A qualitative descriptive approach was undertaken to explore the leadership experience of seven first line nurse managers working in the Cook Islands. For the purposes of this study first line nurse managers are those nurses working as a charge nurse in a hospital, nursing supervisors, chief public health nurse, and nurses working autonomously in the outer islands of the Cook Islands. Nurses in these roles are in key positions to influence the practice of others and set the standard of practice and culture of a unit. The participants were recruited if they were currently employed in any of these positions. The seven participants were all Cook Islands women who received their undergraduate nursing education in the Cook Islands. The purpose of the study was to describe their leadership experience, to raise an awareness of their role, and to make recommendations to support and improve the preparation of nurses for leadership roles in the Cook Islands. Through face-to-face interviews, the participants' stories were audio taped and transcribed verbatim. Six of the seven transcripts required translation from Cook Islands Maori to English and this was conducted by the researcher who is fluent in both languages. Content and thematic analysis of the data revealed a spiritual, emotive and intuitive theme in the participants' leadership experience. The findings of the study revealed the self confidence of these nurses to manage in this role despite being challenged by management issues and the lack of preparedness for the role. The supportive network established within their staff, their family and the people around them has provided the impetus to continue to 'serve' their people. The findings also revealed that these nurses recognised the need to continue to learn and develop themselves and their staff. The findings of this study have significance for nurses aspiring to be nurse leaders in the Cook Islands or other Pacific Islands and rural communities. A key stakeholder in this study is the Cook Islands Ministry of Health, as insights and awareness gained can contribute to an appropriate preparation and support programme for nurses working in its organisation.

Good sexual and reproductive health is fundamental to the overall health status of Māori communities. In 2001, the Ministry of Health reported that New Zealand was facing a Chlamydia epidemic. This epidemic has not abated as rates of Chlamydia have increased significantly in the past five years, with disproportionately high rates in young Māori women compared to non-Māori women. Despite significant sexual health disparities, young Māori have had limited opportunities to participate in research focussed on sexual health and voice their opinions and concerns on sexual health issues. This qualitative descriptive study has used a Māori inquiry paradigm and approached the research from a Kaupapa Māori perspective. The primary research question asked what the knowledge, attitudes and reported behaviours of young urban Māori women were in regards to sexual health and in particular, the sexually transmitted infection Chlamydia. Secondary aims were to ascertain the sources of information used and accessibility of sexual health services, as well as identifying resilience factors associated with protection against Chlamydia infection. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews with 16 young Māori women living in the Auckland region. Data analysis involved the inductive approach of categorical content analysis to identify major categorical themes to answer the specific questions posed. The main conclusion was that there are a number of barriers to accessing quality sexual health information and services for young Māori women. Participants’ level of knowledge varied reflecting their personal experiences and many were unaware that Chlamydia is asymptomatic and that delayed diagnosis can lead to fertility problems. The main sources of sexual health information accessed were whānau, peers, school, and contact with health professionals. Racism was identified as one of the barriers to sexual healthcare services. The young women expressed a clear preference for sexual health services to be delivered by Māori. Most importantly, for sexual health interventions to be successful it is essential that Māori communities, including young people and their whānau, are an integral part of creating positive solutions. Resilience factors that may help protect young women from contracting chlamydia characteristic of this group were having a strong connection with a caring adult or friend and parents who viewed sexuality as a normal part of adolescent development. In addition, having a positive Māori cultural identity with an ability to understand bicultural differences was strongly associated with participants accessing sexual healthcare services despite identified barriers.

Information security technologists and business scholars are motivated by a desire to understand how and to what extent the application of IT within enterprise systems leads to improved and secured organizational performance. An effective relationship between business and IT professionals is a primary determinant of success in gaining business advantage through the enterprise system. As business innovation has relied increasingly on partnerships between business and IT professional, a different perspective of how IT professionals view their organizational contributions was needed for organizations to remain competitive. Business knowledge is essential if IT professionals are to create linkages with other organizational units and have a wider perspective about business objectives, thus achieving fit between IT and organizational strategies. Organizations have started responding to this challenge by demanding more business acumen in their IT staff. The focus of this study is on the knowledge that is beyond that of independent business and IT only domain knowledge of information security. Therefore, technical areas of knowledge, such as hardware and software, all of which are closely associated with IT skills, are not discussed in this thesis. This is not to declare that such knowledge is not important. Clearly technical knowledge is part of the IT professional's overall information security technology expertise, but this study is about the organization proficiency of business and the IT professional, and is therefore interested in what enables business and IT professionals to apply their business domain and technical knowledge in ways that are beneficial to the organization and to act cooperatively with their customers and business partners. The purpose of this study is to employ the triangulation method to identify the theoretical links and empirically examine the association between business and IT perspective of information security. An important contribution of this study is the identification of business and IT perspectives on information security technology. By establishing the link between business and IT, the study focuses and evaluates Virtual Private Network (VPN) as an information security technology to find out if VPN can secure and gain competitive advantage by partisan business process and organization performance. This study articulates distinctive characteristics of Virtual Private Network and management processes that extend the range of applicability across diverse business segments. It distinguishes between business and IT and explains why the exploitation of a complementary set of related information security entities (such as VPN) across multiple functions create competitive vi advantages even across a diverse set of businesses that have limited opportunity to exploit business process and organization performance. The most important direct predictor of this study is a high level of communication between business and IT. However, one cannot mandate meaningful communication between individuals. IT people have to earn the right to play a meaningful role in management forums. Based on the findings from this study, one important way for an IT person to be heard is for him/her to devote the time necessary to create competitive advantage and develop shared domain knowledge, the most influential construct in the research model. An IT person needs to understand the leverage points of the industry, the history and current issues of the business units, and to learn to apply business oriented objectives in the application of technology to business problems. This change in view would help focus their attention on security technology and ideas that could produce the most benefit and create competitive advantage, rather than those that offer the most technical promise.

Few would deny the importance of art education in the total educational development of the child. Drawing is an integral component of art education. Drawing for children appears to be a natural form of expression. Studies involving the observation of children's drawing development have had a long history in relation to child art. Recognition that children pass through identifiable stages of development in drawing and that these stages could be affected by cultural and individual differences is an important focus in art education research. This study is concerned firstly with drawing development and secondly, with differences in drawing development across cultures. Eight year old children with predominantly European background and eight year old children with Vietnamese/Kampuchean background were chosen for this study. The study was concerned with determining whether there were any significant differences in drawing development between the two ethnic groups, using a modified scale of the Rouse "Descriptive Scale for Measurement of Art Products". The results of this study indicate that there are differences in drawing abilities between the two ethnic groups.

<p>The aim of this study was to identify the strategies used to render the literary dialect in A State of Independence into the Swedish translation. In order to systematically study the translation solutions, a number of ‘coupled pairs’ consisting of source text ‘problems’ and target text ‘solutions’ were extracted from the original text and the translation. The ‘coupled pairs’ were then analysed in order to detect regularities in the translation solutions. The study showed that the major strategy used by the translator was the use of ‘eye-dialect’, i.e. non-standard spellings that simulate non-standard speech. Moreover, some passages in the translation had been standardised, whereas eye-dialectal spellings were found in other passages where the original did not contain any non-standard features. Finally, a comparative count of dialectally marked utterances in both texts was made. The count showed that the dialectal markers were in the majority in the translation, which might indicate that the translator has tried to compensate for the lack of equivalent target language features.</p>

One of the main aims of this thesis is to examine the translational situation of popular fiction in post-industrial Japan. Specifically, the goal is to uncover two main aspects surrounding the phenomenon of translationese, the language used in translation. One aspect to be investigated is the characteristic features of Japanese translationese, and the other is readers’ attitudes toward translationese. This research is conducted within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies (Toury, 1995). The literature review includes a background of how translationese has been approached previously and how methods from different fields (e.g., corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics) can be used in the research of translation. Through the review of the historical background of Japanese translationese and the development of Japanese writing styles, it is revealed that the translation norm in Japan had been very closely oriented toward the original text. In the text analysis, the corpora consist of translations from English and non-translations (i.e., originally written in Japanese) in the genre of popular fiction. The goal of the text analysis is to determine whether the features of translationese are actually characteristics of translationese. The features selected for this examination include the following: 1) overt personal pronouns; 2) more frequent loanwords; 3) female specific language; 4) abstract nouns as grammatical subjects of transitive verbs; and 5) longer paragraphs. Two features (third person pronouns and longer paragraphs) are shown to be characteristic of translationese, while others were proven otherwise or questionable (loan words, female language, abstract nouns as subjects of transitive verbs). Findings from the investigation of readers’ attitudes can help identify what constitutes the “norms” of translation (Toury, 1995, 1999) in Japanese society. Readers appear to be able to tell the difference between translation and non-translation. However, readers’ attitudes toward both translationese and non-translationese are more or less neutral or slightly positive. This may indicate that Japanese translationese has become integrated into the contemporary Japanese writing system and that readers do not regard translationese as overtly negative. This study shows that the major translation norm is becoming more domesticated translation in popular fiction, with the focus on making translations easier for the readers. / Translation Studies

Since the end of the Second World War, several phases of migration to West European states have occurred. These migrants consisted of the so called guest workers who were recruited to fill labour shortages, citizens from former colonies who wanted to settle in the colonial empires as well as asylum seekers and refugees. These migrants generally migrated within the network of a certain ethnic group which led to the formation of ethnic groupings in the West European states (so called new ethnic minorities). These ethnic groupings often live segregated from the host population where they experience a lack of cultural, economical and political integration. This lack of integration of the new ethnic minorities often leads to antagonism, lack of understanding, mistrust and sometimes a racist attitude by the host population towards these groups. The development of a collective policy for the management of new ethnic minorities only became priority in the European Union (EU) by the late 1990s. The current policy for the management of new ethnic minorities consists of guidelines and recommendations to member states on the implementation of a own, unique new ethnic minority policy. Although the current Belgian policy for the management of new ethnic minorities adheres to the guidelines and recommendations of the EU, it still has structural problems and gaps. The purpose of this study was foremost to do a descriptive analysis of the protection of established minorities in Belgium. In contrast to and comparison with this, an in depth analysis of the political problem, management and current situation of new ethnic minorities in Belgian was made in order to identify shortcomings in the current policy for the management of new ethnic minorities. This was done through a literature search as well as an empirical study in the form of semi -structured interviews. The general finding was that the Belgian political system makes adequate provision for the protection of established minorities, but not for the protection of new ethnic minorities. In this regard and in conclusion, specific recommendations were made in order to identify and address the current protective measures of new ethnic minorities in Belgium. / Thesis (M.A. (Public Management and Administration))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

<p>The present study was conceived to examine the trend and factors affecting fertility in Nigeria and Guinea. Fertility has declined by about nineteen percent in Nigeria between 1982 and 1999. In the same period it has declined by five percent in Guinea. The decline is observed in data from censuses and surveys. Studies have reported that fertility transition is in progress in most Sub-Sahara African countries (Bongaarts 2008 / Guttmacher 2008), Nigeria (Feyisetan and Bankole 2002) and Guinea (measuredhs 2007). Studies and surveys done in some regions and among ethnic groups suggest that fertility is declining in Nigeria (Caldwell et al. 1992) and Guinea (measuredhs 2007). However, these studies and surveys are devoid of national representativeness as they are localized in specific regions or selected ethnic groups. Thus, they cannot be used as a national reference. The trend of the total fertility rate (TFR) from the three consecutive Demographic and Health Surveys in Nigeria did not show any meaningful decrease over time. In the same vein, no evidence of fertility decline was observed in Guinea from the Demographic and Health Surveys. The claim that fertility is declining in these two countries which assures the funding organizations that Family Planning programs are successful is beyond the scope of the present study. Based on Demographic and Health Surveys the claim that fertility is decreasing in Nigeria may be misleading, whereas in Guinea fertility has shown stability. This suggests that while the factors affecting fertility may be similar, their impacts differ from country to country.</p>

Using mathematical models with the purpose to understand and store knowlegde about a system is not a new field in science with early contributions dated back to, e.g., Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. The aim is to obtain such a comprehensive predictive and quantitative knowledge about a phenomenon so that mathematical expressions or models can be used to forecast every relevant detail about that phenomenon. Such models can be used for reducing pollutions from car engines; prevent aviation incidents; or developing new therapeutic drugs. Models used to forecast, or predict, the behavior of a system are refered to predictive models. For such, the estimation problem aims to find one model and is well known and can be handeled by using standard methods for global nonlinear optimization. Descriptive models are used to obtain and store quantitative knowledge of system. Estimation of descriptive models has not been much described by the literature so far; instead the methods used for predictive models have beed applied. Rather than finding one particular model, the parameter estimation for descriptive models aims to find every model that contains descriptive information about the system. Thus, the parameter estimation problem for descriptive models can not be stated as a standard optimization problem. The main objective for this thesis is to propose methods for estimation of descriptive models. This is made by using methods for nonlinear optimization including both new and existing theory.

Various questions regarding Latinos’ descriptive representation in the mayoralty are examined in this dissertation including: Where and why are Latino mayors elected? Why do Latino mayoral candidates emerge and win? And, is there is a link between Latino ethnicity and electoral outcomes in municipal elections? The empirical results of a cross-sectional analysis of U.S. cities from 1981-2006 suggest that institutions such as term limits and mayor-council governments influence the representation of Latinos in the mayoralty. These effects, however, are conditioned by Latinos’ numerical strength in a city – which suggests that Latino descriptive representation in the mayoralty is largely a function of population size. Despite the prominence of this factor, the results further reveal that Latinos need to swell the ranks of the city council to provide a steady supply of qualified Latino candidates to ultimately win the mayoralty. An analysis of 648 mayoral elections in 113 cities in the Southwest further tests theories of Latino candidate emergence and success based on city-level factors – that supply elections with Latino candidates – as well as strategic factors in elections – that influence Latino candidates’ cost-benefit decision calculus. The results reveal a combined effect of supply and strategy on candidate emergence and success. For example, in cities where Latinos are sizeable (+40 percent) and the electoral context is more competitive (i.e., where turnout is high, more candidates are on the ballot, and when incumbents are not vying for reelection), Latino candidates are more likely to emerge. A similar pattern occurs with regard to the success of Latino candidates except that the individual candidate’s previous political experience is particularly influential in improving their chances of winning. Given the theoretical expectation regarding the impact of ethnicity on electoral outcomes in municipal elections, I also examine whether Latino ethnicity shapes turnout rates and the margin of victory. Latino ethnicity is not statistically associated with these outcomes. However, other factors such as the election timing and the type of election (i.e., runoff election, open seat) seem to be more influential. In sum, the research here examines various aspects of Latino representation in the mayoralty that is the most comprehensive to date.