The counseling profession seeks to support and enrich the quality of life of the general public by providing effective clinical services. Many counselors struggle with practicing self-care regularly, increasing the risk of burnout. When counselors provide services while experiencing burnout, they risk harming clients being served. The conservation of resources theory suggests that there is an increased risk of maladaptive coping and burnout when there is a decrease in resources used to protect someone from experiencing stress. A quantitative survey research study using a nonprobability convenience sampling was used to explore the relationship between counselor burnout, life balance, and self-compassion among fully licensed and provisionally licensed counselors throughout the United States with at least 2 years of experience (N = 331). Two canonical correlation analyses were conducted to determine (a) if there was any significant relationship between the subscales of the Juhnke-Balkin Life Balance Inventory, measuring life balance, and the Counselor Burnout Inventory (CBI), measuring burnout, and (b) if there was a significant relationship between the subscales of the CBI, measuring burnout, and the Self-Compassion Scale, measuring self-compassion. Both canonical correlation analyses indicated a statistically significant relationship. Particularly, professional counselors are experiencing poor work-life balance, decreased attention in their personal life, decreased quality of their relationships, negative work environment, and lower levels of self-compassion. The potential social change impact from this research study is that a better understanding of how to mitigate and/or prevent experiences of burnout in counselors may improve counselor’s quality of life, mitigate turnover, counselor burnout, reduce client harm, and increase the quality of clinical services.

Land surface temperature (LST) and mean radiant temperature (MRT) are commonly used as proxies to evaluate urban heat environments. Many scholars use one of them to represent heat exposure when assessing the urban thermal environment. This research fills a research gap by analyzing two meteorological parameters simultaneously through correlation analysis, hotspot analysis, and the distinctive information they respectively express with the results of vulnerable population distribution based on the case of Linköping. Scatter plots are used to explore the correlation between LST and MRT, and hot spot analysis is applied to investigate their spatial patterns through the clusters of hot and cold spots. Furthermore, the distribution of vulnerable populations is assessed and visualized through a vulnerability index. The results show that there is a moderate positive linear correlation between the mean values of LST and MRT for the whole study area. They have different spatial patterns based on the results of the hot spot analysis. The comparison of different meteorological parameters to the vulnerability index also shows variations in high heat risk areas. All of these conclude that LST or MRT could, to some extent, be presented as references to each other; however, they cannot be used interchangeably as proxies for urban heat exposure. When developing urban thermal adaptation strategies, it is necessary for municipalities to select the parameters appropriately according to the purpose and requirements and to understand what the chosen parameters can and cannot convey.

Air pollution and meteorological conditions impact COVID-19 mortality rates. This research studied Quito, Ecuador, using Granger causality tests and regression models to investigate the relationship between pollutants, meteorological variables, human mobility, and excess deaths. Results suggested that Mobility as defined by Google Mobility Index, Facebook Isolation Index, in addition to Nitrogen Dioxide, and Sulphur Dioxide significantly impact excess deaths, while Carbon Monoxide and Relative Humidity have mixed results. Measures to reduce Carbon Monoxide emissions and increase humidity levels may mitigate the impact of air pollution on COVID-19 mortality rates. Further research is needed to investigate the impact of pollutants on COVID-19 transmission in other locations. Healthcare decision-makers must monitor and mitigate the impact of pollutants, promote healthy air quality policies, and encourage physical activity in safe environments. They must also consider meteorological conditions and implement measures such as increased ventilation and air conditioning to reduce exposure. Additionally, they must consider human mobility and reduce it to slow the spread of the diseases. Decisionmakers must monitor and track excess deaths during the pandemic to understand the impact of pollutants, meteorological conditions, and human mobility on human health. Public education is critical to raising awareness of air quality and its impact on health. Encouraging individuals to reduce their exposure to pollutants and meteorological conditions can play a critical role in mitigating the impact of air pollution on respiratory health during the pandemic.

In this dissertation we introduce two variable selection procedures for multivariate responses. Our procedures are based on sufficient dimension reduction concepts and are model-free. In the first procedure we consider the dual marginal coordinate hypotheses, where the role of the predictor and the response is not important. Motivated by canonical correlation analysis (CCA), we propose a CCA-based test for the dual marginal coordinate hypotheses, and devise a joint backward selection algorithm for dual model-free variable selection. The second procedure is based on ordinary least squares (OLS). We derive and study the asymptotic properties of the OLS-based test under the normality assumption of the predictors as well as an asymmetry assumption. When these assumptions are violated, the asymptotic test with elliptical trimming and clustering is still valid with desirable numerical performances. A backward selection algorithm for the predictor is also provided for the OLS-based test. The performances of the proposed tests and the variable selection procedures are evaluated through synthetic examples and a real data analysis. / Statistics

Maintenance of medical equipment plays an important role in ensuring the healthcare quality so that the care can be conducted with minimal risk. Preventive maintenance is performed to maintain the equipment in satisfactory operating condition, while corrective maintenance is made when there is an unpredicted maintenance requirement. This study aims to determine what effect preventive maintenance has on corrective maintenance. A correlation analysis, regression analysis and survival analysis are performed on work-order data from 2000-2021. The results obtained indicate that increasing the number of preventive maintenances made to medical equipment will decrease the number of corrective maintenances required for the medical equipment.

Sex ratio is very important for the evolution of dioecious plants. It can influence the reproductive success of plants. Sex ratio bias is common among reproductive individuals. Studying the reproductive traits can help to understand possible mechanisms that could influence the generation and maintenance of sex ratio bias. However, few studies have reported the relationship between reproductive traits and sex ratio bias. We investigated 29 full-sib families of the dwarf willow Salix herbacea L. S.herbacea exhibits an overall female sex ratio bias but also strong variation in sex ratio among families. We used variance component analysis to investigate from which morphological level the variation of reproductive traits (cumulative catkin number over four growth periods, annual catkin number in the fourth growth period, flower number, ovule number) came from. And we used mixed models to test the influence of family, sex and the sex by family interaction on reproductive traits. Besides that, we also tested the correlation between sex ratio and reproductive traits. Our results suggest that genetic factors can influence the degree of sexual dimorphism of S. herbacea in the different families Flowers from families with higher sex ratios had more ovules, sex ratio and the ovule number co-varied across families.

The aim of the study was to determine whether there is a relationship between organisational culture and occupational health. The General Health Questionnaire and the South African Culture Instruments were used for this purpose. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for this purpose. The study focused on clarifying the two concepts and their impact on the organisation. The effects of general health factors were determined in the organisation under investigation. The existing organisational culture was also investigated. In conclusion, the assumption that occupational health can have an impact on organisational health, or vice versa, was confirmed. / Industrial & Organisational Psychology / MCom (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

Cerebral autoregulation describes the clinically observed phenomenon that cerebral blood flow remains relatively constant in healthy human subjects despite large systemic changes in blood pressure, dissolved blood gas concentrations, heart rate and other systemic variables. Cerebral autoregulation is known to be impaired post ischaemic stroke, after severe head injury, in patients suffering from autonomic dysfunction and under the action of various drugs. Cerebral auto-regulation is a dynamic, multivariate phenomenon. Sensitive techniques are required to monitor cerebral auto-regulation in a clinical setting. This thesis presents 4 related signal processing studies of cerebral autoregulation. The first study shows how consideration of changes in blood gas concentrations simultaneously with changes in blood pressure can improve the accuracy of an existing frequency domain technique for monitoring cerebral autoregulation from spontaneous fluctuations in blood pressure and a transcranial doppler measure of cerebral blood flow velocity. The second study shows how the continuous wavelet transform can be used to investigate coupling between blood pressure and near infrared spectroscopy measures of cerebral haemodynamics in patients with autonomic failure. This introduces time information into the frequency based assessment, however neglects the contribution of blood gas concentrations. The third study shows how this limitation can be resolved by introducing a new time-varying multivariate system identification algorithm based around the dual tree undecimated wavelet transform. All frequency and time-frequency domain methods of monitoring cerebral autoregulation assume linear coupling between the variables under consideration. The fourth study therefore considers nonlinear techniques of monitoring cerebral autoregulation, and illustrates some of the difficulties inherent in this form of analysis. The general approach taken in this thesis is to formulate a simple system model; usually in the form of an ODE or a stochastic process. The form of the model is adapted to encapsulate a hypothesis about features of cerebral autoregulation, particularly those features that may be difficult to recover using existing methods of analysis. The performance of the proposed method of analysis is then evaluated under these conditions. After this testing, the techniques are then applied to data provided by the Laboratory of Human Cerebrovascular Physiology in Alberta, Canada, and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, UK.

The thesis examines social cognition and object relations in patients with schizophrenia using Thematic Apperception Test evaluated by SCORS. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with schizophrenia, Thematic Apperception Test and its interpretation systems (especially Westen's SCORS). Attention is also paid to the theoretical background of social cognition and object relations in patients with schizophrenia. The aim of the study is to verify the assumption that patients with schizophrenia will reach pathological scores in SCORS. The study also explores the relationships between different dimensions of SCORS in this clinical population. The results indicate that patients with schizophrenia have numerous deficits in social cognition and object relations, as measured by SCORS. Significantly lower scores (that belong or are very close to pathology) were found in a total of five SCORS's dimensions. In the remaining three dimensions patients with schizophrenia achieved below-average results. Cross-correlations among SCORS's dimensions and factor analysis results which revealed a three component structure of SCORS in patients with schizophrenia are also discussed. Keywords: Schizophrenia, social cognition, object relations, SCORS, Thematic Apperception Test, correlation analysis, factor analysis.

The foundation stone of this thesis is to perform a financial analysis of Czech non-financial companies for the years from 2007 to 2009 in order to evaluate development of the basic groups of financial analysis ratios before and after the outbreak of the financial crisis. Based on this analysis, I analyze the changes of the selected ratios in relation with the macroeconomic development. This is carried out by means of the description in words and for some significant changes using correlation analysis with GDP. The analysis results in the findings that the changes of ratios of return on assets and return on equity were negative in the analyzed period and for each year the factors of these changes are tracked using the pyramidal decomposition. In the statistical part of my thesis I partially succeeded in proving linear correlation between return on assets and GDP and a lower confidence level linear correlation between personnel cost to revenues ratio and GDP. Also, there were some correlations between individual ratios found to be significant.