla Mahmoud Ibrahim Khattab, Amanda Alaa Alden Yousef, Paul M. Taylor

International Graduate Program for Educators Master's Projects

From experience, students usually drop in their achievement levels only when faced with a situation that is beyond their control. Situations that impact them are either physical, mental, or both, such as bullying, family sickness, or death. The global pandemic that swept the world was a situation that has globally affected all human beings. This impact was substantial not just from a humanistic perspective of well-being but also economically and academically. The economic and human impact was an experience that could be seen directly within the schools of Qatar. Large swathes of children were showing lower academic levels than was …

Evaluating The Use Of A Specialised Technological Application On Students Learning Growth, Amanda Alaa Aldin Yousef, Aya Khattab, Paul Taylor

International Graduate Program for Educators Master's Projects

From experience, students usually drop their achievement levels only when faced with a situation beyond their control. Situations that impact them are physical, mental, or both, such as bullying, family sickness, or death. The global pandemic that swept the world was a situation that has globally affected all human beings. This impact was substantial from a humanistic well-being perspective and economically and academically. The economic and human impact was an experience that could be seen directly within the schools of Qatar. Large swathes of children showed lower academic levels than predicted before the pandemic. When we returned from Covid, levels …

The Effectiveness Of Handwriting Without Tears Programme In Teaching Handwriting To Students On The Autism Spectrum, Sana Abdul Majeed

International Graduate Program for Educators Master's Projects

Objective:

This research sought to determine the effectiveness of the Handwriting without tears ® programme when used in a specialized school in Doha that caters exclusively to autistic students.

Method:

This was a quantitative experimental study which included two cohorts, a control group (n=18) improving their handwriting skills through traditional methods and a treatment group (n=18) that received interventions based on HWT curriculum and resources.

Results:

Both groups demonstrated improvements in their handwriting skills however

the treatment group exhibited greater difference between pre-test and post-test scores and mastered more competency levels using the HWT® interventions and resources.

Conclusion:

The study …

Immobilization And Its Effects On Functional Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury., William H. Gregory

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Recovery, or rather the failure to recover, is a perplexing issue of spinal cord injury that is currently being investigated. This issue becomes more puzzling when investigating models in which spinal cord injury (SCI) is studied. There appears to be greater functional recovery experienced by animals within these models after injury as compared to patients in the clinical setting. While many things could contribute to this disparity, one difference that stands out when comparing the basic research model and clinical experience of SCI is the inactivity and limb disuse after the injury. This same level of immobility is rarely accounted …

The Emerging Oral Pathogen, Filifactor Alocis, Modulates Antimicrobial Responses In Primed Human Neutrophils., Ian J. Snider

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Periodontitis is an irreversible, chronic inflammatory, infectious disease of the oral cavity that affects approximately half of all adults 30 years or older in the USA. The oral cavity is under high immune surveillance because of its constant exposure to microbes in the environment. The primary immune cell responsible for this surveillance is the neutrophil. Pathogens associated with periodontitis possess virulence factors and have evolved strategies to evade neutrophil antimicrobial responses to survive. One such pathogen is Filifactor alocis, whose presence is associated with the progression of periodontitis. F. alocis manipulates several neutrophil antimicrobial functional responses to avoid killing, an …

Impacts Of Bacterial Evolution On Host Lethality In Drosophila, Andrew Preston

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Evolution is the process by which species change their genetic traits, such as the pathogenicity of bacteria, over time in response to changes in their environment. Although the genetic mechanisms underlying many evolutionary processes have been revealed, it is still not well understood how opportunistic pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, become virulent. The overall goal of this thesis is to test the Coincidental Evolution Hypothesis, which proposes that the virulence of opportunistic pathogens evolves coincidentally as a by-product of their interaction with their natural predators. I hypothesized that the virulence of ancestral Pseudomonas aeruginosa changes over time if it co-evolves …

Understanding The Evolution Of Enforcement Systems In Resource Dilemmas, Devin M. Flener

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The effective management of resources on Earth is a pressing global social dilemma. An alternative solution to the traditional managing methods of these common pool resources is communal self-management facilitated through principles of restorative justice and developed through exploratory learning. We examined how communication, restorative justice techniques, and opportunity for exploratory learning impacted groups’ ability to develop a strong conceptual understanding of enforcement as well as an enforcement system in order to maintain an effective conservation strategy. Participants (N=288) were randomly assigned to 72 four-person groups in six separate conditions. Each group played nine rounds of a computer-simulated foraging task …

Examining Heterosexual Women's Social Comparisons And Perceptions Of Sexual Competition With Porn Stars, Jessica Journeay

Communication (PhD) Dissertations

The current study investigated women’s social comparisons and perceptions of sexual competition with porn stars they imagined their romantic partners viewed for purposes of private masturbation. Two novel predictors were considered, the body size (thin vs. plus-size) and facial attractiveness (high vs. low) of the porn stars, to investigate conditions that were more or less threatening to women’s relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, facial satisfaction, body satisfaction, and sexual desirability. Results from a 2 x 2 between-subjects online experiment (N = 762) suggest that women’s downward comparisons with porn stars’ facial attractiveness resulted in positive effects on facial satisfaction and …

Universal Back-End Design, Jason Kalili

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Accessibility in back-end development is often overlooked, with the majority of discussions and efforts centered on front-end design. To make applications usable for a wider audience, developers must also prioritize incorporating accessibility from the back-end. Back-end web accessibility encompasses the design and development of web-based systems and applications that are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. This involves optimizing the underlying code and infrastructure for accessibility and implementing features that enable users with disabilities to navigate and interact with the site or application. Ensuring back-end web accessibility is crucial for creating an inclusive online environment accessible to everyone, …

Coase’S Parable, F.E. Guerra-Pujol

Mercer Law Review

Some stories have heroes and villains. Others involve a voyage, a quest, or a monster to be defeated. The law is no exception. Most legal stories are about identifying wrongdoers and vindicating the rights of victims, and this standard victim-wrongdoer model not only informs recent developments in legal scholarship, such as feminist jurisprudence or critical race theory; it also informs our classical liberal tradition.5 But what if harms are reciprocal or jointly caused? In other words, what if victims are just as responsible as wrongdoers for their plight?

The Battle Of The Narrative In Jones V. Mississippi: Consideration Of Youth “In Name Only”, Stevie Leahy

Mercer Law Review

Juvenile sentencing within the United States is but one illustration of how the legal system reinforces the marginalization of populations that have been historically underinvested and underrepresented. Throughout the past century, the macro-narrative on sentencing has fluctuated nationally, as well as within individual states, with the reasoning used to justify decisions sliding between the conflicting lenses of rehabilitation and punishment. This has necessarily impacted the micro-narrative—the way that an individual’s story is considered and weighed (or ignored) within sentencing. There are endless factors that affect outcomes in sentencing: class, race and or ethnicity, gender, and access to counsel are just …

Law's Body, Matt Saleh, Hannah Potter, Kendall Foley

Mercer Law Review

How do law’s narratives construct one of its central objects: the human body? This essay explores legal constructions of the human body: both in its idealized form, and in the negative ontological spaces of injury, disability, death, and dehumanization that surround that ideal.

Bodies are “the very ‘stuff’ of law.” There are few areas of law where the human body does not, somewhere, require definition. For instance, without a concept of the body, there can be no consequent constructions of personhood, nakedness, state intrusion, injury, disability, duty of care, aging, or the moment of death, to name only a few.

32 Shots In The Dark: How Local Governments Can Increase Police Accountability When States Refuse To, Marcia M. Ziegler

Mercer Law Review

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot to death in her apartment hallway by police officers executing a search warrant. The warrant was based on a false affidavit, the executing officers acted criminally on scene, and in the aftermath, detectives spread misinformation about the case on social media. While there was some limited accountability for the officers involved, many citizens considered the official response to be lackluster. After a period of public protest, Louisville and other cities all over the country have examined options for police reform at the local level. While most law enforcement agencies operate in a …

A Holy Land Guidebook: Cultivating Spiritual Disciplines For Pilgrimages, Johnnie L. Birks

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

A small group of research participants and I assembled for this phenomenally enriching project intervention to create a proprietary branded guidebook for Miracle Loaves And Fishes World Hunger Ministry, Incorporated, and its subsidiary, Anointed Royal Tours, to be used for pilgrimages to the Holy Land. These pilgrimages will create sustainable funding for the ministry to support universal efforts to eliminate global hunger while simultaneously attempting to equip believers with a transformative and/or restorative walk in Christlikeness for the sake of creation, humanity, and eternal life in God’s Kingdom. The path of Christlikeness is to be transformed (Rom 12:2 NRSV), as …

Crow's Nest, May 1, 2023, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The May 1, 2023, issue of the Crow's Nest.

Accelerating Colorectal Cancer Screening And Follow-Up Through Implementation Science (Accsis) In Appalachia: Protocol For A Group Randomized, Delayed Intervention Trial, Electra D. Paskett, Aaron J. Kruse-Diehr, Jill M. Oliveri, Robin C. Vanderpool, Darrell M. Gray Ii, Michael L. Pennell, Bin Huang, Gregory S. Young, Darla Fickle, Mark Cromo, Mira L. Katz, Paul L. Reiter, Melinda Rogers, David A. Gross, Vickie Fairchild, Wendy Xu, Angela Carman, Jean M. Walunis, Ann Scheck Mcalearney, Timothy R. Huerta, Saurabh Rahurkar, Erika Biederman, Mark B. Dignan

UK CARES Faculty Publications

Appalachian regions of Kentucky and Ohio are hotspots for colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality in the USA. Screening reduces CRC incidence and mortality; however, screening uptake is needed, especially in these underserved geographic areas. Implementation science offers strategies to address this challenge. The aim of the current study was to conduct multi-site, transdisciplinary research to evaluate and improve CRC screening processes using implementation science strategies. The study consists of two phases (Planning and Implementation). In the Planning Phase, a multilevel assessment of 12 health centers (HC) (one HC from each of the 12 Appalachian counties) was conducted by interviewing key informants, …

The (Ir)Reverent Social Roles Of Religion In The Work Of James And Wharton, Jannette Kazlauskas

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Ownership Is Power, Madeleine Moino

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Christian Humanism In Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood", Grant Ward

The Criterion

No abstract provided.