The landscape of cancer care is evolving and as a result nursing care continues to develop and respond to the changing needs of oncology patients and their families. There is a paucity of qualitative research examining the experience of being an oncology nurse on an inpatient unit. Therefore, a qualitative study using an interpretive phenomenological approach has been undertaken to discover the lived experience of being an oncology nurse. In-depth tape recorded interviews has been conducted with six oncology nurses who worked on two adult inpatient oncology units. Van Manen’s (1990) interpretive phenomenological approach has been used to analyze the data by subjecting the transcripts to an analysis both line by line and as a whole. The overarching theme of the interviews is: Investing to Make a Difference. The themes that reflect this overarching theme are: Caring for the Whole Person, Being an Advocate, Walking a Fine Line, and Feeling Like You are Part of Something Good. Oncology nurses provide care for their patients through a holistic lens that further enhances how they come to know their patients. Over time, relationships with patients and families develop and these nurses share that balancing the emotional aspects of their work is key in being able to continue to invest in their work and in these relationships. Their investment is further evident as oncology nurses continuously update their knowledge, for example, of treatment regimes, medication protocols, and as they champion their patients wishes and needs. As nurses develop their own identities as oncology nurses, they in turn enhance the team with their emerging skill and knowledge. These research findings serve to acknowledge the meaning of oncology nurses’ work and inform the profession’s understanding of what it means to be an oncology nurse.

The H1N1/09 (sub-type A) virus was declared to be a pandemic influenza on June 11th, 2009. In response, Canadian public health agencies planned mass vaccination clinics to protect the public. However, little information existed to aid in the planning of mass vaccination clinics, as they had not been used in previous pandemic flu outbreaks. This was further complicated by fear of a limited vaccine supply and nurse shortages. Public health nurses (PHNs), as the largest group of public health professionals were pivotal in implementing the mass vaccination clinics. Yet, the available evidence indicated that PHNs involvement in H1N1/09 response planning was limited and their experiences on the frontline in the mass vaccination clinics were not well understood. The purpose of this study was to give PHNs’ a voice to describe their experiences in the H1N1/09 mass vaccination clinics. A framework based on Foucault’s concepts of knowledge, power, and resistance was developed as the theoretical lens to guide the research. Using an interpretive descriptive methodology, a purposeful sample of 23 PHNs (16 front-line immunizers, seven clinic supervisors) participated in semi-structured interviews. Four pandemic planning documents containing policies in place during the pandemic outbreak were also reviewed to provide context to participants’ experiences. Interpretive descriptive analysis was used to analyze the interviews and pandemic documents. Guba and Lincoln’s (1994) trustworthiness framework was implemented to evaluate the rigour of the study’s findings. Two overall core themes emerged to describe participants’ experiences. The core theme ‘the necessity of knowledge’, illustrated participants’ feelings of unpreparedness entering into the H1N1/09 clinics. Limited notice of the pandemic response, uncertainties regarding the clinics’ anticipated timeframe, and a lack of knowledge on vaccination and clinic management, contributed to a loss of power in the participants’ role. In the second core theme ‘essential supports in protecting the population’, many perceived a lack of agency support when they tried to exercise power in their clinical practice. Although participants did not refuse to immunize in, or supervise, the mass vaccination clinics, participants at times did display subtle resistance. Insights gained from participants’ experiences have implications in terms of public health nursing administration, practice, research, and education. A key recommendation is to involve PHNs in future pandemic planning to optimize mass vaccination clinics’ operations. If this cannot happen, PHNs should at least be informed of the disciplinary discourse utilized to guide clinical decisions. This will help nurses be supported in their own pandemic roles and contribute to the provision of quality population care.

This dissertation explores the ways in which media, visuality, and politics intersect through an analysis of contemporary war photography. In so doing, it seeks to uncover how war photography as a social practice works to produce, perform and construct the State. Furthermore, it argues that this productive and performative power works to constrain the conditions of possibility for geopolitics. The central argument of this project is that contemporary war photography reifies a view of the international in which the liberal, democratic West is pitted against the barbaric Islamic world in a ‘civilizational’ struggle. This project’s key contribution to knowledge rests in its unique and rigorous research methodology (Visual Discourse Analysis) – mixing as it does inspiration from both quantitative and qualitative approaches to scholarship. Empirically, the dissertation rests on the detailed analysis of over 1900 war images collected from 30 different media sources published between the years 2000-2013.

This study, patterned on Benton’s (2009) model of the four conceptions of interpretation which includes connecting visitors to resources through use of interpretive techniques, conveying mission and influencing behaviour, encouraging environmental literacy, and promoting recreational outcomes (modified from Benton’s use of tourism outcomes), took a comprehensive approach to examine the recreational and environmental outcomes of participation in interpretive programs at Gatineau Park (N = 78). The findings included significant correlations between the interpretive techniques and environmental literacy (n = 73, r = .711, p = .000), pro-environmental behavioural intentions (n = 70, r = .267, p = .025), and recreation satisfaction (n = 67, r = .419, p = .000) outcomes. There was also a significant correlation between recreation satisfaction and environmental literacy (n = 66, r = .518, p = .000). Path analysis indicated the direction of these relationships with environmental literacy directly influencing recreation satisfaction and interpretive techniques indirectly influencing recreation satisfaction through environmental literacy, revealing that environmental literacy mediated the relationship between the interpretive techniques used and recreation satisfaction.

This study aims to provide strategies for blended learning situations which combine supervised on-line courses with traditional classroom lectures in order to take into account the different learning styles of particular groups of students. Most studies, to date, on learning styles have focused on the individual level. This research proposed that commonly preferred learning styles and leanings towards certain media presentations can be identified in whole groups that share some common group characteristics. An interpretive case study was chosen as the methodology to reach the research goal because it collectively combines the benefits of a case study and multiple data collections from students who studied on a required on-line course in the same learning context. The students, who participated in this study, were majoring in either Science, Social Science, or Management. Various data collection techniques included a survey of 576 students who studied IT courses, personal interviews of 34 students, participatory and on-line observations, and reference to institutional documents. Qualitative analysis of the data employed a concept synthesis coupled with a template analysis to compare and contextualise all the facets of reality depicted by the data (King, 2004). This approach was necessary due to the extensive theoretical background required to generate the initial template and the need to completely comprehend the group learning phenomenon. The research discerned that students in specific major academic fields have common preferences for on-line media and activities that assist the learning process because they process and perceive information differently. A model is proposed to identify the interactions between the learner, the media and activity content, and the context of learning. The design of on-line course materials should take into account group learning styles to propose a holistic picture for effective learning. This is a valuable resource for the teachers and designers of compulsory on-line courses and for those who determine educational policy and strategy.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) came into the power when banking institutions started to become more and more competitive. The focus on CRM increased banks' abilities to understand their customers' current needs more precisely and also helped them to understand their customers' behaviours, such as what they have done in the past, and what they plan to do in the future. Such practice further helped banks to design strategies based on each customer's preferences in order to meet their customers' demands (Xu, et al., 2002). The adoption of the CRM within the banking industry chiefly depends on the overall adoption of IT culture within the country. Today, developed countries like the UK are enjoying innovative technologies, tailored-made systems, and have a high level of IT maturity within their banking industry. On the other hand, developing countries such as Pakistan are still dealing with several technological issues and the biggest one is the lack of IT alignment within most of their organizations especially within their banking industry (Kundi and Nawaz, 2006). Therefore, it is essential for researchers to further investigate the major IT-related problems faced by the banking industry, especially problems with the current use of the CRM system within the banking industry of developing countries i.e. Pakistan compared to banks in developed countries i.e. UK.This research has investigated and covered the overall operational issues of the CRM system within the banking industry of both developed and developing countries i.e. UK and Pakistan by using a qualitative case study research approach with two case studies, in which the Pakistani banking sector is selected as the developing country for case study one; for a developed country, the UK banking sector is selected as case study two. From the several existing UK and Pakistani banks, the researcher has selected some leading banks from the two countries and conducted several semi-structured interviews with different bank employees. Furthermore, the obtained interviews' results from both case studies are analyzed, compared, and discussed using an in-depth cross-case analysis approach and uncovered the similarities, differences, and several CRM operational issues within the banking sectors of both Pakistan and the UK.

Even before software engineering was formally defined as a discipline, software projects were notorious for being behind schedule and over budget. The resulting software systems were also often described as unreliable. Researchers in the field have, over the years, theorised and proposed many standards, methods, processes and techniques to improve software project outcomes. Based on allegorical evidence, however, it would seem that these proposals are often not applied in practice. This study was inspired by a desire to probe this general theme, namely of the extent to which (if at all) software engineering theory is adopted in practice. The core of this research is an interpretive case study of a software project in the financial services industry that ran from end 2006 to mid 2008. I was one of a team of approximately 20 developers, analysts and development managers working on the project, until I left the company in 2009. Results are reported in a two-phase fashion over several themes. Firstly, the literature of recommended software engineering practices relating to a particular theme is reviewed. This is regarded as the "theory". Thereafter, the observations and evidence collected from the interpretive study in regard to the relevant theme is presented and discussed. The first theme investigated is the notion of "project outcome". Definitions of successful and failed software projects are considered from the perspective of the various stakeholders. Also considered are factors that contribute to project success or failure. After examining how case study participants viewed the project’s outcome, it is argued that the project could neither be labelled as a complete success nor as a complete failure. Two areas were identified as problematic: the requirements gathering process; and the system architecture that had been chosen. Improvements in these areas would arguably have most benefitted the project’s outcome. For this reason, recommended practices were probed in the literature relating both to requirements engineering and also to software architecture design. The case study project was then evaluated against these recommended practices to determine the degree to which they were implemented. In cases where the recommended practices were not implemented or only partially implemented, a number of reasons for the lack of adoption are considered. Of course, the conclusions made in this study as to why the recommended practices were not implemented cannot be naïvely generalized to the software engineering field as a whole. Instead, in line with the interpretive nature of the study, an attempt was made to gain in depth knowledge of a particular project, to show how that project’s individual characteristics influenced the adoption of software engineering theory, and to probe the consequences of such adoption or lack thereof. The study suggested that the complex and individual nature of software projects will have a substantial influence on the extent to which theory is adopted in practice. It also suggested that the impact such adoption will have on a project’s outcome will be critically influenced by the nature of the software project. Copyright / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Computer Science / unrestricted

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第23377号 / 医博第4746号 / 新制||医||1051(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 川上 浩司, 教授 近藤 尚己, 教授 万代 昌紀 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

For the past three decades performance development in sport has been steered by traditional Psychological Skills Training (PST) programmes. However, in the last decade, the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach to performance development in sport has been introduced. To date, there is limited research on the MAC approach and there are currently no published studies in South Africa. The goal of this study was to explore the participant’s experiences of the MAC programme with reference to what they learnt through the programme, how they applied their learning to their swimming and how they transferred their learning to their lives. This study is an Interpretive Phenomenological view of five adolescent swimmers (two female and three male) at the High Performance Centre (hpc), in South Africa (SA). The participants partook in a one-day swimmingspecific MAC programme and thereafter, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants. An interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used for analysing the data gained from the interviews. The findings indicate that the participants had experiences which were consistent, inconsistent or unique in relation to the literature review. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted

This study explored the subjective interpretations of five adolescent athletes who experienced a sport-specific version of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach. The MAC approach is an alternative sport psychology intervention to more traditional control-driven approaches, such as Psychological Skills Training (PST). An in-depth qualitative study was conducted at the High Performance Centre (hpc) of the University of Pretoria (UP). The sport-specific MAC programme was developed for the sport of athletics. The programme was facilitated to five adolescent athletes who participate in the sport of athletics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted after the participants experienced the programme. The interviews were based on written reflections provided by participants during the programme. The research position for this study was phenomenology, and specifically Interpretive Phenomenology (IP). Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the material. The results revealed that there was only one theme that was common to all five participants. Furthermore, the results portrayed diversity amongst the participant experiences and subjectivity in their interpretations of the MAC approach. The results displayed how some themes are consistent with MAC-related literature, and how other themes contradict the literature. Additionally, some themes have not been reported in MAC literature before. Thus, the study contributed to the expansion of literature on the MAC approach. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lk2014 / Psychology / MA / Unrestricted