Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Particularisation Of Child Abuse Offences: Common Problems When Questioning Child Witnesses, Martine B. Powell, Kim P. Roberts, Belinda Guadagno

Psychology Faculty Publications

Prosecuting child abusers is often difficult due to lack of particularising details. Two possible ways of addressing this difficulty are: (a) to change the justice system to better serve prosecution for repeated offences (i.e., allow generic testimony), and (b) to bolster children's testimony. As this article has illustrated, there is still considerable potential for increasing (b). Given the low prosecution rates of child abuse offences, the need for exceptional interviewer training programs coupled with resources for ongoing supervision is now critical. While there have been some major improvements in child witness investigative interviews over the past two decades, there are …

A Workplace Study: Follow-Up Research Report, Deena Mandell, Carol A. Stalker, Cheryl Harvey, Margriet Wright, Karen Frensch

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

In response to the Partnerships for Children and Families Project's study of Canadian child welfare workers that unexpectedly found participants scoring high on a measure of emotional exhaustion (burnout), and at the same time, high on overall job satisfaction, a qualitative study of 25 child welfare workers' experience of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction was undertaken. This analysis was guided by several key questions including what are the personal qualities, workplace and organizational context, and coping skills that employees identify as being a part of their experiences of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction?

Boomerang Or Backfire? Have We Been Telling The Wrong Story About Lovelace V. Canada And The Effectiveness Of The Iccpr?, Andrew M. Robinson

Contemporary Studies

No abstract provided.

No. 3: Linking Migration, Hiv/Aids And Urban Food Security In Southern And Eastern Africa, Jonathan Crush, Miriam Grant, Bruce Frayne

Southern African Migration Programme

This publication seeks to establish a background for understanding the complex and dynamic linkages between urbanization, migration, HIV/AIDS and urban food security in Southern and Eastern Africa (SEA). As urbanization accelerates, direct food transfers from rural areas are increasing as poor urban households seek to reduce their vulnerability to high food prices and a cash-intensive urban existence. At the same time, urban households or individual migrants remit money back to households in rural areas both inside and outside the country of employment. A significant proportion of remittances are used for consumption purposes, including the purchase of food. These processes are …

No. 2: The Prospects For Migration Data Harmonization In The Sadc, Vincent Williams, Tiffany Tsang

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

No. 3: A Migration Audit Of Poverty Reduction Strategies In Southern Africa, Benjamin Roberts

Southern African Migration Programme

Southern Africa is characterized by long-established patterns of intra-regional migration, with countries sending and receiving labour migrants especially for employment in mines and on commercial farms and plantations since the late nineteenth century. However, these pat­terns and processes have undergone notable change in recent decades, the outcome being a progressive intensification of mobility in the region. The underlying determinants of this trend include increased and new opportunities for internal and cross-border movement follow­ing the end of apartheid, the region’s increasing engagement with the global economy, persistently high and worsening levels of poverty and unemployment, the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, …

No. 47: The Haemorrhage Of Health Professionals From South Africa: Medical Opinions, Wade Pendleton, Jonathan Crush, Kate Lefko-Everett

Southern African Migration Programme

The health sector has been especially hard hit by the brain drain from South Africa. Unless the push factors are successfully addressed, intense interest in emigration will continue to translate into departure for as long as demand exists abroad (and there is little sign of this letting up.) Health professional decision-making about leaving, staying or returning is poorly-understood and primarily anecdotal. To understand how push and pull factors interact in decision- making (and the mediating role of variables such as profession, race, class, age, gender income and experience), the opinions of health professionals themselves need to be sought.

This paper …

No. 45: Medical Recruits: The Temptation Of South African Health Care Professionals, Christian M. Rogerson

Southern African Migration Programme

Health workers are one of the categories of skilled professionals most affected by globalization. Over the past decade, there has emerged a substantial body of research that tracks patterns of international migration of health personnel, assesses causes and consequences, and debates policy responses at global and national scales. Within this literature, the case of South Africa is attracting growing interest. For almost 15 years South Africa has been the target of a ‘global raiding’ of skilled professionals by several developed countries. How to deal with the consequences of the resultant outflow of health professionals is a core policy issue for …

No. 46: Voices From The Margins: Migrant Women’S Experiences In Southern Africa, Kate Lefko-Everett

Southern African Migration Programme

The concept of the feminization of migration traditionally refers to the growth in numbers and relative importance of women’s migration, particularly from and within developing countries. In Africa, for example, the proportion of female migrants rose from 42% of the total in 1 960 to almost 50% at the present time. This process is a result, first, of the continued impoverishment and marginalization of many women in developing countries; and second, of the increasing demand for female labour in the service industries of industrial and industrializing countries.

The United Nations suggests that the full implications of migration and mobility for …

Vol. 8, No. 1: South African Immigration Reform, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

Using Wordpress For Our Library Blogs, Greg Sennema

Library Publications

No abstract provided.

Gender And Remittances: Creating Gender-Responsive Local Development: The Case Of Lesotho, Jonathan Crush, Belinda Dodson, John Gay, Clement Leduka

Southern African Migration Programme

The number of international migrants passed 200 million in 2008, more than double the figure in 1965. As the number of migrants continues to grow, the character of international migration has been transformed. South-South migration, as it is now commonly referred to, is acquiring ever-greater significance in contemporary migration configurations. South-South movements of international migrants are highly gendered. In particular, the feminization of international migration has meant that the absolute numbers and proportion of women migrants is increasingly rapidly. More and more women are also migrating for work in other countries in their own right. The gender dynamics behind this …

The Role Of A Clergyperson Within An Assertive Case Management Outreach Team, Rachel Adrienne Lee Fayter

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Mental health consumer/survivors living in urban poverty are generally marginalized and devalued by society. To aid in the process of recovery they require a holistic form of treatment to meet their physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs. The current exploratory study investigated the role of a pastor as part of a multidisciplinary team engaged in mental health outreach work and the impacts of this role for people experiencing urban homelessness. Multiple qualitative methods were used to collect data from different stakeholder groups. From multiple participant perspectives, the findings indicate that there are many unique spiritual, relational, and moral aspects of …

Embracing Life After Breast Cancer: Exploring The Holistic Health Of Survivors, Christine Yakiwchuk

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Health, from a holistic perspective, is more than physical well-being. The experience and treatment of breast cancer has an impact beyond physical health, with psychological, social, and spiritual factors playing a role in wellness. Physically, treatment such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy often have disruptive side effects such as, fatigue, breast soreness, nausea, vomiting, hair loss and weight gain, as well as the possibility of losing one or both breasts (Mustain et al., 2002). Psychologically and emotionally, women may experience anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, fear and repression, psychological distress and persistent fears of recurrence (Glanz & Lerman, 1992). The goal …

Gaining From Loss: Meaning Making And Resolution In Emerging Adults' Low Point Narratives As Predicted By Identity Development And Perceptions Of Parenting In Adolescence, Tara M. Dumas

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Past research suggests that difficult life events can disrupt the expected flow of life, often necessitating increased cognitive effort and reflection to assimilate into the greater life story. In the present longitudinal study, 104 emerging adults (M=26 years) narrated stories about their most difficult life experience. The relationship was examined between certain characteristics of the participants’ low point narratives (depth of learning and coherent positive resolution) at age 26 with their identity development, feelings of support, and parent-child relationships from late adolescence (M=17) to emerging adulthood. Depth of learning refers to the extent to which participants extract more sophisticated forms …

'If You're The Alliance For Children And Youth, Where Are All The Children And Youth'?' How The Alliance For Children And Youth Of Waterloo Region Can Help Advance Youth Engagement, Shauna M. Fuller

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Youth engagement (the meaningful participation and sustained involvement of a young person in an activity outside of him or herself; CEYE, 2003), in particular with organizations that affect young people’s lives, has positive effects on both youth and organizations (Driscoll, 2002; Hart, 1992; Zeldin, McDaniel, Topitzes, & Calvert, 2000). Research on youth engagement has identified that successful and sustainable youth engagement requires a combination of local, interagency, and political level structures (Caputo, 2000). Waterloo Region (Ontario, Canada) has isolated pockets of youth engaged in decision-making; however, no regional youth engagement initiative exists at the interagency and political levels. Regional efforts …

Audiovisual Speech Perception: A Speech Production Approach, Michelle A. Jarick

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of these studies was to test the main assumptions outlined in the Motor Theory of speech perception that (1) speech perception is linked to speech production, (2) audiovisual integration of speech occurs automatically and after the motor commands are activated, and (3) we perceive the intended gestures, which are extracted by a specialized ‘phonetic module’ in the brain. In Experiment 1, we used a Stroop-like paradigm, where participants viewed and listened to a speaker producing speech syllables (/aba/ or /aga/) in three conditions: audio-only, visual-only, and audiovisual. Participants were asked to ignore irrelevant speech stimuli, and to identify …

Narrowed Interpersonal Worlds: Gender Differences In Affiliation-Focus And Dominance-Focus, Oshrat A. Hodara

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this research is to investigate whether there are gender differences in the perceptions of affiliations of dominance behaviour over a large sample of social interactions. We were particularly interested in the variability of these perceptions and whether they differ in men’s and women’s perceptions of themselves and others. This research utilizes the framework of interpersonal theory, in which the two main features of people’s behaviour, affiliation and dominance, are proposed to be unrelated to each other and form a circumplex structure. In study 1, a subset of personality adjectives was selected, which demonstrated good circumplex structure. These …

Hemispheric Sensitivity To Thematic Role Information Derived From Active And Passive Verbs: An Event Related Brain Potentials Study, Christopher A. Schwint

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Recent research examining differences in the way the left (LH) and right (RH) hemispheres of the brain process language have used the visual half-field (VHF) paradigm to examine whether each hemisphere can independently process information from sentences. The current study expanded upon such work by using event related brain potential (ERP) measures to examine how the comprehension of thematic role knowledge, a process essential to successful sentence comprehension (MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenbeerg, 1994), is undertaken in each hemisphere. During language comprehension, agents (entities that initiate action in an event) depicted by nouns (e.g., cop) have been shown to be associated …

Mothers Of Children Placed In Out-Of-Home Care: Everyday Realities And Child Placement Experiences, Nancy Colleen Freymond

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This qualitative study focuses on the everyday realities and child placement experiences of 31 mothers of children placed in out-of-home care in south western Ontario. The stories used in this analysis were collected for the Partnerships for Children and Families Project, a multi-year research project that is committed to developing an understanding of the lives and experiences of families and children who are served by Children's Aid Societies and/or children's mental health services. Twenty six mothers in this study were interviewed on one occasion, ranging from one to two hours in duration. Five mothers in this study had multiple interviews. …

Role Changes And Birth Order In Female Adolescent Bereavement, Jennifer Joyce Evans

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis reports on the findings of a qualitative research study that explored role changes experienced by female adolescents after the death of a parent, with special attention paid to birth order. Seventeen women were recruited by convenience sampling for this study: nine were eldest daughters, three were middle daughters, and five were youngest daughters. All of the women lost a parent when they were between the ages of 11 and 17, and all were living at home with both parents at the time of the death. The findings were analyzed using a grounded theory method of coding (Glaser & …

Gender Differences In Reward Allocation Among Boys And Girls Who Receive Allowance, Sarah Clift

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Gender differences emerge at a very young age in children. Through socialization boys and girls are encouraged to adopt gender stereotypes. Among adults, salary is an area where there are consistent gender differences, with females typically asking for and receiving less than males. The present study examined differences in reward allocation (i.e., pay) among 91 boys and girls who receive an allowance or “pocket money” in grades one through four, to try to determine whether the differences noted among adults appear with first early pay experiences. Children were asked to complete a series of five tasks regarding gender stereotypes, occupations, …

Social Anxiety And Rumination: The Effects Of Alcohol, Susan Reed Battista

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Previous reserach has found a positive relationship between social anxiety and rumination. A positive relationship has also been found between social anxiety and alcohol use in clinical samples. The current study investigated how alcohol affected levels of rumination in socially anxious and non-socially anxious individuals. It was expected that consuming alcohol would decrease levels of rumination in socially anxious individuals. Eighty male participants were recuited (38 high in social anxiety and 42 low in social anxiety). Most participants were White (86%), students (78%), who ranged in age from 19 to 69 (M=22 years). Individuals were randomly assigned to …

Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Jamiacan Immigrant Youth In Two Southern Ontario Cities, Kathleen M. Hogarth

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Research done with immigrant youth in Canada has been largely focused on educational outcomes. The experiences of Jamiacan immigrant youth in Canada have not been explored in great depth in the literature. Canadian statistics show however that Jamiacan immigrant youth account for the largest grouping of Caribbean immigrant youth in Canada. Other data sources point to the fact that Jamiacan youth are more likely to be criminalized and face added challenges in society because of racial stereotyping. The goal of this thesis therefore was to explore the experiences of Jamiacan immigrant youth in Kitchener and Toronto, Ontario through an investigation …

Assessing Phonology, Syntax & Working Memory Using Erp: Towards An Understanding Of The Underlying Cause Of Developmental Dyslexia, Courtney Patterson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 20 children with dyslexia and controls matched on age, sex, nonverbal reasoning, and handedness (ages 8-12 years) as they listened to and read sentences that varied in syntactic complexity and the working memory load they induced [subject-subject (SS) and subject-object (SO) relative clause sentences]. In each modality, control children demonstrated amplitude differences between the brainwave potentials elicited to each sentence type. When listening, controls, and children with dyslexia did not differ in the N400 effect elicited in response to the relative verb of SO sentences, thus indicating auditory sentential processing occurred in a …

Perceptions Of Change In The Urban Core: A Case Study Of A Satellite Campus In Kitchener, Ontario, Lindsay Woodside

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The university satellite campus is a recent planning instrument used to revitalize struggling downtown cores. The satellite model, however, is not without controversy. To gain an insight into the debate, this study focuses on the perceptions of groups involved in bringing the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work satellite campus to downtown Kitchener, Ontario. Approaches to revitalization since World War II are examined together with the current downtown revitalization initiative in bringing university satellite campuses to downtowns. The strengths and weaknesses of the university and community dynamic are highlighted as they relate to the main university campus and host …

An Institutional Analysis Of Oil And Gas Sector Development And Environmental Management In The Yukon Territory, Jason C. May

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis investigates the ways in which oil and gas development priorities and concern for the environment are integrated within strategic planning and management frameworks, and how associated conflict is addressed, in a case study of the Yukon. Because substantial ground-based oil and gas activity is yet to occur in the territory, a thorough understanding of the institutions and institutional arrangements set to govern future oil and gas development is a valuable tool for gauging the capacity to integrate these priorities. Therefore, this thesis employs the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to analyze the legislation, regulations, policies, and institutions …

Spatial Relationships Of Carbon Dioxide Exchange In An Upland Forested Wetland Complex In The Western Boreal Plain, Alberta, Canada, Danielle M. Solondz

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study examined the midday (10:00 - 16:00) growing season (April - October) surface cover CO₂ relationships with different canopy closures and microtopography (lawn and depression) in a forested upland - peatland - pond complex in the Western Boreal Plain, north - central Alberta, Canada. A dynamic - closed chamber technique was used to: evaluate the relative contributions of heterotrophic and autotrophic respiration and photosynthesis and assess the relative roles of substrate, plant communities, hydrology, and microclimates on CO₂ exchange.

Large differences were observed among the forest floors of landscape units with different canopy covers with respect to …

The Examination Of Fixed And Multi-Tier Source Monitoring Training With Children, Sean Curtis Cameron

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The current research consists of two studies examining children’s source monitoring training. As previous research (e.g., Thierry & Spence, 2002; Poole & Lindsay, 2002) on source monitoring training is somewhat inconsistent, this research examined two different types of source training with 3–8 year old children. In Study 1, 131 children across two age ranges (3–4 and 7–8 years) were given comparable source training to that completed by Thierry and Spence (2002). General results indicated that the training benefited 7–8 year olds at two delay times, but only benefited younger children that met the established criterion in training. In Study 2, …

“To Thine Own Self Be True”: A Narrative Analysis Of Social Group Disengagement And Associated Identity Implications, Catherine De Boer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of individuals who had voluntarily disengaged from social groups that had once been central to their self-understandings. Theoretical underpinnings of the study proceeded from the distinction made by social psychologists between personal identity, self-definitions derived from an understanding of one’s self as unique, and social identity, self-definitions derived from an understanding and identification of one’s self as a member of social groups. The overarching aims were to: 1) determine if a disengagement process exists, and if so, to discover its defining characteristics and phenomenological aspects; 2) describe the shifts …