Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 2003. / "December 2003." Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-165). Also issued on the Internet.

Thesis--School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., 1995-96. / Title from title screen (viewed Oct. 28, 2003). "February 2001." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-301). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-106).

Zugl.: Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine leadership in the public sector based on leadership models, organizational factors, conditions and health of employees. The study was divided into sub-study one and two. In sub-study one the design was an observational study using cross sectional design in which 67 first line managers in the public sector answered a survey about conditions and leadership models. Sub-study two was an observational study using case-control design focusing on a health promoting leadership intervention in the municipal sector. Two semi-structured interviews and 41 surveys were collected. The first-line managers in each group were interviewed and their employees had to answer a questionnaire.  The results showed that there is a difference between first line managers’ conditions in the public sector. Further, the result showed that there is a significant difference in how intervention group and control group estimate demand, control and structure-oriented leadership. But it is difficult to say if the differences only depend on the intervention or other factors.

Cognitive-based narrative intervention for bilingual preschoolers Abstract The aim of this study was to determine how an intervention conducted in Spanish and English influenced macro and micro structure in the oral narratives produced by eight preschool Spanish-speaking English-language-learners (M = 68 months, range 59 to 79 months) during a four-week summer intervention program. Following a single-subject pre-experimental repeated A-B measure design, each subject completed an initial treatment phase in Spanish followed by an English treatment phase. The cognitive-based intervention method focused on the mediated learning of language-independent cognitive strategies such as attention, self-regulation, organization, and problem solving. Analysis at the macrostructure level included story component and episode structure and microstructure level analysis considered lexical diversity and use of grammatical forms in each language. All narrative samples were evaluated to determine the effect of language treatment condition and narrative productivity in both languages. Mediated learning significantly increased participants’ ability to independently produce narrative macrostructure story component and episodic structure on multiple elicitation tasks across both languages. Mixed results were observed at the microstructure level for participants’ demonstration of lexical diversity and grammatical complexity specific to language condition and elicitation task. These findings help us understand which macro and micro structure skills transfer under a cognitive-based intervention conducted in two languages. / text

African Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV comprising only 12% of the U.S. population but accounting for nearly 50% of all HIV cases (CDC, 2009). HIV surveillance data estimate that one in 30 Black women will be diagnosed with HIV during their lifetime. For many HIV positive African American women, treatment of HIV infection and the subsequent psychological stress is complicated by lack of resources and competing life priorities. These women also face additional challenges such as fear of disclosure and lack of adequate social support. The complexity of challenges faced by African American women who are HIV positive highlight the need to explore their preferred ways of coping. Studies show that minority women tend to utilize alternative coping strategies when faced with dual mental and physical health challenges. Spirituality has been found to have a direct relationship with cognitive and social functioning and inversely related to HIV symptoms among African American women. Psychosocial interventions are a key component to improved quality of life for women living with HIV and spirit-level interventions are shown to buffer psychosocial distress experienced by HIV positive persons. This dissertation will consist of three publishable quality articles that examine issues associated with the function of spirituality in HIV positive women. This first article will review published spiritually oriented interventions and compare, contrast, and critique the various components, sample, and intervention methods to determine the applicability and replicability of these interventions as a basis for increasing treatment options for co-morbid African American women. The second article will offer a conceptual framework incorporating the health belief model and a discussion of Lazarus & Folkman's stress and coping model to examine theoretical frameworks for integrating spirituality into social work practice interventions for HIV positive women. The third article for this dissertation seeks to contribute new information to the literature on the spirituality in the lives of HIV positive women. This article will present data that identifies, defines, and describes various uses of spirituality as a coping mechanism. The article will also discuss historical factors that influence the use of religion and spirituality among African Americans. / text

Those who misuse alcohol in the United States do not regularly seek treatment on their own to reduce use and avoid consequences of misuse. Because of the association between alcohol misuse, alcohol-related risk behaviors, and injury; alcohol misuse in the United States has serious societal and individual repercussions. To alleviate these problems, health care professionals; including doctors, nurses, and social workers; have an opportunity to screen injured patients for alcohol misuse and provide brief interventions. Although some brief intervention research has demonstrated reductions in alcohol misuse and other injury-related behaviors, other evidence indicates that brief alcohol interventions are not equally effective for all injured patients. Moreover, screening and brief alcohol interventions are not reimbursed in most states, leaving providers and medical centers uncompensated for providing services. A possible way to address these challenges is to target intervention services to patients who are most likely to make positive changes. Therefore, this dissertation used mixture modeling to identify subclasses of injured patients based on their past injury-related consequences and risks of alcohol misuse in order to describe which subgroups made the greatest reductions in drinking in the year following discharge from a Level-1 trauma center. This dissertation also identified which subclasses of patients made the greatest behavioral improvements for injury-related consequences and risks of alcohol misuse during the year following discharge from the trauma center. Patients with profiles that contained high probabilities of multiple consequences and risks and those with histories of alcohol-related accidents and injuries reported some of the largest improvements in drinking and injury-related consequences and risks following discharge. Those classes that made the fewest changes had profiles that consisted of fighting and taking foolish risks while drinking or that consisted of low probabilities of risks or consequences of alcohol misuse. This dissertation provides tentative evidence for targeting intervention services to injured patients. Further research should verify which subclasses of patients are most likely to reduce alcohol misuse and other alcohol-related risk behaviors in order to more effectively target brief alcohol interventions, increase cost savings, and improve the health and behavioral health outcomes for injured patients who misuse alcohol. / text

Studien var av interventionskaraktär och byggde på Vygotskijs sociokulturella teori. Syftet med studien var att undersöka om intensiv lästräning, utifrån den reciproka modellen, kan förbättra hos läsningen hos gymnasieelever. De frågeställningar som studien utgick från var följande: Förbättras läsningen hos gymnasieelever efter lästräning enligt den reciproka modellen? Finns det skillnader i resultat mellan undervisningsgrupper, skola, studieinriktning och kön, på pre-testen samt post-testen? Är verbal mediering ett effektivt sätt att förmedla lässtrategier? Studiens ansats var kvantitativ då den byggde på utfallet från den genomförda interventionen. Standardiserade och normerade test användes för att mäta elevernas utgångsnivå före inter–ventionen samt efter avslutad intervention för att se om det skett någon utveckling. Det som mättes var avkodningsförmåga, semantisk och syntaktisk förmåga, läshastighet samt slutligen läsförståelse. Fem klasser från två skolor deltog i studien och det totala antalet elever uppgick till 51 stycken. Klasserna delades upp i fyra grupper varav en blev kontrollgrupp. Eleverna kom från både studie- och yrkesförberedande program. Elevernas resultat i stanine på pre- och post-testen räknades samman för att få ett medelvärde i gruppen. Dessa medelvärden var grundvalen för att se om det skett någon utveckling i grupperna samt för att kunna jämföra dem. Även lägsta och högsta staninevärdena i grupperna på pre- och post-testen togs ut för att visa på spridningen av förmågorna i grupperna samt visa på eventuell utveckling. Likaså en jämförelse mellan skola, program och kön gjordes för att se om det var någon skillnad i utveckling efter genomförd intervention. Resultaten visade att samtliga grupper, kontrollgruppen inkluderad, utvecklat sin förmåga angående avkodning, semantisk och syntaktisk förmåga samt läs–hastighet. Två av grupperna som deltog i interventionen gick bakåt på testen i läsförståelse, vilket även var fallet för kontrollgruppen. Det var endast en grupp som utvecklade samtliga förmågor. Vid jämförelsen mellan skolor, inriktning och kön kan man se att det förekom skillnader i utveckling.