Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Immigrant’S Personal Network In The Integration Process: A Case Study Of Ghanaian Immigrants’ In The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, Emmanuel Kojo Kyeremeh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses on the integration of recent immigrants in receiving societies by analyzing their personal networks' contribution to this process. Although migration studies have stressed the importance of relationships or im/migrant networks in different spatial contexts, gaps exist in understanding this phenomenon. Specifically, studies on immigrants' networks' structure and composition that indicate their integration level in the host society is missing within the literature. This research, therefore, contributes to our understanding of personal networks. It considers the structure of immigrants’ network by examining the role of their migration project and context of reception towards developing ties in the host …

Perspectives Of Canadian University Coaches On Integrating Sport Psychology And Mental Performance Consultants In Varsity Programs, Federico Cisneros Sánchez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recently, sport psychology has become a more popular resource for athletes and coaches when looking to increase performance. It is unknown how many Canadian universities utilize sport psychology services in their athletic programs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with coaches of Canadian university varsity teams to learn about their opinions on sport psychology and mental performance consultants (MPCs). The research was approached from a pragmatic perspective. Results showed that MPCs are important to enhance performance and provide mental health resources. MPCs provide athletes with personal and leadership development, mental skills training, and mental health support. MPCs can also be a resource …

Regional Integration: Physician Perceptions On Electronic Medical Record Use And Impact In South West Ontario, Sadiq Raji

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Regional initiatives in the health care context in Canada are typically organized and administered along geographic boundaries or operational units. Regional integration of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) has been continuing across Canadian provinces in recent years, yet the use and impact of regionally integrated EMRs are not routinely assessed and questions remain about their impact on and use in physicians’ practices. Are stated goals of simplifying connections and sharing of electronic health information collected and managed by many health services providers being met? What are physicians’ perspectives on the use and impact of regionally integrated EMR? In this thesis, I …

A Novel Spatio-Temporal Examination Of Children's Accessibility, Exposure, And Engagement To Parks And Recreation Spaces In Middlesex-London, Ontario, Malcolm K. Little

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Children are spending more free time engaged in activities indoors, rather than in outdoor environments such as parks and recreation spaces. Parks and recreation spaces provide amenities that promote physical, cognitive, and social health among children. As it relates to the complexities of children’s living situations, properly measuring children’s levels of interactions with these spaces is poorly understood in geography research.

By examining various attributes of children, this thesis improves on the measurement of children’s levels of interactions with parks and recreation spaces. Research herein utilized household survey data, a high-resolution GIS dataset of environmental factors, and GPS logs from …

Cannabis For Therapeutic Purposes: Older Adult Perspectives, User Characteristics And Motivations For Use, Lean Fiedeldey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Use of cannabis among adults 55 years of age and older is increasing. In Q4 of 2018, slightly over half of cannabis users used for therapeutic purposes at least once, where many reported using for both medical and non-medical reasons (mixed use). Research on older adults regarding the use of Cannabis for Therapeutic Purposes (CTP) is fragmented and there are no comprehensive or in-depth studies on their perceptions or self-reported motivations. Understanding in these areas is important to inform policy that takes the protection of public health and safety as central aims. Does policy affect one of, if not both, …

The Public Library As Past Become Space, Greg Nightingale

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I use Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism in The Arcades Project to critique contemporary notions related to the understanding of the public library as a place. My critical theoretical approach, grounded in historical research and Benjamin’s theories of modernity, highlights contemporary aspects of the public library and broadens and deepens our understanding of the library’s physical role, both within and outside its walls. My research is based on the concurrent yet divergent social and cultural development of modern public libraries and Benjamin’s symbolic shopping arcades. Like Benjamin with the arcade, I believe that the public library contains innovative potentiality, in its …

Science And Sex Testing: The Beginnings Of A Female Testing Discourse, Camille M. Croteau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the 1960s, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sanctioned testing to verify the sex of elite female athletes. Sex tests, as they were called, did not extend to male athletes, and they have tended to rely on appearance and performance alone. Now measuring testosterone levels, the Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification scrutinizes female athletes far more than male athletes. This dissertation contributes to the sex testing literature by investigating three under-explored avenues: the history of the sex testing sports medical literature, a medical discourse analysis of IOC documents based on the implementation of sex testing, and a critical feminist …

Organizational Change, Work Conditions And Professional Learning, A Case Study Of Nurses In Ontario, Elise Mcclenaghan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In professions, lifelong learning is essential to providing quality and safe services. Certain working conditions, including work intensification due to rationalization and organizational change, may inhibit professionals’ ability to learn on the job. This study adds to the literature surrounding informal learning that occurs on and off the job by exploring the impact working conditions and workplace change have on learning behaviours for nurses in Ontario, through the analysis of survey data. For a sample of nurses working in Ontario in 2016 it is found through a regression analysis that certain working conditions like experiencing discrimination, participating in policy related …

Post-Secondary Education (Pse) Indigenous Students' Perspectives: Sharing Our Voices On How We Fit Into Residential School (Rs) History Of Canada And The United States Using Photovoice, Natahnee Winder

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A substantial body of literature about Indigenous experiences regarding the boarding school and residential school systems in the US and Canada, respectively, does exist. Both federal governments’ intentions were to Christianize, assimilate, and “civilize” students who attended these schools. Most Indigenous educational research is centered in either an American or Canadian context, and the colonial education of Indigenous peoples is rarely discussed as a collective experience. This colonial education occurred in tandem, in both countries, and its legacy severely impacted Indigenous students by separating them from their families and communities and stripping them of their Indigenous identities and lifeways. Furthermore, …

Characterizing A Novel Mobile Game Battery Assessment: A Comparison Of Performance-Based And Survey-Based Executive Functioning Instruments, Josephine A. Pham

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Exploratory characterization of a novel mobile game battery was conducted via a correlational comparison with a standardized assessment of executive functioning. Previous literature has shown that computer-based and survey-based instruments have either very weak correlation or no correlation at all – giving the impression that these instruments may not measure the same constructs of executive functioning. Findings from the current exploratory study demonstrated significant associations but weak correlational strength between tasks from the computer-based game battery and an updated standardized survey-based instrument. This confirmed a trend found in previous literature, demonstrating little overlap between both instruments in executive functioning measurement. …

Energy Access And Extreme Heat Events: A Case Study Of Seniors In Ottawa, Ontario, Samantha N. Doris

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Energy poverty, or not having access to sufficient energy to meet one’s needs, is a serious problem in Canada and around the world. While the current literature on energy poverty largely focuses on the experiences of people utilizing energy services to stay warm during cold winter temperatures, little is known about experiences of energy poverty during summertime heat. This gap is especially urgent since current climate models suggest that cities are likely to experience extreme heat conditions more frequently in the future. This research investigates how people use energy services, such as air conditioning and fans, among other strategies to …

Religion In Modern Sports Fanaticism: From Classical Antiquity To Online Sports Forums, Matthew Prokopiw

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In tracing the concept of religion to its theorization and study by French sociologist Émile Durkheim this dissertation presents concrete and abstract support for a commonly forwarded proposition: fanaticism of the modern spectacle of sports amounts to religiosity, characterized by a social logic of vitality and totemism, notably present as well in the ancient Roman spectacle and Greek agōn. Based in the contemporary theory of French sociologist Michel Maffesoli, following Durkheim and the study of the sacred by Le Collège de Sociologie, this dissertation contributes an immersive and critical investigation into the nascent but encompassing online dimension of fanaticism …

Making Sense Of Online Public Health Debates With Visual Analytics Systems, Anton Ninkov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Online debates occur frequently and on a wide variety of topics. Particularly, online debates about various public health topics (e.g., vaccines, statins, cannabis, dieting plans) are prevalent in today’s society. These debates are important because of the real-world implications they can have on public health. Therefore, it is important for public health stakeholders (i.e., those with a vested interest in public health) and the general public to have the ability to make sense of these debates quickly and effectively. This dissertation investigates ways of enabling sense-making of these debates with the use of visual analytics systems (VASes). VASes are computational …

The Use Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Based Photogrammetric Point Cloud Data For Winter Wheat Intra-Field Variable Retrieval And Yield Estimation In Southwestern Ontario, Yang Song

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Precision agriculture uses high spatial and temporal resolution soil and crop information to control the crop intra-field variability to achieve optimal economic benefit and environmental resources sustainable development. As a new imagery collection platform between airborne and ground measurements, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is used to collect high spatial resolution images at a user selected period for precision agriculture. Most studies extract crop parameters from the UAV-based orthomosaic imagery using spectral methods derived from the satellite and airborne based remote sensing. The new dataset, photogrammetric point cloud data (PCD), generated from the Structure from Motion (SfM) methods using the UAV-based …

Conscious Perception And Implicit Memory Formation Of A Narrative Presented During Sleep, Sarah E. Hollywood

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present study sought to determine the extent of conscious awareness and implicit memory formation of a narrative presented during sleep. Participants were played an excerpt of J.D. Salinger’s Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes while napping. Afterwards, participants completed a task designed to assess implicit memory to determine if they had formed any memories about words that were either directly stated in the story, or directly related to the plot. Participants who heard the story while asleep responded more quickly to words that had appeared in the story than to words from another story they had not heard. Exactly …

Examination Of Institutional Investment In The United States Of America From 1999 To 2018, Martin R. Lefebvre

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the evolution of spatial preference of institutional investors located in the United States of America for the time period of 1999 to 2018 using a mix of exploratory data analysis techniques and more sophisticated space-time and machine learning techniques such as ESRI Space-Time cube and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling. This thesis concludes that despite having the appearance of a footloose industry due to almost negligible fixed costs, institutional investors are attracted to highly dynamic urban centres and on the 20 year time horizon, appear surprisingly sticky in their location preference. This is consistent with the belief …

Investigating Quality Of Care For Diabetes Mellitus, Congestive Heart Failure And Chronic Kidney Disease In Ontario’S Family Health Group And Family Health Organization Models, Mary Aderayo Bamimore

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background and objectives: In Ontario, primary care reform was initiated in the early 2000s with an aim to improve the quality of primary care. Hence, the provincial government restructured family physicians’ remuneration package. Prior to the reform, most physicians received majority of their income through fee-for-service (FFS). In Ontario, Family Health Group (FHG) and Family Health Organization (FHO) are dominant post-reform primary care models that remunerate family physicians through blended FFS and blended capitation, respectively. In three studies, we compared physicians in FHGs and FHOs in terms of their care provision for persons with diabetes mellitus (1^st study), …

Adding Data-Driven Modelling To Causal Inference And Financial Economics, Sha Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis, which consists of three chapters, aims to either adapt ML to solve important questions in financial markets, or apply state-of-the art ML methodologies that specifically target on economic causal inference problems. The first chapter is adapted from a paper co-authored with Lars Stentoft and published on the Journal of Portfolio Management in 2019. We modified a ML model in order to develop a portfolio tracking strategy that solves a pain point for investors. Many investors try to replicate the performance of certain financial instrument, such as a hedge fund strategy return index for its desirable risk-return profile. However, …

Children’S Perspectives On The Social Exclusion Of Peers With Behavioural Difficulties, Kayla Edwards

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Children who display externalizing behaviours are more likely than their peers to experience social exclusion. To better examine this topic, the perspectives of peers were investigated. Thirty-six participants were interviewed from a school in Southwestern Ontario. Participants were asked why they believe children with behavioural difficulties may be socially excluded by peers. Unique statements were extracted from the transcribed data. Participants were invited back to sort the statements into meaningful categories. Sorted data were analyzed using multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis. A five-cluster solution was selected as the best conceptual and statistical fit for the data. The clusters in this …

Essays On Student Loans And Returns To Skill, Qian Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three studies, which explore topics related to labor economics. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the returns on student loans and student loan repayment policy, respectively. Chapter 4 examines the returns to skill and the evolution of skills at older ages.

In Chapter 2 (co-authored with Lance Lochner), we study rates of return on government student loans in Canada using novel administrative data from the Canada Student Loans Program. We exploit rich information on personal characteristics, loan amounts, field of study, and institution of attendance to explain differences in rates of return across different types of borrowers. …

Blackness, Gender And The State: Afro Women's Organizations In Contemporary Ecuador, Beatriz A. Juarez-Rodriguez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation presents an ethnographic analysis of the Afro women’s social organization CONAMUNE (Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras del Ecuador), the political thought and praxis of its members and their entanglement with myriad ethno-racial political spaces in contemporary Ecuador. CONAMUNE is an umbrella organization comprised of Afro women’s grassroots organizations from different provinces of Ecuador. In addition to their activities within CONAMUNE, many of the women with whom I worked have sought out positions of government employment or political representation (as teachers and principals, as employees of government ministries or programs, as local municipal councillors, etc.), through which they bring …

Essays On Share Repurchases And Boom-Bust Cycles, Bohan Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My doctoral dissertation consists of three chapters on financial economics. In the first chapter, I examine whether a firm's share repurchases and issuances reveal information on its future 2-year stock returns. Firm-quarter observations with repurchases or issuances are each divided into twenty 5-percentile bins sorted by their magnitude. I regress 2-year future stock returns on the bins and find a non-linear relationship between the change in shares outstanding and returns. Firms making repurchases (issuances) of less than 9.3% (1.4%) of shares outstanding outperform the equal-weight portfolio by 6.4% (3.9%). These observations account for 90% of repurchases and 70% of issuances. …

The Language Vitality Of Nahuatl In Santiago Tlaxco, Mexico, Grace Gomashie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis assesses the language vitality of Nahuatl (also known as Mexicano) in Santiago Tlaxco, a rural bilingual community in the municipality of Chiconcuautla, located in Puebla, Mexico, in the face of the growing trend of language endangerment for many Indigenous languages. It explores the linguistic use and attitudes of community members, and how they contribute to language maintenance and language shift of Nahuatl. The main research questions are: a) what are the language use patterns of the community? and b) what are the prevailing language attitudes of this Nahuatl-speaking community towards its Indigenous language? Data on the language practices …

Understanding The Determinants Of The Cost Of Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery, Hun Lee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Introduction: The relationship between patient demographics, clinical factors, and cost of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) is complex. Investigation of these relationships is important to aid clinical practice and inform reimbursement models. This thesis analyzes multiple different domains in order to understand the significant factors that impact the cost of CABG at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC).

Methods: Model selection, construction of nested descriptive models, exploration of mediation analysis of the impact of peri-operative factors and cost through length of stay, and construction of estimative models were performed.

Results: Several baseline characteristics, socio-demographics, peri-operative variables, and post-operative variables were …

The Social Construction Of The Chinese By Canada, Anna Chen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study aims to investigate why contemporary Chinese individuals in Canada continue to be affected by discriminatory practices of the past. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theoretical work, the following questions are addressed: (1) How did Canadian discipline impact the social construction of the Chinese and what it means to be Chinese?; (2) How did the Chinese become discursively marked as racial subjects?; (3) What are the discourses responsible for the social exclusion of the Chinese in Canada? To answer these questions, this study uses Foucault’s genealogical approach to unearth the discursive practices responsible for legitimizing and normalizing the ‘othering’ of …

Treasure Amongst The Ruins: The Policy And Practices Of Adaptive Reuse Of Urban Industrial Buildings In Ontario, Marcello Vecchio

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The practice of adaptive reuse is a unique concept of city building, where demolition and traditional brownfield redevelopment have been common practice. Though an already established method, adaptive reuse is becoming increasingly popular due to a greater intensity to protect heritage, reuse materials and structures, and offer unique architectural spaces. To achieve this, there must be sufficient policy in place to incentivize and mitigate the increase cost and risk which are usually associated with this type of development. This thesis combines a province-wide content analysis of Official Plans in Ontario’s 51 cities, with a more in-depth case study investigation on …

The Psychosocial Functioning Of Children With Chronic Health Conditions: A Meta-Analysis, Serena Thompson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Chronic health conditions are highly prevalent among childhood populations and lead to restrictions in everyday life. Previous research indicates that children and youth with a chronic health condition are at an elevated risk of psychosocial difficulties, including mental illness and social exclusion, compared to typically developing populations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of chronic health conditions on psychosocial factors during childhood by comparing the psychosocial functioning of children with chronic health conditions and children without chronic illnesses using a meta-analysis. Specifically, three elements of psychosocial functioning were examined, (a) social-emotional functioning, (b) behavioural functioning, …

The Impact Of Levodopa Administration On Learning From Short-Term And Long-Term Action Consequences: A Paradigm Validation., Masood Rezaei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Behavioral and neuroimaging studies have identified two valuation systems in the human brain for controlling behavior known as model-free (MF) and model-based (MB). MF is based on immediate evaluation and MB is based on long-term evaluation of the outcome of our decisions. Previous studies suggest that dopamine baseline activity may play an important role in the balance between the two systems and determine how they compete or interact in controlling our actions. The overarching aims of this study is to investigate the impact of levodopa administration on learning from immediate and long-term action consequences, and to dissociate the role of …

Toward A Fluid Cinematic Spectatorship And Desire: Revisiting Laura Mulvey’S Psychoanalytic Film Theories, Taylor Ashton Mcgoey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis project re-evaluates Laura Mulvey’s film theories regarding psychoanalysis and the “male gaze,” first found in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). By re-evaluating the limitations of Mulvey’s use of the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic model this project seeks to understand the desires and processes of identification of cinematic spectators who reject the ideological imperative of the “male gaze”. As many critics have noted, Mulvey’s initial examination of cinema does not account for LGBTQ+ spectators and/or black spectators who occupy looking relations that reject cis-normative and heteronormative white Hollywood cinematic conventions. From this standpoint, we begin the …

Hiv Vulnerability And Resilience Among Heterosexual African, Caribbean And Black Men In London Ontario, Canada, Roger Antabe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Since Canada’s first HIV diagnosis in 1981, prevalence rates have remained below endemic levels. This, however, tends to mask realities of HIV infection among sub-populations like heterosexual men of African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) descent, who experience increased risk of infection compared to other groups. Research to unpack ACB men’s vulnerability to HIV has prioritized behavioral risk factors, including the endorsement of traditional masculinity, partner concurrency, condomless sex, and poor use of preventive health services. As such, recommendations from these studies have centered on behavioral changes, which understate the role of structural risk factors in ACB men’s HIV vulnerability. Furthermore, …