Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted virus, and is causally related to several cancers. HPV vaccination rates are far below HealthyPeople 2020 targets and vary across geographic, socioeconomic, and demographic populations. The purpose of this research was to test the relationships among socioeconomic and demographic variables, HPV vaccination, social vulnerability, and physician recommendation within select local areas in the United States. Fundamental cause theory and behavioral economics informed this quantitative secondary analysis of National Immunization Survey-Teen and Social Vulnerability Index data (n = 43,271). Statistical analyses included chi-square and binomial logistic regression. Teens whose mothers had less than a college degree were more likely to initiate the HPV vaccine series (p < .01), while teens living in Hidalgo County and Houston were less likely to initiate the series (p < .001). Younger teens (p < .001), males (p < .001) and teens whose mothers had some college (p < .01) were less likely to complete the series, while older teens (p < .001) and teens living in Philadelphia and Houston (p < .01) were more likely to complete the series. Fewer teens in Bexar County received a physician recommendation (p < .01); there was no difference between vaccine initiation and select local area. These findings highlight the need to consider local sociodemographic influences on underlying disparities in health and physician behavior. Informed interventions may produce positive social change by reducing variance in health care quality, tailoring public health efforts to local needs, and moving persons experiencing disparities in health outcomes toward a healthy future.

Dual diagnosis clients continue to have low treatment completion rates. The purpose of the current study was to understand if motivational interviewing helped to increase completion rates for clients receiving cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Studying the problem was necessary for identifying an evidenced-based model for mental health counselors to help clients with dual diagnoses complete CBT treatment. There were no studies available for understanding the effectiveness of motivational interviewing as a tool for improving treatment completion rates for dual diagnoses clients in intensive outpatient programs. The research question examined if motivational interviewing was effective for improving treatment completion rates for the dual diagnosis population. A quantitative methodology with a quasi-experimental design used for this study and included a paired samples t test, a chi-square test, and a logistic regression analysis. The results showed a statistically significant association between receiving the motivational interviewing techniques and completing CBT. Clients who received motivational interviewing were 4 times more likely to complete CBT treatment compared to clients who did not receive the technique. Clients with increased self-efficacy levels were 2 times more likely to complete treatment, thus addressing the problem of dual diagnosis clients having low treatment completion rates. The overall results demonstrated that clients reduced substance use relapse and recidivism improved. Completing treatment helped to reduce crimes related to drug use; it also prepared substance users for return to society as productive citizens, which promoted positive social change.

Despite decades of the implementation of the directly observed therapy short-course (DOTS), Sierra Leone is ranked among the 30 highest TB-burdened countries. Several factors account for unfavorable treatment outcomes, among which are patient characteristics. Previous studies have only focused on treatment compliance without any consideration for the factors that lead to noncompliance to treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate patient characteristics that are associated with treatment noncompliance (treatment not completed) among TB patients undergoing the DOTS program in Sierra Leone. A retrospective longitudinal quantitative design was used to analyze secondary data from the completed records of 1,633 TB patients, using the Andersen's behavioral model of health services utilization as a theoretical framework work. Descriptive statistics and bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to analyze the data. The results show that there was no significant association between treatment completion and age, gender, and TB-case category. On the other hand, being HIV-positive decreases the odds of treatment completion. Also, the educational level, geographic location, and year of treatment were significantly associated with treatment completion. Overall, program performance improved as the number of dropouts decreased significantly between 2013 and 2015. The social change implication of this study was that it identified HIV-positive patients and rural communities as areas needing specific attention such as the assignment of case managers to ensure compliance thereby improve DOTS program performance, thereby reducing the incidence and transmission of TB

U.S. doctoral program completion rates have remained persistently low in the humanities and biomedical sciences despite educators' efforts. A variety of factors, including stress and dissitation advisor-related issues, were associated with high attrition rates and extended time-to-degree for PhD candidates. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine relationships among life stressors, advisor-related factors, and time-to-degree for a convenience sample of 74 online social sciences doctoral degree holders. Holmes and Rahe's work on stress and Tinto's framework for education program attrition provided the framework for the study. Linear regression and Pearson's correlation statistics were used to examine the relationships between Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) scores, Advisor-Related Factor scores, and time-to-degree after controlling for covariates of age, ethnicity, and gender. Key findings included: a) SRRS significantly (p < .01) predicted time-to-degree after controlling for age, ethnicity, and gender; and b) no significant relationship was found between advisor-related factors. By identifying at-risk students, early intervention could reduce the time need to complete a PhD program and reduce financial and university resources required to finish. Doctoral program administrators could provide closer supervision with PhD candidates and make adjustments based on an accumulation of extraordinary stressors to help PhD candidiates adjust and finish their programs.

Interruptions to juvenile detainees' education often delay their progress toward high school completion. Implementing an individualized learning plan (ILP) has been suggested as a solution to this problem. The purpose of this case study was to explore how ILPs facilitate attainment of graduation among incarcerated youth. The study was guided by the Washington State legislative framework for individualized learning plans and the efforts of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency to increase educational opportunities. Three research questions were formulated to explore perceptions of local juvenile detention center educators and administrators regarding their experiences in the development, implementation, and effectiveness of ILPs. Qualitative data were collected from interviews with 5 detention center educators, field observations, and document reviews. The examination of the data through the coding process using a matrix enabled descriptions and themes to emerge. Results indicated that ILPs are collaboratively developed and implemented in the detention center, there is a need for professional development related to ILPs, and ILPs have impacted students' education completion. Results from this study may influence social change by supporting development of ILPs which can result in a higher graduation rate and a reduction in recidivism among the incarcerated youth population.

Over the last two decades, dual-polarimetric weather radar has proven to be a valuable instrument providing critical precipitation information through remote sensing of the atmosphere. Modern weather radar systems operate with high sampling rates and long dwell times on targets. Often only limited target information is desired, leading to a pertinent question: could lesser samples have been acquired in the first place? Recently, a revolutionary sampling paradigm – compressed sensing (CS) – has emerged, which asserts that it is possible to recover signals from fewer samples or measurements than traditional methods require without degrading the accuracy of target information. CS methods have recently been applied to point target radars and imaging radars, resulting in hardware simplification advantages, enhanced resolution, and reduction in data processing overheads. But CS applications for volumetric radar targets such as precipitation remain relatively unexamined. This research investigates the potential applications of CS to radar remote sensing of precipitation. In general, weather echoes may not be sparse in space-time or frequency domain. Therefore, CS techniques developed for point targets, such as in aircraft surveillance radar, are not directly applicable to weather radars. However, precipitation samples are highly correlated both spatially and temporally. We, therefore, adopt latest advances in matrix completion algorithms to demonstrate the sparse sensing of weather echoes. Several extensions of this approach are then considered to develop a more general CS-based weather radar processing algorithms in presence of noise, ground clutter and dual-polarimetric data. Finally, a super-resolution approach is presented for the spectral recovery of an undersampled signal when certain frequency information is known.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether learning a meaningless phonological word-form, can affect its ability to compete with other words shortly after it was learned. According to previous experimental work we expected that a semantic referent (Leach & Samuel, 2007), and/or consolidation over a significant amount of time (Gaskell& Dumay, 2003) are necessary for a novel word-form to be able to engage in lateral inhibition with other words. In order to examine this we used the experimental design that was used by Dahan, Magnuson, Tanenhaus and Hogan (2001). Experiment 1 was a replication of the Dahan et al (2001) study. In Experiment 2 we added a condition in which a novel word was now assigned the role of the competitor, by inserting a nonword learning task (that was performed right before the Dahan task). The goal was to see whether any differences would arise between this new novel-word condition and the nonword condition. The results from Experiment 2 were inconclusive due to the stimulus set and this is why we conducted Experiment 3, which was similar to Experiment 2, but had a different stimulus set. The results of Experiment 3 showed that, in contrast to the predictions, a novel word can compete with other words, even if it does not have meaning and, moreover, this happens immediately after training. These findings indicate that 1) a word does not have to be complete (i.e. include semantic information) in order to compete with other words and 2) connections between novel and known words can form faster than what has been suggested.

One of the challenges facing higher education today is to graduate undergraduate students in a timely manner. Graduation rates are reported to students, parents, and the general public as well as academic and political leaders. The rates are derived using different methodologies. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects data annually by law from every institution offering federal financial aid in the United States. The "IPEDS reported" students are considered students who start in the fall semester, full-time, first-time in college, and graduate from the original institution (no transfers). The adult, part-time, returning, and transfer students, or "IPEDS unreported" students, are left out of the numbers. The purpose of this research is to understand how current college graduation data are collected in the United States and to compare that information with post-secondary attendance and transfer patterns. This study proposes to document the data of "IPEDS reported" and "IPEDS unreported" graduated students from one academic year and to propose alternatives for holistic and inclusive methods for counting graduation numbers that reflect current enrollment trends. Furthermore, emphasis of the serious implications of these data for students, parents, policymakers, institutional leaders, and politicians who rely on these data to make informed decisions regarding higher education will be discussed. This research contributes to innovative solutions for calculating graduation rates that adhere to updated methods that count and value all graduated students and their successes.

College enrollment has improved among Black and Latino students during the last several decades due partly to the influence of formal and informal mentors and increasing parental support of higher education. However, college completion for these underrepresented minority groups continues to lag behind graduation rates for White students. This research sought to examine whether pre-college relationships influence college completion. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen, this study tested the direct and indirect effects of social capital from pre-college networks, including parental capital and mentor capital, race and gender on college completion utilizing logistic regression. The results indicated that one form of parental capital, parental education, is positively associated with college completion for all students. Three forms of parental capital, however, were positively associated with completion for Black students. Contrary to hypothesis, mentor capital was not a significant predictor of graduation for any group. Furthermore, Black and Latina women graduated at higher rates and received more parental support for academic performance than their male counterparts. Implications for future research are discussed.

This thesis consists of two parts: a synthesis of the theory of categories enriched in a quantaloid; and a weakening of this theory for it to include semicategories describing ordered sheaves on a quantaloid. A synthesis of, and supplements to, results in the literature concerning the theory of categories enriched in a quantaloid Q (as particular case of categories enriched in a bicategory) is contained in the first chapters. This theory is built with Q-categories, functors and distributors, and contains such notions as, for example, adjoint functors, weighted colimits, presheaves, Kan extensions, Cauchy completions and Morita equivalence, and so on. The literature does not provide an overview of these matters, so it was necessary to provide one here. Then the necessary theory is developed to arrive at an elementary description of ``ordered sheaves on a quantaloid Q', henceforth referred to as Q-orders. As there is no ``topos of sheaves on a quantaloid', Q-orders cannot be defined as ordered objects in such a topos. Instead a description of Q-orders as categorical structures enriched in the quantaloid Q is proposed. The well-known ordered sheaves on a locale L (i.e.~ordered objects in the topos of sheaves on L) should of course be a particular example of the general theory, taking Q to be the (one-object suspension of) L. Then it turns out that the theory of Q-categories has to be weakened to include ``categories without units', i.e. Q-semicategories. But for Q-semicategories to admit a convenient distributor calculus, a ``regularity' condition has to be imposed. And for those regular Q-semicategories to admit a reasonable theory of Cauchy completions and Morita equivalence, the even stronger condition of ``total regularity' has to be imposed. The former notion has been studied before for semicategories enriched in a symmetric monoidal closed category; the latter notion is new, and is introduced via the intuitively clear idea of ``stability of objects'. The point is then that precisely the Cauchy complete totally regular Q-semicategories are the Q-orders; for a locale L they are indeed the ordered objects in the topos of sheaves on L. A (bi)equivalent description of those Q-orders can be given in terms of categories enriched in the split-idempotent completion of the quantaloid Q: a totally regular semicategory enriched in Q corresponds in a precise sense to a category enriched in the split-idempotent completion of Q. Applying this once more to a locale L instead of a quantaloid Q, these results thus deepen the work of the Louvain-la-Neuve school, and reconcile it with that of the Sydney school, on the description of (ordered) sheaves on a locale as enriched categorical structures. The extended introduction gives a compact yet intuitive presentation of the developments contained in the thesis.