In an effort to improve understanding of the role that support groups such as the National Stuttering Association (NSA) play in helping people who stutter, speech-language pathologists who participate in the NSA were asked to participate in a research survey. Previous research and anecdotal evidence has shown that support groups not only benefit people who stutter, but also the professionals who work with them. Participation in the NSA can enhance SLPs' understanding of stuttering, and their comfort level and competence working with people who stutter. However, the relationship between support groups and professionals has not been adequately studied. / text

Many computer vision problems involve building automatic systems by extracting complex high-level information from visual data. Such problems can often be modeled using structural models, which relate raw input variables to structural high-level output variables. Structural support vector machine is a discriminative method for learning structural models. It allows a flexible feature construction with good robustness against overfitting, and thus provides state-of-the-art prediction accuracies for structural prediction tasks in computer vision. This thesis first studies the application of structural SVMs in interactive image segmentation. A novel interactive image segmentation technique that automatically learns segmentation parameters tailored for each and every image is proposed. Unlike existing work, the proposed method does not require any offline parameter tuning or training stage, and is capable of determining image-specific parameters according to some simple user interactions with the target image. The segmentation problem is modeled as an inference of a conditional random field (CRF) over a segmentation mask and the target image. This CRF is parametrized by the weights for different terms (e.g., color, texture and smoothing). These weight parameters are learned via a one-slack structural SVM, which is solved using a constraint approximation scheme and the cutting plane algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method, by learning image-specific parameters automatically, outperforms other state-of-the-art interactive image segmentation techniques. This thesis then uses structural SVMs to speed up large scale relatively-paired space analysis. A new multi-modality analysis technique based on relatively-paired observations from multiple modalities is proposed. Relative-pairing information is encoded using relative proximities of observations in a latent common space. By building a discriminative model and maximizing a distance margin, a projection function that maps observations into the latent common space is learned for each modality. However, training based on large scale relatively-paired observations could be extremely time consuming. To this end, the training is reformulated as learning a structural model, which can be optimized by the cutting plane algorithm where only a few training samples are involved in each iteration. Experimental results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed technique. / published_or_final_version / Computer Science / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This thesis explores the impact of whole-person development programmes on the development of managers. The research on which this thesis is based is in two stages. The initial stage compared the ways in which personal development plans were created in 14 organisations and identified that the means by which the plans were created had a significant effect on the enthusiasm and commitment of the learners. This led to a review of management development programmes to try and identify in more detail the factors that influence impact and outcomes. Interviews were conducted with 55 individual learners, 11 subordinates and 21 line managers and explored how these managers learnt, what they learnt and what impact this learning had on them and their organisations. These participants came from five case study organisations who provided a range of management development opportunities. The learning that seemed to have had most significant impact centred around 'soft skills'. This is particularly interesting because it is these soft skills that have proved to be difficult to develop and assess. There emerged some key themes that help explain these changes. The first step in this journey of development is that managers should know themselves. Much management development focuses on the external world and the development of knowledge and skills that are 'out there' - understanding budgets, where business strategy comes from, what a good appraisal looks like and so on. The really effective managementdevelopment programmes placed considerable emphasis on the internal world. This development of the internal world focuses on both knowledge and skills - what are my strengths and weaknesses, how do I normally react when put under pressure, what techniques can I use to overcome my reluctance to deal with conflict? Two processes appear to be essential if individuals are to develop greater internal skills and self-knowledge: feedback opportunities and support mechanisms. Those that have received structured feedback within a supportive and trusting environment have used this to change themselves for the better, becoming more proactive, more self-confident and more empathic in their dealings with others. Feedback can play a positive role in enhancing self-esteem through increasing selfknowledge. However feedback is not always welcomed. In an unsupported environment, feedback can be perceived as threatening when it tells the individual something that they did not know about themselves and are not ready to integrate into their selfknowledge. In these circumstances a vicious circle is set up. Support from those that the learner has come to trust appears to be crucial if feedback is to be warmly received. Once an individual has integrated such feedback into their selfknowledge and accepted it, there would appear to be an increase in the value attached to feedback and the desire to seek it out

The purpose of this study was to better understand the self-care practices of female peer support specialists (PSS) with co-occurring mood and substance use disorders. The researcher took a qualitative grounded theory approach conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with ten women employed at peer-run agencies in Maricopa County, Arizona. Data from these interviews were transcribed, then analyzed manually, as well as with NVivo 10.0 software, to identify the key terms, nodes, categories and emergent themes of the participants' experiences. Self-care practices of peer support specialists included accessing personal and professional support networks; maintaining a daily routine to balance the demands of recovery, parenting, and working; taking medications; sleeping; practicing spirituality; participating in service work; eating nutritiously; exercising, and building a sense of coherence. Although a variety of practices were being used and identified as helpful, spirituality was identified as the most important self-care practice to achieve overall wellness. Employment improved the ability for PSSs to practice self-care because they valued the support of their supervisors and coworkers, were reminded of the consequences of not practicing self-care by working with individuals who were unstable, gained knowledge from teaching others, found healing in telling their stories, and reported higher self-esteems from working and helping others. However, participants did identify ways that employment as a PSS could interfere with practicing self-care, such as staff turnover, limited access to supervisors, or being unprepared to work in the field. Several recommendations were suggested as a result of this study, such as the importance of understanding and using effective self-care practices, building personal and professional support networks, and establishing daily routines to balance recovery with personal and professional demands.

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In this master’s graduation dissertation is treated the maintenance given to children with special demands in preschool institutions and outside them. Wishing to create in Lithuania democratic and civil society in which all its members would be given equal possibilities it is necessary to study more properly the problems of families who bring up disabled children. Only knowing the main problems of these families it is possible to organize the maintenance properly. When a family brings up a child who has developmental disorders some services can guarantee an effective maintenance for him and his family: health service, training, custodial and care services, employment service, leisure service and others. Besides, it is necessary to coordinate the activity of these services. The experience of developed states shows that if only one of these services will not perform its functions all the maintenance will not be effective. According to accredited laws of Lithuania children with special demands can get such maintenance outside the institution: preferential transport service, free legal consultations, diurnal centers for disabled people, leisure occupation and so on. It is really interesting if they use this aid, if the attend diurnal centers intended for them, if they go to summer camps intended for disabled. Working in preschool institutions we face with complaints of parents that they fail an aid in these institutions. The aim of the work: to find the forms of maintenance... [to full text]

This work analyzes the peculiarities of social support rendering for problem families, raising children. Problem families outlive changes painfully and appear in difficult situations; therefore their abilities to successfully take care of themselves and their children weaken. This work is relevant because it discusses the possibilities to make the system of social support rendering for problem families more efficient and more socially secure. The aim of the research is to analyze the structure of social support system, examine the peculiarities of rendering the support for problem families, raising children. The objectives of the research were to discuss the concept of problem family and their living peculiarities; analyze laws of the Republic of Lithuania and other law acts, regulating social support for problem families, raising children; find out the peculiarities and structural parts of social support for problem families in Trakai municipality; find out the problem families social support needs in Trakai region and distinguish kinds of support rendering. The aim of the research was to find out social support rendering arrangement for problem families, raising children in Trakai municipality. During individual interview it was aimed to learn the attitude of experts – law and other juridical act projects and proposals organizers, towards social service rendering for problem families, raising children tendencies in Lithuania. The experts were 4 Parliament members, working... [to full text]

Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka hur cancerpatienter ser på stöd i samband med sjukdom samt vilka faktorer är det som gör att vissa människor klarar av att hantera sjukdomar medan vissa har större benägenhet att fastna i kriser och hamna i depression. För syftet valdes den kvalitativa forskningsansatsen och vidare valdes Ad-hoc metoden som intervjuanalys då målet och mitt fokus som forskare låg i att skapa mening och sammanhang i materialet. Två kvinnor har intervjuats vid ett tillfälle och till grund för det transkriberade intervjumaterialet ligger tidigare forskning om stöd vid sjukdom, upplevelser av sjukdom, KASAM, coping, kristeori och depression i samband med cancer. Resultat och analys består av utdrag från respondenternas beskrivelser och berättelser samt citat kopplat och knutet till tidigare forskning och teoretiska perspektiv. I resultatet framgår hur kvinnorna upplevde stödet under sjukdom såväl som efter, KASAM och coping samt fokus på personliga faktorer för livskvalité.

Neuromuscular diseases are difficult to diagnose, requiring specialized equipment and training. A decision support system facilitates this by visualizing the data produced by a classification system, allowing users to make a diagnosis. This thesis explores the development of a specific component of the decision support system; a comparison tool which allows the user to explore the visualization by making comparisons between assertions derived from the underlying classification system. After studying the impact of the comparison tool upon the performance of volunteer users, we provide recommendations on the utility of a particular decision exploration strategy and give guidance for the correct course for the future development of this system. This document illustrates some of the unique challenges associated with the evaluation of a decision support system which relies not only upon the computational power of the computer, but also upon a human’s innate ability to solve problems.

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