Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1997. Graduate Programme in Philosophy. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 209-218). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ27325.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-139). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The disproportionate exposure to exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities is an acknowledged phenomenon. However, a theoretical understanding for this phenomenon is unknown. Recent claims have been made that the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities results from a long-standing historical pattern of discrimination. The use of exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities results in the denial of opportunities and services at a more frequent rate than their peers without disabilities. This denial would indicate the possibility of prejudice, a construct understood to arise from the existence of a perception of threat by the ingroup in an intergroup relationship. The purpose of this study was to (a) determine if school administrators hold perceptions of threat from students with disabilities and (b) if a relationship exists between identified threats and disciplinary decisions. A survey measured threat perception, administrators' attitude toward students with disabilities, and administrators' disciplinary action preference in instances involving students with disabilities. It was hypothesized: H1. Perceived realistic threats will have a direct effect on administrator disciplinary decisions. H2. Perceived threats (both realistic and symbolic) will have a direct effect on administrator attitudes towards students with disabilities. H3. Perceived threats (both realistic and symbolic) will have an indirect effect through attitude on administrator disciplinary decisions. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed an acceptable model fit of the four latent variables of realistic and symbolic threat, educational administrator attitude toward students with disabilities, and educational administrator discipline decisions for students with disabilities. An acceptable fit was found for the originally hypothesized structural model, and no improved alternative models were identified. Realistic threat was found to have a significant relationship to educational administrators' disciplinary decisions for students with disabilities. No significant paths were identified for symbolic threat or attitude. / text

The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of health promotion for a group of young adult African American men with invisible disabilities. This hermeneutic phenomenological study used a non-experimental, descriptive design. The purposive sample consisted of 11 young adult, English-speaking, non-institutionalized, African American men with invisible disability between the ages of 25 and 39 years of age living in the Central Texas metropolitan area. This study's research questions were answered using audio-taped, one-on-one qualitative interviews along with detailed fieldnotes. Participants were interviewed twice at a mutually decided upon location to ensure the privacy and comfort of participants. For these young men, an essential component of health promotion involved the reestablishment and reorganization of their bodies in the world while adjusting to living with disability. For them, the essential structure of health promotion was comprised of the following themes: Reconciling Perspectives of the Self, Embracing the Current Body, and Reorienting the Body in the World. Their lived experience of health promotion was reflected in the following themes: Risking the Body to Preserve the Self, Accepting the Evolving Body, and Seeking the Body's Redemption. For this group of young adult African American men, their health promotion experience required risking the body, putting the needs of the self before the needs of the body, and then accepting and valuing the resulting condition of the body. / text

Given the percentage of African American women in the general U.S. population, the number of African American women with functional limitations and disabilities is disproportionate; although chronic conditions such as osteoarthritis may contribute to these disparities it is unclear what environmental factors may affect these outcomes in the women. Hence, the purpose of this study was to examine biological factors (age, body mass index, and waist circumference), psychosocial intra-individual factors (health care utilization, trust in health care providers, pain, pain beliefs, and depression), and cumulative extra-individual environmental factors (racial discrimination, stress from racial discrimination, and health care access) that may influence function and disability outcomes in African American women with osteoarthritis 50-80 years of age. The disablement process model combined with the cumulative inequality theory served as theoretical guides used for this study. This study was a non-experimental, descriptive correlational study. The study included a sample of 120 African American women with OA from Texas and New Mexico. Surveys were mailed to participants or distributed in person. The statistical analysis consisted of correlations, linear regressions, multiple regressions and hierarchical regressions. The significant predictors of function were BMI, pain severity and pain beliefs. Pain severity and pain beliefs predicted disability. Depression mediated the relationship between racial discrimination and disability. It was demonstrated that biological risk factors, intra-individual and extra-individual factors are related to disablement outcomes in this sample of African American women. This study can inform the development of future interventions designed to decrease the risk of functional limitations and disabilities in middle-aged and older African American women with osteoarthritis. / text

Federal and state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies are putting increased emphasis on, and providing more resources for, self-employment for individuals who are blind or visually-impaired since the Rehabilitation Act was amended in 1998. Additional emphasis is being placed on self-employment because VR system consumers – especially those who are blind or visually-impaired – are disproportionately likely to have difficulty obtaining other kinds of competitive employment in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 recession. The purpose of this quantitative study is to identify variables in the administrative records of the federal Rehabilitation Service Agency that impact self-employment outcomes and earnings among blind or visually-impaired consumers. The file, comprised of 13,998 cases closed in Texas from Fiscal Years 2008 through 2012, spans the national recession and subsequent slow recovery. From the original file, 798 cases closed through self-employment were examined by employment status at application, cost of services and returns on investments (ROI). This study found those who were self-employed at application were 50 times more likely to be self-employed at closure. Those who received assessments, diagnosis and treatment, technical assistance, and rehabilitation services were more likely to be self-employed at closure. The variables most closely related to weekly earnings at closure for self-employed consumers were: gender (male), being self-employed at application and receiving some form of rehabilitation technology. Disproportionate numbers of those who were self-employed at application were 55 to 65 and self-identified as White only with weekly earnings at application above the mean for the entire population of consumers whose cases were closed through self-employment. They received the fewest services on average over the shortest period of time at the lost average cost. Returns on investments in serving those who were self-employed at application were positive but small. The average cost of services provided to those employed at application was the highest. However, on average, they experienced decreases in the hours worked per week and weekly earnings. Thus, returns on investments were, on average, negative. Limitations of the study, implications for practice, and future research are discussed. / text

Diversity of social identities among college students has received increasing attention in higher education research, with a particular focus on singular dimensions of identity. However, scholars have often neglected the intersectional experiences of multiple social identities. While research has begun to address the experiences of students with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students as distinct populations, few researchers have addressed the identities and experiences of LGBTQ students with disabilities in higher education. Thus, this study begins to address a need for empirical research on the social identities and higher education experiences of this population. Two primary research questions guided this study: (1) How do LGBTQ students with disabilities conceptualize their multiple, intersecting social identities, specifically the intersections of disability, gender, and sexuality? (2) How do LGBTQ students with disabilities perceive the influence of context at a predominantly White, research-intensive university in the southern United States in shaping their identity development journeys? This study utilized a qualitative methodology situated within critical and postmodern epistemologies. Specifically, concepts from queer theory, disability studies, and queer disability theory/crip theory guided this research. Situational analysis, a postmodern extension of grounded theory that calls for the making of three types of situational maps, guided the study’s design and analysis. Purposive sampling techniques were used to identify: (1) the institution of higher education under study, and (2) 25 undergraduate and graduate students who self-identify as LGBTQ and with a disability to participate in one to two semi-structured interviews. Students constructed positive, salient queer identities and utilized a variety of contextual labels for gender and sexuality. Most participants understood disability primarily as a medical phenomenon, but some participants also began to attach relational and political meanings to disability. Though participants acknowledged the presence of multiple identities, they viewed connections among their identities in distinctive ways: intersectional, interactive, overlapping, parallel, and/or oppositional. Students described complex processes for disclosing identities, forming community, and navigating normative temporal and spatial expectations of the university. Finally, students spoke of their journeys finding campus resources, encountering able-bodied/heteronormative assumptions in the classroom, and joining with others to create social change. / text

This paper explores Mazo de la Roche’s peculiar articulation of the Bildungsroman in the first of Jalna’s sequels, Whiteoaks. It argues that the text’s psychosocially aberrant protagonist, Finch Whiteoak, is a Bildungsheld whose modern coming-of-age process of accommodation and assimilation into a socio-specific norm is not as much a progression toward the centre as it is a simultaneous progression/regression toward a reification of his exemplary marginal status as an other amidst others. This paper further contends that this unique process is made possible only by Finch’s particularly unstable and eccentric otherness—established through his treatment by his family as variously mentally ill rather than disabled—and that this process is both externally regressive in a vein similar to the modern, female Bildungsroman and internally progressive in the vein of the classic, male Künstlerroman. In order to accommodate this duality of publicly typical and privately subversive otherness, Finch must navigate the diegetic realm’s social boundaries and liminal spaces through a series of “double lives,” in which the other is ultimately found within the home context and potentially subversive centralities outside of Jalna are sacrificed for the sake of representative marginalities at home.

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The purpose of this secondary analysis was to test a multivariate model of disability separately in women with two different conditions, multiple sclerosis (MS) and fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), and to compare respective models across groups. Guided by the Disablement Process Model, this study examined the influences of functional limitations, depressive symptoms, economic adequacy, and social support on disability by use of two-group structural equation modeling (SEM). Nonprobability samples of women with MS (N = 118) and women with FMS (N = 197) were recruited for separate health promotion intervention studies. Baseline data collection occurred between 1997 and 1998 for women with MS enrolled in the Wellness Intervention and between 2004 and 2006 for women with FMS enrolled in the Lifestyle Counts Intervention. Participants in both samples were largely married, well-educated, middle-age, and Caucasian. Descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and SEM were conducted with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences 15.0 and Amos 7.0 software programs. Mean scores of the major study variables indicated poorer physical and mental health for the sample of women with FMS compared to that with MS. Controlling for age, duration of illness, and education, greater functional limitations predicted greater SFdisability and Role Physical (RP)-disability in both groups. The influence of Functional Limitations on both SF-disability and RP-disability was greater for women with FMS than MS. The effect of Depressive Symptoms on SF-disability was equivalent across groups. Feeling depressed significantly impacted RP-disability, although these effects were not equal across groups. Depressive Symptoms played a larger role than did Functional Limitations in explaining SF- and RP-disability in women with MS. Social Support affected Depressive Symptoms equally for both groups. For women with MS, compared to women with FMS, Economic Adequacy had greater detrimental effects on Depressive Symptoms and both measures of disability. Social Support and Depressive Symptoms mediated the effect of Functional Limitations on disability. Adjustment to life with a chronic illness depends on, at the very least, individual physical, social, and psychological capacities. Practitioners should be sensitive to depressive symptoms and availability of social support in women with MS or FMS. / text