Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Efficacy Of Psychosocial Services In Comprehensive Cancer Care: A Program Evaluation, Nicola B. Mucci

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

On average, regardless of other factors, persons affected by cancer will experience some level of distress associated with the disease and its sequelae. Left untreated, psychosocial problems can, and often do, adversely affect a person's health and healthcare treatment. As a result, national initiatives have been implemented to recognize and treat psychosocial stressors to optimize a person's functioning and facilitate successful movement through the medical system. A program evaluation was conducted to examine how Providence Regional Cancer Partnership has addressed the psychosocial needs of its patient population. Specifically, the psychosocial services department, Patient Support Services, was evaluated to understand how …

Vicarious Battering: The Experience Of Intervening At A Domestic Violence-Focused Supervised Visitation Center, Tracee Parker

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This descriptive phenomenological research illustrated the experience of women who worked in a supervised visitation program (SVP) specifically developed to address safety concerns related to allegations of domestic violence. The SVP policies and procedures were designed not only to prevent physical assault and abduction but also to intervene in vicarious battering—a term introduced to describe the attempts by men who battered to exert control over, undermine, and/or intimidate the mothers of their children via interactions with their children and the visitation staff. The results of this research demonstrated the challenges of intervening in the context of court-ordered supervised visitation. Data …

The Lilead Survey: A National Study Of District-Level Library Supervisors: The Position, Office, And Characteristics Of The Supervisor, Ann Carlson Weeks, Jeffrey Discala, Diane L. Barlow, Sheri A. Massey, Christie Kodama, Kelsey Jarrell, Leah Jacobs, Alexandra Moses, Rebecca Follman, Rosemary Hall

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The school district library supervisor occupies a pivotal position in library and information services programs that support and enhance the instructional efforts of a school district: providing leadership; advocating for the programs; supporting, advising, and providing professional development to building-level librarians; and representing school library programs to stakeholders in the school system and the community at large. With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Lilead Project was founded at the University of Maryland in 2011 to "study, support, and build community among school district library supervisors" (Lilead Project n.d.). To gain a better understanding of supervisors--who …

School Library Advocacy Success- Perceptions In Context, Elizabeth Burns

STEMPS Faculty Publications

School librarians must be able to articulate the value of the educational impact they have on students and do so in a manner that is meaningful to their stakeholders (Kirkland, 2012). Little research (Ewbank, 2011; Haycock, 2003; Oberg, 2006) exists examining effective advocacy practices or the perceptions of school library programs by stakeholders when school librarians are strong advocates for their programs. This study addresses this gap and explores perceived advocacy success by school librarians, as well as their stakeholders, and the strategies implemented to gain support for the school library program. This study employed a mixed method explanatory research …

Paleoparasitological Evidence Of Pinworm (Enterobius Vermicularis) Infection In A Female Adolescent Residing In Ancient Tehran (Iran) 7000 Years Ago, Niloofar Paknazhad, Gholamreza Mowlavi, Jean Dupouy Camet, Mohammad Esmaeili Jelodar, Iraj Mobedi, Mahsasadat Makki, Eshrat Beigom Kia, Mostafa Rezaeian, Mehdi Mohebali, Siamak Sarlak, Faezeh Najafi

Harold W. Manter Laboratory: Library Materials

Background: The Molavi street archeological site south of Tehran, Iran accidentally provided a unique opportunity for paleoparasitological studies in Iran. A female skeleton was unearthed and evaluated to be 7,000 years old. Soil samples were collected around the pelvic and sacrum bones.

Findings: Careful microscopic investigation of rehydrated soil samples revealed the presence of one Enterobius vermicularis egg attached to the skeleton sacral region.

Conclusion: The present finding likely represents the oldest evidence of a human pinworm infection in Asia.

Committing To The Non-Traditional: The Path To The Incorporation Of 3d Models In An Online Journal, Dillon Mark Wackerman, Robert Z. Selden Jr.

Fondren Library Research

In 2013 Dr. Robert Selden approached the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) inquiring about the possibility of including interactive 3D models in a digital collection. Working with Dr. Selden, the CDS found a platform to which these models could be deposited and displayed. Concurrently, the CDS was actively promoting SFA’s institutional repository, SFA ScholarWorks. One guiding idea behind these IR-focused activities was the emphasis of the legitimacy of non-traditional works in respect to SFA ScholarWorks and the academic community as a whole. This idea and acceptance of the non-traditional was maintained as the …

The United States, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The United States is an example of how three branches of government can stall and derail reform initiatives. The judiciary in particular is central to the US experience with political finance reform, repeatedly striking down legislation on party finance, despite consensus from executive and legislative branches. The most recent Supreme Court ruling, in April 2014, struck down one of the last remaining federal regulations, on the overall campaign contribution limits for individuals. At a subnational level, the United States does, however, see significant variations in terms of regulations on the flow of money into politics at a state level. In …

The Politics Of Global Humanitarianism: R2p Before And After Libya, Michael W. Doyle

Faculty Scholarship

The responsibility to protect (R2P) is both a license for and a leash against forcible intervention. It succeeded in widening the scope of legitimate armed intervention by licensing some (protective) interventions but only because it was seen as a leash against other (exploitative) interventions. This chapter traces the origins of the R2P doctrine in the Kosovo and ICISS reports, highlights the special features of the 2005 Outcome Document, notes how the doctrine was strengthened in practice by careful attention to non-coercive measures in Myanmar, Kenya, and Guinea, and then examines the landmark case of its use to sanction and then …

Cyberwar, International Politics, And Institutional Design, Daniel Abebe

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, the breadth of the president’s warmaking authority has been governed by the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, and, over time, historical practice; in short, the president’s powers are constrained by a well-developed body of US foreign relations law. But the prospect of a new kind of conflict — cyberwar — potentially challenges the existing regulatory regime, which rests on assumptions that are common to traditional, conventional war. For some, the complexities of cyberwar generate new foreign relations–law questions about the president’s authority to engage in offensive cyberoperations, and they thus necessitate a new regulatory framework. For …

Executive Federalism Comes To America, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This Article proposes a different way of thinking about contemporary American governance, looking to an established foreign practice. Executive federalism – “processes of intergovernmental negotiation that are dominated by the executives of the different governments within the federal system” – is pervasive in parliamentary federations, such as Canada, Australia, and the European Union. Given the American separation of powers arrangement, executive federalism has been thought absent, even “impossible,” in the United States. But the partisan dynamics that have gridlocked Congress and empowered both federal and state executives have generated a distinctive American variant.

Viewing American law and politics through the …

Early Prerogative And Administrative Power: A Response To Paul Craig, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

What does English experience imply about American constitutional law? My book, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, argues that federal administrative power generally is unconstitutional. In supporting this conclusion, the book observes that eighteenth-century Americans adopted their constitutions not only with their eyes on the future, but also looking over their shoulder at the past – especially the English past. This much should not be controversial. There remain, however, all sorts of questions about how to understand the English history and its relevance for early Americans.

In opposition to my claims about American law, Paul Craig lobs three critiques from across the …

Vermeule Unbound, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

My book asks Is Administrative Law Unlawful? Adrian Vermeule answers “No.” In support of his position, he claims that my book does not really make arguments from the U.S. Constitution, that it foolishly denounces administrative power for lacking legislative authorization, that it grossly misunderstands this power and the underlying judicial doctrines, and ultimately that I argue “like a child.”

My book actually presents a new conception of administrative power, its history, and its unconstitutionality; as Vermeule has noted elsewhere, it offers a new paradigm. Readers therefore should take seriously the arguments against the book. They also, however, should recognize that …

Caring In Transition: Home Care Workers’ Experiences Of Care Relationships In Shanghai, China, Liu Hong

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation reports a qualitative study of 23 care workers in the home care program for older people in Shanghai, China. Using grounded theory methodology, a model was developed to account for care workers’ experiences of relationships with older clients. Care workers were found to resist the image of care work as demeaning labour performed by lowly migrant workers and re-construct care as valuable work for those in need accomplished by a caring self. As a mechanism of care relationship formation, care workers engage in tuning, a dynamic process of identity negotiation that shifts in between two contrasting states: …

Space-Time Modelling Of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Assessing Leptospirosis Risk In Sri Lanka, Cameron C F Plouffe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this research, models were developed to analyze leptospirosis incidence in Sri Lanka and its relation to rainfall. Before any leptospirosis risk models were developed, rainfall data were evaluated from an agro-ecological monitoring network for producing maps of total monthly rainfall in Sri Lanka. Four spatial interpolation techniques were compared: inverse distance weighting, thin-plate splines, ordinary kriging, and Bayesian kriging. Error metrics were used to validate interpolations against independent data. Satellite data were used to assess the spatial pattern of rainfall. Results indicated that Bayesian kriging and splines performed best in low and high rainfall, respectively. Rainfall maps generated from …

Social Justice And Worker Cooperatives, Gurveer Shaan Dhillon

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Social Justice (SJ) is an organizing principle of contemporary community psychology (CP); however, the concept and understanding of social justice in community psychology is undertheorized and narrow. Specifically, the concept of distributive justice, which has been a popular notion of social justice in community psychology discourse, does not translate well into transformative action. In order to address this issue, the research uses a qualitative approach to explore the understanding of social justice from the perspectives of worker-members of 5 worker cooperatives in Ontario, with the aim to contribute to an understanding of SJ that has transformative implications. A worker cooperative …

Representations Of Stranger And Non-Stranger Homicide: A Qualitative Content Analysis Of Canadian News Media, Gabriella L. Leone

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The news media play a significant role in shaping public narratives about homicide by the particular incidents that journalists choose to report – or not report – on. Newspapers, in particular, lack the benefit of constant imagery, special effects, and live-action reporting that T.V. news reports have, and, as a result, forces newspapers to construct sensational and newsworthy homicide stories in order to be competitive and gain readership. To achieve this, newspapers often disproportionately report on bizarre and atypical homicide incidents, which most frequently involve a stranger or unknown assailant. While there is substantive literature surrounding the newsworthiness of homicide …

More Than Stone And Iron: Indigenous History And Incarceration In Canada, 1834-1996, Seth Adema

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines Indigenous (First Nation, Métis, and Inuit) history as played out in Canadian prisons. It argues that in the prison, processes of colonialism, decolonization, and neocolonialism took place simultaneously. In the nineteenth century, the prison was built as part of a network of colonial institutions and polices. It was imagined, designed, and built by representatives of the Canadian state alongside other colonial institutions, drawing on similar intellectual traditions. It maintains the imprint of this colonial origin. Prisons also became arenas for Indigenous cultural exchange and cultural creation, which in most cases subverted the logic of the prison. This …

Debt Financed Migration To Consumption Smoothing: Tracing The Link Between Migration And Food Security In Bangladesh, Mohammad Moniruzzaman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation is primarily focused on migration and food security linkages, more specifically the impact of migrants’ remittances on household food security, and the role of debt in financing migration. Using a multi-methods approach the dissertation focuses on the household level, but also sheds light on the related policy landscape linked to these resource issues. The dissertation consists of seven chapters, with four research finding chapters that are each self-contained and interdisciplinary. Each of these four chapters adds conceptually and empirically to the existing literature on migration and development.

Chapters one and two provide the introduction and literature review. Chapter …

Acculturation And Post-Immigration Changes In Obesity, Physical Activity, And Nutrition: Comparing Hispanics And Asians In The Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada., Michele Vitale Mr., Sean Doherty

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

OBJECTIVES: The acculturation hypothesis speculates that as new immigrants get exposed to more obesogenic environments, they progressively acquire the unhealthy lifestyles of the host society, and their obesity risk gradually increases since time of arrival. However, the consistency of the presumed acculturation effect across immigrant groups and gender, and the reasons behind individual changes in lifestyle behaviors remain unclear. Thus, this study investigated the acculturation hypothesis in the Canadian context by comparing two foreign groups, Hispanics and East/Southeast Asians, which present contrasting post-settlement obesity patterns and behavioral trends.

Methods: A 41-item questionnaire (including open-ended questions) was administered with 100 first-generation …

An Examination Of The Factors That Dictate The Relative Weighting Of Feedback And Feedforward Input For Speech Motor Control, Nichole E. Scheerer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Speech is arguably the most important form of human communication. Fluent speech production relies on auditory feedback for the planning, execution, and monitoring of speech movements. Auditory feedback is particularly important during the acquisition of speech, however, it has been suggested that over time speakers rely less on auditory feedback as they develop robust sensorimotor representations that allow speech motor commands to be executed in a feedforward manner. The studies reported in this thesis recorded speaker’s vocal and neural responses to altered auditory feedback in order to explore the factors that dictate the relative importance of auditory feedback for speech …

Exploring Women’S Perspectives Of Living With Mental Illness, Stigma, And Receiving Community Services, Alexa L. Stovold, Magnus Mfoafo-M'Carthy

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) (2015), one in five individuals will experience mental illness personally, which means that all Canadians will be indirectly (or directly) influenced by mental illness at some point in their life. Unfortunately, due to historical trends and negative stereotypes mental illness has become heavily stigmatized (Camp, Finlay, and Lyons, 2002; Chernomas, Clarke, and Chisholm, 2000; Link, Struening, Neese-Todd, Asmussen, and Phelan, 2001; Sands, 2009; Szeto, Luong & Dobson, 2013). Although many studies have assessed the relationship between mental illness and stigma, little research has included a gender lens when exploring these topics. Therefore, …

Let's Talk About (Consensual) Sex!, Eleanor M. Mcgrath

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Legal, moral, and health-related issues around sexual consent have become prominent in the media in recent years. The public debate surrounding these news stories indicates a large discrepancy in people’s understanding of sexual consent and its legal implications. Motivated by the fact that university students are sexually victimized at rates exceeding the general population, this study explores factors that influence knowledge of legal aspects of sexual consent and confidence in using such knowledge of students/alumni, under 30 years old, from two southern Ontario universities. This quantitative study used an online survey design, and is grounded in a heuristic paradigm, with …

The Influence Of Real-Time Visual Feedback Training On Vocal Control, Justeena N. Zaki-Azat

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Trained singers have better vocal control when compared to singers without vocal training. The development of precise vocal control, like any motor skill, requires practice with some form of feedback, such as auditory feedback. In addition to auditory feedback, singing training programs use online visual feedback to improve performance accuracy. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the recent body of literature concerning the cognitive processing of vocal control, and apply this knowledge practically to develop an effective real-time visual feedback training program that enhances vocal control. In the first of two studies, non-singers and singers were randomly assigned …

Host Community Narratives Of Volunteer Tourism In Ghana: From Developmentalism To Social Justice, Danielle E. Lediard

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

It is evident from the research around volunteer tourism that local perspectives are sorely lacking. Instead of the focus of research being on the communities that volunteer tourism is meant to help, the emphasis remains on the experiences of the volunteers. Although many researchers identify the lack of attention directed towards host communities as a problem, there remains a lack of research in this area. The importance in the existing research, then, remains on the ‘us’ in developed countries instead of the those in developing countries that volunteer tourism is meant to help. The primary objective of this research is …

Investigating Grandiose Narcissism As A Personality Process, Miranda Giacomin

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Though grandiose subclinical narcissism has predominantly been studied in structural terms—focused on individuals’ general tendencies to be more or less narcissistic—narcissism may also function as a personality process (i.e., narcissism fluctuates within-individuals across contexts or situations). Narcissism has also been conceptualized as a dynamic self-regulatory system, a set of coherent, mutually-reinforcing attributes, which orients individuals toward positive self-feelings (e.g., Campbell & Foster, 2007). In this dissertation, I empirically examine the possibility that narcissism has a meaningful process or state component and is more context-dependent than previously assumed. Manuscript 1 found that making people feel more connected to others (by increasing …

"Getting Ahead" Versus "Getting Along": Examining The Role Of Agency And Communion In Prejudice, Courtney A. Lunt

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The topic of prejudice has been extensively studied by psychologists, but there has been no work directly examining whether agency (“getting ahead”) and communion (“getting along”) influence prejudiced attitudes. Across three studies we examined whether these dimensions differentially motivate prejudiced attitudes towards immigrants and Syrian refugees. We expected that agency would positively predict prejudice for those low in communion but not for those high in communion and that a self-threat would amplify this effect. Additionally, we examined unmitigated agency (focus on agency to the exclusion of communion, distinct from high agency and low communion as separate factors) as it has …

Analysis Of The Geosocial Landscape In The City Of Toronto, Courtney J. Jones

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Microblogging on geosocial platforms is a popular form of online communication where users post information about their daily lives and challenges. Since the launch of Twitter in 2006, information sharing through social media has become a largely unused data repository. Tweets often convey content about the users sentiment as it is happening. As such, Tweets can be viewed as a proxy of public mood. In this thesis, I performed a sentiment analysis of all public geo-located Tweets posted by a variety of Twitter users between September 2013 and October 2014. Each Tweet was processed through a custom algorithm to extract …

The Tale Of Soulmates Or A Marriage Of Convenience? Tying The Knot Of Human Rights With Development And Its Goals Through Donor Programs And Projects. The Case Of The Canadian International Development Agency (Cida), Taguhi Dallakyan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of the dissertation was to examine whether globally agreed development goals (Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a specific focus on poverty reduction) were operationalized in human rights, access to justice and rule of law programs/projects of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and of its executing partners. The analysis of the CIDA’s reports to Parliament and programing documents indicates that from the first years of the launch of MDGs, they were operationalized within the CIDA’s programing architecture and remained as a macro- level goal of the agency. MDGs, with the focus on poverty reduction, were treated as an ultimate …

An Evaluation Of The Impact Of Rent Assistance On Individuals Experiencing Chronic Homelessness In Waterloo Region, Courtney Pankratz Ms.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The main objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the addition of rent assistance to Waterloo Region’s existing housing and support services. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent comparison group design was used to compare the outcomes between two groups: (a) participants selected to receive rent assistance plus intensive support services (n = 26) and (b) participants receiving support services only (n = 25). Participants were interviewed at baseline and again six months later. It was hypothesized that participants receiving rent assistance would show significantly greater improvement on housing outcomes compared to the comparison group, including greater number of days …

The Nature Of Resident Participation In The Exploration And Installation Stages Of The Implementation Of A Community-Based Primary Prevention Program For Young Children, Jessica S. Noble Ms.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Resident participation is a vital factor and key prerequisite to the planning, development and implementation of community-driven projects. Early implementation evaluations, especially during the planning stages of project development, are critical to ensuring effective resident participation. Understanding the nature of resident participation, including the activities involved, facilitators, barriers, and outcomes of engagement, is essential for laying the foundation for program success and sustainability. This study was an implementation evaluation of a small community-based initiated project that examined resident participation, varying by degrees of involvement throughout the early stages of implementation. The sample (N = 11) consisted of three service-providers, …