Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Strategic Evangelism Project For The Youth Of The Newly Formed South Brooklyn Academy Sparklers: The Indiscriminate Distribution Of God's Four Everlasting Covenant Provisions, Courtney W. Wickham

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

God’s prophetic word to Jeremiah (31:31-34) echoes God’s plan of redemption which was there, even before the foundation of the earth. In this prophecy, God declares that “He will write His law on the hearts of men”. God’s law is His Word, and this Word “became flesh and dwelt among men” (John 1:14). This Thesis Project focuses on the first stage of Evangelism, sowing. The membership of the South Brooklyn Academy Sparklers Pathfinder Club, represent the youth arm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They are passionate about the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) and the Three Angels Messages (Rev. 14:6-12). However, …

Pastoral Burnout Of African American Pastors: Creating Healthy Support Systems And Balance, William E. Johnson Iii

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Pastoral self-care is critical in minimizing the symptoms of burnout in ministry. Caught up in the daily demands of ministry, pastors are under tremendous stress as they try to serve God’s people in multiple roles in ministry. Often, pastors are called upon to be counselors, preachers, project managers, students, social activists, and a moral compass for those they lead. Too often, pastors are expected to perform duties with superhuman perfection, life and ministry can get so crowded with obligations and emergencies that pastor’s maintenance of a healthy lifestyle can become unbalanced or cease to exist. This research study will complement …

Leadership Matters: The Process Of Leading A Declining Church To Revitalization Utilizing Early Church Principles, Jarvis Baker

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A review of current literature that exist details the perpetual decline that is occurring in the local church. Nevertheless, the leadership a pastor provides must not be ignored, when there is an attempt to lead a church from decline to revitalization. The purpose of this project is to assist pastors who lead declining churches to revitalization by examining the principles of the early church, which was a church that was vibrant in the area of growth and spiritual life. Based on questionnaires sent to pastors and other ministry leaders, the project will reveal the need for a practical Biblical plan …

A Quantitative Examination Of The Relationship Between Leadership Style And Employee Job Satisfaction In Registered Nurses In The Pittsburgh Msa Region, Jeffrey Belsky

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Healthcare worker jobs, particularly in the nursing profession, are among the fastest growing occupations in the United States. However, the nursing field is overwhelmed with an aging workforce, low morale, ineffective leadership practices, employee dissatisfaction, and increased worker turnover. Healthcare organizations have witnessed an increase in employee job dissatisfaction amongst nurses, which ultimately has led to increased employment turnover among other negative consequences such as lack of organizational commitment, absenteeism, reduced patient care, and disgruntled employees. This quantitative, nonexperimental, correlational research examined the relationship between perceived Registered Nurse (RN) job satisfaction and leadership styles in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area …

Husbands' Experience Of Being Trusted By Their Wives: A Heuristic Study, Paul Andrew Johns

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Trust is widely understood to be a critical component of interpersonal relationships. In an effort to understand this complex construct, the majority of research on dyadic trust has focused on the decision to trust and the interactions between a trustor and trusty, with a strong bent toward understanding the trustor’s experience. Surprisingly little is known about the experience of the trusty, or the recipient of trust, which if not remedied may result in erroneous assumptions about the experience of the trusty or an obscuration of the relational dynamics surrounding trust as a whole. Using qualitative, heuristic methodology, the author sought …

Health And Wellness Factors Affecting The Wholistic Lifestyle Of National And International Christian Missionaries, Angela C. Williams

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis will focus on the health and wellness of missionaries and will develop a wholistic framework for healthier living. This framework will be used as a guide to help sustain missionaries living in various cultural contexts by connecting and integrating the mind, body, and spirit in harmony for wholistic lifestyle. God intended for His people to live a healthy lifestyle and to take care of their temples. Missionaries are the backbone of cross-cultural evangelism, but they often find themselves living unhealthy lifestyles. These unhealthy lifestyles can have a negative impact on missionaries’ overall health, wellness, and fruitfulness in serving …

The Relationship Between Organizational Commitment And Transformational And Transactional Leadership Styles In Government Contract Employees, Alethia Gardner

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study sought to determine if a relationship exists between leadership styles and organizational commitment in government contract employees. The psychological contract theory, expectancy theory, and transactional and transformational leadership theories framed the study purpose. The quantitative research method using the Pearson correlational statistical design was used to assess variable relationships. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and the Three-Component Model (TCM) of Commitment were used to collect data from a sample of government contract employees. The results revealed weak but no statistically significant relationship between transformational and transactional leadership styles and organizational commitment. The study also found weak but no …

Faith-Based Organizational Values And International Business Transactions, David Ralph Pennington

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The general business problem is conflicting values between faith-based businesses and hosting countries can adversely affect business performance. The problem may be the gap between business leaders and organizational values and host country values. The specific business problem is some faith-based business leaders lack strategies to mitigate incongruousness between the core values of their organizations and the contrary values of foreign cultures to effectively conduct international business. The purpose of this qualitative case study research is to explore what strategies biblically based business leaders use to mitigate incongruousness between the core values of their business and contrary values of foreign …

A Role For Epac1 And Epac2 In Nociceptor Hyperexcitability And Chronic Pain After Spinal Cord Injury, Samantha Berkey

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Chronic pain is a major complaint of those living with spinal cord injury (SCI), affecting 65-80% of the SCI population, but the treatment options remain limited or non-existent. The cAMP sensor EPAC has previously been shown to play a key role in chronic inflammatory and neuropathic pain, though the contribution from each of its two main isoforms, EPAC1 and EPAC2, is unclear. Here I test the hypothesis that both EPAC1 and EPAC2 play a key role in the maintenance of persistent nociceptor hyperexcitability and chronic pain after SCI.

Using both a T9 SCI mouse model and a T10 SCI rat …

Tipton's "The Life To Come: Re-Creating Retirement" (Book Review), Barbara A. Thomas

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

La Comunicación Lingüística En Español Y Sus Barreras En El Sistema De Salud De Los Estados Unidos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

La enseñanza del español con fines médicos en los Estados Unidos ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, los pacientes de origen hispano se encuentran desprotegidos ante las barreras lingüísticas que impone el sistema de salud estadounidense en muchos contextos monolingües y bilingües. Esta investigación descriptiva muestra como, por un lado, los malentendidos producidos por la comunicación ineficiente desarrollada por intérpretes e intermediarios (familiares, enfermeras con conocimientos de español, facultativos con una preparación lingüística deficiente, etc.) tienen serias repercusiones para la salud en el tratamiento de los casos. Por otro lado, el estudio da cuenta …

How Children Describe Negative Adoption Experiences, Mckenzie Paskett

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Adoption faces stigmas from society which affects peoples' perceptions of adoptees, their birth parents, and adoptive parent s; one of the most prominent being that adoption is the "second best" route to getting children (Baxter, Norwood, Asbury, & Scharp , 2014). Adoption success is mixed with some adapting well, while others have negative experience s. Studying themes about how and why negative adoption experiences happen could be beneficial to preventing them in the future. There is a unique perspective between parents and children and so the central research question for this study is: how do children describe their negative adoption …

Some Characteristics Of Interethnic Contacts Of Women In A Post-War Divided City – Kosovo Case, Ivana Milovanović

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper is a result of perennial theoretical and methodological studies and empirical research of the impact of social changes on the daily life of women in a post-conflict social environment. Keeping in mind that this paper is part of a more extensive field research, it focuses on some characteristics of interethnic contacts, which at the same time, are interreligious contacts between Orthodox and Muslim women (Serbian, Albanian and Bosnian). Characteristics of interethnic contacts of women in a daily life contextual framework are described and explained within the Kosovar post-war divided city Mitrovica/Kosovska Mitrovica, with special emphasis on the grassroots …

Present Condition And Role Of The Catholic Church In Poland, Alfred Marek Wierzbicki

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

My remarks about the present condition and role of the Catholic Church in Poland are not based on formal sociological research, for I am not a sociologist. I would like just to share some observations and concerns about the situation in which I live as Christian and priest. My report is mostly based on the personal experience, but in spite of the subjective perspective I seek to objectivize my views as much as possible by taking into account a broader context.

Political Competition And Predictors Of Hate Crime: A County-Level Analysis, Eaven Holder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research on hate crime has tended to utilize sociological frameworks to best explain the incidence of such offending, but little research has been conducted to determine whether political factors may play a role. Although Olzak (1990) touched upon the relationship between racial violence and third-party politics during the American Progressive era (1882-1914), the research did not fully articulate how political competition may influence the commission of hate crime. The current study seeks to fill this gap, while also extending concepts associated with social disorganization theory and the defended communities perspective. It does so by utilizing a longitudinal research design to …

Self-Compassion And Physical Health-Related Quality Of Life In Cancer: Mediating Effects Of Control Beliefs And Treatment Adherence, Morgan Treaster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among the 14 million persons living in the United States with current or remitted cancer, poor physical health-related quality of life (HRQL) is a significant concern. However, self-compassion (i.e., common humanity, mindfulness, self-kindness) may be a protective factor, either directly or indirectly, by allowing for a sense of empowerment and control over illness, and in turn, facilitating engagement in treatment and positive perceptions of health. Serial mediation analyses among persons living with current (n = 67) or remitted (n = 168) cancer lend support for a positive, direct association between self-compassion and physical HRQL, as well as indirect effects via …

Gaming Behaviors In Day-To-Day Life: Exploring A Problematic Gaming Behavior Scale, Christin Collie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Growing concern for the problematic use of video games has prompted new research in a now growing field of literature. Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) is a proposed behavioral addiction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5). To examine the proposed criteria for IGD, a self-report problematic gaming behavior scale (PGBS) was developed for adults residing in the United States. One hundred eighty-nine participants completed an online questionnaire comprised of demographic items, general gaming information, the PGBS, and the Internet Gaming Disorder-20 Test (IGD-20 Test). Statistical analyses conducted at the conclusion of the study were consistent …

Dreadd Targeting Projections From The Nucleus Accumbens To The Ventral Pallidum With Nicotine Self-Administration, Amanda Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Projections from the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) to the Ventral Pallidum (VP) play a critical role in motivation and reward. Rewards and reward-associated cues are thought to alter this pathway by suppressing GABA release to the VP, however, the role of the NAc to VP pathway has never been investigated with regard to nicotine self-administration. We hypothesized that increasing GABAergic signaling from the NAc to the VP would decrease the reinforcing effects of nicotine. To increase GABA release, CRE dependent DREADD was expressed in the NAc of male rats. Administration of low dose clozapine activated the DREADD receptor and showed a …

Root-N Consistency Of Intercept Estimators In A Binary Response Model Under Tail Restrictions, Lili Tan, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The intercept of the binary response model is irregularly identified when the supports of both the special regressor V and the error term ε are the whole real line. This leads to the estimator of the intercept having potentially a slower than √n convergence rate, which can result in a large estimation error in practice. This paper imposes addition tail restrictions which guarantee the regular identification of the intercept and thus the √n-consistency of its estimator. We then propose an estimator that achieves the √n rate. Finally, we extend our tail restrictions to a full-blown model with endogenous regressors.

Semiparametric Maximum Likelihood Inference For Nonignorable Nonresponse With Callbacks, Zhong Guan, Denis H. Y. Leung, Jing Qin

Research Collection School Of Economics

We model the nonresponse probabilities as logistic functions ofthe outcome variable and other covariates in the survey sampling study withcallback. The identification aspect of this callback model is investigated. Semiparametricmaximum likelihood estimators of the parameters in the responseprobabilities are proposed and studied. As a result, an efficient estimator ofthe mean of the outcome variable is constructed using the estimated responseprobabilities. Moreover, if a regression model for conditional mean of the outcomevariable given some covariate is available, then we can obtain an evenmore efficient estimate of the mean of the outcome variable by fitting the regressionmodel using an adjusted least squares …

Quantile Treatment Effects And Bootstrap Inference Under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization, Xin Zheng, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the estimation and inference of the quantile treatment effect under covariate-adaptive randomization. We propose three estimation methods: (1) the simple quantile regression (QR), (2) the QR with strata fixed effects, and (3) the inverse propensity score weighted QR. For the three estimators, we derive their asymptotic distributions uniformly over a set of quantile indexes and show that the estimator obtained from inverse propensity score weighted QR weakly dominates the other two in terms of efficiency, for a wide range of randomization schemes. For inference, we show that the weighted bootstrap tends to be conservative for methods (1) …

Enhanced Mean Ratio Estimators Of Auxiliary Variables Based On The Linear Mixture Of Variances, Damisa A. Saddam, Jamila Abdullahi, Umar Nura

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This paper incorporates the variance of auxiliary variables to propose three improved ratio estimators of population mean. To enhance the efficiency of the proposed ratio estimators, a linear combination of the population coefficient of variation, kurtosis, skewness and the population variance of the auxiliary variable is harnessed. The properties relating to the suggested estimators are assessed using constant, bias and mean square error. We also provided practical study for illustration and corroboration using a population data consisting of the fixed capital, which is the supporting variable and output of 80 factories which are the study variables. The suggested improved ratio …

Policy Trilemma And Interest Rate Behaviour In Nigeria, Korede Ajogbeje, Oluwatosin Adeniyi, Festus O. Egwaikhide

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

Policy makers face trade-off in dealing with exchange rate management, monetary independence and concerns about capital mobility simultaneously. This study empirically examines the effects of Nigeria’s trilemma policy path on interest rate using data spanning from 1997:Q1 to 2017:Q3. It equally incorporates the role of external reserves in buffering these effects. Stationarity of the series were ascertained with Zivot-Andrew (ZA) structural break unit roots test technique, while the bounds test cointegration approach was used to confirm the cointegrating properties of the variables. We found that capital mobility has significant effect on interest rate in the long run baseline model and …

Non-Performing Loan And Its Effects On Banking Stability: Evidence From National And International Licensed Banks In Niger, Ngozi V. Atoi

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

This study examines Non-Performing Loan (NPL) and its effects on the stability of Nigerian banks with national and international operational licenses from 2014:Q2 to 2017:Q2. A “restricted” dynamic GMM is employed to estimate the macroeconomic and bank specific drivers of NPL for each licensed category. Z-Score is constructed to proxy banking stability, and its response to shocks NPLs is examined in a panel vector autoregressive framework. The results reveal that drivers of NPLs vary across the two categories of banks, but, weighted average lending rate is a vital macroeconomic driver of NPLs for both. The results also confirm the moral …

A Predictive Model For Inflation In Nigeria, Nse S. Udoh, Anietie S. Isaiah

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

The study estimates a dynamic model using quarterly data spanning 1995 to 2016. Four dynamic models: level lagged variables, differenced lagged variables, log-transformed lagged variables and differenced log-transformed lagged variables were considered. The best predictive model was selected based on the Schwarz Information Criterion (SIC) value. From the empirical results, the level form models performed better than the differenced form models. On the basis of model parsimony, the level lagged model was the preferred model among the set of selected models. Predictions obtained from the model indicate that the model is stable as actual interest rate (IR) values, fall well …

Assessing Efficiency In The Pharmaceutical Sector Of Nigeria, Efayena O. Obukohwo, Enoh H. Olele, Patricia N. Buzugbe

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

The study analyses, empirically, the efficiency of the Pharmaceutical sector in Nigeria. Employing a balanced panel of 20 pharmaceutical firms between 2012 and 2016, the paper uses a non-parametric technique (Data Envelopment Analysis) to analyze the firms’ efficiency under the constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) assumptions. The results obtained shows inefficiency in the pharmaceutical sector as it operates under a decreasing return to scale. This calls for an appropriate policy mix to stimulate the efficiency of the pharmaceutical sector in Nigeria by enhancing research and development (R&D) as ell as regulations within the sector.

Parenting And Inequality In Insecure Times. A Comment To The Symposium, Aliya Hamid Rao

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This comment highlights how high income inequality and economic uncertainty produce new dimensions to intensive parenting amongst the middle-class. Parenting practices encourage children’sdevelopment of behaviors and values which are coveted in élite professions. Amongst the advantaged,these parenting practices encourage neo-traditional family structures as a means of coping with economic uncertainty.

Caring For Thai Older Persons With Long-Term Care Needs, John Knodel, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Wiraporn Pothisiri

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objective: To provide a situation analysis of recent long-term care (LTC) needs among older persons in Thailand. Method: The 2014 Survey of Older Persons in Thailand (SOPT) provides data to assess patterns of caregiving,whether care needs are met, and who are main caregivers for older Thais. We examine how types of familial and non-familial caregivers are associated with the wellbeing of older persons. Results:The need for LTC increases sharply with age and is more common among women than men. Spouses and children constitute approximately 90% of main caregivers. The association of a family member as the main caregiver and education …

Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic In Contemporary Singapore And Malaysia, Kian Chow Kwok

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In an interview published a month before his passing, Hayden Whitesuggested historical studies had finally arrived at an “era of the image,” givenhow long it took for historians to recognize the potentialities of photographyand subsequently cinema and post-cinema as not just historical objects butalso modes of doing history. White cited queer history as an example ofcomplicating the binary between the object and method of historical study,enabling new approaches to understanding history and historiography(Ethan Kleinberg and Hayden White on the Practical Past, Part 2, published onYouTube, February 5, 2018).

Forecasting Large Covariance Matrix With High-Frequency Data: A Factor Correlation Matrix Approach, Yingjie Dong, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a factor correlation matrix approach to forecast large covariance matrix of asset returns using high-frequency data. We apply shrinkage method to estimate large correlation matrix and adopt principal component method to model the underlying latent factors. A vector autoregressive model is used to forecast the latent factors and hence the large correlation matrix. The realized variances are separately forecasted using the Heterogeneous Autoregressive model. The forecasted variances and correlations are then combined to forecast large covariance matrix. We conduct Monte Carlo studies to compare the finite sample performance of several methods of forecasting large covariance matrix. Our proposed …