This research study explored the meaning of 'Being' (i.e. Heidegger's four philosophical concepts of Being-in the-world, fore-structures, time and space) as a nurse involved in the work of death investigation in the USA. The objectives were to: reveal the hidden meaning of Being; transfer the findings into an English context by examining what nurses could offer beyond their current role boundaries in an area not currently practised to the extent that nurses make to other medical specialities; and finally put forward developments that would need to take place to ensure such proposals were successful in making an effective difference to health care. In the USA there are two systems of death investigation, the Coronial and Medical Examiner system. The Coroner is an elected county or state position with varied educational and professional requirements. Some Coroner positions have been filled by registered nurses as they have put themselves forward successfully for election. In contrast, the Medical Examiner is an appointed county or state position who must be a licensed physician and a qualified pathologist or forensic pathologist in most cases. Within the Medical Examiner systems death investigators may also be appointed of which some have been filled by registered nurses. It was under the interpretive paradigm that a Heideggerian hermeneutic study was undertaken. Snowball sampling was instigated to reach a hidden population and collect qualitative data by means of unstructured interviews, non-participant observations, interrogation of historical records and the keeping of a personal reflective diary. The seven phase analysis process underpinned by the hermeneutic circle was developed to enable a synopsis of the shared meaning of Being to be revealed through the presentation of paradigm cases that encompass stories and themes. Of the 22 nurses found to be working as either death investigators or Coroners in the USA who fulfilled the inclusion criteria, 17 nurses from 11 States in the USA consented to take part. Fore-structures concerning age (average 37), gender (82% were women) and professional experience (majority came from an adult nursing background with emergency department or critical care experience) are discussed. Overall participants were interviewed for a total of 78 hours in 11 States, five of which were also observed in practice for a total of 142 hours in 3 States, giving a total of 220 hours of interview and observational data. The interpretive analysis revealed the three major paradigms of: the authentic and inauthentic reality of Being (the death investigator nurse in action); the everydayness and averageness of Being (community outreach) and the publicness of Being (mass fatality care). This study reveals knowledge concerning the meaning of Being as a nurse involved in the work of death investigation in the USA. Aspects of this illuminated landscape have propositioned for the advancement of nursing clinical practice to replace and further develop the current coroner's officer and soon to be implemented medical examiner officer role in England and Wales. Hence recommendations are made for practice development and further research in England.

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

<p>X-ray fluorescence (XRF) detection of heavy metals is a cost- and time-effective method for investigation of polluted areas. Compared to laboratory analysis, XRF analysis is limited by high detection limits and uncertainties in some situations. Preparation of samples is known to affect the results of measurements.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to bring a deeper understanding of how different factors affect the results of XRF-analysis. A large number of measurements have been made with the instruments Niton XLt 700 and Niton Xli 700. Results from measurements of lead, zinc and copper have been analysed.</p><p>This study has shown that a greater moisture content will give a lower measured concentration for the same sample. If the moisture content is known, it is possible to make good approximations of concentrations in dry samples. No obvious differences were found between different metals.</p><p>Proper homogenisation of samples was found to be one of the most critical issues. It should be noted that laboratories do not usually homogenise samples prior to analysis, so samples sent for laboratory verification should therefore be homogenised before sending.</p><p>Sample preparation, including drying, sieving to finer grain-sizes and analysing in a special sample cup was found to increase the measured concentrations and decrease the variation between measurements. The concentrations differed with different sample matrices and with sample preparation. Because of the differences, measurements should always be correlated with laboratory analysis before any conclusions can be made. In situations when metals are well within detection range of the XRF instrument, the only preparation needed is in most cases homogenisation. If metal levels are just at the limit, or just below the detection limit, further preparations of samples should be made. When drying samples makes detection possible, more preparation is usually not worth the effort. If detection limits still are a problem after drying, the samples should be sieved and analysed in sample cups. In situations where concentrations still are below the</p><p>detection limit when analysing in sample cups, or if the measurements are disturbed for other reasons, another method than XRF-analysis must be used. When XRF analysis is possible, the method is preferable compared to only laboratory analysis. This cost- and time effective method makes a larger number of measurements possible, and gives a more complete overview of a polluted area.</p> / <p>Analys med röntgenfluorescensdetektor (XRF) är en snabb och kostnadseffektiv fältmetod för detektion av tungmetaller i mark. Nackdelen är att mätningarna inte är tillförlitliga i alla sammanhang och att detektionsgränsen för många ämnen är förhållandevis hög. Det är sedan tidigare känt att olika former av provbearbetning påverkar mätresultaten.</p><p>I detta examensarbete har undersökts hur olika faktorer påverkar mätresultaten vid analys av jordprover med XRF instrument. Faktorerna som undersökts är inverkan av vattenkvot, kornstorlek, provpåsar och olika provbearbetningsmetoder. Vid provbearbetningsförsöken skickades prover även in till externt laboratorium för jämförande analys. Metaller som undersökts är bly, zink och koppar.</p><p>Vid undersökningen konstaterades att en ökad vattenkvot ger upphov till lägre mätvärden. Vid kännedom om vattenkvot kan halt per torrsubstans med god överensstämmelse uppskattas utifrån mätningar på fuktiga prov. Är precisionskraven stora och vattenkvoten varierande och okänd bör dock proverna torkas innan mätningar görs. Ingen avsevärd skillnad sågs mellan de olika metaller som undersöktes.</p><p>Vid undersökningen om provbearbetningens betydelse visade det sig att homogeniseringen av proverna är mycket viktig, inte minst av prover som skickas till laboratorieanalys.</p><p>Ökad provbearbetning med torkning och siktning till mindre kornstorlek tenderar att ge högre mätvärden med XRF instrument. Storleksmässigt är mätvärden vid obearbetade prov mest överensstämmande med laboratorieanalys. Mest skiljer sig analys på finsiktade prover i provkopp. Korrelationsmässigt finns i en del fall en tendens till bättre överensstämmelse med mer bearbetade prov. Den största vinsten med ökad bearbetning av prover konstaterades i detta arbete vara att mark med lägre metallkoncentrationer då kan analyseras.</p><p>I de fall där halterna av metaller ligger väl inom XRF instrumentets detektionsområde visade det sig att det oftast är tillräckligt att endast homogenisera proverna innan analys görs. I de fall där koncentrationen av metaller är på gränsen till vad XRF instrumentet kan detektera rekommenderas att proverna torkas, eller om nödvändigt torkas, siktas och analyseras i provkopp. Där nivåerna av metaller ligger under detektionsgränsen för XRF instrument trots provbearbetning, eller där andra ämnen till exempel järn stör mätningarna, måste en annan analysmetod väljas.</p>

This study tested an underlying assumption of professionals who interview young children with anatomically correct dolls: children who have been sexually abused react differently to interviews with the dolls than children who have not been sexually abused. The behavior of a group of children who were referred to a mental health clinic in the southwestern United States because of suspected sexual abuse was compared to the behavior of a group of children referred to the same clinic for other reasons while the children were interviewed by clinicians using anatomically correct dolls. The study examined four categories of behavior which consisted of indicators of child sexual abuse from the literature. The four categories were: (1) sexual behavior; (2) anger/aggression; (3) anxiety/regression; and (4) avoidant behavior. Clinicians at the mental health clinic identified potential subjects for the study from the outpatient population. Parents were given written and verbal descriptions of the study and asked to contact the researcher if they were interested in allowing their child to participate. The voluntary nature of participation in the study was stressed. Eleven children who were referred because of suspected sexual abuse and eleven children referred for other reasons were successfully recruited. Groups were matched as closely as possible as to sex, age, racial/ethnic group and developmental level. Two dependent measures were employed: the Behavioral Checklist and the Likelihood of Victimization Scale. Both instruments were designed for the research study. The Behavioral Checklist was completed by two observers who watched each interview from behind a one-way mirror. The Likelihood of Victimization Scale was completed by the clinicians who interviewed the children. Observers as well as interviewers were blind to the referral status of the children. Statistically significant differences were obtained for two of the four categories of the Behavioral Checklist. The same two categories correlated significantly with the Likelihood of Victimization Scale. The results provided support for the assumption tested.

Pre-sentence evaluations are commonly prepared by court clinics to assist the court in sentencing dispositions and plans for treatment of offenders. There is no standard policy in effect for advising a defendant of his legal rights prior to evaluation by a mental health professional for purposes of a pre-sentence report. The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of the effects that different types of briefing or warning statements may have upon clients in a court clinic. The present study systematically investigated two factors in briefings given before a pre-sentence evaluation. The first factor was the nonverbal communication of the person giving the briefing. The effects of these briefing manipulations were assessed in terms of client behavior and mental health evaluator's impression of the client. Specifically, these dependent variables were measured by MMPI scales L, K, and Pd, an Evaluation Rating Scale, a Briefing Questionnaire, a Psychopathology Rating Scale and a Nonverbal Behavior Record Form. A set of hypotheses was forwarded which predicted that these behavioral indices would vary as a result of changes in briefing procedure. Contrary to predictions, results indicated that the briefing procedures had no significant effect upon any of the measures of clients' behavior. While questionnaire data indicated that subjects were affected by the type of briefing immediately after the briefing was given, it appears that these effects were of very short duration. These findings are discussed with regard to the methodology of the present study and with regard to previous research concerned with Miranda warnings.

The growing popularity of various Web 2.0 media has created massive amounts of user-generated content such as online reviews, blog articles, shared videos, forums threads, and wiki pages. Such content provides insights into web users' preferences and opinions, online communities, knowledge generation, etc., and presents opportunities for many knowledge discovery problems. However, several challenges need to be addressed: data collection procedure has to deal with unique characteristics and structures of various Web 2.0 media; advanced data selection methods are required to identify data relevant to specific knowledge discovery problems; interactions between Web 2.0 users which are often embedded in user-generated content also need effective methods to identify, model, and analyze. In this dissertation, I intend to address the above challenges and aim at three types of knowledge discovery tasks: (data) collection, selection, and investigation. Organized in this "CSI" framework, five studies which explore and propose solutions to these tasks for particular Web 2.0 media are presented. In Chapter 2, I study focused and hidden Web crawlers and propose a novel crawling system for Dark Web forums by addressing several unique issues to hidden web data collection. In Chapter 3 I explore the usage of both topical and sentiment information in web crawling. This information is also used to label nodes in web graphs that are employed by a graph-based tunneling mechanism to improve collection recall. Chapter 4 further extends the work in Chapter 3 by exploring the possibilities for other graph comparison techniques to be used in tunneling for focused crawlers. A subtree-based tunneling method which can scale up to large graphs is proposed and evaluated. Chapter 5 examines the usefulness of user-generated content in online video classification. Three types of text features are extracted from the collected user-generated content and utilized by several feature-based classification techniques to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed text-based video classification framework. Chapter 6 presents an algorithm to identify forum user interactions and shows how they can be used for knowledge discovery. The algorithm utilizes a bevy of system and linguistic features and adopts several similarity-based methods to account for interactional idiosyncrasies.

The aim of the study is to make a comparison between the nursery/preschool recommendations (by the state) made in 1972 and the one used today. Here I’ve focused on the posts of looking after children vis-à-vis the educational responsibility. Also the type of education recommended in 1972 and what type of education recommended today. My questions concerns what the preschool recommendations from 1972 are and how they are viewed and applied today in the 2000nds. Since my questions has to do with ideologies regarding children, family and society I choose to do a specific form of text and content analysis called Idea and ideology analysis. In my theoretical chapter I choose two aspects central for my field of examination. These are discourse and discourse analysis, I choose them as they concern how people of different professions in society uses language to categorize and discuss various phenomena surrounding us. Discourse and discourse analysis also includes a description of what the Swedish discourse regarding childcare looks like during the two years I’ve been doing this study. My findings are that the preschool in both 1972 and today both have the responsibility to look after children and the educational task. I’ve also found that in 1972 a certain type of education is recommended for preschools while as today the recommendations don’t contain only one specific type of education.

Research has shown that courts and practising jurists increasingly use social work pre-sentence reports. Pre-sentence reports can be requested from probation officers and social workers in private practice. These reports are prepared with the purpose of assisting courts in determining the most appropriate sentence taking into account the criminal, the victim and the community. Worldwide research as confirmed by this investigation indicates that jurists generally regard the quality of pre-sentence reports as unsatisfactory. This research focussed on jurists' quality grading and their pointing out of shortcomings and problems regarding certain aspects of the pre-sentence report. Twenty respondents took part in this research among whom were advocates (some with senior status), regional magistrates, magistrates and attorneys with experience in the criminal court as well as being experienced in employing pre-sentence reports. The aspects of the pre-sentence reports concentrated on is the report format, report content, the discussion of the facts (evaluation), motivation underlying the recommendations, general appearance, use of assessment instruments, presentation in court, as well as skills and knowledge required to write the reports. The respondents were also requested to indicate they prefer the service of either a probation officer or a social worker in private practice. Their preferences are highlighted and discussed. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The investigation and modelling of aviation accident causation is dominated by linear models. Aviation is, however, a complex system and as such suffers from being artificially manipulated into non-complex models and methods. This thesis addresses this issue by developing a new approach to investigating aviation accident causation through information networks. These networks centralise communication and the flow of information as key indicators of a system‟s health and risk. The holistic approach focuses on the system itself rather than any individual event. The activity and communication of constituent elements, both human and non-human agents, within that system is identified and highlights areas of system failure. The model offers many potential developments and some key areas are studied in this research. Through the centralisation of barriers and information nodes the method can be applied to almost any situation. The application of Bayesian mathematics to historical data populations provides scope for studying error migration and barrier manipulation. The thesis also provides application of these predictions to a flight simulator study in an attempt of validation. Beyond this the thesis also discusses the applicability of the approach to industry. Through working with a legacy airline the methods discussed are used as the basis for a new and forward-thinking safety management system. This holistic approach focuses on the system environment, the activity that takes place within it, the strategies used to conduct this activity, the way in which the constituent parts of the system (both human and non-human) interact and the behaviour required. Each stage of this thesis identifies and expands upon the potential of the information network approach maintaining firm focus on the overall health of a system. It is contended that through the further development and application of this approach, understanding of aviation risk can be improved.