The current study explores the experiences of mental health care professionals in Sweden who conduct therapy with the assistance of an interpreter. Seven participants took part in semi-structured interviews that were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith, 1996). Three main themes emerged from the analysis of the interview transcripts: (1) communication and translation - highlighting the communicative challenges and benefits that arise when using an interpreter, (2) the interpreter as a person and as a professional - describing the variation of interpreters in terms of behavior, personality, roles, and professionalism, and their impact on psychological treatment, and (3) dynamics and relations - featuring the interpreter’s impact on the dynamics and the process of building a patient-therapist alliance. The results show that all participants find it difficult to determine the accuracy of the translation, and several techniques used by the clinician to ensure a correct translation were pointed out. Moreover, findings highlight the essentiality of non-verbal cues and body language in communication and that the role and the behavior, in addition to several personal factors of the interpreter has an impact on the patient-therapist alliance and therapy dynamics. In addition, the study illuminates the patient’s impact on the interpreter as many interpreters themselves have been through traumatic experiences, which in turn may affect the therapeutic process. The findings of the current study show how important it is for clinicians, mental health services, and interpreting services to take the interpreters’ impact on the clinician, the patient, and the therapeutic outcome  into account. The study aims to contribute to a better understanding of clinicians’ experiences of working with interpreters to improve the use of - and collaboration with - interpreters and thereby raise the standard of psychological treatment for refugees and asylum seekers.

My dissertation is about how engineering educators can use natural language processing (NLP) in implementing open-ended assessments in undergraduate engineering degree programs. Engineering students need to develop an ability to exercise judgment about better and worse outcomes of their decisions. One important consideration for improving engineering students' judgment involves creating sound educational assessments. Currently, engineering educators face a trad-off in selecting between open- and closed-ended assessments. Closed-ended assessments are easy to administer and score but are limited in what they measure given students are required, in many instances, to choose from a priori list. Conversely, open-ended assessments allow students to write their answers in any way they choose in their own words. However, open-ended assessments are likely to take more personal hours and lack consistency for both inter-grader and intra-grader grading. The solution to this challenge is the use of NLP. The working principles of the existing NLP models is the tallying of words, keyword matching, or syntactic similarity of words, which have often proved too brittle in capturing the language diversity that students could write. Therefore, the problem that motivated the present study is how to assess student responses based on underlying concepts and meanings instead of morphological characteristics or grammatical structure in sentences. Some of this problem can be addressed by developing NLP-assisted grading tools based on transformer-based large language models (TLLMs) such as BERT, MPNet, GPT-4. This is because TLLMs are trained on billions of words and have billions of parameters, thereby providing capacity to capture richer semantic representations of input text. Given the availability of TLLMs in the last five years, there is a significant lack of research related to integrating TLLMs in the assessment of open-ended engineering case studies. My dissertation study aims to fill this research gap. I developed and evaluated four NLP approaches based on TLLMs for thematic analysis of student responses to eight question prompts of engineering ethics and systems thinking case scenarios. The study's research design comprised the following steps. First, I developed an example bank for each question prompt with two procedures: (a) human-in-the-loop natural language processing (HILNLP) and (b) traditional qualitative coding. Second, I assigned labels using the example banks to unlabeled student responses with the two NLP techniques: (i) k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), and (ii) Zero-Shot Classification (ZSC). Further, I utilized the following configurations of these NLP techniques: (i) kNN (when k=1), (ii) kNN (when k=3), (iii) ZSC (multi-labels=false), and (iv) ZSC (multi-labels=true). The kNN approach took input of both sentences and their labels from the example banks. On the other hand, the ZSC approach only took input of labels from the example bank. Third, I read each sentence or phrase along with the model's suggested label(s) to evaluate whether the assigned label represented the idea described in the sentence and assigned the following numerical ratings: accurate (1), neutral (0), and inaccurate (-1). Lastly, I used those numerical evaluation ratings to calculate accuracy of the NLP approaches. The results of my study showed moderate accuracy in thematically analyzing students' open-ended responses to two different engineering case scenarios. This is because no single method among the four NLP methods performed consistently better than the other methods across all question prompts. The highest accuracy rate varied between 53% and 92%, depending upon the question prompts and NLP methods. Despite these mixed results, this study accomplishes multiple goals. My dissertation demonstrates to community members that TLLMs have potential for positive impacts on improving classroom practices in engineering education. In doing so, my dissertation study takes up one aspect of instructional design: assessment of students' learning outcomes in engineering ethics and systems thinking skills. Further, my study derived important implications for practice in engineering education. First, I gave important lessons and guidelines for educators interested in incorporating NLP into their educational assessment. Second, the open-source code is uploaded to a GitHub repository, thereby making it more accessible to a larger group of users. Third, I gave suggestions for qualitative researchers on conducting NLP-assisted qualitative analysis of textual data. Overall, my study introduced state-of-the-art TLLM-based NLP approaches to a research field where it holds potential yet remains underutilized. This study can encourage engineering education researchers to utilize these NLP methods that may be helpful in analyzing the vast textual data generated in engineering education, thereby reducing the number of missed opportunities to glean information for actors and agents in engineering education. / Doctor of Philosophy / My dissertation is about how engineering educators can use natural language processing (NLP) in implementing open-ended assessments in undergraduate engineering degree programs. Engineering students need to develop an ability to exercise judgment about better and worse outcomes of their decisions. One important consideration for improving engineering students' judgment involves creating sound educational assessments. Currently, engineering educators face a trade-off in selecting between open- and closed-ended assessments. Closed-ended assessments are easy to administer and score but are limited in what they measure given students are required, in many instances, to choose from a priori list. Conversely, open-ended assessments allow students to write their answers in any way they choose in their own words. However, open-ended assessments are likely to take more personal hours and lack consistency for both inter-grader and intra-grader grading. The solution to this challenge is the use of NLP. The working principles of the existing NLP models are the tallying of words, keyword matching, or syntactic similarity of words, which have often proved too brittle in capturing the language diversity that students could write. Therefore, the problem that motivated the present study is how to assess student responses based on underlying concepts and meanings instead of morphological characteristics or grammatical structure in sentences. Some of this problem can be addressed by developing NLP-assisted grading tools based on transformer-based large language models (TLLMs). This is because TLLMs are trained on billions of words and have billions of parameters, thereby providing capacity to capture richer semantic representations of input text. Given the availability of TLLMs in the last five years, there is a significant lack of research related to integrating TLLMs in the assessment of open-ended engineering case studies. My dissertation study aims to fill this research gap. The results of my study showed moderate accuracy in thematically analyzing students' open-ended responses to two different engineering case scenarios. My dissertation demonstrates to community members that TLLMs have potential for positive impacts on improving classroom practices in engineering education. This study can encourage engineering education researchers to utilize these NLP methods that may be helpful in analyzing the vast textual data generated in engineering education, thereby reducing the number of missed opportunities to glean information for actors and agents in engineering education.

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Corporate environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting is becoming subject to increased scrutiny by regulators, investors and public. This dissertation will contribute to several research streams in the extant literature. This dissertation is the first to show the impact of employee environmental values and attitudes on reporting and whistleblowing decisions, making contributions to accounting, management, whistleblowing and environmental psychology literatures. Next, it is among the first to examine the role of the identity of ESG assurance provider in ESG reporting context. Further, it is among the first to examine the impact of SEC assurance mandate and the value of assurance over ESG information, thus contributing to audit literature. Using experimental methodology, I examine how ESG report assurance, ESG report assurance provider, ESG issue type, and environmentalism as a personality factor influence employee decisions to accede to a supervisory request to misrepresent ESG information, to report management's actions to a corporate hotline, to post information about management wrongdoing on social media, to switch jobs, and to judge ESG misreporting actions as unethical. The results indicate that (1) employee personality factor environmentalism impacts their ESG reporting decisions; (2) pro-environmental employees are more likely to whistleblow when assurance is not mandated, and they judge management actions to be more unethical when assurance is required; (3) under pressure to misreport ESG information, employees are more likely to switch jobs and judge management actions significantly more unethical, when they are dealing with quantitative data (as opposed to qualitative data), and when ESG assurance is provided by a consultant (versus an auditor); (4) pro-environmental employees do not differentiate between the issues impacting financial statements or ESG report only, whereas, employees with low-level environmentalism judge management actions to be more unethical when facing ESG issue with immediate impact to financial statements as opposed to an issue impacting ESG report only; (5) older employees (over 35) with low-level environmentalism are more likely to post information on social media when dealing with an environmental issue as opposed to a social issue; and (6) majority of participants (57%) perceive ESG misreporting to be a widespread phenomenon.

Research has shown that we presently live in an era where birth rates are low and life expectancy is high, drawing the conclusion that older people will be part of young people’s lives for longer. Intergenerational relationships refer to the relationship between two or more generations and are crucial for growth within both generations, young and old. There are many stereotypes attached to old age, and it has been found that young people take on these stereotypes through the media and society. The aim of this study was to explore young people’s perceptions of older people before and after an ethnodrama presentation. Programme evaluation which forms part of applied qualitative research was used. The participants for the research were selected from four schools across Gauteng through convenience sampling, and their ages ranged from ten to sixteen years old. The presentation consisted of an icebreaker and the ethnodrama, which is defined as the dramatisation of researched data. The ethnodrama aimed at generating a better understanding of older people, and refuting negative perceptions associated with older people and aging. It was specifically aimed to tell a story of how older people are living in South-Africa based on previous research. The data, to determine the participants’ perceptions of older people, were collected by means of questionnaires containing open-ended questions. The data were obtained before and immediately after the presentation of the ethnodrama. Thematic analysis was used to transform the data into meaningful information. Findings in this study were not intended to generalize or prove the efficacy of the programme, but to establish how young people perceive older people and whether an ethnodrama presentation had any influence on these perceptions. The findings of the evaluation before the presentation revealed that young people have ambivalent, stereotypical or favourable perceptions of older people. The evaluation directly after the presentation showed a more nuanced description of older people, whereby younger people did not just describe them according to their identities as older people, but also described the relationship between young and old, and expressed an understanding for older people’s needs. In conclusion, the ethnodrama seemed to have an impact on younger people’s perceptions of older people, although stereotypical perceptions remained throughout the study. It is recommended that young people are encouraged to interact with older people from a young age in order to base their perceptions on first-hand accounts of experience gained through these interaction, and possibly dismiss any negative perceptions they may have. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This study focuses on the strengths of early adolescents after losing a parent to suicide. Strengths is a global phenomenon and yet little research has been undertaken in South Africa pertaining to strengths in early adolescence. The goal of the study was to determine how the early adolescent experiences the suicidal death of a parent while simultaneously going through puberty, and what strengths were present to help them make meaning out of what happened in their lives. The research was conducted through a phenomenological design and followed a qualitative research approach within an interpretivist paradigm. The research design and approach allowed the participants to give meaning to the construct by sharing their own experiences. A total of 6 early adolescent girls from the ages of twelve to sixteen years were purposefully selected from the East Rand area, Gauteng. Five of the girls were Afrikaans speaking and one was English speaking. Three of the girls lost a mother to suicide and three of the girls lost a father to suicide. The qualitative data was collected in the form of individual in-depth interviews with the early adolescents. The interviews were voice recorded, transcribed and typed out by online transcribers. The raw data was checked by the researcher for accuracy and categorised to ascertain certain emerging themes. Thematic data analysis was used to transform the transcribed data into meaningful information. Principles and strategies to increase the trustworthiness of the data were done through a process of crystallisation. The researcher's objective was to understand and interpret the meanings the participants gave to their own experiences, to identify the strengths that emerged and make findings available to professionals and parents. The findings of the study revealed that early adolescents do present with certain strengths of an intrapersonal nature that assisted and support them through the grief and bereavement process after the suicide of a parent. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Research has shown that we presently live in an era where birth rates are low and life expectancy is high, drawing the conclusion that older people will be part of young people’s lives for longer. Intergenerational relationships refer to the relationship between two or more generations and are crucial for growth within both generations, young and old. There are many stereotypes attached to old age, and it has been found that young people take on these stereotypes through the media and society. The aim of this study was to explore young people’s perceptions of older people before and after an ethnodrama presentation. Programme evaluation which forms part of applied qualitative research was used. The participants for the research were selected from four schools across Gauteng through convenience sampling, and their ages ranged from ten to sixteen years old. The presentation consisted of an icebreaker and the ethnodrama, which is defined as the dramatisation of researched data. The ethnodrama aimed at generating a better understanding of older people, and refuting negative perceptions associated with older people and aging. It was specifically aimed to tell a story of how older people are living in South-Africa based on previous research. The data, to determine the participants’ perceptions of older people, were collected by means of questionnaires containing open-ended questions. The data were obtained before and immediately after the presentation of the ethnodrama. Thematic analysis was used to transform the data into meaningful information. Findings in this study were not intended to generalize or prove the efficacy of the programme, but to establish how young people perceive older people and whether an ethnodrama presentation had any influence on these perceptions. The findings of the evaluation before the presentation revealed that young people have ambivalent, stereotypical or favourable perceptions of older people. The evaluation directly after the presentation showed a more nuanced description of older people, whereby younger people did not just describe them according to their identities as older people, but also described the relationship between young and old, and expressed an understanding for older people’s needs. In conclusion, the ethnodrama seemed to have an impact on younger people’s perceptions of older people, although stereotypical perceptions remained throughout the study. It is recommended that young people are encouraged to interact with older people from a young age in order to base their perceptions on first-hand accounts of experience gained through these interaction, and possibly dismiss any negative perceptions they may have. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This study focuses on the strengths of early adolescents after losing a parent to suicide. Strengths is a global phenomenon and yet little research has been undertaken in South Africa pertaining to strengths in early adolescence. The goal of the study was to determine how the early adolescent experiences the suicidal death of a parent while simultaneously going through puberty, and what strengths were present to help them make meaning out of what happened in their lives. The research was conducted through a phenomenological design and followed a qualitative research approach within an interpretivist paradigm. The research design and approach allowed the participants to give meaning to the construct by sharing their own experiences. A total of 6 early adolescent girls from the ages of twelve to sixteen years were purposefully selected from the East Rand area, Gauteng. Five of the girls were Afrikaans speaking and one was English speaking. Three of the girls lost a mother to suicide and three of the girls lost a father to suicide. The qualitative data was collected in the form of individual in-depth interviews with the early adolescents. The interviews were voice recorded, transcribed and typed out by online transcribers. The raw data was checked by the researcher for accuracy and categorised to ascertain certain emerging themes. Thematic data analysis was used to transform the transcribed data into meaningful information. Principles and strategies to increase the trustworthiness of the data were done through a process of crystallisation. The researcher's objective was to understand and interpret the meanings the participants gave to their own experiences, to identify the strengths that emerged and make findings available to professionals and parents. The findings of the study revealed that early adolescents do present with certain strengths of an intrapersonal nature that assisted and support them through the grief and bereavement process after the suicide of a parent. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Recent research surrounding educational leadership indicates that among school-related factors, leadership is second only to the classroom teacher as a variable associated with improving student achievement (Leithwood et al., 2004). Given the current climate of high stakes testing and accountability, the role that the principal plays in fostering continuous school improvement and ensuring academic success for all students has become increasingly important. To enhance school performance, the literature proposes that school leaders serve as instructional leaders and distribute their leadership responsibilities. One significant element of such leadership models is the ability of the school principal to support and promote inquiry by teachers and school administrators into student and school data. Wayman and Stringfield (2006) note that a campus culture that values and practices data-based decision making is marked by collaborative inquiry into student data. Advocates of data-driven decision making and data use suggest that inquiry into student data has been shown to be useful in improving overall school practice (Bernhardt, 2003; Wayman and Stringfield, 2006). Furthermore, using data to focus on specific goals will improve student learning (Schmoker, 1999). To explore how principals can foster the development of structures that allow for inquiry into student and school data, a case study of one purposely-selected high school was conducted. The four primary research questions this study addressed were: (1). What structures can high school principals develop and implement that promote inquiry by teachers and administrators into data? (2). What structures positively impact student academic achievement, as perceived by high school teachers and principals? (3). How are teachers using student achievement data in their instructional decision-making? (4). What are the qualitative data elements that school leaders might consider to inform the ongoing planning and decision-making process? Over the course of four months, data was gathered through individual interviews, observations, a survey, and analysis of pertinent documents. Several themes surrounding data analysis and leadership practices emerged. These included: the benefits of using structures to empower school staff to own data, the use of structures to allow for time for collaboration, using data to improve teaching practices, and the benefits of providing teachers greater access to pertinent data. / text