Digital Commons Network^™

The Complexities Of Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Study Of Health, Behavioral Health, And Quality Of Life Among Women With And Without Disabilities, Anne-Marie Gomes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Background and Purpose: The negative effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on behavioral and physical health and well-being long after exposure are a global and national concern. For over two decades, ACEs have been associated with numerous medical conditions, health risk behaviors, and poor mental and physical health outcomes. However, few studies have examined the effects of ACEs on the health outcomes of persons with disabilities (PWDs). The main objective of this study was to examine the impact of ACEs on women with and without disabilities, their health and well-being.

Understanding Attitudes Among Professionals Who Interact With Youth Who Exhibit Problematic Sexual Behavior, Erin Gardner

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Problematic sexual behaviors (PSB) among youth have been a prominent public health and social concern. Although these behaviors have previously been considered to comprise a “curiosity” or an “experimentation”, PSB is now recognized as causing harm and suffering for victims and family members while also having a considerable economic influence in medical, behavioral health, social services, and criminal justice systems. Much research has examined how perceptions and attitudes impact our behaviors towards PSB among adults, but none examines how perceptions and attitudes impact our behaviors towards youth. Knowing there are several gaps in literature, the current study was conducted to …

Substance Use & Systems Impact: A Mixed-Methods Community-Based Participatory Action Study, Jordan Dyett

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Individuals, families, and communities who use drugs or have a history of substance use have been highly criminalized, stigmatized, and their perspectives marginalized in research and policy. Furthermore, trajectories of research on this community tend to focus on pathologizing individuals and focus on prevention or abstinence-based outcomes, failing to embrace a broader critique of societal forces that marginalize communities and contribute to substance use. Despite the increase in deaths due to drug toxicity, policy and practice at large have failed to embrace the expertise of those with lived experience using substances, and instead continued to rely on carceral logics to …

A Comparison Of The Whytry Curriculum And Aggression Replacement Training In Adolescents At Risk For Family Breakdown, Grace Elizabeth Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) division of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services seeks to provide evidence-based programs to prevent family breakdown. Evidence-based programs are defined as programs that have qualitative and quantitative support of positive outcomes by peer-reviewed articles. Family and Youth Success (FAYS) is a PEI program that seeks to promote resilience in families and youth by offering one-on-one skills-based counseling and group-based learning for children and parents. FAYS utilizes the WhyTry Program and Aggression Replacement Training (ART) as social skills training programs that seek to decrease social problems and aggression and increase social skills. …

Emotional Labor Performed Among University Faculty Responding To Student Sexual Assault Disclosures, Cadi Imbody

All Theses

Given the barriers to formal help-seeking and the prevalence on college campuses, students who experience sexual assault may turn to faculty for assistance, as they are familiar faces they trust and can provide access to university resources. In these cases, faculty may become the frontline for providing official help within the university setting. Responding to these student sexual assault disclosures requires great emotional capacity and the ability to provide empathetic, supportive responses. In these interactions, faculty may need to perform what Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983/2003) theorized as “emotional labor” to handle such sensitive information appropriately. Initially focusing on the service …

Understanding The Perspectives And Attitudes Of 12-Step Participants Towards Medication-Assisted Treatment, Christopher Scott

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Background: The effects of living with a substance use disorder (SUD) are vast. Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) has grown increasingly popular as a recovery tool among substance users but does not align with the popular 12-step model, which demands complete abstinence from narcotics and mind-altering substances. Objective: The primary aim of this phenomenology study was to explore the perspectives and attitudes towards MAT among 12-step participants. The secondary aim was to compare the responses of treatment and non-treatment professionals. Methods: This study used non-probability sampling methods to recruit participants who reported regular participation in a 12-step program. Semi-structured …

Civil Disobedience Of Social Workers In Hospice, Jamie Leigh Roper

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Rejection, Creation, And Abolitionist Futures: Sustaining Ecosystems Of Care Under Neoliberal Violence 1980-Present, Maya Phelps

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The enforcement of the child welfare system through policies, funding practices, and ideologies is a national investment in the nuclear family as a critical social institution to the United States (US); this investment communicates to the broader population that conforming to this heteropatriarchal, white supremacist conception of family provides protection from state intervention to those who conform. My project interrogates child welfare’s enforcement of normative families, and the resistance from Black family formations and kinship based on their social position and its relation to power. Focusing on the period between 1980 and the present, I examine the ways Black family …

“I Don’T Mind This Actually. It’S Kind Of Fun To Work On”: Project Based Assessment Following An Inquiry Based Unit In A Modern Middle School Classroom, Alexis J. Mctigue

English Education Theses

This paper focuses on one teacher’s action-research project examining inquiry-based teaching and project-based assessment in the middle school English classroom. The study focused on the inquiry-based instructional strategies used during a Young Adult Literature unit for seventh grade English Language Arts. The unit concluded with project-based assessments for all students. Results showed that levels of engagement rose with instructional strategies focused on inquiry and project-based assessments. Implications for middle school ELA teachers show that while project-based assessments and inquiry-based learning are effective for engagement, they are not without their challenges. Navigating department culture, limited resources, and other challenges are discussed.

Allowing Latinx Students’ Voices To Be Heard, Sofie Jamieson

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

There are too many Latinx students falling behind academically, and coming to First Tee helped improve their academic performance. The First Tee of Monterey is a local non-profit organization that was established in 1997 and is based in Salinas, California primarily serving students who come from low-income backgrounds. The agency strives to support Latinx students who are fourth, fifth, and sixth grade who have a language barrier, not enough tutoring support, and not enough parent and teacher involvement. This increases the likelihood of dropout rates, mental health issues, and unemployment. Implementing an evaluation that the students can take part in …

Caregiver Engagement In Their Child's Mental Health Rehabilitation Services: Utilizing The Hoover-Dempsey And Sandler Model Of Parental Involvement (2005) In Mental Health Counseling, Andrew Q. Holmgren

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Mental Health Rehabilitation (MHR) is a widely utilized community mental health service in Louisiana for low-income families. However, treatment adherence, including caregiver engagement for minor clients, is often low. There is still limited understanding of the barriers to caregiver engagement and few tools to assess these barriers and engagement behaviors. Clinicians, caregivers, and clients currently engaged in MHR services completed a modified version of the Parent Involvement Project Questionnaire (PIPQ) to determine if this scale and its associated theory, the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler Model of Parental Involvement (2005), can be used in a mental health counseling format to assess for …

Distinguishing Family Poverty From Child Neglect, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

Family courts and child protective services (“CPS”) agencies surveil, regulate, and separate hundreds of thousands of families for neglect annually. These families are overwhelmingly poor, and the history of this legal system reveals an expectation, if not an intention, to intervene in poor families. This raises the question whether family courts and CPS agencies are “confusing poverty and neglect” or if they intervene for more than “just poverty,” as a raging debate in the field is framed.

The law fails to help resolve this debate. Instead of distinguishing poverty from neglect, or providing nuanced examinations of what social science has …

Reaping What We Sow: The Implications And Outcomes Of Mississippi House Bill 1125, The “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (Reap)” Act, Kerigan Brewer

Honors Theses

Mississippi House Bill 1125 (MS HB1125), also known as the “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (REAP) Act,” was signed into law by Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves in early 2023 (REAP Act, 2023). It is one of multiple policies passed into law that limit the rights of transgender people. This thesis aims to clarify the history of the trans community, dispel myths around gender-affirming health care and the trans identity, and discuss the current state of anti-trans laws and transgender rights. Using a policy analysis framework by DiNitto (2011), MS HB1125 is analyzed on points like its social and economic costs, the …

Parental Child Rearing Beliefs And Children's Behavioral Problems: The Mediating Role Of Parental Involvement In Elementary School, Catalina Correa Ramirez

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The contributions that parents make to child development have been heavily investigated but the potential links between parents’ child rearing beliefs and school involvement levels have been overlooked. In this study, a model was proposed where parental involvement was examined as a potential mediator in the relationship between parents’ child-rearing beliefs and internalizing and externalizing outcomes in children. Using data from the NICHD SECCYD study, these constructs were examined in first, third, and fifth grade (N = 1128). SEM analyses supported our hypothesis regarding the mediating effect of parental involvement and it appeared to act as a potential mediator …

Sexual Exploitation: The Crisis And Eradicative Solution, Tonnie Adams Bracey

Nonprofit and NGO Studies Student Projects

French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I find this to be true in our current era of the digital age. Although technology has gifted a newly improved and vast method of making worldwide connections and broadening our perceptions and views, a change in how we communicate has conveniently presented itself, but the historic pattern of how we handle these new advancements have indeed stayed the same.
Smart phones are a mainstream vessel employing the world with a plethora of information while giving all sorts of people access to individual’s lives …

2023-2024 Common Data Set, Systems Intelligence And Data Analytics, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Common Data Sets

The Common Data Set (CDS) initiative is a collaborative effort among data providers in the higher education community and publishers as represented by the College Board, Peterson’s, and U.S. News & World Report. The combined goal of this collaboration is to improve the quality and accuracy of information provided to all involved in a student’s transition into higher education, as well as to reduce the reporting burden on data providers.

Graduate List - May 2024, University Of Nebraska At Omaha

Commencement Lists

No abstract provided.

Counseling Students’ Experiences Of Religious/Spiritual Transitions: A Narrative Inquiry, Lexi Gene Heringer Wimmer

Dissertations

Religious and spiritual (R/S) identities are not stagnant constructs, as may often be believed (Strawn, 2019). The landscape of religion and spirituality is shifting rapidly, and these changes point to individual experiences of R/S transition. One place these kinds of individual changes are occurring is within counselor training. Counselor training can be a transformative experience, and these transformations can include religious and spiritual changes (Nogueiras et al., 2019). Little research explores a broad understanding of religious/spiritual transition, and this gap widens when considering counselors-in-training (CITs) specifically. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to more fully understand the narratives of …

Adventist Human Subject Researchers' Association Research Conference: May 22-25, 2024, Andrews University

Human Subject Research Archive

Program Book

An Integrated Transformational Teaching Model For Empowering Undergraduate Psychology Students To Cultivate Self-Awareness, Wellness Practices, And Resilient Mindsets During Their Undergraduate Careers, Summerrae L. Arcemont

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This Narrative inquiry explored psychology students’ perceptions of self-awareness interventions and wellness training in undergraduate psychology coursework. Participants included seven undergraduate psychology majors who completed a psychology health and wellness course in the Fall 2023 semester at a regional university in the Southeast. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and examined to identify themes in the students’ stories regarding their journeys through the wellness course. The use of reflexive thematic analysis helped determine the following five overarching themes from the data: Roadmap for Navigating Wellness, Group Experience, Newfound Insight, Personal Growth and Transformations, and Moving Forward. The results of this study highlighted …

Examining The Risks And Resilience Of Older Adults Living With Hiv/Aids: Qualitative Community-Based Participatory Research Studies In Southern Nevada, Brandon Ranuschio

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since the height of the HIV pandemic in the 1980s, medical interventions have significantly increased the life expectancy of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) and made HIV/AIDS a livable, chronic health condition. Because of this, PLWH have been living longer lives and thriving with the help of HIV sector healthcare and service providers. However, with their longer life expectancy, older PLWH have been experiencing other health challenges. One such challenge is the risk of developing HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND), which is a condition that affects up to 50% of PLWH at some point in their lifetime, with middle-aged and older …

Adverse Childhood Experiences: Why Trafficking Victims End Up Running Away, Getting In Trouble, And Being Homeless, Makaylen Tadeo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Sex trafficking of youth is something that requires people to think deeper as to how they ended up trading sex in the first place. Literature has shown that within adverse childhood experiences, abuse plays a significant factor. There are many types of abuse and a variety of harmful effects it can have on a child that is not only limited to physical and mental health but also to how they grow up and live in the world. Using the life course theory, this current study wanted to apply the concepts to explain how specific adverse childhood experiences in the form …

Seeking Sanctuary: An Analysis Of U Visa Policies In Omaha, Nebraska And Their Impact On Immigrant Communities, Emma Ehmke

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Since 2000, immigrants have been eligible for U visa status if they are a victim of a particular crime and assist law enforcement in criminal investigations. However, challenges arise for numerous reasons with the I-918 Supplement B form, which must be signed by an agency certifier within law enforcement or an attorney’s office. This study examines the policies of six law enforcement agencies and attorney’s offices in the Omaha Metro Area through semi-structured interviews to understand their approach to U visas and the characteristics of successful applications. The study aims to uncover variations in agency procedures and understandings and the …

Community Health Assessment Collaboration: Implementing A Joint Assessment Between A Healthcare System And A Local Health Department, Briar L. Deen

Dissertations: Doctor of Public Health

Non-profit hospitals and local health departments (LHDs) often complete community health assessments (CHAs) to help understand the needs of their community and develop implementation strategies to address the community needs. Hospitals and LHDs in the same community often develop separate CHAs with similar results leading to overlap in work and funds. This project aimed to address this issue in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex by convening one local health department, Denton County Public Health, and one non-profit healthcare system, Texas Health Resources, to leverage resources from each other to build a joint CHA. The Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships …

A Review Of Training For First Responders When Interacting With Individuals With Diagnoses, Mackenzie Drost, Robbie Hanson

Theses

Safety is a priority for first responders when responding to calls, but there have been numerous cases in which unintentional harm was caused when interacting with individuals with diagnoses or disabilities. Thus, it seems as though effective training procedures for these professionals is critical. However, training for first responders varies from state to state and can depend on the county in which the services are provided. Although behavioral skills training (BST) has a well-established history of training non behavior-analytic professionals and although there have been some encouraging recommendations for the effective dissemination of applied behavior analysis (ABA) to those outside …

Vegetation Management During Establishment Of Native Grasses And Forb Plantings On Roadsides And Prairie Restoration, Rachel Woody-Pumford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

North American prairies have been shrinking due to agricultural production, overgrazing, development of cities and towns, and climate change. However, integrated roadside vegetation management (IRVM) creates the opportunity to reestablish prairies along roadsides through planting native grasses and forbs. Utilizing postememergence (POST) herbicides registered for use along rights-of-way has the potential to remove invasive species and create space for newly establishing native grass and forb species. The use of clopyralid, florpyrauxifen-benzyl, metsulfuron, and quinclorac were found to be safe for use in plantings containing big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii Vitman) and butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa L.). However, florpyrauxifen-benzyl injured and stunted …

Incarceration And Its Impact On Family And Communities, Ti’Anyana Hayes

University Honors College

Incarceration does not just affect the convicted person, it has far-reaching consequences for their families, communities, and society as a whole. This research paper provides a closer insight at the wide-ranging impacts of incarceration. Reviewing interviews, data analysis, and long-term studies provides a clear perspective of how damaging incarceration can be to the incarcerated, their families, friends, and community. The findings show that prison takes a significant toll on someone's mental health, both during their time inside and even after they are released. Yet prisons severely lack adequate mental health support, which is desperately needed. The research also reveals that …

From Classroom To Cell: A Call To Action For Educational Reform, Draylen Akers

University Honors College

The “school-to-prison pipeline” (SPP) refers to the policies, practices, and attitudes that push the United States’ most vulnerable schoolchildren out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. This correlation shows a disturbing trend of incarceration CLASSROOM TO CELL: CALL FOR REFORM AKERS 3 instead of education (ACLU, 2008). The link between school and incarceration is present in most physical and social institutions, creating a widespread and intersectional injustice. To create more targeted and holistic reform, this paper will concentrate on the education institution and crucial social structures like socioeconomic status (SES), family stability, and community support. Additionally, reviewing …

Lived Experiences, Migration Journey, Religiosity, And Spirituality Depicted In Drawings By Latino Children And Youth Crossing The U.S. Mexican Border: A Qualitative Study., Doroty Magalhaes Sato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Widespread violence forces thousands of Central American children to endure a hazardous journey toward the U.S. Border seeking refuge. In the Latino community, faith serves as a social movement of resistance against oppression, playing a vital role in migration. There is a paucity of research documenting this experience and children's overall journey. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the lived experience of crossing international borders, religiosity, and spirituality depicted in Latino children's drawings used as coping methods to endure the journey toward the U.S. southern border. This investigation employed Art-based approaches to give voices to children's experiences by analyzing 63 …

Understanding The Multidimensional Ramifications Of Education Censorship To Promote Justice-Oriented School Social Work., Brandon D. Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since 2020, recensions on youth rights and education censorship have been backed by a network of actors and organizations on the political Right, evidenced by race and diversity curricula bans, book bans, and inflammatory media discourse. The scope and prevalence of education censorship are understudied with little known about the policies enacted, and influences of media discourse, school boards, and the effects on schools and the school social worker. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore and understand the scope and prevalence of education censorship, including policies, media discourse, school boards, and schools. To achieve the aims of this …