Background: The rights of children to freedom of expression and receiving information are underpinned by Articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989), which was ratified by the Malaysian government in 1995. There has been increasing shifts toward recognising the importance of children’s rights with many initiatives to realise and uphold the rights of children in Malaysia. However, no previous studies of children’s participation have been conducted in Malaysia. The aim of this study was to explore children’s participation in decisions regarding their nursing care from the perspective of the children, their parents, and nurses in an oncological ward in Malaysia. Methods: This was a focused ethnographic study. Participant observation was carried out with 61 participants (21 children, 21 parents, and 19 nurses) in the paediatric oncology-haematological ward, Malaysia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 participants (6 children, 7 parents, and 8 nurses). The existing documents pertinent to the research focus were examined to validate the participant observations and interview findings. Data were analysed using Roper and Shapira’s (2000) focused ethnographic data analysis techniques. Findings: There were different degrees of the participation of children in decisions among children diagnosed with leukaemia, including: being physically present, being informed, being consulted where children can express their wishes and opinions during the provision of nursing care, and being able to make their own decisions in relation to their nursing care. The degrees to which children participated in decisions fluctuated throughout the course of their hospitalization; moving from lesser degrees of participation (passive participant) to greater involvement (active participant) and vice-versa. The extent to which children participated in decisions were significantly influenced by the children’s preferences for participation. The preferences of children also fluctuated over the course of their illness and treatment. There were several factors contributing to children’s participation in decisions including; i) interpersonal relations in the child-parent-nurse interactions; ii) experiences of the child (veteran or novice); iii) attitude of nurses; iv) parental role; and v) the ward policy. Conclusion: The children want to be involved and really appreciate participation in communication and decisions but their opportunities for participation are somewhat limited. This study calls for a flexible model to assess children’s preferences for participation and different forms of participation for children in relation to decision-making in paediatric oncology.

A descriptive research methodology based on the principles of symbolic interactionism was employed to explore and explicate the meaning of experience of single-parenting with adolescents. Prior research has indicated that single-mothers experience more psychological and emotional problems than two-parent mothers, and that adolescents from single-parent families have more behavioural, emotional, and academic problems than adolescents from two-parent families. However, recent studies have reported that family processes, such as parent-adolescent relationships and parenting styles, rather than the family form itself are more strongly related to how adolescents adapt in single-parent families. As well, the meaning of the economic, social, and family challenges faced by single-parents affects their psychological well-being and their parenting abilities. Single-parents (n=16) were interviewed twice using an interview guide which comprised the basic conceptual domains of the study. These domains were challenges to single-parents and their families, supports needed, family structures and processes, parenting issues, parents' perceptions of their adolescents' adjustment, and the single-parent "self". Other data sources were utilized to triangulate the data to add depth and credibility. Means of triangulation included a focus group (n=10), interviews with adolescents (n=6), and interviews with key informants (n=5) who encounter a broad range of single-parent families through their professional affiliations. Theoretical and developmental perspectives drawn upon to inform and organize the data were Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological model, Kegan's constructive-developmental theory, and Baumrind's typology of parenting styles. The common challenges experienced by the participants identified by a thematic analysis of the data were increased responsibilities, means of coping with increased demands, the other parent, social isolation, negative social expectations, financial constraints, and extenuating circumstances related to adolescents' learning, behavioural, or health problems. The challenges that single-parents face and their resources available to buffer the effects of these challenges can be conceptualized using Bronfenbrenner's social-ecological model. This transactional model enables the assessment of families in relation to challenges and supports from both proximal and distal environments which may affect the families' strengths, vulnerabilities, and development. The participants described a process of development through which they redefined their roles and relationships, reorganized their families' internal and external supports, and re-established a social role. Resolution of these processes led to a transformation of their identities and a more differentiated way of constructing meaning of their situation as single-parents. This transformation affected the parents' capability to mediate their families' functioning and to meet the culture's demands of parents (Kegan, 1994), for example to manage family boundaries, set limits, and facilitate development. The results have implications for how we understand single-parent families. The more positive portrait of single-parenting painted by these participants illustrated that despite challenges and risks, single-parent families are a viable family form capable of raising adolescents effectively. Prevention of such problems as adolescent alienation and risk lie in strengthening supportive family relationships and community networks to counterbalance the impact of ongoing challenges. Clinical approaches should assist single-parents to realign family roles and structures, to integrate their internal and external resources, and to develop a positive single-parent identity. Affirmation of the single-parent family as a legitimate and viable family form enables single-parents to challenge negative stereotypes that can minimize their ability to function effectively. Recommendations for further research include exploration of the adolescents' perspectives of growing up in a single-parent family, and also exploration of single-fathers' perspectives. / Graduate

ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed neurobehavioral disorder among children. While ADHD in Western countries has long been recognized and increasingly diagnosed in recent years, there is a growing recognition of this disorder as a significant cross-cultural phenomenon. Saudi studies to date vary in their estimation of prevalence of ADHD, with overall prevalence estimated to be between 3.5% and 6.5%, while the worldwide prevalence of ADHD is 5.29%.This study is a thesis by three articles. The first article examines the representations of ADHD by the Saudi ADHD Society members on Twitter because, as the only charity serving people with ADHD in Saudi Arabia, they have come to define how ADHD is talked about there. The Society’s Twitter account (@adhdarabia) has over 13,500 followers. Tweets posted between December 1st, 2016 and January 31st, 2017 were collected, with those announcing events and retweets from other accounts eliminated. This resulted in 141 tweets discussing the nature, causation, and treatment of ADHD. The content of these tweets was analyzed using Foucauldian discourse analysis. Findings reveal that the Society’s Twitter account shows members constructing ADHD as an experience of suffering; their comments position children with ADHD as sufferers, often subject to additional problems. An alternative discursive construction of ADHD is that caring for a child with ADHD is a ‘different’ kind of responsibility for parents and teachers, who must be advised by ‘experts’. The implications of these discourses are discussed in this paper.The second article uncovers the lived experience of parents with a child who has had an ADHD diagnosis in Saudi Arabia, and examines how their experiences can be understood in relation to the multiple and competing discourses of ADHD that frame their daily lives. Which discourses do parents draw upon – and reinforce – as they describe their experiences of ADHD, and which discourses do they resist? This study carried out in-depth interviews with seven Saudi parents who have at least one child diagnosed with ADHD, or any of its subtypes, between the ages of two and 11. Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) is applied in analyzing parental ADHD discourses, uncovering how these parents made sense of ADHD pre- and post-diagnosis. Four main discourses emerged in the process: ADHD as normal behavior (pre-diagnosis), and ADHD as emerging from supernatural/religious, medical, and social environment contexts (post-diagnosis). This paper also emphasises that the causes of ADHD must be considered in the wider context of misconceptions and uncertainty among Saudi parents. All the participants in this research were influenced by a combination of discourses in their attempts to make sense of their children’s symptoms.The third article explores the discourses drawn upon, reinforced and resisted by six Saudi teachers and four clinicians as they describe their experiences and understanding of ADHD. Saudi clinicians approach ADHD as an extension of American medical views in terms of its causes, diagnosis and treatment. Alarmingly, in light of the shortage of recommended ADHD medications, there are accounts of antipsychotic medications being prescribed for children. Saudi teachers’ views of ADHD were an extension of the medical discourse; this meant that students’ strengths were ignored and the focus was entirely on negative behavioral patterns. Despite a tendency to attribute ADHD to genetics, teachers objectified students who ‘acted out’ as having ADHD or even other disorders (when the child’s behavior or symptoms diverged from their limited understanding of ADHD). Parents who do not comply with teachers’ suggestions are blamed for any lack of improvement in the child’s behavior or academic attainment. Teachers’ accounts also revealed some serious pressures on them as a result of large class sizes and a lack of training in how to teach and manage students with ADHD. These findings have implications for individuals and institutions providing ADHD education to both doctors and teachers, and reinforce calls for researchers to examine ADHD outside of the genetic ‘box’.

Current political forces see education as a potential solution to the economic slide the United States is experiencing. This push toward higher education and resulting employment creates a conflict for women expected by society to serve as primary caregivers of children. Research suggests that working mothers experience feelings of guilt related to the conflict between parenting and employment roles that may come from failure to personify the intensive mothering ideology. Student parents potentially share this guilt but few studies exist that investigate this. The results of this study suggest that student parents do experience guilt and identify relationships between guilt, gender, and relationship status. The nature of these relationships is unclear at this time, highlighting the need for further research

Text in Afrikaans / Die doel van hierdie studie was om die belewinge van die kind in die enkelouergesin te identifiseer. Die belewinge van skok, skuldgevoelens, woede, verwarring, vrees, onsekerheid, angs, oorbeskerming, sosiale verleentheid, ontoereikendheid, verwerping, verlies en verlange, smart en depressie is in die literatuur gevind. Daar is .ook positi.ewe belewinge gevind, asook dat belewinge onderdruk word. Ba.ie van die belewinge stem ooreen ongeag die oorsaak van die verlies, hetsy egskeiding of dood. Die empiriese studie bet bevestig dat onrealistiese betekenisgewing onderliggend aan bogenoemde belewinge is en dat die opvoedingsituasie problemati.es is omdat daar nie in die behoeftes van die kind voorsien word nie. Voorts is bevind dat faktore wat onderliggend is aan ongunstige belewinge in 'n groot mate ophetbaar is. Sekere aanbevelings is na aanleiding van die studie gedoen wat as riglyne gebruik kan word in die volwassene se bemoeienis met die kind in die enkelouergesin. / The object was to identify the experiences of a child in a single parent family. Experience such as guilt, anger, confusion, fear, insecurity, anguish, overprotectiveness, social embarrassment, inadequacy, rejection, a feeling of loss and yearning, grief and depression have been found in the literature studied. Favourable experiences have also been established as well as the fact that experiences are suppressed. Many experiences show a similarity regardless of the cause of the loss, be it divorce or death. The empirical study has confirmed that unrealistic meaning attribution is subjacent to these experiences and that educational problems exist due to the fact that provision for the needs of the child has not been made. Futhermore, it has also been found that factors 'Yhich are subjacent to these unfavourable experiences can, to a large extent be neutralized. Thus recommendations which can be guidelines for adult intervention with a child in a single parent family, have been made. / Psychology of Education / M. Ed. (Voorligting)

The major purpose of the thesis is to attempt to understand some of the reasons for children's differential achievement in arithmetic. Research has associated various factors with arithmetic performance, however, usually in isolation. The present study examines a combination of social, environmental, and cognitive factors as related to arithmetic achievement, based on a sample of 91 8-9-year-old Greek children who were identified as belonging into one of three levels of arithmetic ability, above average, average, and below average, and a group of children with mild reading difficulties. Children in the math ability groups had at least average reading performance. Social and environmental factors included self-concepts, attitudes and home practices, parental help and encouragement, and parentschool relations and academic status. Cognitive components included knowledge and skill in formal and informal arithmetic and working memory efficiency. As part of the study, children were interviewed on the social and environmental factors and went through a battery of tests on the cognitive factors. Children's parents filled out a questionnaire. From the total of social and environmental factors, children's attitudes to arithmetic, parents' beliefs of children's attitudes, and mothers' academic status were associated with children's arithmetic achievement. From the total of cognitive factors, knowledge and skill in informal arithmetic and base ten system, knowledge of addition facts, problem-solving skills, speech articulation, and speed of reciting even numbers predicted children's arithmetic achievement. When both social and environmental and cognitive factors regressed on children's performance, mothers' beliefs of their child's attitudes, mothers' academic level, knowledge of informal arithmetic and base ten system, and problem-solving skills predicted children's achievement in arithmetic.

abstract: Much of the current literature regarding the well being of children of incarcerated parents has focused largely on the trauma that results from losing a parent to incarceration. Little research has been dedicated to examining the pre-existing trauma and negative life experiences these children are exposed to prior to parental incarceration. Using cross-sectional data on children (N = 1,221) from a representative study of Arizona Department of Corrections inmates, the present study examines the relationships among children who have contact with Child Protective Services (CPS) prior to parental incarceration and: (1) parental substance abuse, (2) exposure to violence and (3) parental mental illness. Nearly a quarter of all children whose inmate parents were interviewed were contacted by CPS before experiencing parental incarceration. Children whose inmate parents reported being unemployed or less involved in the lives of their children and children who were reportedly exposed to violence were significantly more likely to have been contacted by CPS prior to experiencing parental incarceration as were younger children. The children of incarcerated mothers were more likely to have been contacted by CPS than were the children of incarcerated fathers. This effect remained even after controlling for additional parent, child and family risk factors for CPS contact such as prior history of incarceration and race. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2014

No description available.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract.

Scholars of adolescence have identified parents and peers as two important contexts of development. This dissertation examines an understudied linkage between these two contexts: parents' management of adolescents' friendships. A conceptual model for thinking about parents' management of adolescents' peer relationships was developed and examined as part of the study. Specifically, four peer management behaviors were examined: communicating preferences, communicating disapproval, supporting friendships, and information-seeking. The nature of parents' beliefs about their adolescents' friends (specifically, parents' perceived efficacy in managing their adolescents' friends and parents' concerns about their adolescents' friendships) was also explored. To further evaluate linkages suggested by the conceptual model, connections between parents' beliefs about adolescents' peers and their peer management behaviors were investigated. These aspects of managing adolescents' friendships were then examined for linkages, suggested by the conceptual model, to adolescents' reported friendships (i.e., the deviant and prosocial orientations of their friends) and psychosocial adjustment (i.e., their reported engagement in school and in problem behaviors). The participants for the study were 452 adolescents and 269 parents (161 mothers and 108 fathers). Data were collected from the adolescents at two time points, in the spring of 1997 and the spring of 1998, resulting in longitudinal information for 170 adolescents. Approximately six months after the first data collection for adolescents, questionnaire packages were sent home for parents' participation. The study results suggest that parents use the four management behaviors described, albeit relatively infrequently. Additionally, the more parents engaged in one peer management behavior, the more they engaged in the other peer management behaviors. Parents also felt relatively efficacious in managing their adolescents' friendships and were generally unconcerned about their adolescents' friendships. In general, mothers and fathers held similar beliefs about adolescents' friendships, and were similar in their management of their adolescents' friendships. When the relationships between parents' beliefs about peers and management behaviors to adolescents' friendships and psychosocial adjustment were examined, some interesting linkages were revealed. For example, mothers and fathers reported being more concerned about their adolescents' friendships when their adolescents were engaged in more problem behaviors. When relationships to parents' peer management behaviors were examined, adolescents' problem behaviors and deviant friends emerged as significant predictors of parents' management behaviors, showing relationships to mothers' and fathers' communicating disapproval and information-seeking, as well as to fathers' supporting friendships. For mothers, their concerns also emerged as a significant predictor of their peer management behaviors, showing relationships with supporting friendships and information-seeking. For fathers, feeling efficacious in managing adolescents' friendships was more consistently related to their peer management behaviors than were their concerns about adolescents' friendships. Finally, parents' concerns about adolescents' friends, communicating disapproval and information-seeking were examined for relationships to change in adolescents' deviant friendships and psychosocial adjustment. These analyses revealed that when adolescents' school engagement increased, fathers communicated disapproval more and when adolescents' school engagement decreased, fathers sought information about their adolescents' friends more often. The results of this study provide insight into parents' management of adolescents' friendships and suggest avenues for further research. These avenues and other unexplored linkages suggested by the conceptual model are the substantive focus of the discussion. / Graduate