Cognitive-attentional test anxiety theory posits that test-anxious individuals direct attention internally, thus interfering with task-relevant information processing. Nevertheless, working-memory deficits are often obscured by compensatory exertion of increased effort by anxious subjects on cognitive tasks. Failure to identify anxietyspecific performance decrements has led some authors to replace the test anxiety construct with one emphasizing skill deficiencies. This investigation examined whether information-processing deficits are inherent sequelae of test anxiety or merely reflect lowered exam-taking ability in test-anxious persons.

Literature suggests positive relationships with caregivers during childhood facilitate intimacy in young adulthood. The three hypotheses in this inquiry related to the students' relationship between parental intimacy and friend intimacy, gender differences in intimacy, and the perceived acceptance of parents. Subjects were 322 male and female university students, aged 17 through 25 years. Most were single, white, and middle class. During class the Children's Report of Parental Behavior, the Miller Social Intimacy Scale, and a demographic sheet were administered. ANOVA revealed that relationships between parental intimacy and friend intimacy were not significant. Females reported greater intimacy with friends than males. For both sexes, correlations between recalled parental intimacy and acceptance were higher for mothers than fathers.

M.Ed. (Tertiary and Adult Education) / The purpose of this empirical study which forms part of a team research project, was to identify personality variables which may influence the academic achievement of first-year engineering-students. It was undertaken in the light of the relatively high failure rate of first-year students and the negative implications this has for an institute of higher learning and the students. The Bureau for University Education aims to establish a better student selection mechanism. The test group consisted of first-year engineering-students who registered at the Rand Afrikaans University during 1989, 1990 and 1991. This study focused on a single non-cognitive factor, namely personality, and its influence on academic achievement. The 16-PF-Questionnaire was used as a measuring instrument. student's t-test was utilized to establish significant differences between the two identified groups. The available data was processed by means of the BMDP-3S computer programme. The findings of this empirical study indicate that personality cannot be utilised in the prediction of academic achievement as a single factor, but in combination bined with other factors it forms an integral part of the selection mechanism. The successful engineering-students differed significantly from the less successful enigeering-students with regard to the following factors of the 16-PF-Questionnaire: * Factor G (dutyfullness) * Factor N (shrewdness)

M.A. (Psychology) / This study has been undertaken in the belief, on the one hand, that it will stimulate awareness among student counsellors of the fact that factors like a third world orientation, minority group membership, culturalism and ethnocism has an influence on the emotional experience and behavior of the students which have wide implications for career maturity as well as for counseling and, on the other hand, that it may provide guidelines for student counsellors in their guidance and helping of students. This study consists of two phases. The first phase, as expounded in chapters one, two and three, is devoted to an exploration of the situation of the student, possible theories in career guidance and the role and function of student counsellors in cross-cultural situations. Chapters four, five and six deals with the second phase which consists of an empirical investigation. An experimental approach was followed and the crites Maturity Investigation was used as a pre- and posttest to measure the achievement of the students. The experimental group completed a program based on the model of Super for the development of career maturity. computer analyses with the BDMP3D-program was employed to compare the raw . scores among the experimental group and control group. comparisons were also made among the students of SWA/Namibia as members from a third world orientation and the students of the RAU as members of a first world orientation.The results were that there was a significant difference in performance between the experimental group and the control group, as well as between the SWA/Namibia and RAU students. In conclusion it is recommended that a guidance the development of career maturity in such situation as existing at the Academy, should form total guidance program. program for a complex part of the It is also recommended that the guidance service should be extended and developed to make provision for a career library and information centre as well as for the opportunity to give ample guidance to students during the orientation period and to pupils before entering the Academy.

M.Cur. (Psychiatric Nursing) / Caring for intellectually disabled people can be demanding for student nurses who are still novices in the profession. To ensure optimal nursing care is received, student nurses must have both an understanding of and a positive attitude towards intellectually disabled people. Nursing intellectually disabled people is a challenge that can have an impact on a person‟s body, mind and spirit therefore, student nurses need to have the ability to deal with stressful situations and environments. Student nurses need to be prepared to care for patients with long-term challenges, such as intellectual disabilities. These patients require a caring relationship that facilitates an enhanced awareness of life and health experiences. The caring relationship also facilitates health and healing processes as it involves the authentic and genuine needs of patients. This research aimed to explore and describe lived experiences of student nurses caring for intellectually disabled people in a public psychiatric institution, and to formulate guidelines for the facilitation of mental health of these student nurses. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual design was used. Data were collected through individual in-depth interviews, focusing on the question “How was it for you to be working at this institution?” Thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected data and a consensus discussion was held with the independent coder. Ten participants were interviewed and five, who were not comfortable with interviews, wrote naïve sketches. Trustworthiness was assured by adhering to Lincoln and Guba‟s principles, that is, credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Four ethical principles were demonstrated throughout the research namely, principles of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Three themes emerged from the data. Firstly, student nurses experience a profound unsettling impact on their wholistic being when caring for intellectually disabled people. iv Secondly, they develop a sense of compassion and a new way of looking at life, and lastly they require certain educational, emotional and spiritual needs to be met. Guidelines were formulated to facilitate the mental health of student nurses caring for intellectually disabled people in a public psychiatric institution.

M.A. (Information & Knowledge Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The years spent studying towards a degree represent many challenges to the learner1. These pressures increase once that learner moves into the post-graduate level of professional study. Faced with the pressure of having to perform suitably in order to remain on the programme, the learner finds himself or herself under conditions which may present as stress or illness, depending upon the availability of coping resources and strategies. This study adopted a psychofortigenic2 approach and explored and described the coping (i.e., coping resources and sense of coherence) and subjective well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life, happiness and general psychiatric health) of post-graduate learners in the following six departments of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU): Psychology; Human Movement Science and Sport Management; Environmental Health and Social Development Professions (incorporating MA Health and Welfare Management); Pharmacy; Nursing Science; Biomedical Technology and Radiography. An exploratory descriptive research design was used and the participants were selected by means of non-probability, convenience sampling. The sample consisted of 60 male and female masters and doctoral post-graduate learners in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Biographical data was gathered by means of the administration of a questionnaire. Hammer and Marting’s (1988) Coping Resources Inventory was used to measure the students’ available coping resources. Furthermore, Antonovsky’s (1987) Orientation to Life Scale was used to measure the construct of Sense of Coherence. The Satisfaction with Life Scale by Diener, Emmons, Larson and Griffin (1985) was used to assess the respondents’ overall satisfaction with life. Kamman and Flett’s (1983) Affectometer-2 was used to measure participants’ subjective global happiness. The General Health Questionnaire of Goldberg and Williams (1988) was used to measure the psychiatric morbidity or general psychiatric health of the participants. The data was analyzed using both descriptive statistics and cluster analysis. A Hotellings T² was computed with subsequent t-tests to draw inferences about differences in the means of established groups across the five measures. The results indicated that the participants were generally coping and experiencing subjective well-being. The results indicated two clusters to significantly differ from one another across the five measures. The first cluster could be characterized as high in psychofortology and presented with better coping and subjective well-being. The second cluster could be characterized as low in psychofortology and presented with poorer coping and subjective well-being.

While the literature on the experiences of women in academe generaly, is growing, the experiences of women student mothers in post-secondary education are rarely explored. Given the increasing number of women students enroling in university and the fact that the student population is aging, there is a greater likelihood of these students being mothers. A study of these women is timely and crucial to understanding their needs and chalenges within the university. The purpose of the research was to examine the experiences of doctoral student mothers living at the intersection of studenthood and motherhood as it was expected that the demands from the family and university would create specific chalenges. The study delineates the women's understanding of and the degree to which they accepted the dominant North American ideology of intensive mothering and the ideology of the good student. Further, the study sought to ascertain whether the student mothers experienced contradiction between the two ideologies similar to that experienced by the women in Hay's (1996) study of employed and stay-at-home mothers. The study utilizes the concept of the public/private dichotomy and the notions of greedy institutions and competing urgencies in its framework. The design consisted of in-depth semi-structured interviews with seventeen mothers at various stages in their doctoral programme. The women range in age from thirty-three to forty-seven and have at least one child, under age of thirteen, living with them full-time. Findings noted that the women were able to articulate the dominant definitions of the good mother and the good student but, for the most part, they rejected them. They preferred to be balanced both as mothers and as students, although almost all of them insisted their children were their first priority. The women experienced a contradiction between the two ideologies and, using the concept of ideological work developed by Berger (1981), their experiences were explored. The women engaged in ideological work to support their alternative definitions of the good mother and the good student. When they were not as able to sustain their ideological work they tended to revert to the dominant definitions. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Most research on medical professional socialization was conducted when medical students were almost uniformly white, upper- to upper-middle class, young men. Today 50% of medical students in Canada are women, and significant numbers are members of racialized minority groups, come from working class backgrounds, identify as gay or lesbian, and/ or are older. This research examined the impact of such social diversity on processes of corriing to identify as a medical professional, drawing on a survey of medical students in one third-year class, interviews with 25 third-year students, and interviews with 23 medical school faculty members. Almost all of the traits and processes noted by classic studies of medical professional socialization were found to still apply in the late 1990s. Students learn to negotiate complex hierarchies; develop greater self-confidence, but lowered idealism; learn a new language, but lose some of their communication skills with patients. They begin playing a role that becomes more real as responses from others confirm their new identity. Students going through this training process achieve varying degrees of integration between their medical-student selves and the other parts of themselves. There is a strong impetus toward homogeneity in medical education. It emphasizes the production of neutral, undifferentiated physicians - physicians whose gender, 'race/ sexual orientation, and social class background do not make any difference. While there is some recognition that patients bring social baggage with them into doctor-patient encounters, there is very little recognition that doctors do too, and that this may affect the encounter. Instances of blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia are not common. Nonetheless, students describe an overall climate in the medical school in which some women, students from racialized minority groups, gays and lesbians, and students from working class backgrounds seem to 'fif less well. The subtlety of these micro-level experiences of gendering, racialization and so on allows them to co-exist with a prevalent individual and institutional denial that social differences make any difference. I critique this denial as (unintentionally) oppressive, rooted in a liberal individualist notion of equality that demands assimilation or suppression of difference. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

D.Phil. / The advances in information technologies have created an array of possibilities for today's learners in institutions of higher education. Kaye (1989) predicted that online education would ultimately emerge as a new educational paradigm, taking its place alongside conventional (face to face) education as well as distance education, and even changing the face of education in general. Although online education is becoming a common component of higher education, Wang & Newlin, (2000) confirm that relatively little is known about the characteristics of learners who choose to enroll for courses in an online learning environment. Schlosser and Anderson (1997) published a report entitled Distance education: Review of the literature in which they did not cite a single study on the characteristics of online learners. What seem to remain unanswered out of the literature are the questions: > Who are the students who undertake and succeed in online learning? > Are these students different from students who take and succeed in traditional, face-to-face classes? The answers to these questions are critical for the future of higher education.