This qualitative study investigated the perceptions of exercise among individuals with fibromyalgia. The goal of this research was not to prove that exercise is good for people with fibromyalgia, but rather to gain an understanding of how health practitioners can help fibromyalgia patients adhere to regular physical activity. The research was conducted using three focus groups with people who are treated for fibromyalgia at Medical Consultants in Muncie, Indiana. The groups consisted of current exercisers and non-exercisers. Four themes emerged from the groups that the participants discussed. These themes were, reasons for exercising, barriers to exercise, desired characteristics of an exercise program, and key support personnel helping participants deal with their condition. The information contained within these themes can be used by health practitioners to develop exercise programs that entice fibromyalgia patients to adhere to a regular exercise program. / Fisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology

No description available.

Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only. / School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science

Certification and licensure have been sources of debate and controversy for many years in the counseling profession. Counseling psychology, in contrast, has developed uniform standards for licensure across most of North America. Virtually no literature, though, has examined whether these phenomena have any impact on a client's perceptions of a counselor. This dissertation reports on a study designed to examine this issue. University student and university counseling center client perceptions of helper credential status and educational achievement were studied. Subjects reviewed written vignettes of a helper that included the person's credential status and level of educational achievement. Credential status was presented in one of three ways: not certified or licensed; certified but not licensed; certified and licensed. Educational achievement was presented in one of two ways: a master's degree in counseling or a doctoral degree in counseling psychology. Subjects then completed the Counselor Rating Form - Short (CRF-S) (Corrigan & Schmidt, 1983) and the 15 Personal Problems Inventory (15 PPI) (Cash, Begley, McCown, & Weise, 1975). Data from the CRF-S and the 15 PPI were analyzed using multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs). The data were analyzed in terms of three samples: a combined student-client sample (N = 127), a student sample (N = 96), and a client sample (N = 31). The results of the analysis of the CRF-S data showed a significant main effect for credential status in the combined and student samples (p < .01), but not in the client sample. A significant main effect was also found for educational achievement in the combined sample (p < .01) and student sample (p < .05), but not the client sample. Follow-up analyses showed that helpers with more credentials were generally rated better than helpers with fewer credentials, and that helpers with a master's degree were generally rated better than helpers with a doctoral degree. The results of the 15 PPI analyses also found a significant main effect for credential status in the combined student-client sample (p < .01) but no other significant main effects. The study's results are discussed in terms of their implications for the field of counseling psychology. / Department of Secondary, Higher, and Foundations of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / Nursing Studies / Master / Master of Philosophy

Background: When an individual is cared for in a hospital, which is a new and unknown environment, this can create feelings of uncertainty and insecurity for some. Insecurity can lead to a feeling of pressure and makes the caring more difficult. This can therefore worsen the recovery for the patient. Aim: The aim of this study was to illuminate the patient's perceived experience of safety at hospital. Method: A literature based study was done based on ten qualitative articles among men- and women at hospital. Result: The study showed that the feeling of safety could be experienced when the patient felt confirmed, the patient feels involved in their own care and when nursing staff cares for the patient. To felt safe is also found in how patients perceive their environment through the hospital's physical and social environment. The result of the articles were presented in two main themes; the meaning of the caring relationship and presence of others. Conclusion: There was several factors that contribute to the feeling of safety for the patient in hospital care. Patients’ feelings of safety can be experienced by acts such as to be confirmed by the care giving staff, the patient's opportunity to be involved and when the patient feels cared about. / Examensarbetet har för avsikt att belysa patienters upplevda erfarenhet av trygghet vid sjukhusvård. Trygghet är ett filosofiskt begrepp med olika innebörder och upplevs olika från individ till individ. Trygghet kan delas in i både inre och yttre trygghet där den inre tryggheten skapas av positiva minnen från barndomen såsom minnen från en vacker sommardag. Inre trygghet kan också skapas i vuxen ålder av positiva erfarenheter såsom bli väl bemött och omhändertagen under sjukhusvården. Yttre trygghet kan ses såsom miljön patienten har runt sig. Detta examensarbete benämner det som den sociala och fysiska miljön. Den sociala miljön skapas av närvaro av närstående, andra patienter och vårdpersonal. Den fysiska miljön handlar om hur sjukhusmiljön är utformad och påverkar den sociala miljön. Resultatet från de tio vetenskapliga artiklarna inkluderade i examensarbetet visar att upplevelse av trygghet är associerad med upplevelsen av vårdrelationen och relationen till andra signifikanta personer. Det framkommer att upplevelse av trygghet påverkas av graden av delaktighet i vården, relationen till personalen och närstående samt den fysiska vårdmiljön.

Online health communities (OHCs) have been increasingly popular among patients with chronic or life-threatening illnesses for the exchange of social support. Contemporary research of OHCs relies on methods and tools to handle analytics of massive user-generated content at scale to complement traditional qualitative analysis. In this thesis, we aim at advancing the area of research by providing computational tools and methods which facilitate automated content analysis, and by presenting applications of these tools to investigating member characteristics and behaviors. We first provide a framework of conceptualization to systematically describe problems, challenges, and existing solutions for OHCs from a social support standpoint, to bridge the knowledge gap between health psychology and informatics. With this framework in hand, we define the landscape of online social support, summarize current research progress of OHCs, and identify research questions to investigate for this thesis. We then build a series of computational tools for analyzing OHC content, relying on techniques of machine learning and natural language processing. Leveraging domain-specific features, our tools are tailored to handle content analysis tasks on OHC text effectively. Equipped with computational tools, we demonstrate how characteristics of OHC members can be identified at scale in an automated fashion. In particular, we build up multi-dimensional descriptions for patient members, consisting of what topics they focus on, what sentiment they express, and what treatments they discuss and adopt. Patterns of how these member characteristics change through time are also investigated longitudinally. Finally, relying on computational analytics, members' behaviors of engagement such as debate and dropping-out are identified and characterized. Studies presented in this thesis discover static and longitudinal patterns of member characteristics and engagement, which are potential research hypotheses to be explored by health psychologists and clinical researchers. The thesis also contributes to the informatics community by making computational tools, lexicons, and annotated corpora available to facilitate future research.

This qualitative study aimed to investigate psychotherapy clients’ phenomenological experience of positive regard. Though positive regard is broadly accepted as a useful and effective clinical tool across orientations, it has been under-researched and overlooked in favor of more clearly conceptualized variables, such as empathy and working alliance. Designed as a follow-up to a quantitative study that yielded a tentative factor structure and inventory for measuring positive regard (Psychotherapist Expressions of Positive Regard, PEPR), the study also aimed to elucidate the extent to which those findings could be replicated in a qualitative format. Following Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) methodology, 15 psychotherapy clients, primarily white women, participated in semi-structured interviews eliciting the factors that contribute to their experience of positive regard in therapy, the absence of positive regard in therapy, and the impact of positive regard on the course of psychotherapy. Nine domains and several key findings emerged from the analysis. While clients named a wide range of therapist behaviors and actions that served as markers of positive regard in the relationship, three constituent attitudes appeared repeatedly throughout the CQR categories, suggesting an underlying tripartite structure of positive regard – warm authenticity, flexible responsiveness, and empathic understanding. Clients viewed positive regard as a crucial ingredient of therapy, suggesting that it facilitates self-disclosure, risk-taking, personal growth, and rupture resolution. In relationships where positive regard was lacking, clients became disengaged from treatment, and terminating without explanation was not uncommon. Clinical implications and recommendations for optimizing the experience of positive regard are offered. The substantial overlap and interdependence of positive regard with the other Rogerian facilitative conditions of congruence and empathy is discussed. Convergence and divergence between the PEPR factor structure and the results of the current study are also highlighted, with future directions proposed.

published_or_final_version / Nursing Studies / Master / Master of Nursing in Advanced Practice

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