Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-245) / Microfiche. / xvi, 245 leaves, bound 29 cm

On entering the Rhodes University Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at 6 Prince Alfred Street, visitors are confronted by a glass cabinet in which is displayed the four volumes of the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey (1947-1952); six of the volumes which emanated from the Border Regional Survey (1956-1964) of which three are the Xhosa in Town trilogy, and a modest paperback From Reserve To Region (1997), which records the changes which took place in Keiskammahoek between the birth of apartheid in 1948 and its demise in 1994. Together these may be seen as the charter documents of the ISER - rooted in empirical research in the Eastern Cape, multidisciplinary, substantial works of scholarship and, in the case of The Xhosa in Town trilogy, at least, of international repute.

Ph.D. (Social Work) / This study constitutes a reaction to the need for measurement tools in social work in this new era of accountability. The basic objective of the study is to introduce and describe a specific research processes for the development of measurement tools for the social work profession. A second objective of the study is to introduce this process with the development and validation of a scale that can measure social functioning. The research process involved in scale development is firstly described in detail and four main phases are identified, namely the pre-development phase, development phase, validation phase and utilization phase. Each of these phases consists of main moments and research steps that are specifically adapted for use in the social work profession. For the purpose of this study, the pre-development phase mainly consists of a literature review on social functioning. The literature review produced a theoretical framework from which social functioning can be analysed. The framework makes it clear that social functioning is a theory of polarity. It further implicates a three dimensional approach where achievement, satisfaction and expectation are seen as assessment areas that can be operationalised to measure social functioning and frustration, stress and helplessness as assessment areas that can be nonoperational to measure social dis functioning. The pre-development phase concludes with a literature review on the six identified operational assessment areas in order to formulate a operational definition of each area.

This dissertation includes three papers on pro-work reforms of the North Korean Defector Settlement Support System (NKDSSS) and the economic adjustment of the North Korean Defectors (NKDs) in South Korea. Paper 1 analyzes changes in benefit levels caused by the pro-work reforms to the NKDSSS and differences in the total benefit levels across groups, classified by the ability to work, employment status, and income level. Paper 2 examines the causal effect of the pro-work reforms on the NKDs’ economic adjustment. Paper 3 evaluates the association between the NKDs’ human capital and welfare receipt.

Sometimes students struggle to interpret literary texts because some of these texts do not lend themselves to the deduction of the interpretative processes with which they are familiar, but the same is not true when students pull interpretations from songs. Is it possible that students’ familiarity with songs might enable them to connect a song with a book and aid interpretation that way? This study attempted to explore the possibility of bridging songs to literary texts in my Community College English classroom, to ascertain if or how the use of song can support or extend students’ interpretive strategies across different types of texts. I investigated how songs might work as a bridge to other texts, like novels, and, if the students use songs as texts, to what extent do the students develop and hone their interpretative skills? Because of this, how might including songs as texts in English writing or English Literature curriculum contribute to the enhancement of students’ writing? The students’ responses disclosed that the songs appealed to their cognition and memories and helped them to interpret and write about the novels they read. Moreover, the students’ responses revealed that pairing or matching songs with novels strengthened interpretation of the book in a plethora of ways, such as meta-message deduction, applying contexts, applying comparisons, and examining thematic correlations. When a novel is bridged or paired with a song, interpretation can also be derived by examining different perspectives, characterizations, personal connections, and life experiences. Exploring emotional connections as well as signs and symbolism can also enable interpretation. Another way to deduce interpretation, according to the students, is to locate a reoccurring issue or thread in a song and transfer the analysis from the song to the novel. However, although a few students might not use songs to interpret literary texts, they might still be able to recognize that the possibility exists to grasp meaning that way.

This dissertation explores multidimensional social support across the perinatal period among sexual and gender-diverse (SGD) childbearing individuals living in the United States. The Social-Ecological Model (SEM) of Health Promotion and resilience theory guided this dissertation. Chapter One provides an overview of emerging health disparities among SGD childbearing people and compelling evidence of their risk for mental health disparities. It also identifies our limited understanding of perinatal social support among this population — an important modifiable risk factor for adverse mental health. Thus, social support was identified as a promising topic for this dissertation that could promote perinatal health and well-being among an understudied childbearing population. Chapter Two, Childbearing at the Margins: A Systematic Metasynthesis Review of Sexual and Gender Diverse Childbearing Experiences, evaluated and synthesized data from 25 studies on SGD childbearing. Three main themes were identified (1) Systematic Invisibility: Erasure, Structural Exclusion, Discrimination; (2) Creating Personhood Through Parenthood; and (3) Resilient Narratives of Childbearing. We found widespread structural and interpersonal harm and discrimination across the childbearing period while also emerging evidence of positive social experiences and resilience. Gaps in the literature were identified, including data on racially and geographically diverse SGD childbearing populations, perinatal support experiences beyond the healthcare context, and data derived from prospective studies. Chapter Three, “Through Our Resiliency We…Find Joy”: A Community-Placed Qualitative Study of Social Support Among Sexual And Gender Diverse Childbearing People, introduces The Study of Queer and Trans Perinatal Resilience and Experiences of Gestation (PREG). This chapter sought to understand perinatal risk and resilience among SGD childbearing individuals at the inter-and intrapersonal levels of the SEM — namely, coping skills and social support. Four main themes were identified: 1) Entering a New Season of Life, 2) Community is Family, 3) The Pain We Bear, and 4) Obligatory Resilience. We found that this new season of life came with unique support needs and sources of support. Support systems were robust and generally diffuse. Family formation signaled a time to heal old wounds among families of origin while simultaneously a time of increased harmful experiences and sacrifices to maintain access to support. Due to a history of stigma and discrimination, SGD individuals had well-developed coping strategies that mitigated harm. They found building a family a profoundly meaningful experience that provided great joy and purpose. Chapter Four, “You’re Preparing for People to Assess Whether You Can Have Your Own Child”: Structural Failures to Support Sexual and Gender Diverse Childbearing Parents, explores social support and social needs at the community, organizational, and policy levels of the SEM to understand how structural factors support or fail to support SGD childbearing people. Three main themes were identified: 1) When Protections Fail to Protect, 2) The Burden Is on Our Shoulders, and 3) When Privilege Is Protection. We found that despite advances in legal protection of SGD people, numerous factors undermine the ability to access protections across the childbearing journey. Thus, SGD individuals are faced with impossible choices when building their families and are forced to advocate for themselves, educate others, and pay to access structural support. Class and racial privilege may play a role in protecting SGD people from these burdens. Chapter Five summarizes the findings from the three manuscripts in this dissertation, highlighting the strength and weaknesses of the studies, and research, clinical practice, and policy implications. Taken together, the heterocisnormative framework of family formation creates structural stigma and contributes to interpersonal conflict and exclusion that may increase vulnerability to perinatal mental health disparities among SGD childbearing individuals. However, SGD individuals also demonstrated resilience by using well-developed coping strategies and robust social support networks, achieving what was for many a lifelong dream of having a family. This dissertation provides an important contribution to the scientific literature by describing and characterizing perinatal resilience and stigma at each level of the SEM and, in doing so, provides a roadmap to inform clinical practice, policy, and future research in pursuit of promoting perinatal health equity among a marginalized childbearing population.

In recent years, organizations have sought to address historic inequities by adopting ameliorative policies ranging from providing merit-based avenues of entry and promotion to members of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups to creating a new organizational function that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion (hereafter DEI). My dissertation comprises three case studies of the implementation and unanticipated consequences of such policies. I find that in all three cases, even the most far-reaching attempts at reform tend to reproduce existing ethnoracial and class barriers, thereby illustrating the dynamic of “reproduction through change” (Bourdieu 1988). The first paper is a case study of what happens when a relatively limited form of inclusion is introduced into a context marked by firm class boundaries. The analysis is based on interviews and participant observation with administrators and recipients of a prestigious and merit-based scholarship to an elite university in Peru. While administrators described themselves as committed to inclusion, their message to scholarship recipients was ambiguous, often counseling them to hide their scholarship status. This more insidious form of gatekeeping, together with evident class boundaries, entailed enormous social-psychological and interactional costs for scholarship recipients and transformed their pride in winning the scholarship into shame. The second paper describes a similar dynamic but in a different and more surprising context. Drawing from in-depth interviews conducted with current and former Foreign Service Officers to explain how recipients of the Pickering Fellowship, a U.S. Department of State fellowship, learn to accept a devaluing status belief about this accolade once they enter the Foreign Service. Within this organizational context, there is an established belief that Foreign Service Officers who are not the prototypical “Male, Pale, and Yale” workers must be “diversity hires” who entered the U.S. Department of State through a “back door” and have a “leg up” because of their race. This racialized negative evaluation gets linked to the Pickering fellowship and affects all fellows. This paper offers insights into the intersection of racial diversity and status processes in organizations. The third paper analyzes the structural tension concentrated in the position of Black DEI workers, explicitly hired as part of an organizational effort to implement a more thoroughgoing set of reforms addressing historical inequities. The case study examines the work lives of DEI workers in an elite public university. Between 2019 and 2021, we conducted in-depth interviews with DEI workers, students, and high-status organizational actors. The analysis suggests that DEI workers and their organizational colleagues envision the prototypical DEI worker as a member of a minoritized racial group. This race-typed prototype dictated (1) how colleagues and organizational leaders evaluated the expertise of DEI workers who belong to different racial groups and (2) how DEI workers of color intertwined their life narratives in accounts of their expertise, while White DEI workers did not do so. The development of this form of racialized expertise leads to a (3) racial task segregation among DEI workers of different groups. Even as the organization seeks to implement a far-reaching form of inclusion, minority DEI workers are assigned the task of managing internal and external organizational boundaries.

Magister Artium - MA / Several studies concur that children from a disadvantaged background are as prepared for formal schooling, compared to their advantaged peers who have access to attend good quality pre-schools. This is particularly true regarding the literature aimed at understanding the challenges that impede school readiness of Foundation Phase learners and the consequences of poor school readiness on learner’s school performance. The overall aim of the study was to explore Foundation Phase teachers’ experiences and perceptions of the challenges that impede school readiness. The research questions for this study probed the challenges that impede the school readiness of Foundation Phase learners of low-to middle-income background; the consequences of poor school readiness on learners’ school performance; the challenges encountered in the classroom by teachers regarding learners with poor school readiness; and the programmes used to assist children with poor scholastic performance. The study was informed by Bronfenbrenner’s Bio-ecological Systems Theory, to understand how the environment shapes the development of a child. The study adopted a qualitative methodological framework with an exploratory research design. The design was suitable since limited literature exists on this topic, thus proving in-depth information of Foundation Phase teachers about the phenomenon under study. Furthermore, a total number of 20 participants were included in this study, and participants were purposively selected. Data was collected by means of semi-structured individual interviews and was thematically analysed.

The increase in voluntary activities in both public and private sectors of the U.S.A. has begun to make it clear that information is needed concerning models for new or different ways of working with people in volunteer agencies. This study attempted to develop a model for a Human Resource Center for Voluntarism which began with three objectives. They were to: 1. stimulate and/or provide avenues for closer working relationships among existing agencies and organizations involving volunteers, 2. broaden the base of citizen participation in community services, 3. reinforce the relationship between adult education and community service by allowing for individual growth and task completion as interdependent goals. Fundamental statements underlying the purpose for developing a Model included the following: 1. Involvement of citizen volunteers is a valuable facet of the American cultural heritage, and is unique in its application. 2. An adult's responsibility as a citizen is to become involved in the community to work toward improvements for all individuals. 3. Education is the principal avenue by which this can be accomplished becasue: (a) learning results in behavior change, (b) behavior change is necessary for cultural growth and progress. From this, a Model was developed which described in general terms what tones, atmosphere, and relationships were necessary to achieve the goals. In addition, a proposal was made for more specific details for the requirements of the Directing Group and its components. Data for the study was obtained from documented literature primarily from 1960 to 1970, as well as personal experiences of both the writer and many colleagues in the field of voluntary community service agencies. The writer concluded that the proposed Center could have some lasting, positive effects on a community by being both a model for other community service agencies as well as an action agency which could develop innovative and experimental ways of work.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / A semi-parametric approach incorporates parametric and nonparametric functions in the model and is very useful in situations when a fully parametric model is inadequate. The objective of this dissertation is to extend statistical methodology employing the semi-parametric modeling approach to analyze data in health science research areas. This dissertation has three parts. The first part discusses the modeling of the dose-response relationship with correlated data by introducing overall drug effects in addition to the deviation of each subject-specific curve from the population average. Here, a penalized spline regression method that allows modeling of the smooth dose-response relationship is applied to data in studies monitoring malaria drug resistance through the ex-vivo assays.The second part of the dissertation extends the SiZer map, which is an exploratory and a powerful visualization tool, to detect underlying significant features (increase, decrease, or no change) of the curve at various smoothing levels. Here, Penalized Spline Significant Zero Crossings of Derivatives (PS-SiZer), using a penalized spline regression, is introduced to investigate significant features in correlated data arising from longitudinal settings. The third part of the dissertation applies the proposed PS-SiZer methodology to analyze HIV data. The durability of significant weight change over a period is explored from the PS-SiZer visualization. PS-SiZer is a graphical tool for exploring structures in curves by mapping areas where rate of change is significantly increasing, decreasing, or does not change. PS-SiZer maps provide information about the significant rate of weigh change that occurs in two ART regimens at various level of smoothing. A penalized spline regression model at an optimum smoothing level is applied to obtain an estimated first-time point where weight no longer increases for different treatment regimens.