Magister Curationis - MCur (Dept. of Nursing) / This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of undergraduate community health nursing students at the University of the Western Cape who conducted a family health assessment learning task in communities during their clinical fieldwork placement.The population included the 2008 semester two, third year undergraduate baccalaureus nursing students. These students completed their community health nursing modules at the end of the first semester. A total of nine (9) out of the eighty- nine (89) semester two students participated in this qualitative research study. The purposive and convenient sample consisted of those students who agreed to voluntarily participate in the research study. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven (7) female and two (2) male students to collect data. Field notes were taken and utilized to capture non-verbal communication of the participants. The focus f the researcher was to explore the lived experiences of students and not that of the family whom they interviewed. All interviews were audio recorded nd validated by participants after transcription, before any of the data was used for the data analysis process. The data collected was categorized into themes as guided by the systematic data analyses process according to Tesch’s (1990) method, as cited in Creswell (2003). Saturation was tested after nine interviews and the researcher found that no new data emerged. The importance of the research study was to reflect on the exploration of the self-reported lived experiences of the third year community ealth nursing students while conducting the family health assessment learning task. / South Africa

Focusing on the potential use of telemedicine among other efforts for better treatment of stroke patients, this study explored the role of telemedicine in the management of stroke patients and knowledge sharing among health care providers in Afghanistan. To this end, fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with physicians, specialists, neurologists, and decision makers from the Afghan Ministry of Public Health (MoPH). Actor-network and diffusion of innovations theories provided a theoretical framework for this exploratory qualitative study. The study was intended: 1) to find out about the major challenges and problems associated with managing stroke patients in Afghanistan; 2) to explore the perceptions of Afghan health professionals about the application of telemedicine as a means of improving the delivery of health services for stroke patients in Afghanistan; and 3) to understand the perceived barriers to knowledge sharing and to ascertain the potential role of telemedicine in knowledge sharing among health care providers in Afghanistan. The findings of this study demonstrated that almost all of the participants were optimistic about the potential positive role telemedicine could play in the management of stroke patients and knowledge sharing among health care providers in Afghanistan. Some important existing organisational, socio-economic, geographical, security, and cultural barriers to the management of stroke patients and knowledge sharing among health care providers in Afghanistan were revealed. To the best knowledge of the researcher, there has been no study of this kind conducted in Afghanistan yet; thus, the findings of this study will likely contribute to the development of health communication in the context of Afghanistan, and could likely be used as a resource for future research about the applications of telemedicine in various medical specialities.

The Master's thesis focuses on customer satisfaction and its relationship to profitability, which is becoming an increasingly more relevant topic of daily discussion among the managers across all industries. The search for an optimal strategy that would lead to a consequent increase of both could be compared to a search for the "holy grail" or to an invention of the "perpetuum mobile" of business. The overall goal of my thesis is to design a strategy that would have the abovementioned attributes and would lead to an increase of profitability and customer satisfaction for the Hilti Czech republic and its after-market service. The theoretical part reviews the general academic literature connected with the topic. The practical part focuses on the company Hilti AG - a global premium provider of building construction tools and consumables in B2B segment, and examines especially its after-market service department. The first section of the practical part analyses the outcomes of the qualitative expert in-depth interviews with managers across different business units and departments and with real customers. The second part of the practical part proposes concrete steps that will lead to an increase of profitability and customer satisfaction.

The topic of the thesis concerns the everyday life of Russian speaking students in the Czech Republic. Its aim is to capture certain features of the everyday life of Russian-speaking students in the Czech Republic. It consists of several chapters. The theoretical part is devoted to defining the key concept of "everyday life", its characteristics, a brief overview of selected books and theories related to this issue, as well as a description of basic theoretical bases in the sociology of everyday life. The historical part deals with the description of selected daily activities and focuses on the life of Russian speaking students in the territory of Czechoslovakia in the 1920s. century. The methodological part describes what qualitative research is, how the data and the actual course of research were obtained. The practical part deals with the results of the research.

Collaborative Consumption is an economic model wherein consumers gain access to goods without acquiring ownership, for example through sharing, trading, swapping, or renting (Belk, 2014). This approach is often viewed as a means to enhance resource efficiency and transform the economy in a sustainable way (Botsman, 2013). Likewise, the concept of toy rental suggests a more eco-friendly alternative to purchasing, extending a toy's lifespan through shared usage among multiple families (Martin-Woodhead & Waight, 2023). The empirical data for this thesis was gathered through in-depth interviews, centered around a case study involving the toy-rental subscription service Tribu Box. This thesis aims to gain a deeper understanding of the behavioral drivers that influence parents’ adoption of Collaborative Consumption behavior within the children’s goods industry. This includes exploring internal and external motivators and barriers, as well as shedding light on how this consumption model contributes to sign-value and self-expression. The findings highlight that parents primarily value Collaborative Consumption in the form of toy rental for its practical utility, simplifying daily life and decluttering. Additionally, it enables parents to construct an identity centered around family time rather than material possessions and differentiating them from previous generations through increased adaptability and flexibility. Building on these findings and drawing on previous literature on environmental communication, the second part of this thesis formulates communication strategies that aim to promote sustainable consumption behaviors, encouraging consumers to embrace various forms of Collaborative Consumption.

No / We drew on an interdisciplinary research design to examine stroke survivors’ experiences of living with stroke and with technology in order to provide technology developers with insight into values, thoughts and feelings of the potential users of a to-be-designed robotic technology for home-based rehabilitation of the hand and wrist. Method: Ten stroke survivors and their family carers were purposefully selected. On the first home visit, they were introduced to cultural probe. On the second visit, the content of the probe packs were used as prompt to conduct one-to-one interviews with them. The data generated was analysed using thematic analysis. A third home visit was conducted to evaluate the early prototype. Results: User requirements were categorised into their network of relationships, their attitude towards technology, their skills, their goals and motivations. The user requirements were used to envision the requirements of the system including providing feedback on performance, motivational aspects and usability of the system. Participants’ views on the system requirements were obtained during a participatory evaluation. Conclusion: This study showed that prior to the development of technology, it is important to engage with potential users to identify user requirements and subsequently envision system requirements based on users’ views.

Interactivity is a factor on which cyber journalism is based and summarizes participation options between a user and the medium, a user with other users, and a user with editors. In this study, we focus on the latter in three countries-Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador-, which have been identified owing to their technological gap and the emerging importance of online communication for their respective societies. Through 35 in-depth interviews with journalists from these countries, we analyzed the concept of interactivity of these professionals and their relationship with users. The results revealed that the journalists positively valued civic contributions as a space for diagnosis, although they do not perceive its informational value, as they relate them to the context of opinions. These results verify the prevalence of journalism as strongly influenced by conventional offline production routines. / Revisión por pares

Masters of Science - Msc (Physiotherapy) / The roles of doctors and nurses in clinical supervision and clinical education are well defined in literature. However, the role of the physiotherapist in clinical education has not been clearly defined. This could be because the understanding of a clinical supervisor varies from discipline to discipline.

With the number of Asian immigrants continually increasing in New Zealand society, Asian immigrant businesses have been appearing more rapidly in New Zealand, particularly in Auckland. The primary purpose of this study is to enquire into why a certain Asian immigrant group become business people after migrating to Auckland, New Zealand. In addition, it investigates the level of their business activity and the level of happiness with their new life in New Zealand. This study examines the growing phenomenon of Asian immigrants, and the entrepreneurship rate of ethnic groups through existing statistics. The study focuses on Korean immigrants. Twenty self-employed Koreans who are running a business in Auckland participated in the study. They were invited to talk about why they became self-employed business people and related matters about their business activity. The study found that Korean immigrants chose self-employment as a means of getting a job. They gave up seeking mainstream employment opportunities due to the language barrier and their inability to cope with a new society and new system. Other fundamental factors in their decision to become entrepreneurs were that firstly, they were willing to invest a considerable amount of their own money and secondly, they preferred to participate in the workforce rather than to depend on the New Zealand welfare system. Based on the information acquired through the research, the study reported that the recently increased numbers of Asian businesses are partly attributable to New Zealand business immigration policy which introduced a new business category – Long Term Business Visa (LTBV). The findings from this research pointed to commitment that immigrant businesses contribute to the New Zealand economy and New Zealand society as taxpayers and potential employers.

This thesis is called “Citation needed – the perceived credibility of Wikipedia among higheducation students”. The purpose of this thesis is to discover the opinions about the credibilityof Wikipedia among high education students. The assumption is that students are aware ofbeing source criticizing and do not directly cite Wikipedia in academic works. The main research question is: what are the views of the perceived credibility of theinformation on Wikipedia among high education students? The theoretical framework is made out of previous research specific related to Wikipediabut also theories around memory creation, assessment of sources and credibility. The method used is qualitative, with semi-structured interviews. The material consists ofinterviews with nine participants. Their answers are transcribed and presented in themes andthen analyzed. The main results are that the perceived credibility of the information on Wikipedia amongthe students is that it is fairly credible and their views of the encyclopedia are that it is fastupdated and neutral. They also believe that Wikipedia isn’t for academic usage so in allaspects the students do not make a thoroughly assessment of the encyclopedia’s credibility. Further implications are that Wikipedia would be ruined if anyone tried to make itacademic. Wikipedia fulfills an educational tool for the public even though it is not alwayscorrect. It is important to be reminded that Wikipedia contains errors but no other source iscompletely flawless either. In that sense it would be smarter to start a new encyclopedia, ifthere is such a need, perhaps open for professors only and would in the end only containvetted information, however mostly/only in academic fields. The length of the thesis is 56 pages in total and approximately 21 000 words. Keywords: Wikipedia, encyclopedias, source criticism, credibility, Nationalencyclopedin,students, in-depth interviews.