It is becoming more common for researchers to use existing recordings as a source for data rather than to generate new media for research. Prior to the examination of recordings, data must be extracted from the recordings and the recordings must be described with metadata to allow users to search for the recordings and to search information within the recordings. The purpose of this small-scale study was to develop a web based search tool that will permit a comprehensive search of spoken information within a collection of existing digital recordings archived in an open-access digital repository. The study is significant to the field of instructional design and technology (IDT) as the digital recordings used in this study are interviews, which contain personal histories and insight from leaders and scholars who have influenced and advanced the field of IDT. This study explored and used design and development research methods for the development of a search tool for use with digital video interviews. The study applied speech recognition technology, tool prototypes, usability testing, expert review, and the skills of a program developer. Results from the study determined that the produced tool provided a more comprehensive and flexible search for users to locate content from within AECT Legends and Legacies Project video interviews. / Doctor of Philosophy / It is becoming more common for researchers to use existing recordings in studies. Prior to examination, the information about the recordings and within the recordings must be determined to allow users the ability to search information. The purpose of this small-scale study was to develop an online search tool that allows users to locate spoken words within a video interview. The study is important to the field of instructional design and technology (IDT) as the video interviews used in this study contain experience and insight from people who have advanced the field of IDT. Using current and free technology, this study developed a practical search tool to search information from AECT Legends and Legacies Project video interviews.

Yes / This study investigates how men’s body image develops over time. 14 men aged between 45 and 67 years completed in-depth interviews where they discussed their body image since childhood, prompted in some cases by photographs of themselves at different ages that they brought to the interviews. Transcripts were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. From the participants’ accounts it was evident that body concerns did not steadily improve or worsen, but waxed and waned over time. Results are discussed in relation to understanding changing body concerns in men’s lives, and the implications of these for future research and practice.

State legislatures have variable levels of professionalism. Measures of state legislative professionalism typically include metrics such as the number of legislative staff, legislative session length, and legislator compensation. This research considers the influence of variability in levels of legislative professionalism on the state’s oversight process. Few prior studies engage the legislative oversight process in states. To fill this gap, this research takes a grounded theory approach that uses thirty-three interviews with legislators, legislative staff, committee staff, and legislative research organizations in five states to test existing concepts and to develop new directions for research. The current scholarship on oversight and legislative institutions emphasizes the importance of broad factors like elections and committees, as well as more specific concepts like inter-branch conflict, partisanship, and legislative term-limits. This research confirms and extends those ideas, reaching the conclusion that oversight in states is a deeply political action. A central contribution of this work is a consideration of how the oversight process in states operates on the ground. The interviews uncover that many measures of professionalism often perform in unforeseen ways than what might expected. For instance, a lengthy legislative session can prohibit oversight actors from performing oversight functions. Conversely, long legislative interim periods provide actors with the space to conduct meaningful reviews of administrative action. This research also advances understandings of state legislative research organizations – like the Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission and Texas Sunset Commission – which play a vital role in performing meaningful legislative oversight. To catalyze these ideas a new concept, the oversight entrepreneur, is used to describe how stakeholders use the oversight process to achieve their preferences and enhance their reputations. The interviews contained here also expose the importance of each state’s individual context – including Constitutional, institutional, normed and historical factors. The dissimilarities that play out across states (and their secondary effects) demonstrate that future scholars would be well served to adopt caution in the application of concepts across contexts. / Ph. D.

This interview study investigates the embodied experiences of adult educators, exploring how they perceive and utilize bodily knowledge in their instructional practice. Through interviews and observations with five adult educators, the study highlights challenges in articulating the role of physical experiences in teaching. The study reveals four major themes: (a) participants perceive or approach instruction as a performance, engaging with various performance tools like voice, sound, proximity, and posture to impact content delivery and classroom management; (b) bodily knowledge informs the educator's improvisational skills as they receive sensory input and adapt to student and environmental cues during teaching; (c) while recognizing the importance of bodily knowledge, participants struggle to articulate and connect their physical experiences to instructional practice despite training in embodied learning and pedagogy; and (d) participants often prioritize tasks and student needs over attending to their bodily sensations during instruction. The study challenges assumptions about educators' identities. It underscores the complexity of integrating bodily knowing into teaching practice, advocating for further research into the embodied experiences of adult educators across diverse contexts. Recommendations include developing healthy physical habits and recognizing the 'felt sense' to enhance instructional effectiveness. Methodological suggestions advocate prioritizing bodily knowledge observed through movement and action and exploring movement analysis techniques. This study contributes to the evolving field of embodied education research and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and leveraging the embodied aspects of teaching practice.

No / Little is known about the career decisions qualified nurses make, although it is clear that some areas of practice are more popular than others. This qualitative descriptive study considers one common area, surgery, and explores the motivation for decisions made by Registered Nurses (RNs) to work in this area. A sample of 16 RNs working within surgical areas participated in semi-structured interviews, using a thematic interview schedule. Findings were analysed using the framework suggested by Morse and Field. Analysis of findings indicates that all participants actively chose to work within surgery and that this was because of the pace and turnover of surgical work, personal satisfaction at the recovery of patients; the close links between this type of work; and participants' original aims when first entering nursing and participants' preference of surgery to other areas of nursing work. Participants actively rejected working in areas where patients were likely to suffer from chronic long-term conditions where recovery was unlikely and felt that these areas were likely to be depressing and unrewarding. These findings suggest that participants actively chose to work with 'healthy' patients in preference to those who may be considered 'ill', and this is closely linked to the identified need of participants to be able to 'make patients better'. Participants were reluctant to work in areas where they would be unlikely to achieve this aim.

Designing global interfaces for users has always been a challenge. This challenge is even greater today with the current trend of globalization, which leads to highly diverse users of the same product. The global audiences for the software and information technology products belong to different countries, different religions, speak different languages, have different life styles, belong to different cultures and have different perceptions and expectations of the same product. A truly global product must inherently accommodate this diversity in order to be effective and successful. A major impediment is that there is very inadequate understanding of the role of culture in user interfaces and how they are built. This lack of understanding is further compounded by the fact that very little empirical work exists regarding the role of culture in usability testing. The objectives of this research are to study and empirically establish the effects of culture on the usability assessment technique of structured interviews. A study was conducted to determine the effects of culture on Indian participants when structured interviews are used in usability testing. The experiment consisted of usability testing of two independent groups of Indian participants by two interviewers; one belonging to the Indian culture and the other to the Anglo-American culture. The findings from the study clearly demonstrate the effects of culture on structured interviews during international user testing. Participants found more usability problems and made more suggestions to the interviewer from their own culture than to the interviewer from a foreign culture. The results of the study prove that culture affects the efficacy of structured interviews during international user testing. / Master of Science

This study aimed to investigate teachers' perceptions of and pedagogical strategies in teaching about desire and pleasure, with a particular focus on emotions. The study examined which emotions teachers experience before and during teaching about desire and pleasure, which emotions are perceived as desirable, how these emotions are conceptualised and which pedagogical strategies teachers use to manage their own and the students' emotions. The study used a qualitive approach based on interpretative phenomenology. The methods used for data collection were semi-structed interviews with seven teachers working in a secondary school, an upper secondary school and an upper secondary school for students with intellectual disabilities. The methods used for analysis was interpretative phenomenological analysis. The main result of the study showed that desire and pleasure is a sensitive topic and both teachers and students felt emotions of shame, fear and discomfort. The study also showed how teachers experience emotions such as wonder and pride. The result of the study highlights the demanding emotional work of teachers when they use pedagogical strategies to manage their own and the student’s emotions. These strategies aim to create conditions for maintaining education about desire and pleasure despite those emotions that arise and to challenge and consolidate boundaries in conversations about sex and sexual practices. The result of the study indicates how sexual education about sexuality, desire and pleasure needs to address the students’ vulnerability and integrity and simultaneously needs to an open climate where students can learn about sexuality, desire and pleasure.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Technology: Language Practice, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2014. / The selection criteria common to all Fashion schools/departments/programmes both in South Africa and internationally, is the requirement for the applicants to pass an interview. Research confirms that in institutions where student selection includes an interview, the dropout rate is low. The need for this study arose because of the lack of structure of the current oral protocol or interview selection procedure in Fashion at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), and the need to include a larger number of previously disadvantaged applicants into the Fashion programme. The aim of this study therefore was to investigate the career life histories of the Fashion degree students at the DUT to identify a set of biographical variables that can be used for student selection. Underpinned by the Systems Theory Framework, this study adapted Tinto’s Longitudinal Model of Institutional Departure to investigate pre-entry attributes and interactions within family backgrounds, skills and abilities, and prior schooling that impact the goals and commitments of students. Narrative enquiry using semi-structured in-depth interviews provided data which were processed using the three-dimensional narrative analysis approach. Findings of this study indicate the importance of pre-entry attributes and personality type that is best suited to a career in fashion, and emphasised that intrinsic interests and talents are of primary importance. The results have important implications for student interview selection as it identifies suitable and prepared applicants who will complete and graduate in the minimum time, thereby potentially increasing throughput and output rates in Fashion. Based on the results, the researcher proposed a framework for a standardised and structured interview selection procedure in Fashion at the DUT which enables access to candidates who have the potential for a career in Fashion regardless of their socio-economic or cultural background. / D

This thesis examines how tourism affects conditions for young adults in rural areas. Such a study lies at the intersection of research about tourism impacts, adult transition, and rural areas. The aim is to examine how largescale tourism affects the opportunities for young adults living in rural areas; their perception of place and the perceived opportunities and obstacles that tourism provides. The thesis utilizes a mixed method approach. A quantitative study based on micro-data on individuals identifies the patterns and magnitudes of the mechanisms by which tourism affects population change among young adults. Interview methods are used in the case study area, Sälen, to investigate these mechanisms in depth. Finally, the rural–urban dichotomy is explored in a conceptual study that asks how tourism affects the perception of a local village as either rural or urban. Young inhabitants in rural areas are rarely considered in tourism research; therefore, the main contribution of this thesis is that it illuminates how tourism affects conditions for young adults in rural areas. The thesis reveals a substantial impact on the adult transition, mainly due to easier access to the labor market and a good supply of jobs during the high season. Further, the large number of people passing through creates flows of opportunities to make friends, get a job, or just meet people. All of these factors contribute to high mobility in these places, and to the perception of them as places where things happen. The high mobility in Sälen implies that fixed migrant categories (such as stayers and leavers) are largely insufficient. The tourism environment creates a space that is always under construction and continually producing new social relations mainly perceived as opportunities. Conceptualizing this as a modern rurality is a way to move beyond the often implicit notions of urban as modern and rural as traditional.

O trabalho foi realizado com 40 gestantes que haviam recebido diagnóstico de malformação fetal não letal. Descreve as repercussões emocionais iniciais após o diagnóstico; avaliando a relação entre o tipo de malformações e as repercussões emocionais; a presença e a fase de stress em que estas gestantes se encontravam. Foi realizada uma entrevista semidirigida e aplicado o Inventário de Sintomas de Stress de Lipp. Os resultados apontaram repercussões emocionais com choque e negação. Não houve diferenças emocionais associadas à gravidade ou ao tipo de anomalia. Quanto ao stress, este está presente na maioria das gestantes e, parece associado a interpretaçãos individuais de fontes estressoras / This research was done with 40 pregnant woman that had received the diagnosis of non lethal fetal malformation. The emotional repercussions are described after the diagnosis; evaluation the relation between the type of malformation and the emotional repercussions; the presence and level of stress that these pregnant woman were in. A semidirected interview was done and the Inventory of Stress Symptoms by Lipp was applied. The results showed emotional repercussions such as shock and denial. There were no emotional differences associate with the degree or type of anomaly. And as for stress, it is present in the majority of the woman and is associated to individual interpretations of stress causes