The National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) first-time pass rate for an associate degree in nursing (ADN) program was below the national mean, presenting a problem for graduates who failed the NCLEX-RN and could not enter the workforce as registered nurses. Knowles's assumptions of adult learning, Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, and Zull's neuroscience research served as the theoretical frameworks for this study. The purpose of this study was to identify which academic and time-lapse variables predict the graduate's first-time passage for the NCLEX-RN. Archived academic records and NCLEX-RN results for all 786 graduates from one ADN program who took the NCLEX-RN for the first time in 2015 were reviewed. Binary logistic regression analysis of the data identified multiple academic and one time lag factor as significant predictors for first-time NCLEX-RN passage. Key results included positive relationships between academic variables (prerequisite grade point average [GPA], nursing GPA, cumulative GPA, final course grade in 1 medical surgical course) and NCLEX-RN passage. An inverse relationship was shown between NCLEX-RN pass and the number of nursing component failures and time lag between clinical capstone completion and first NCLEX-RN attempt. Results informed a policy recommendation to provide timely intervention and resources for students at risk, with a goal of promoting success on the first attempt of the NCLEX-RN. Increasing the numbers of graduates who successfully complete the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt and promptly join the nursing workforce will demonstrate positive social change by mitigating the nursing shortage, which promotes safe patient care.

Undernutrition is a global public health challenge. In Somalia, undernutrition is chronic with the situation often graded for emergency response. The purpose of this study was to provide contextual evidence regarding trends of prevalence and predictors of undernutrition in South Central Somalia. Following the UNICEF conceptual framework of determinants of undernutrition, the study examined which individual, household, and society factors were associated with undernutrition. Using secondary data from cross-sectional nutritional surveys implemented by the Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit from 2007 to 2012, a sample of 75,756 and 60,856 children aged 6-59 months was used in analyzing trends in prevalence and predictors of undernutrition respectively. Linear regression was used to examine trends, while Generalized Estimation Equations were used to determine predictors of undernutrition. Results of this study showed that from 2007 to 2012, there was a declining trend in the prevalence of stunting (R2 = 0.73; p < 0.05) while there was no significant trend in terms of underweight and wasting. When individual, household, and society factors were considered simultaneously, diarrhea, child gender, diet diversity, and minimum meal frequency were significant predictors of underweight; child gender and meal frequency significantly predicted stunting while wasting was significantly predicted by diarrhea, malaria, and diet diversity. Geographical region and livelihood system were significant predictors of undernutrition. The study findings provide evidence to inform nutrition policy and programs that could result in eliminating disparities in child nutrition and reducing undernutrition, ultimately improving survival and development of children in Somalia.

Thesis (M.A. (Clinical psychology )) --University of Limpopo, 2009 / This study is aimed at exploring the influence of shame and stigma on the psychological functioning of HIV/AIDS and cancer patients. Four hypotheses were stated and they are: 1. There will be a difference on the scores of shame and stigma and psychological functioning between HIV/AIDS and cancer patients. 2. Patients who experience shame and stigma are more likely to experience psychological dysfunction than those who do not. 3. Females will experience more shame and stigma, and then consequently report more psychological dysfunctions than males. 4. There will be a difference on the scores of shame and stigma and psychological functioning between age groups. Method: This study used a quantitative research design. A convenient sample of 100 HIV and cancer patients from different race, ethnicities, genders and age groups participated in this study. Statistical tests used to measure the results included means and ANOVAs. Results: Results revealed that HIV patients do experience more enacted stigma and anxiety than cancer patients. Enacted stigma and perceived community stigma were associated with anxiety, and depression. Females experienced more enacted stigma than males whiles males and internal felt stigma than females. There were age differences in the experience of somatic symptoms and internal felt stigma. Conclusion: Recommendation included that shame and stigma be addressed through stress management and the community counselling model.

There are two studies in this dissertation. Both are about a program called “PICK a Partner.” The first study looked at how the program went for 682 people from the community who were taught PICK. These people ranged in age from 18 to 25. Those in attendance were given questions at the beginning of the program about their thoughts, perceptions, and knowledge regarding dating relationships. They were given these same questions at the end of the program. The scores on the questions at the end of the program were compared with scores on the questions at the beginning of the program. Peoples’ scores increased from before to after on all four questionnaires. These scores were also compared with scores from a group of students aged 18 to 25 from a university. Those that attended the program had higher scores; the scores of those from the university who did not attend the program stayed about the same. The second study examined how teachers influence scores and how individual characteristics of participants influence change in scores. The second study showed that teacher characteristics do matter somewhat in helping participants increase in knowledge. In addition, how religious a person is and whether they are a man or woman also matter, but only a little, in helping participants increase in knowledge. Future studies on PICK and the strengths and weaknesses of these studies are discussed.

Sixteen "model building" and "model selection" procedures commonly encountered in industry, all of which were initially alleged to be capable of identifying the best model from the collection of 2k possible linear models corresponding to a given set of k predictors in a multiple linear regression analysis, were individually summarized and subsequently evaluated by considering their comparative advantages and limitations from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint. It was found that none of the proposed procedures were absolutely infallible and that several were actually unsuitable. However, it was also found that most of these techniques could still be profitably employed by the analyst, and specific directional guidelines were recommended for their implementation in a proper analysis. Furthermore, the specific role of the analyst in a multiple linear regression application was clearly defined in a practical sense.

Radiofrequency neurotomy is a pain intervention procedure designed to coagulate nerves that innervate a specific area of spinal vertebrae known as the facet joint. Despite moderate to strong research support for the efficacy of radiofrequency neurotomy to improve short-term subjective pain levels, much of the literature to date has used strict selection criteria and has not focused on functional and quality of life outcomes. Moreover, few studies have examined outcomes in worker's compensation patients or considered biopsychosocial predictive variables for the procedure. The current study aimed to characterize injured workers who have undergone radiofrequency neurotomy across a number of pre and post-procedural variables, evaluate multidimensional functional and quality of life outcomes, and examine biopsychosocial variables predictive of success and failure in this sample. The current study comprised 101 injured workers who had undergone at least one radiofrequency neurotomy of the spine (cervical, thoracic, or lumbar) in the past 11 years. Participants were solicited through the Worker's Compensation Fund of Utah computerized database. Employing a retrospective cohort design, patients' medical charts were reviewed and various preprocedural variables were coded for analysis including age at the time of the first neurotomy, history of depression, lawyer involvement in the claim, prior back and neck surgical history, and quantity of other compensation claims. Of the total sample, 56 patients (55.4%) were contacted and completed outcome surveys that assessed patient satisfaction, functional impairment, disability status, pain catastrophization, and general physical and mental health functioning. Findings revealed a moderate proportion of patients with total disability (40%), poor back/neck specific functioning (63%), and dissatisfaction with their current back/neck condition (75%). A multivariate regression model was consistently predictive of patient outcomes. Specifically, litigation status was a robust predictor of multidimensional outcomes, while depression and age retained slightly less predictive power. Results of descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses are compared to existing data for radiofrequency neurotomy and other spine procedures with similar populations. Limitations of the study are discussed, such as the retrospective design, lack of matched controls, and small sample size.

The influence of religiosity in adolescence on several variables that have been shown to be predictors of marital quality and stability was examined using a nationally representative sample of 3,151 youth, aged 13 to 17 years, from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). Religiosity was defined to incorporate multiple characteristics including religious beliefs, attitudes, participation, experiences, and identities. The effect of religious affiliation and religiosity was also examined for seven premarital predictors, which included relationship with parents, ideal age for marriage, right and wrong, academic achievement, sexual behavior, attitude toward cohabitation, and attitude toward divorce. Data were collected through telephone interviews using a random-digit-dial method between 2002 and 2003. Youth were categorized into eight religious groups: Conservative Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Black Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Other Christian, and Not Religious. Research questions were analyzed using ANCOVA, OLS regression, and logistic regression. Results indicated that all three research hypotheses were supported by the data. Specifically, religious affiliation significantly predicted level of religiosity, religiosity was related to each of the seven premarital predictors of marital quality and stability, and religious affiliation acted as a moderator in the relationships between religiosity and the seven premarital predictors. Comparison of the eight religious groups revealed that religiosity has a unique influence on youth in the different groups in relation to these outcome variables. In light of these findings, implications, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.

Children's theories of mind have been researched extensively over the past two decades. Generally, studies concerning this understanding have focused on children between three and five years of age because it is believed that an understanding of mind develops during this period. However, evidence from naturalistic contexts suggests that many younger children can demonstrate an understanding of the mind. Despite this, the focus in many studies has been the age at which children are able to demonstrate a representational understanding of mind. Less interest has been directed towards how children use their understanding during their everyday interactions. Evidence suggests further investigations need to consider the social nature of a theory of mind. For example, a growing amount of research indicates that social contexts are important in facilitating an understanding of mind. Relationships have been reported between a theory of mind and the following: peer popularity, family size and level of fantasy play. Given these, it appears necessary for research to address the social implications of an understanding of mind in 3-5 year olds. Interview and observation methods were adopted for data collection. The interview phase of this study investigated whether or not selected characteristics of narrative influenced children's performance on four non-traditional literature based false belief tasks. Results indicated that narrative style, active participation and narrative detail were significant predictors of children's ability to demonstrate an understanding of false belief. Age was not identified as a significant variable. The results from both phases in this study suggest that 3-5 year olds can demonstrate an understanding of mind during non-traditional false belief tasks and everyday interactions. It is argued that an understanding of mind is characterised by a range of behaviours and that not all these are addressed in the traditional paradigm. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The widely acknowledged performance gap between processors and memory has been the subject of much research. In the Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) paradigm, the combination of in-order issue and the presence of a large number of parallel function units has further worsen the problem. Prefetching, by hardware, software or a combination of both, has been one of the primary mechanisms to alleviate this problem. In this talk, we will discuss two prefetching mechanisms, one hardware and other software, suitable for implementation in EPIC processors. Both methods rely on the off-line learning of Markovian predictors. In the hardware mechanism, the predictors are loaded into a table that is used by a prefetch engine. We have shown that the method is particularly effective for prefetching into the L2 cache. Our software mechanism which we called predicated prefetch leverages on informing loads. This is used in conjunction with data remapping and offline learning of Markovian predictors. This distinguishes our approach from early software prefetching techniques that only involves static program analysis. Our experiments show that this framework, together with the algorithms used in it, can effectively remove, in the best instance, 30% of the stall cycles due to cache misses. The results also show that the framework performs better than pure hardware stride predictors and has lower bandwidth and instruction overheads than that of pure software approaches. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the socialization of English instructors at preparatory schools of Turkish universities at organization, department and task levels, and various individual (academic degree, teaching experience, length of employment at current work place, job satisfaction, commitment, and self-efficacy) and organizational (type of university, training, work conditions, knowledge sharing) variables. A pilot study with 225 instructors from four universities was conducted to confirm the validity of Haueter, Macan, and Winter&rsquo / s (2003) Newcomer Socialization Questionnaire (NSQ) adapted into Turkish. Although the results of exploratory factor analysis in the pilot study did not reveal supportive results for the structures in NSQ, results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated moderate fit for the structures in the scale. The main study was designed as a correlational study and the participants comprised of 737 English instructors working at 16 public and private universities selected from four cities in Turkey and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus via cluster sampling. In order to collect the data, an inventory consisting of three parts made up of self-developed and pre-developed scales was utilized. The first part consisted personal questions about education, age, gender and length of employment of the participants. The second part included questions about training and work conditions of the participants. The items related to training and work conditions were developed by the researchers. The third and final part of the inventory consisted of five separate scales for measuring both the predicted and predictor variables. Turkish adaptation of three-dimensional Organizational Socialization Scale, which was self-developed, and the Turkish version of three-dimensional Teachers&rsquo / Sense of Efficacy Scale developed and validated by &Ccedil / apa, &Ccedil / akiroglu, and Sarikaya,(2005), three-dimensional Organizational Commitment Scale developed and validated by Wasti (1997), Job Satisfaction and Knowledge Sharing scales developed by Kondak&ccedil / i and Haser (2011), all of which were pre-developed were utilized to measure the predictors of organizational socialization. Both descriptive and inferential statistics techniques were used for the data analysis. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis for the self-developed Organizational Socialization Scale, and confirmatory factor analyses for the pre-developed Teachers&rsquo / Efficacy Scale, Organizational Commitment Scale, Job Satisfaction Scale and Knowledge Sharing Scale were conducted within the scope of this study. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses was carried out in order to investigate the relationship between organizational socialization and its predictors. Descriptive, inferential and multiple regression statistical analyses were performed by the software PASW Statistics 18 and the confirmatory factor analysis was performed by the software AMOS 18. The results of the main study revealed that socialization of English instructors to the organization, department, and task are significantly predicted by several organizational and individual variables. Among organizational variables knowledge sharing and training are the most significant ones / and among individual variables, job satisfaction, self-efficacy for instructional strategies, and affective commitment are the most significant ones. In this respect, the practitioners in the field should provide necessary conditions so as to promote and improve knowledge sharing, job satisfaction, appropriate training in the work place, as well as offering opportunities for instructors to improve their self-efficacy as a teacher and satisfaction with the job, which can lead to increase in affective commitment.