published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Public Health

No description available.

The purpose of the research was to describe the relationships between social support and role strain and preventative health behaviors. The sample consisted of 62 critical care nurses employed in three southwest acute care facilities. Subjects completed instruments measuring social support, role strain, and four preventative health care behaviors. Pearson correlations revealed significant positive relationships between social support and personal/household roles women perform and ways women handle stress. Additional significant negative relationships existed between marital/relationship roles women perform and leisure physical activities, a subset of preventative health behaviors. The parental roles, obligations, and responsibilities women perform were also significantly related with leisure physical activities. Conclusions drawn indicate that the critical care nurses did not perceive themselves susceptible to cardiovascular disease and therefore did not participate in preventative health care activities, regardless of perceived helpful social support and an absence of role strain.

No description available.

A multivariate model of health self-perceptions was postulated based upon a comprehensive set of health related variables suggested by previous bivariate research. Components of the model included measures of health attitudes, health practices, health locus of control, a measure of stress/ coping, and a physical health measure. A stratified random sampling technique was used to select 10 8 subjects based upon the external measure of physical health which included categories ranging from disability-severe to symptom free-high energy level. All subjects completed a health questionnaire comprised of measures of the model components, two measures of health self-perceptions, and the Health Resource Task, an author designed instrument measuring a subject's ability to generate flexible health alternatives/resources. Bivariate correlational analysis revealed that the physical health, stress/coping, health practices, and locus of control measures and certain of the health attitude subscales were significantly correlated to general health self-ratings. A multivariate model including these variables accounted for almost 50 percent of the variance in one of the general health self-ratings measures and approximately 38 percent of the variance in the Health Resource Task. Suggestions for refining the proposed model were made.

The relationship between health attribution belief systems and compliance in an ecological treatment regimen was examined in 40 patients with environmental illness. Internal and chance scales on the Health Attribution Test (HAT) were found to be related to reported level of compliance for each subject. Data were subjected to Chi square analysis with highly significant results obtained. Ecology patients appear to take responsibility for their own health and treatment and, although they feel themselves to be victims of fate, they comply with treatment on a high level.

Dementia incidence is rising as our population is ageing. There is growing evidence for the protective effect of physical activity against cognitive decline. However, there are inconsistent results across studies despite the large number of high quality trials. The role of psychosocial factors on cognitive outcomes was investigated in the present thesis due to the evidence of their relationship with physical activity and for their effect on cognitive ability in other contexts. The psychosocial factors investigated were attitudes towards ageing, perceived control, mental health, and self-efficacy using cross-sectional studies and pilot randomised controlled exercise trials to test proof of concept. Study 1a found that more positive attitudes towards ageing were associated with better self-reported subjective and functional health. Perceived control mediated the effect of attitudes related to psychosocial loss with ageing and physical activity level mediated the effect of attitudes related to psychological growth with ageing on subjective health. Attitudes towards ageing mediated the effect of perceived control on functional health. Study 1b and 1c explored attitudes towards ageing in more detail and found that older adults attitudes towards ageing were similarly negative to those held by young adults in the UK. A substantial proportion of attitudes reported by older adults related to physical functioning and cognitive ability. Attitudes towards ageing in China were more positive than those in the UK which suggested a potential relationship with socio-cultural and environmental factors and possible scope for attitude change from an intervention. A higher proportion of attitudes towards ageing reported in the UK were related to physical functioning and cognitive ability compared to China. These findings highlighted the potential for attitudes towards ageing and perceived control to play a role in the context of physical activity, cognitive ability and subjective health. Study 2a found that physical, social, and mental activities were independently associated with cognitive ability which informed the study design of exercises to include a pseudo control group that controlled for social interaction and mental stimulation. Study 2b found that mental health partially mediated the association between walking and cognitive ability. In older adults with better mental health, walking was not associated with cognitive ability. In older adults with poorer mental health walking was associated with better cognitive ability. Study 3 utilised available data from a pilot resistance training randomised controlled trial with middle-aged adults to test proof of concept for the role of psychosocial factors in this context. Preliminary evidence was provided for a potential association between improvements on some psychosocial factors and cognitive performance improvements. The associations of cognitive gains with psychosocial factors were independent to those of physical fitness improvements, which may indicate a potentially additive effect. Study 4 assessed the feasibility of the pilot randomised controlled trial of resistance training with older adults. Recruitment was successful but high drop-out rates lead to between group differences in age and baseline cognitive ability. Adaption of exercise to suit individual capabilities increased participation and adherence of those who completed the programmes was high. The limited usefulness of analysis by group was highlighted due to the large variation in response to exercise within groups on psychosocial and cognitive measures. Older participants were more likely to report a negative effect of resistance training on psychosocial measures, which indicated a potential confound on outcomes of exercise interventions with older adult populations. Preliminary analysis indicated that improvements on some psychosocial factors were associated with domain specific cognitive gains. This association could be due to a variety of mechanisms, such as meta-cognitive motivational processes, for example sustained effort and attention and the use of memory strategies. However, these findings need to be interpreted with caution due to the parallel change of variables, small sample size and feasibility and pilot nature of the interventions. There is a potential implication for the design of exercise programmes if they facilitate improvements in psychosocial factors as well as physical fitness, then this could enhance the effect of exercise on cognitive outcomes. Future research should replicate these studies with larger sample sizes to further understand the role of psychosocial factors in cognitive gains during exercise interventions in older adults.

Magister Curationis - MCur / Background: The changes in sexual and reproductive behaviour of young people as they become students, has been widely documented. International and local studies promote the development of student-centred, comprehensive and accessible reproductive health services. In order to establish effective reproductive health care within education institutions, it is strongly recommended that one should understand the local context well. Aim: This study aimed to describe the reproductive health knowledge, attitudes and practices of student nurses at a select private nursing college in South Africa.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the preferred method of learning about heart disease by adult learners. This research study also investigated if there was a statistically significant difference between race/ethnicity, age, and gender of adult learners and their preferred method of learning preventative heart disease care. This research study further explored the effectiveness of adult education on reducing or preventing serious, life-threatening heart disease, including heart attack. This research is of significant importance as the adult population and age in many developed countries is increasing. It was anticipated that the study would unearth the effectiveness of various educational methods of providing information to adult learners to inform them how to prevent heart attacks. For this quantitative investigation, participants were limited to students enrolled in at least one college course (three credit hours) at the Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton campus who were 25 years of age or older. During the course of this study, three methods of learning; formal, informal, and non-formal, as well as two delivery methods; online and traditional, were evaluated. Over one third of the study’s participants (35%) preferred to receive healthrelated information via email (35%). This major finding was statistically significant (x² (6) = 82.171; p < .001). Further, statistically significant findings were manifest for study participants for omnibus age grouping and in the 25-35 years of age grouping, for those who were White and Hispanic by ethnic background, and for both females and males participating in this study. The results of this research may assist health department administrators in utilizing varying methods for distributing health information, keeping the preferred knowledge acquisition method of students on college and university campuses especially in mind. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection