<p> More U.S. men and women are returning from military service obligations with physical and mental disabilities which complicate their transition to civilian life. Few researchers, however, have examined the post service experiences of blind veterans and whether they are affected by societal expectations of people living with disabilities. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain knowledge about the experiences of U.S. veterans who suffered vision loss, and the influence of societal expectations on their lives. Hermeneutic phenomenological methodology was used to explore the personal meanings 8 veterans, who lost their vision during active service, attached to their experiences as they transition into daily routines. Using a 4 stage hermeneutic analysis and an interpretive lens resulted in the emergence of 6 major themes: (1) Never give up, (2) Mantras and declarations, (3) Previous beliefs and helping, (4) Struggles after vision loss (5) Current thought about disabilities and (6) Independence. Key findings suggested the veterans&rsquo; previous thoughts about disabilities hindered their initial adjustments to losing their vision. All of them experienced a time of distress that aligned with their previous thoughts concerning people living with obvious disabilities requiring help, and independent skills training programs greatly contributed to their increased confidence to live independently. Blind veterans&rsquo; personal descriptions of becoming blind may provide social workers, vocational rehabilitation counselors, and other human service professionals with information they can use to enhance programming and services for these individuals. Other implications for positive social change include the possible development of social change initiatives to change public perceptions of blind veterans.</p>

<p> This doctoral project focuses on the effectiveness of Relational Spirituality training administered to the direct support professionals at Cedar Lake Lodge, an intermediate care facility for adults with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities. The effectiveness was tested through administration of a survey prior to and following a professional training session offered by the researcher. The results seem to demonstrate an increase in spiritual integration for direct support professionals who participated. The reframing of spiritual life supports as an element of recognizing the individuality of each person supported at Cedar Lake Lodge seemed to have a positive effect on professionals of various age, religious, and cultural affiliations. The expanded perspective of spiritual support holds the potential for cultivating rich, person centered care that is mutually beneficial to the people offering and receiving care in the intermediate care facility setting.</p>

<p> Discovering the relationship between the occupational stress of community supervision officers (CSO), their supervision orientation and community supervision outcomes will improve the field of community corrections with respect to CSO job satisfaction, work performance, turn-over rates, workload distribution and training officers in evidence based practices. It also expands already rich research on offender recidivism. An ex post facto non-experimental quantitative design was used to describe the relationship between the independent variables (IV) under observation: the occupational stress level and supervision orientation of CSOs, and the dependent variables (DV): the number of client arrests on the caseloads of CSOs, the offenders&rsquo; successful completion of community supervision, the offenders&rsquo; unsuccessful completion of community supervision, and the number of violation reports a CSO sends to the releasing authorities for offenders on their caseloads. Two survey instruments called the Job Stress Survey (JSS) and the Revised Community Corrections Officer Orientation Scale (RCC) were used to collect data from CSOs. Multiple regression analyses of the IVs and DVs concluded that there was no statistically predictive relationship between the occupational stress and supervision orientation of CSOs. Additionally, there was no statistically predictive relationship between the occupational stress of CSOs, their supervision orientation, or community supervision outcomes. This research began a valuable discussion about the influence of stress on CSO interactions with their offenders, which may influence offender noncompliance with community supervision. Further research should include a larger representation of CSOs, so that more variables can be incorporated into a study for a more robust analysis.</p>

<p> Non-monogamous partnerships were vulnerable to jealousy and envy, although aspects that contributed had not been described. This qualitative phenomenological study examined jealousy and envy in non-monogamy using equity theory. The purposive sample drawn from Loving More Nonprofit, and 19 participants were interviewed. Transcripts were analyzed using NVivo for Mac using the modified van Kaam method. Study results included four major themes for research question 1: (a) agreements reduced jealousy, (b) boundary violations increased jealous, (c) communication mitigated jealousy, and (d) time allocation fueled jealousy, and three minor themes: (a) willingness to end problem relationships, (b) acceptance and reframing mitigated jealousy, and (c) NRE fueled jealousy; and three minor themes for research question 2: (a) challenges to partner choices fueled by envy, (b) resources allocation influenced by envy, and (c) self-comparison to metamours magnified by envy. Implications of themes were that agreements were used by the non-monogamous to manage jealousy and enhance equity perceptions but when boundary violations related to jealousy occurred and boundary turbulence and distrust often resulted. When jealousy arose the non-monogamous relied on communication strategies, such as acceptance and reframing and willingness to end relationships to preserve existing relationships through reciprocal altruism, and to mitigate jealousy and rebalance equity due to concerns of scarcity. Additionally, self-comparison to metamours&rsquo; attributes stimulated envy and appeared to magnify jealousy. Recommendation for professional practice included the importance of agreements for non-monogamous relationship maintenance, use of equity to manage boundaries, and the role that boundary turbulence plays in perceptions of fairness. Recommendations for further research included (a) a replication of the current qualitative phenomenological study using participants from outside of organizations to include a more diverse a sample to explore consistency of themes across a broader demographic of non-monogamous people (b) a quantitative descriptive study to operationalize jealousy and envy, (c) a quantitative correlational study to assess relationships between agreements, boundary violations and jealousy, and (d) a qualitative multiple case study to explore explicit versus implicit agreements.</p>

<p> Abstract of Dissertation The Power of Peers: Do Deviant Peers Facilitate or Suppress Genetic Contributions to Externalizing Behavior During adolescence, children&rsquo;s social norms are increasingly established and enforced by peers. Affiliation with deviant peers at this time is an established risk factor for externalizing behavior, presumably because peers model, encourage, and permit antisocial behavior. What is unclear however is the degree to which deviant peers facilitate the expression of genetically influenced predispositions to externalizing behavior (contextual triggering), or whether peers socialize behavior and suppress genetic predispositions (social control). To examine these questions, a biometric moderation model was employed to examine the degree to which peer deviance moderates genetic and environmental contributions to externalizing behaviors during adolescence. </p><p> Analyses used archived data from the Nonshared Environment and Adolescent Development (NEAD) project. NEAD included a national sample of 708 same sex sibling pairs from never-divorced families and stepfamilies from the USA: monozygotic twin (N=93), dizygotic twin (N=99), and full sibling (N=95) pairs from never-divorced families, and full sibling (N=182), half sibling (N=109), and unrelated sibling (N=130) pairs from stepfamilies. The mean ages of Sibling 1 and Sibling 2 were 14.52 and 12.91, respectively. Mothers and fathers reported on their own perceptions of their adolescents&rsquo; involvement with deviant and prosocial peers (Perceptions of Child&rsquo;s Peers) and on their adolescents&rsquo; engagement in externalizing behavior (Zill Behavior Inventory). </p><p> Analyses indicated that peer deviance moderates genetic and nonshared environmental contributions to adolescent externalizing behaviors. Specifically, at higher levels of peer deviance, genetic contributions to externalizing behavior were stronger, while nonshared environmental contributions were weaker. Shared environmental contributions were significant, but not moderated by peer deviance. These findings are consistent with a contextual triggering model of gene-environment interaction: within the context of deviant peers, the heritability of externalizing behaviors was higher, while nonshared environmental contributions were lower. Therefore, deviant peers appear to enhance the expression of genetic predispositions to externalizing behaviors rather than exert social control. These findings provide insight into the process through which deviant peers affect the development of externalizing behavior.</p>

<p> Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a noted deficit in executive function which concurrently employs multiple systems in the brain to complete complex tasks. Executive function skills begin developing around the age of four years and continue developing throughout life, potentially impacting the entire life span of an individual. Service providers need cost effective and efficient strategies to address executive functioning disorders in preschoolers with ASD in typical educational settings by school personnel. Using a multiple baseline design across behaviors, this research compares the use of Power Cards, video modeling, and Social Stories&trade; to: 1) teach early executive function behaviors; 2) generalize behaviors to a Pre-Kindergarten setting; and 3) maintain the behaviors after one and two months following the withdrawal of intervention materials. Results indicate all three strategies were effective in increasing executive function behaviors, although the strength of the strategies varied among the five preschoolers who participated. Three of five students were able to generalize the behaviors when instructed utilizing Power Cards and video modeling, while two of five were able to generalize to the new setting after instruction using Social Stories&trade;. Maintenance results proved to stratify the efficacy of the strategies showing four of five students maintained above intervention levels after instruction using Social Stories&trade;, three of five maintained utilizing video modeling and zero of five students maintained following the Power Card strategy.</p>

<p> Individuals that struggle with inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity experience difficulties in several life domains including struggles in academia (Biederman, Monuteaux et al., 2004), interpersonal relationships (e.g., Friedman et al., 2003), marital satisfaction (e.g., Eakin et al., 2004), and occupational performance (e.g., Barkley et al., 2008). In spite of a history of academic and social failures, many individuals with ADHD maintain a self-protective bias in which they maintain high self-evaluations of causal efficacy (Owens et al., 2007). This may contribute to greater levels of inattention, impulsivity, and resulting dysfunction, as self-evaluation is rule-governed rather than a result of self-awareness and discrimination. This study aimed to examine how derived causal efficacy might impact inattention and impulsivity. Participants completed a series of Go/NoGo tasks with and without contextual cues that had derived causal efficacy functions through their relations with discriminative stimuli for high or low rates of responding. The impact of derived causal efficacy was then examined in terms of errors of omission (inattention) and errors of commission (impulsivity). Implications for behavioral interventions for ADHD were discussed.</p>

Food cooperatives play a central role in the local food movement. In addition to supporting the local economy, the cooperative movement lists "concern for the community" among their seven core principles (Healthy Foods Healthy Communities Report, 2012). Food cooperatives, however, are typically consumer-owned and primarily assert democratic control over buying practices rather than workplace operation (University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives, 2009). Therefore, unless allocated a separate means for advocacy, cooperative workers often have less autonomy than they would if they were organized and had the means to collectively negotiate their benefits and work environment. This article argues that the efforts of worker-run governance bodies are integral for securing worker citizenship yet are often excluded from the efforts of consumer cooperatives. Using a mixed methods approach that includes focus groups, individual interviews, and textual and policy analyses, this study looks at the impact of unions on the social, political and civil rights of workers in two unionized food cooperatives in Vermont. Specifically, it examines the relationship between cooperative and union governance structures and the role of each institution in generating citizen engagement both in and outside the workplace. In this study, citizenship is defined as access to social, political, and civil rights. Study findings suggest that workers view management and the union as the prime decision-making bodies and the benefits of consumer membership as mainly consumer-oriented and vaguely community-based. Interview data generated with workers and stakeholders indicates that the union plays a pivotal role in promoting citizen engagement and workplace democracy in food cooperatives.

Professional identity is a complex construct that describes how an individual develops a sense of self-concept within a chosen profession. Professional identity refers to a self definition within a professional role based on attributes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences (Ibarra, 1999). This study explored the relationships between the professional identity of gerontology graduates and age, career stage, student typology, occupation, and value of experiential learning both quantitatively and qualitatively. Survey results indicate that experiential learning opportunities provide a framework for all gerontology students to gain and apply the skills and knowledge necessary for professional identity development in the field of aging. Findings indicate that experiential learning and mentorship represent important, but different outcomes for students who are new to the field of gerontology vs. students who are already employed in an aging-related profession prior to enrollment in a graduate gerontology program.

It has been established that much of the disparity in health outcomes between blacks and whites can be explained by accounting for education and income. Once education and income have been taken into consideration, research has found racial disparities in health outcomes for low-income populations are small, and in some cases no longer significant. For middle and upper income populations, however, a significant racial disparity in health outcomes persists even after accounting for education and income. Seeking to explain this variation, I analyze the literature concerning health disparities, race and class, the prevalence and distribution of black physicians, and issues and trends surrounding physician-patient communication and discrimination. I find that black physicians tend to be concentrated in low-income, minority-dense areas, therefore, the likelihood of a black middle or upper class person seeing a doctor of their same race may be less than that for lower class blacks. I hypothesize that doctor-patient racial concordance, and the associated possibility of diminished communication and cultural hurdles endured by black patients visiting a black doctor, may explain some of this variation in the magnitude of racial health disparities along the education/income spectrum, explaining the larger racial health disparities in middle and upper-income populations. Using data from the 2006 Commonwealth Fund Health Care Quality Survey (N=1591), I conducted bivariate (chi-sq/t-tests) and step-wise multivariate, logistic regression statistical tests to explore if doctor-patient racial concordance affects the self-rated health of American adults. This analysis showed concordance as a significant predictor of self-rated health in the unadjusted model, but not in the full model. Simply put, concordance is a significant predictor of self-rated health, but not independent of socioeconomic factors. My modeling is consistent with the literature in showing education and income as the most significant predictors of health status.