This correlational study explored the knowledge, perceived seriousness, and willingness to seek medical help for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) among Ghanaian Immigrants currently residing in the Unites States. Study participants were 163 Ghanaian Immigrants between the ages of 45 and 90, attending Ghanaian community churches in Virginia and Maryland. Significant results include a positive correlation between knowledge and perceived seriousness of the disease, perceived seriousness of the disease was negatively correlated with caregiving experience. These results as well as several seemingly counterintuitive findings are discussed in terms of the Health Disparities and Psychometric challenges. Specifically, these results points to the necessity for future research and implication for action in the following areas: 1) Further qualitative exploration to develop a deep, rich understandings of the phenomenon of AD among Ghanaian Immigrants, 2) Improved cultural sensitivity in psychometric assessment with immigrant populations of AD knowledge, perceptions, and willingness to seek assistance, 3) Person Centeredness and Cultural Humility in Educational Interventions to empower individuals and parallel existing cultural beliefs rather than displacing them.

This dissertation provides a formal syntactic analysis of complex-path motion predicates in Ghanaian Student Pidgin (GSP) – an English-lexified expanded pidgin spoken by (mostly male) students in Ghanaian high schools and universities – within the Generative Constructivist framework. The data for the study was collected from three speakers with an instrument consisting of a battery of animated video-clips designed to elicit and contrast the following set of parameters that correspond to the various subcomponents of a motion event – path, telicity, result and agentivity. With regard to the path subcomponent, the dissertation found that GSP is able to express the 3-D vectorization of the path in motion predicates via verbal morphology in Serial Verb Constructions – a proposal which had already been argued by some earlier researchers (Benedicto, Cvejanov, & Quer, 2008; Benedicto & Salomon, 2014; Zheng, 2012). On the issue of the Telicity subcomponent, this dissertation follows in the footsteps of Borer (2005) who argues (among other things) that an event is telic when the functional projection, Asp_Q, is assigned range by a subject-of-quantity internal constituent. However, where this dissertation forges new ground is in proposing that, in motion predicates, it is not the internal constituent that assigns range to Asp_q, as usually assumed, but rather the reaching of an endpoint (which obtains in GSP as the reach substructure). Additionally, the dissertation also shows that this is only compatible with a reachable (i.e. non-projective) XP_loc – a connection made possible by analyzing the internal structure of the XP_loc along the lines of Svenonius, 2008, 2010). The chapter on the Resultative subcomponent shows that the Resultative substructure (unlike some prevailing analysis, e.g. Ramchand, 2008) is independent of Telicity. Finally, with regard to agentivity, the dissertation makes a crucial discovery about the structural difference between initial contact and continuous contact agentives – i.e. the additional functional projection of a grammacticalized <i>make</i> (present in initial contact agentives, but absent from continuous contact agentives) which signals the separation of the figure from the agent. <br>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Veit Erlmann. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.M.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 84 p. : ill., music. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 302-312) .

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Veit Erlmann. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis seeks to shed light on the cultural construction of marriage and the relative psychosocial predictors of marital satisfaction across British and Ghanaian settings. The main argument is that, Britain and Ghana stand apart in socio-cultural standing: Britain is a developed Western European country whereas Ghana is a developing West African Country. Consequently local realities and social constructions would differ across these two settings and engender different constructions and experience of marriage. The project examined the relative contributions of self-construal, self-disclosure, material support, relationship beliefs, marriage role expectation and demographic variables to marital satisfaction among British and Ghanaian married couples. These objectives were pursued through the implementation of quantitative (n=400) and qualitative (n=117) paradigms in studies of couples from London and Accra. Various multivariate analytic strategies were employed to test hypotheses about differential constructions of marriage and the predictors of marital satisfaction across the two contexts. As hypothesized, responses of British couples suggested constructions of marriage that resonate with individualist patterns (e.g., less emphasis on "traditional" marital roles), and responses of Ghanaian couples suggested constructions of marriage that resonate with collectivist patterns (e.g., relative emphasis on instrumental support). Additional analyses revealed the hypothesized role of cultural grounding indicators in mediating the relationship between predictors and marital satisfaction. Specifically, interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between material support and satisfaction, but independent self-construal mediated the relationship between self-disclosure and marital satisfaction. Qualitative analyses of the interview data aid in the interpretation of these results. The expected and counterintuitive findings that emerged are discussed against the backdrop of individualism-collectivism descriptions of prevalent cultural patterns that implicitly and explicitly shape and determine personal relationship behaviour. Implications of the findings as well as recommendations for future studies of marriage across cultural settings are offered.

The banking industry in Ghana has seen tremendous growth in recent times. This exponential growth has led to high levels of competition and necessitated that all banks devise strategies to improve customer satisfaction to gain competitive advantage. The growing demands of customers have a significant impact on bank management's ability to attract and retain them. The ability to retain customers depends on the strategy in place to exceed customer expectations and satisfaction. Grounded in relationship marketing theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies banking leaders use to increase customer satisfaction. Data were collected through semistructured interviews from 6 bank leaders in 3 banks in Accra. Member checking confirmed the interpretation of participant data. Three themes emerged from the data analysis. The themes were customer centricity, customer relationship management, and service quality standards. Adopting customer-centric strategies, building strong relations with customers, and implementing quality service standards might increase customer satisfaction, retention, and profitability. The social change outcomes include the opportunity for the banks to give back to the community through corporate social responsibility and extending credit to improve the quality and standards of living of the people. Improved standards of living could result in the people in the Ghanaian community doing more business with banks, resulting in a ripple effect of profitability and giving back to society.

The central purpose of this study was to explore the conflict within the problematic racialized and gendered construction of black women as primarily sexualized objects. This study examined the impact of media cultural representations of black sexuality on identity formation, migrant integration (ethnic and cultural interactions within and between groups), and perceived social achievements of migrant Ghanaian women in the United States. The goal was to gain in-depth knowledge surrounding how media representations are resisted or internalized among Ghanaian migrant women. This research was designed to discover the conflict resolution process undertaken by Ghanaian migrant women regarding this struggle of resisting or internalizing media representations. This research is a qualitative research operating under the requirements of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and focusing on the population of migrant Ghanaian women. The phenomenon studied was the experience and perceptions of being exposed to media representations of black women. Participants were taken from the DC Metro Area, where a large Ghanaian population exists and is flourishing. Key findings discovered that for the participants studied there exist 3 prominent media representations perceived to directly impact lived experiences: Jezebel, Angry Black Woman, and Poverty/Ignorant representations. It is the researcher’s hope that this research will aid in improving the process of successfully empowering and providing positive integration for future black migrant women.

<p>Validerat; 20110819 (cani)</p>