Diversity of social identities among college students has received increasing attention in higher education research, with a particular focus on singular dimensions of identity. However, scholars have often neglected the intersectional experiences of multiple social identities. While research has begun to address the experiences of students with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students as distinct populations, few researchers have addressed the identities and experiences of LGBTQ students with disabilities in higher education. Thus, this study begins to address a need for empirical research on the social identities and higher education experiences of this population. Two primary research questions guided this study: (1) How do LGBTQ students with disabilities conceptualize their multiple, intersecting social identities, specifically the intersections of disability, gender, and sexuality? (2) How do LGBTQ students with disabilities perceive the influence of context at a predominantly White, research-intensive university in the southern United States in shaping their identity development journeys? This study utilized a qualitative methodology situated within critical and postmodern epistemologies. Specifically, concepts from queer theory, disability studies, and queer disability theory/crip theory guided this research. Situational analysis, a postmodern extension of grounded theory that calls for the making of three types of situational maps, guided the study’s design and analysis. Purposive sampling techniques were used to identify: (1) the institution of higher education under study, and (2) 25 undergraduate and graduate students who self-identify as LGBTQ and with a disability to participate in one to two semi-structured interviews. Students constructed positive, salient queer identities and utilized a variety of contextual labels for gender and sexuality. Most participants understood disability primarily as a medical phenomenon, but some participants also began to attach relational and political meanings to disability. Though participants acknowledged the presence of multiple identities, they viewed connections among their identities in distinctive ways: intersectional, interactive, overlapping, parallel, and/or oppositional. Students described complex processes for disclosing identities, forming community, and navigating normative temporal and spatial expectations of the university. Finally, students spoke of their journeys finding campus resources, encountering able-bodied/heteronormative assumptions in the classroom, and joining with others to create social change. / text

This paper explores Mazo de la Roche’s peculiar articulation of the Bildungsroman in the first of Jalna’s sequels, Whiteoaks. It argues that the text’s psychosocially aberrant protagonist, Finch Whiteoak, is a Bildungsheld whose modern coming-of-age process of accommodation and assimilation into a socio-specific norm is not as much a progression toward the centre as it is a simultaneous progression/regression toward a reification of his exemplary marginal status as an other amidst others. This paper further contends that this unique process is made possible only by Finch’s particularly unstable and eccentric otherness—established through his treatment by his family as variously mentally ill rather than disabled—and that this process is both externally regressive in a vein similar to the modern, female Bildungsroman and internally progressive in the vein of the classic, male Künstlerroman. In order to accommodate this duality of publicly typical and privately subversive otherness, Finch must navigate the diegetic realm’s social boundaries and liminal spaces through a series of “double lives,” in which the other is ultimately found within the home context and potentially subversive centralities outside of Jalna are sacrificed for the sake of representative marginalities at home.

Not available / text

The purpose of this secondary analysis was to test a multivariate model of disability separately in women with two different conditions, multiple sclerosis (MS) and fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), and to compare respective models across groups. Guided by the Disablement Process Model, this study examined the influences of functional limitations, depressive symptoms, economic adequacy, and social support on disability by use of two-group structural equation modeling (SEM). Nonprobability samples of women with MS (N = 118) and women with FMS (N = 197) were recruited for separate health promotion intervention studies. Baseline data collection occurred between 1997 and 1998 for women with MS enrolled in the Wellness Intervention and between 2004 and 2006 for women with FMS enrolled in the Lifestyle Counts Intervention. Participants in both samples were largely married, well-educated, middle-age, and Caucasian. Descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and SEM were conducted with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 15.0 and Amos 7.0 software programs. Mean scores of the major study variables indicated poorer physical and mental health for the sample of women with FMS compared to that with MS. Controlling for age, duration of illness, and education, greater functional limitations predicted greater SFdisability and Role Physical (RP)-disability in both groups. The influence of Functional Limitations on both SF-disability and RP-disability was greater for women with FMS than MS. The effect of Depressive Symptoms on SF-disability was equivalent across groups. Feeling depressed significantly impacted RP-disability, although these effects were not equal across groups. Depressive Symptoms played a larger role than did Functional Limitations in explaining SF- and RP-disability in women with MS. Social Support affected Depressive Symptoms equally for both groups. For women with MS, compared to women with FMS, Economic Adequacy had greater detrimental effects on Depressive Symptoms and both measures of disability. Social Support and Depressive Symptoms mediated the effect of Functional Limitations on disability. Adjustment to life with a chronic illness depends on, at the very least, individual physical, social, and psychological capacities. Practitioners should be sensitive to depressive symptoms and availability of social support in women with MS or FMS. / text

This experimental study was conducted to examine the relative effectiveness of a Repeated Reading (RR) and Wide Reading (WR) intervention when compared to typical instruction on secondary struggling readers' comprehension, fluency, and word reading. The sample consisted of a total of 96 students (9th through 12th grade) ranging in age from 13-17 in special education reading and English classrooms. Participants included students with learning disabilities (LD), dyslexia, or students selected as students with significant reading difficulties. The investigator paired students on variables of interest (i.e., reading level) within classes and then randomly assigned pairs to one of three groups: repeated reading (N=33), wide reading (N=34), or typical instruction (N=29). Tutors, trained by the investigator, monitored students as they worked in pairs in each treatment condition. Intervention was provided daily for approximately 15-20 minutes for 10 weeks. Treatment effects for each outcome measure were estimated using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Results indicate no overall statistically significant differences for any condition. Effects ranged from -.81 to .28 usually hovering around no effect or favoring the C condition over the treatment conditions or favoring the RR condition over the WR condition. Five separate ANCOVAs were conducted using the following dependent variables with each pretest score used as a covariate: (1) Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement III (WJIII) Passage Comprehension subtest (RR vs. C = -.10; WR vs. C = -.20; RR vs. WR= .10); (2) Test of Silent Reading Fluency (TOSRE) (RR vs. C =.-31; WR vs. C = -.81; RR vs. WR= .10); (3) Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement III (WJIII) Letter-Word Identification subtest (RR vs. C = -.05; WR vs. C = -.11; RR vs. WR = .06); (4) AIMSWeb Oral Reading Fluency System (RR vs. C = -.08; WR vs. C = -.26; RR vs. WR= .18); and (5) Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency (RR vs. C =.28; WR vs. C = -.01; RR vs. WR= .28). Results indicate that neither RR nor WR should be implemented for secondary readers with significant reading difficulties and more research into ways to make fluency instruction more explicit and instructional for these students is warranted.

Students with learning disabilities (LDs) represent 9% of students attending college, and college administrators must comply with a large number of federal requirements outlining the provision of educational services for students with LDs, including offering support groups. Nurse-facilitated support groups, held within the university setting, could provide effective social support, increasing likelihood of college success among students with LDs. The purpose of this project was to develop a plan for implementing nurse-facilitated support groups for students with LDs within the student health services (SHS) department at a university designed to improve their coping skills on personal, social, and academic levels. Guided by the Logic Model, a plan for implementing nurse-facilitated support groups within the SHS department was developed and presented to university stakeholders. Components of the plan included a support group structure, curriculum, evaluation tools, steps for piloting the program, and a proposed timeline for implementing the program. The stakeholders acknowledged the potential benefits of initiating a program of nurse-facilitated support groups for students with LDs to assist in attaining their academic goals. However, additional analysis of the program and refining and other disabilities to assist in attaining their academic goals; however, additional analysis of the program and refining the proposed student self-evaluation tool were needed before implementing the program. Nurses in a SHS department staff are effective support group facilitators for students with LDs. This study holds the potential for positive social change by enhancing personal, social, and academic coping skills with nurse-facilitated support groups who may help students with LDs reduce their risk of experiencing burnout and enhance the likelihood of academic success.

No description available.

This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first chapter estimates the crowd-out effect of Social Security on private retirement saving. In a quasi-experimental research design, I analyze the effect of the 1990 federal mandate of Social Security coverage for all state and local government employees who were not covered by an equivalent state pension. Using a sample of more than 12 million employer-employee observations on earnings and contributions to retirement plans, I find that Social Security coverage induces approximately 16% of those affected who had previously saved in private retirement plans to stop contributing. For those who continue contributing, Social Security coverage crowds out about 23% of pre-reform contributions.

The understandings and treatments of the sexual rights of people with intellectual and psychological disabilities vary in different societies. However, one issue that is common in most societies is that this group of people experiences the highest rates of sexual violence and is regularly a-sexualized. Much attention has been paid to the increasingly visible issues of sexual violence in Latin America in a gendered and racial context, however recent scholarship has neglected to look at sexual violence in the context of people with disabilities. In this text, I aim to uncover how the human rights, and more specifically, sexual rights, are understood and treated for this highly marginalized group of people in Guatemala, a country that has endured heavy amounts of violence and trauma both contemporarily and historically. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted at institutions for disability services in urban Guatemala, I paint a picture of how the contemporary social and political climate involving violence, nearly complete impunity for crimes, culturally engrained patriarchal norms and neoliberal policies affect this group of people who are often depoliticized through patronizing portrayals in media and the public arena. Using in depth investigations of Guatemalan law and observational work and interviews conducted in public government-funded institutions, NGOs and non-profit organizations and human rights organizations, I seek to reveal the paradigms within the disparate types of institutions for understanding and treating people with disabilities. By questioning the institutional perceptions and treatments of the sexuality and sexual abuse of people with intellectual and psychological disabilities, I seek to examine the different ways cognitive disability has been socially constructed in Guatemala and the different reasons behind this group's social abandonment and high rates of sexual violence towards them. This work problematizes medical and charity models utilized for understanding disability that have been implemented through law, institutional and public policies, and societal misconceptions. This research also challenges Western disability policies and conceptions that have been imposed in developing countries like Guatemala, and questions the possibility to create spaces of local disability rights activism in spite of high risk factors for violence and neoliberal policies that limit political protest. / text

A Claim incidence study for Individual Disability Insurance was conducted for study period from 2004 through 2007. Incidence was measured by count and amount and was compared with its 2007 EVM assumption and with standard industry tables 1985 CIDA. Generally, incidence rates are higher by amount than by count. This analysis and discussion focus on the experience by amount since this measure more closely reflects the financial impact. This report is to determine which assumption will be used going forward. Results have been provided for each calendar year within the study period. Further, results by significant blocks of business, elimination period, benefit period, CIDA occupation class and geographic location have been summarized in the body of the report. Additional details are included in the Appendices. In the report, the name of the insurance company and any other revealing information are suppressed due to confidentiality and sensitivity of the nature of these data. / text