Policymakers, politicians, and media outlets have declared an obesity epidemic. In doing so, they have named a variety of villains, including fast food. Despite the framing of fast food as being a leading contributor to weight gain and obesity, we have yet to understand the impact that fast food has on those who work with it every day. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the food choices, BMIs, and self perceived weights of the food service worker population. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field, I investigate the role of the workplace and external cultural influences, such as the family, in navigating an obseogenic workplace environment that is centered on selling highly caloric food to the Canadian public in a quick and cost effective manner. The first stage of this research addresses the question: Are food service workers more likely to be overweight or obese and perceive themselves as being overweight compared to the general population? In order to do this, I analyzed secondary survey data from the Canadian Community Health Survey cycle 5.1 (2009-2010). I used logistic regression techniques to construct models that analyze the likelihood of having high BMIs and high self perceived weights in both the food service worker and general Canadian populations. In addition to this, I sought to understand the food choices that contribute to weight gain in fast food workers. To do this, I conducted forty semi-structured qualitative interviews with workers from a variety of fast food chains. The results of my research disprove my original hypothesis that food service workers are more likely to be overweight or obese because of their frequent exposure to fast food. Instead, I found that they are less likely to be overweight or obese than the general Canadian population. Additionally, they are also less likely to perceive themselves as being overweight or obese. Through the qualitative interviews, I found that these individuals participate in a process of regulation where they monitor their food intake at work. Additionally, I found that their consumption patterns stemmed from habitus generated through cultural exposures in other areas of their lives. Pierre Bourdieu (1984) argues that we develop habitus through meaningful cultural exposure. We use our habitus, or engrained dispositions, to navigate hierarchical spaces or fields. Through this research, I found that workers viewed their jobs as being temporary and their cultural consumption patterns did not seem to change from their exposures to their workplaces. The majority were part time students, working in this industry to pay for living expenses and tuition. For the most part, they were raised in middle class homes where their mothers prepared food for their families from scratch on a daily basis. Fast food was viewed as a special treat and not an item to consume on a regular basis. I conclude that the meaningful exposures we have to food and cultural norms throughout life are more important in determining our food choices than our exposure to fast food restaurants.

The purpose of this research was to develop a theoretical understanding of the influences on participation for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) from a self-perceived perspective, with particular focus on the role of assistive technology (AT) in self-perceived participation. The theoretical underpinning, symbolic interactionism, was used to gain an understanding of the ways that adults with SCI ascribe meaning to the interaction between themselves and their unique environments in a process of participation. A grounded theory study of 19 adults with SCI was conducted. Participants engaged in individual in-depth interviews, used photovoice as a framework for taking photographs of aspects of their environment that promoted and restricted participation, and engaged in focus groups. The constructed grounded theory is summarized as follows: Negotiating the Body-environment Interface is a continuous process for those living with a SCI. Despite the relative stability of their changed body, they Live in a Changed World, one perceived differently after SCI. Four sets of strategies are used by individuals to interact within their unique environments: creating an accessible proximal environment; using AT and adaptations; advocating and educating; and gaining information and knowledge. Strategies were selected to engage in a Process of Participation, a process that consisted of a sense of inclusion, autonomy, accomplishment, and reciprocity. Intervening conditions were the physical (architectural, natural), socio-cultural (social supports, societal attitudes), and institutional (services, policies) environmental aspects that served as barriers or facilitators to the process of participation. The study has added to the growing body of literature on self-perceived participation that forefronts the sense of connectivity and engagement people feel within their environment. The findings highlighted how AT holds unique meaning, and how decisions around use of technology for participation is influenced by personal factors, and physical, socio-cultural, and institutional environments. A new definition of AT was constructed that acknowledges the environmental influences and importance of self-perceived participation as an outcome of AT use. This research highlights the instrumental role of the environment in supporting self-perceived participation of adults with SCI. Further research on developing ways to create inclusive and supportive environments for assistive technology users is warranted.

Official-language minorities in Canada may face specific issues in accessing health care services that can lead to negative consequences on their health, utilization of health care services and satisfaction with the health care system. A secondary data analysis of the 2006 Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities revealed significant differences between the Anglophone minority (n=5,161) and the Francophone minority (n=12,029) with regards to general health, and access to and use of health care services. Important predictors of these outcomes included age, education level, household income, marital status and place of residence (urban/rural). Access to health care services in the minority language was associated with self-perceived health in the Anglophone minority only. Health policy recommendations elaborated in light of the findings include working on both the supply and the demand of health care services offered in the two official languages, while taking into consideration important contextual differences between regions.

The purpose of this research was to develop a theoretical understanding of the influences on participation for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) from a self-perceived perspective, with particular focus on the role of assistive technology (AT) in self-perceived participation. The theoretical underpinning, symbolic interactionism, was used to gain an understanding of the ways that adults with SCI ascribe meaning to the interaction between themselves and their unique environments in a process of participation. A grounded theory study of 19 adults with SCI was conducted. Participants engaged in individual in-depth interviews, used photovoice as a framework for taking photographs of aspects of their environment that promoted and restricted participation, and engaged in focus groups. The constructed grounded theory is summarized as follows: Negotiating the Body-environment Interface is a continuous process for those living with a SCI. Despite the relative stability of their changed body, they Live in a Changed World, one perceived differently after SCI. Four sets of strategies are used by individuals to interact within their unique environments: creating an accessible proximal environment; using AT and adaptations; advocating and educating; and gaining information and knowledge. Strategies were selected to engage in a Process of Participation, a process that consisted of a sense of inclusion, autonomy, accomplishment, and reciprocity. Intervening conditions were the physical (architectural, natural), socio-cultural (social supports, societal attitudes), and institutional (services, policies) environmental aspects that served as barriers or facilitators to the process of participation. The study has added to the growing body of literature on self-perceived participation that forefronts the sense of connectivity and engagement people feel within their environment. The findings highlighted how AT holds unique meaning, and how decisions around use of technology for participation is influenced by personal factors, and physical, socio-cultural, and institutional environments. A new definition of AT was constructed that acknowledges the environmental influences and importance of self-perceived participation as an outcome of AT use. This research highlights the instrumental role of the environment in supporting self-perceived participation of adults with SCI. Further research on developing ways to create inclusive and supportive environments for assistive technology users is warranted.

Official-language minorities in Canada may face specific issues in accessing health care services that can lead to negative consequences on their health, utilization of health care services and satisfaction with the health care system. A secondary data analysis of the 2006 Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities revealed significant differences between the Anglophone minority (n=5,161) and the Francophone minority (n=12,029) with regards to general health, and access to and use of health care services. Important predictors of these outcomes included age, education level, household income, marital status and place of residence (urban/rural). Access to health care services in the minority language was associated with self-perceived health in the Anglophone minority only. Health policy recommendations elaborated in light of the findings include working on both the supply and the demand of health care services offered in the two official languages, while taking into consideration important contextual differences between regions.

The use of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare organizations is omnipresent. The nursing curriculum needs to include IT in order to prepare nursing students to acquire Nursing Informatics (NI) competencies before entering the workplace. The literature review suggests that pre-licensure nurses are ill prepared to enter the workforce because they lack some of the essential computer skills that employers are seeking when hiring new graduates (Fetter, 2009a; Gassert, 2008; Ornes & Gassert, 2007). The lack of defined competencies in NI is a worldwide problem (Chang, 2007; Fetter, 2009b; Staggers, Gassert, & Curran, 2001; Ragneskog & Gerdner, 2006). This thesis will examine two questions: 1) Do nursing students increase their NI competency scores progressively in their school program from year 1 to 4? 2) Do nursing students with work experience requiring the use of technology outside of the curriculum get higher scores for NI competencies than those without by the end of 4th year? A questionnaire was given to 176 nursing students asking them to rate their computer use and computer knowledge. The results were consistent for both independent variables of year of study and experience with technology in the work setting. There is no interaction present between variables; they each influence individually the total score for NI competencies for nursing students. The results show NI competencies progressively increasing over the four academic years. The nursing students scored higher still when they had technology experience in any work field on NI competencies. The combination of academic and work experience that uses IT provides nursing students with more opportunities to practice and assimilate their NI competencies before graduation.

This dissertation proposed and operationalized a theoretically meaningful and practically useful conceptualization of change for three well known communication constructs, namely willingness to communicate (WTC), self-perceived communication competence (SPCC), and communication apprehension (CA). Specifically, this research found that students' WTC and SPCC scores increased linearly during the semester and their CA scores decreased linearly. In addition, results from this dissertation indicated that for all three constructs considerable differences among students existed with respect to both initial levels and subsequent change in levels. These results are important and can advance the theoretical communication research centered around these constructs. In particular, knowledge that the hypothesis of linear change in the constructs received support from empirical data and that variations in students' trajectories of change were recorded, can prompt communication scholars to search for novel theoretical frameworks that can explicate these change processes. Moreover, the findings of this research are also salient for classroom instruction. Specifically, teachers of introductory communication classes can use the results of this study as broad benchmarks that can inform realistic expectations with respect to students' improvement in WTC, SPCC, and/or CA. In addition, this dissertation presented the benefits derived from properly conceptualizing and studying change by means of latent growth modeling, a powerful and versatile data analytic technique. Specifically, employing this methodology offered the opportunity to get detailed information about how changes in one construct are related to changes in the other two constructs and to gain a more in-depth knowledge of the intricate ways in which interlinkages among the constructs change across time. The benefits of this dynamic way to study WTC, SPCC, and CA are readily apparent as it facilitates teachers access to information that can be used to tailoring their activity for a more targeted, efficient, and beneficial instruction.

Digital formats and social networks provide unique opportunities for meteorologists to disseminate weather information to the public, but it comes with a set of challenges. These opportunities and challenges may be enhanced when applied to a younger demographic, which acquires information from different platforms than the traditional sources the older demographics utilize. There is a vast amount of literature that focuses on weather dissemination, weather information sources, and risk perception; however, there is a lack of emphasis on 18 to 24 year olds. The first two parts of this dissertation attempted to fill this lack of knowledge on 18 to 24 year olds by conducting interviews at several college campuses to gain rich knowledge of the daily processes involving weather information and determine their understanding of weather graphics. Participants cited checking the weather forecast pretty frequently but utilized non-traditional sources for the weather forecast. It was also determined that participants lacked an understanding of weather products. The last part of this dissertation attempted to obtain a better understanding of the public’s weather knowledge and self-perceived weather knowledge. This study compared the public to those who actively follow specialty weather pages. In addition, how severity impacts decision-making and confidence in decision-making was evaluated. Followers of specialty weather pages had higher self-perceived and assessed weather knowledge. It was also determined that the public is more likely to adhere to recommendations from meteorologists, and that the correlation between self-perceived weather knowledge and confidence is weak.

Mobbning på arbetsplatser skapar ett stort lidande för den utsatte samt har stora konsekvenser för den enskilde och för organisationen. Tidigare forskning kring ämnet mobbning har mestadels fokuserat på självupplevd stress och psykisk ohälsa. Därför var syftet med föreliggande studie att undersöka arbetsplatsmobbning och egenupplevd allmän hälsa samt tre typer av ohälsotillstånd; Ohälsa 1 (hantering av vardagen); Ohälsa 2 (smärtor/besvär); Ohälsa 3 (oro/nedstämdhet). Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) och Negative Acts Questionnaire-Perpetrators (NAQ-P), användes för att mäta upplevelsen av att bli utsatt för olika mobbningsrelaterade beteenden och situationer (objektivt mått på mobbning) respektive upplevelsen av att utsätta andra för olika mobbningsrelaterade beteenden. NAQ-R har en mobbningsdefinition och en direkt fråga om att ha blivit utsatt för mobbning (subjektiv mått).För att undersöka allmän hälsa och tre typer av hälsotillstånd användes ett självskattat formulär. Undersökningen omfattade 172 personer inom Uddevalla Kommuns område, och deltagarna som medverkade var socialarbetare, ingenjörer, restauranganställda och ordningsvakter. Det var 73 män och 98 kvinnor. Det fanns ett signifikant positivt samband mellan Ohälsa 1-3 och NAQ-R, och ett signifikant negativt samband mellan allmän hälsa och NAQ-R. Resultaten indikerar att den mobbade utmärks av ohälsa. Inga signifikanta könsskillnader kunde urskiljas i upplevelsen av mobbningsbeteenden på arbetsplatsen (objektiv bedömning). Genom att undersöka egenupplevd hälsa utifrån olika typer av hälsotillstånd hos arbetstagare som blivit mobbade och arbetstagare som mobbar, kan denna studie leda till ett förbättrat förändringsarbete. Ett sådant förändringsarbete måste ske fortlöpande för att utveckla goda organisationsförändringar inom Sverige och påbörja ett bättre preventionsarbete gällande arbetsplatsmobbning. / Bullying in the workplace creates a great suffering for the victim and has major consequences for the individual and for the organization. Previous research on the subject of bullying has mostly focused on self-perceived stress and mental illness. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine workplace bullying and self-perceived general health as well as three types of illness conditions; Unhealth 1 (everyday life management); Unhealth 2 (pain/discomfort); Unhealth 3 (anxiety/ depression). Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) and Negative Acts Questionnaire-perpetrators (NAQ-P), used to measure the experience of being exposed to various bullying-related behaviors and situations (objective measure of bullying) and the experience of exposing others to various bullying-related behaviors. NAQ-R has a bullying definition and a direct question about having been a victim of bullying (subjective measurement). To investigate the general health and three types of unhealthy conditions. The survey covered 172 people in Uddevalla Municipality's area, and the participants who took part were social workers, engineers, restaurant staff and security guards. There were 73 men and 98 women. There was a significant positive correlation between Unhealth 1-3 and NAQ-R, and a significant negative correlation between general health and NAQ-R. The results indicate that bullying is related to illness. No significant gender differences could be seen in the experience of bullying behavior in the workplace (objective evaluation). By examining the self-perceived health based on different types of health of workers who have been bullied and workers who bully, this study may lead to an improved change management. Such a change must be continuous to develop good organizational changes in Sweden and start a better prevention efforts regarding workplace bullying.

Objetivo. Este estudo foi realizado com o objetivo de avaliar a autopercepção das condições bucais em idosos. Material e Métodos. Participaram do estudo 337 pessoas, com 60 anos e mais de idade, funcionalmente independentes, que freqüentavam um centro de saúde em Araraquara, SP. Foi aplicado formulário com questões sobre as características sócio-demográficas da amostra, autopercepção da condição bucal e o índice GOHAI. Realizou-se exame clínico para determinar a prevalência das principais doenças bucais. Os testes estatísticos realizados tiveram como objetivo determinar a associação entre as variáveis sócio-demográficas, clínicas e o índice GOHAI com a autopercepção e também identificar os preditores da auto-avaliação. Resultados. O exame clínico revelou que 40,4% das pessoas eram desdentadas, e entre os dentados a cárie e a doença periodontal tiveram grande prevalência. Entre os dentados, 42,7% avaliaram sua condição bucal como regular, enquanto 55,8% dos desdentados afirmaram que era boa. As variáveis associadas à auto-avaliação foram: a classe social, o GOHAI, os dentes cariados e com extração indicada entre os dentados, e a escolaridade e o GOHAI entre os desdentados. A análise multivariada mostrou que os preditores da auto-avaliação foram o GOHAI (em dentados e desdentados), os dentes com extração indicada e o CPITN em dentados. Estes preditores explicaram no máximo 30% da variabilidade da auto-avaliação. Conclusões. Entre outros aspectos concluiu-se que a percepção teve pouca influência das condições clínicas e por isso seria importante o desenvolvimento de ações educativas e preventivas junto a esta população. / Objective. The purpose of this study was to assess the self-perception of oral health status of the elderly. Methods. Results are based on interviews and clinical assessment of 337 subjects aged 60 years and over, functionally independents and who used to go to a Health Care in Araraquara, Brazil. A questionnaire with questions about the social characteristics of the sample, self-perception of oral health status and the GOHAI index was applied. A clinical examination was made to determine the prevalence of the main oral diseases. The objective of statistical tests was to determine the association among the social and clinic variables and the GOHAI index with the self-perception. Moreover the tests had to identify the self-assess predictors. Results. The clinical examination revealed that 40.4% of the people were edentulous and among the dentate the dental caries and the periodontal disease had a significant prevalence. 42.7% of the dentate assessed their oral health status as regular and 55.8% of the edentulous assessed theirs as good. The social class, the GOHAI index and the decayed and missing teeth among the dentate, and also the level of education and the GOHAI among the edentulous, were associated to the self-assess. The multivariate analysis showed that the predictors of the self-assess were the GOHAI index (among dentate and edentulous), the missing teeth and the CPITN among dentate. These predictors explained 30% of the self-assess variability. Conclusions. As the perception had a small influence on the clinical conditions, the development of educated and preventive actions for these people are recommended.