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Geographic Distance, Contact, and Family Perceptions of Quality Nursing Home Care
The effect of frequency of nursing home contact on family perceptions of quality care is the focus of this research. A family member characteristic, such as geographic distance from the nursing home, affects his or her frequency of contact with the nursing home. Frequency of contact, in turn, affects family perceptions of the care his or her loved one receives in the nursing home. The theoretical framework for this study is based on Allport's intergroup contact theory, which posits that when four contact conditions - institutional support, equal status, common goals, and intergroup cooperation - are present in an intergroup situation, a reduction in anxiety between groups is likely to occur. Regression analysis tested the stated hypotheses using survey data collected from 275 family members of residents in 10 Dallas-Ft. Worth area nursing homes. This study is among the first to quantify family geographic distance, finding that family geographic distance is a significant negative predictor of nursing home contact. Additionally, results build on Allport's theory by extending its' usefulness to nursing home organizations in two distinct ways. First, findings support Allport's premise that contact alone between groups - i.e., family members and nursing home staff - is insufficient for increasing …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Dillman, Jennifer L
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Tracing the Path of Sustainable Development through Major International Conferences: A Brief History and Overview of Sustainable Development 1964-2002
Starting with the idea that unsustainable practices contribute to issues of social justice and poverty as much as to ecological issues. Chapter 1 traces the origins of the terms sustainable and development individually to see how it is that they came together. Chapter 2 traces the major international conferences and documents and their use of the terms sustainable development. Chapter 3 takes a phenomenology approach to get a bit deeper into sustainable development. I examine the most commonly cited definition of sustainable development as well as a broader definition of sustainable development as a process of change. Chapter 4 examines the field of environmental ethics and argues that constant debates over value distract policy makers from the central question of what morally motivates people to support environmental ethics views. Chapter 5 examines the institution and regime building process, and the conclusion offers three questions to measure our progress.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Dunn, Benjamin P.
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Stretching the Flexible Myosin II Subfragment Using the Novel Gravitational Force Spectroscope, and the Uncoiling of S2
Familial Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) causes ventricle walls to thicken and often leads to sudden death especially in adults. Mutations in the subfragment 2 (S2) of β-cardiac myosin are implicated in the genetic disorder. This S2 region is a coiled-coil rod region resulting from the dimeric form of myosin II. It has been proposed that an elastic quality allows normal S2 to absorb force during the powerstroke according to the sliding filament model. To test the flexibility of single molecules of S2 against levels of physiological force, the Gravitational Force Spectrometer (GFS) is being developed. This novel system employs a standard microscope on an equatorial mount that allows the spectrometer to be rotated freely in space. Stationary glass beads are attached to a microscope slide where the molecule is tethered between the stationary bead and a smaller mobile bead. The GFS is oriented so that the force of gravity can act on the mobile bead and so impart a small force to the tethered subfragment. Additionally, a video system in conjunction with ImageJ software makes a distance measurement of the molecule possible with a resolution of around 11 nm. The S2 can be stretched parallel or perpendicular to the coiled coil …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Dunn, James W.
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Self-Objectification and Sport Participation: Do the Gendered Makeup and Competitive Level of the Team Matter?
The purposes of this study were to (a) investigate differences in self-objectification, self-surveillance, body shame, and flow among female athletes on all-women's and coed ultimate frisbee teams at different competitive levels, and (b) examine the objectification theory model across groups. Participants (n = 112) completed online surveys including a demographic questionnaire, trait and state versions of the Self-Objectification Questionnaire, Body Surveillance and Body Shame subscales of the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, and the Flow State Scale. No differences in self-objectification, self-surveillance, or body shame were found, although highly competitive athletes experienced more flow than lower competitive teams. Relationships were found between self-objectification, self-surveillance, and body shame, but not for flow, partially supporting the objectification theory model.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Ede, Alison
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Using Geographic Information Systems for the Functional Assessment of Texas Coastal Prairie Freshwater Wetlands Around Galveston Bay
The objective of this study was to deploy a conceptual framework developed by M. Forbes using a geographic information system (GIS) approach to assess the functionality of wetlands in the Galveston Bay Area of Texas. This study utilized geospatial datasets which included National Wetland Inventory maps (NWI), LiDAR data, National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery and USGS National Land Cover data to assess the capacity of wetlands to store surface water and remove pollutants, including nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, and organic compounds. The use of LiDAR to characterize the hydrogeomorphic characteristics of wetlands is a key contribution of this study to the science of wetland functional assessment. LiDAR data was used to estimate volumes for the 7,370 wetlands and delineate catchments for over 4,000 wetlands, located outside the 100-yr floodplain, within a 2,075 square mile area around Galveston Bay. Results from this study suggest that coastal prairie freshwater wetlands typically have a moderate capacity to store surface water from precipitation events, remove ammonium, and retain phosphorus and heavy metals and tend to have a high capacity for removing nitrate and retainremove organic compounds. The results serve as a valuable survey instrument for increasing the understanding of coastal prairie freshwater wetlands …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Enwright, Nicholas
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
An Assessment of Consumers' Willingness to Patronize Foreign-Based Business Format Franchises: An Investigation in the Fast-Food Sector
This study aimed to address consumers' stereotypical categorizations in the form of essentialist views about foreign cultures and their effect on individual consumers, including their negative or aroused emotions and subsequent retail patronage behaviors. The research mission was to empirically assess the salient dimensions of consumers' states of mind (positive and negative affect, psychological essentialism, epistemic curiosity), states of being (store atmospherics), and states of action (retail patronage behaviors) in a cultural context based on Mehrabian-Russell theory of environmental psychology. Specifically, the retail patronage setting was selected as foreign-based fast-food franchises because it represents both a relevant and timely situational context for consumer behavior. This dissertation makes several contributions to international retail patronage literature. First, it frames curiosity as an aroused emotional state and finds support for the relationship between consumer epistemic curiosity and retail patronage. Second, it provides support for the linkage between consumer affect and retail patronage in an international retail setting. Third, it reveals that affect has a greater impact on retail patronage than epistemic curiosity. The overarching finding of this study is an inability to tie the cultural elements in retail atmospherics, including signs, symbols, and artifacts, to consumer emotions. In addition, we were unable to …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Ertekin, Selcuk
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Fractus I for Trumpet in C and Electronic Sound: A Critical Examination of the Compositional Process
Fractus I is a composition for trumpet in C and live electronic sound. The electronics were primarily created using SuperCollider, an environment and programming language for real time audio synthesis. This project investigates SuperCollider's pattern and task functionality as a means of supporting and enriching the compositional process. Fractus I develops several different code architectures in order to randomize as well as synchronize various musical elements. The piece exploits SuperCollider as both an audio synthesis tool and a performance conduit. Additionally, the nature of SuperCollider's patterns and tasks influences the form and content of the composition. The project underscores SuperCollider as a powerful, versatile and open-ended tool for musical composition and examines future directions and improvements.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Fieldsteel, Eli Mulvey
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Cracking the Closed Society: James W. Silver and the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi
This thesis examines the life of James Wesley Silver, a professor of history at the University of Mississippi for twenty-six years and author of Mississippi: The Closed Society, a scathing attack on the Magnolia State's history of racial oppression. In 1962, Silver witnessed the campus riot resulting from James Meredith's enrollment as the first black student at the state's hallowed public university and claims this was the catalyst for writing his book. However, by examining James Silver's personal and professional activities and comparing them with the political, cultural, and social events taking place concurrently, this paper demonstrates that his entire life, the gamut of his experiences, culminated in the creation of his own rebel yell, Mississippi: The Closed Society. Chapter 1 establishes Silver's environment by exploring the history and sociology of the South during the years of his residency. Chapter 2 discusses Silver's background and early years, culminating with his appointment as a faculty member of the University of Mississippi in 1936. Chapter 3 reveals Silver's personal and professional life during the 1940s, as well as the era's notable historical events. The decade of the 1950s is discussed in chapter 4, particularly the civil rights movement, Silver's response to these …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Fox, Lisa Ann
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Analysis of Graduation Rates for Four-year Colleges: A Model of Institutional Performance Using IPEDS
Under the George W. Bush U.S. presidential administration, the federal government pushed for greater accountability among institutions of higher education for educational outcomes. Graduation rate is a key performance indicator of institutional accountability. Previous researchers of student attrition focused primarily on the effects of student level factors on student persistence/withdrawal behavior. Recently, researchers put more focus on the effects of institutional characteristics on graduation rates, but most of these studies were exploratory and based on multiple regression models. No institutional model has existed to synthesize their results within a theoretical framework. Such an institutional model is needed to explain the process of student persistence at the institutional level. The purpose of this study was to develop a model of institutional performance in graduation rate for four-year, public and private not-for-profit, Title IV institutions in the United States. This study validated the institutional model based on the IPEDS dataset using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Further group comparison analyses are conducted by fitting the same SEM model to several subgroup datasets based on grouping variables such as control, geographical region and state. Benchmarking analyses were conducted to demonstrate how administrators and policy-makers can use the institutional model to compare the …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Fung, Terence Yip-hung
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Effect of Fluorine and Hydrogen Radical Species on Modified Oxidized Ni(pt)si
NiSi is an attractive material in the production of CMOS devices. The problem with the utilization of NiSi, is that there is no proper method of cleaning the oxide on the surface. Sputtering is the most common method used for the cleaning, but it has its own complications. Dry cleaning methods include the reactions with radicals and these processes are not well understood and are the focus of the project. Dissociated NF3 and NH3 were used as an alternative and XPS is the technique to analyze the reactions of atomic fluorine and nitrogen with the oxide on the surface. A thermal cracker was used to dissociate the NF3 and NH3 into NFx+F and NHx+H. There was a formation of a NiF2 layer on top of the oxide and there was no evidence of nitrogen on the surface indicating that the fluorine and hydrogen are the reacting species. XPS spectra, however, indicate that the substrate SiO2 layer is not removed by the dissociated NF3 and NiF2 growth process. The NiF2 over layer can be reduced to metallic Ni by reacting with dissociated NH3 at room temperature. The atomic hydrogen from dissociated ammonia reduces the NiF2 but it was determined that the …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Gaddam, Sneha Sen
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Jeans, Boots, and Starry Skies: Tales of a Gay Country-and-Western Bar and Places Nearby
Fourteen short stories, with five interspersed vignettes, describe the lives of gay people in the southwestern United States, centered around a fictional gay country-and-western bar in Dallas and a small town in Oklahoma. Various characters, themes, and trajectories recur in the manner of a short story cycle, as explained in the prefatory Critical Analysis, which focuses on exemplary works of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, Italo Calvino, Yevgeny Kharitonov, and Louise Erdrich.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Gay, Wayne Lee
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Présentations de la Grammaire et Représentations du Discours Dans les Manuels de Français Publiés aux États-Unis: une Étude Diachronique
This study partially replicates and re-explores specific dimensions of a textbook analysis of the presentation and use of specific grammatical elements and sociolinguistic variants in textbooks published in the United States for learners of French. Authenticity is situated as a central construct in the analysis of interrogatives, relative pronouns, and the negative particle ne in selected textbooks and ancillary materials. The findings reveal that little progress has been made over the past twenty years in integrating authentic representations of discourse into French-as-a-foreign-language textbooks.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Grall, Christophe
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Discovery of Resources and Conflict in the Interstate System, 1816-2001
This study tests a theory detailing the increased likelihood of conflict following an initial resource discovery in the discovering nation and its region. A survey of prior literature shows a multitude of prior research concerning resources and nations' willingness to initiate conflict over those resources, but this prior research lacks any study concerning the effects of the discovery of resources on interstate conflict. The theory discusses the increased likelihood of conflict in the discovering nation as both target and initiator. It further looks at the increased chance of conflict in the discoverer's region due to security dilemmas and proxy wars. The results show strong support for the theory, suggesting nations making new resource discoveries must take extra care to avoid conflict.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Clark, Bradley
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Student characteristics and self-concept of secondary career and technical education students in a north central Texas region
Self-concept, discussed as a scholarly topic since the time of Socrates and Plato, is an important theoretical construct in education because self-concept is considered to be a desirable trait and a facilitator of positive future behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the characteristics of students enrolled in career and technical education (CTE) programs and students' self-concept scores as measured by specific subscales from the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ). A total of 196 male and 89 female secondary students (Grades 9-12) enrolled in arts, audio/video technology and communications cluster courses in North Central Texas school districts participated in the study. Student characteristic variables of interest were age, gender, CTE program enrollment, and participation in CTE. The self-concept subscales analyzed were General, Academic, Verbal, Math, and Problem Solving. A canonical correlation analysis was conducted using the four student characteristic variables as predictors of the five self-concept variables to evaluate the multivariate shared relationship between the two variable sets. The full model across all functions explained about 23% of the variance between the variable sets. Function 1 explained 15% of the shared variance and Function 2 explained 7% of the variance that remained. This study detected a relationship …
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Cox, Nancy Lynne
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Comparing the Effects of Home Versus Clinic-Based Parent Training for Children with Autism
Research with parents on managing child problem behavior typically measures either child or parent behavior. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of training parents to implement a function-based behavior intervention plan (BIP) in a non-trained natural environment utilizing a Multiple Probe Design across Participants. Participants included four parent-child dyads. Measurement variables included parents' use of effective and ineffective strategies and child problem behavior. Intervention involved training parents to understand and implement the BIP using effective strategies, modeling the effective procedures, and providing feedback following parent implementation of procedures. Results showed that the intervention was very effective in promoting skill generalization of parents and decreasing child problem behavior. The findings have implications for research and clinical practice.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Crone, Regina M.
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Historical Development of Tertiary Education in the Bahamas: The College of the Bahamas, Past, Present, and Future.
The purpose of this study was to provide a historical overview of the development of the College of the Bahamas, and to examine the development of the College of the Bahamas in light of the College of the Bahamas Act of 1974 and the subsequent Act of 1995. The research was qualitative in nature using historical analysis. The primary means of investigation were analyses of both primary and secondary documents and interviews with key individuals who were important to the development of the College of the Bahamas since the 1960s. The methods of triangulation of data and findings were complemented by member checks to affirm the basic findings of the study. The study was limited in scope to the College of the Bahamas to the exclusion of other tertiary institutions within the country. The College of the Bahamas has advanced greatly and has largely fulfilled the directives and goals of the Act of 1974 and is currently engaged in efforts to meet the goals of the Act of 1995.
Date:
May 2010
Creator:
Dames, Terren L.
Object Type:
Thesis or Dissertation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Storage 101: The Basics
This presentation discusses storage options for digital content, questions to ask when planning, and things to consider for storing and digitizing data.
Date:
February 5, 2010
Creator:
Phillips, Mark Edward
Object Type:
Presentation
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Written in Blood: the History of Fort Worth's Fallen Lawmen
Access:
Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
In 2009 Fort Worth unveiled an elaborate, million-dollar memorial to its fallen police and firefighters going all the way back to the city’s beginnings in 1873. Fifty-eight of the ninety-five names on the memorial were policemen. Written in Blood is a more inclusive version of that idea because it covers more than just members of the Fort Worth Police Department; it includes men from all branches of local law enforcement who died defending law and order in the early years: policemen, sheriffs, constables, “special officers,” and even a police commissioner. Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster tell the stories of thirteen of those early lawmen—an unlucky number to be sure. They range from Tarrant County Sheriff John B. York through Fort Worth Police Officer William “Ad” Campbell covering the years from 1861 to 1909. York was the first local lawman to die—in a street fight. Campbell was last in this era—shot-gunned in the back while walking his beat in Hell’s Half-Acre. Co-authors Selcer and Foster bring academic credentials and “street cred” to the story, explaining how policemen got (and kept) their jobs, what special officers were, and the working relationship between the city marshal’s boys and the sheriff’s boys.
Date:
October 15, 2010
Creator:
Selcer, Richard F.
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Stan Kenton: This is an Orchestra!
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Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Stan Kenton (1911–1979) formed his first full orchestra in 1940 and soon drew record-breaking crowds to hear and dance to his exciting sound. He continued to tour and record unrelentingly for the next four decades. Stan Kenton: This Is an Orchestra! sums up the mesmerizing bandleader at the height of his powers, arms waving energetically, his face a study of concentration as he cajoled, coaxed, strained, and obtained the last ounce of energy from every musician under his control. Michael Sparke’s narrative captures that enthusiasm in words: a lucid account of the evolution of the Kenton Sound, and the first book to offer a critical evaluation of the role that Stan played in its creation. “Michael Sparke’s book, the first general history of the Kenton Orchestra, is the best evaluation yet of Kenton’s 40-year musical development.”—The Wall Street Journal
Date:
May 15, 2010
Creator:
Sparke, Michael
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Johnson-sims Feud: Romeo and Juliet, West Texas Style
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Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
In the early 1900s, two families in Scurry and Kent counties in West Texas united in a marriage of fourteen-year-old Gladys Johnson to twenty-one-year-old Ed Sims. Billy Johnson, the father, set up Gladys and Ed on a ranch, and the young couple had two daughters. But Gladys was headstrong and willful, and Ed drank too much, and both sought affection outside their marriage. A nasty divorce ensued, and Gladys moved with her girls to her father’s luxurious ranch house, where she soon fell in love with famed Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. When Ed tried to take his daughters for a prearranged Christmas visit in 1916, Gladys and her brother Sid shot him dead on the Snyder square teeming with shoppers. One of the best lawyers in West Texas, Judge Cullen Higgins (son of the old feudist Pink Higgins) managed to win acquittal for both Gladys and Sid. In the tradition of Texas feudists since the 1840s, the Sims family sought revenge. Sims’ son-in-law, Gee McMeans, led an attack in Sweetwater and shot Billy Johnson’s bodyguard, Frank Hamer, twice, while Gladys—by now Mrs. Hamer—fired at another assassin. Hamer shot back, killed McMeans, and was no-billed on the spot by a grand …
Date:
August 15, 2010
Creator:
O'Neal, Bill
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Américo Paredes: in His Own Words, an Authorized Biography
Access:
Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies. Born in Brownsville, Texas, along the southern U.S.-Mexico Border, Paredes grew up between two worlds—one written about in books, the other sung about in ballads and narrated in folktales. After service in World War II, Paredes entered the University of Texas at Austin, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1956. With the publication of his dissertation, “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. His book questioned the mythic nature of the Texas Rangers and provided an alternative counter-cultural narrative to the existing traditional narratives of Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie. For the next forty years Paredes was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history. He was a soft-spoken, at times temperamental, yet fearless professor. In 1970 he co-founded the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico, decades before its …
Date:
April 15, 2010
Creator:
Medrano, Manuel F.
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Out the Summerhill Road: a Novel
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Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
From Jane Roberts Wood comes a quietly riveting novel revealing the banal faces of evil in a small East Texas town. In 1946 a young couple is brutally murdered in Cold Springs. And, now, thirty-four years later, the rumor is that Jackson Morris, who had been the only person of interest in the murders, has come home. Or has he? When the four women of the Tuesday bridge club hear this rumor, their responses range from a reckless excitement to a shaky uneasiness. There’s Isabel, compelling and passionate, who foolishly and inexplicably longs to see Jackson, her first love, again while the seemingly innocent Mary Martha prays that the sheriff will put Jackson’s head in a noose. Although the eternally optimistic Sarah looks to the law to determine Jackson’s fate, the fourth woman, an Irish immigrant and a misfit in Cold Springs, is guided by the spirit world, including a cat, in deciding his guilt or innocence. When a second murder occurs after Jackson’s return, Cold Springs reacts with fear and paranoia while the women struggle to protect their friend’s reputation and desperately try to find a murderer.
Date:
August 15, 2010
Creator:
Wood, Jane Roberts
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Stray Home: Poems
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Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
With poems that combine the self-scrutiny of Philip Larkin with the measure of Elizabeth Bishop, Amy M. Clark burnishes her first collection, Stray Home, with exquisite understatement and formal control. Sweeter than Larkin and more intimate than Bishop, these poems address the suppressed pain and shame of living as a childless woman in a world of mothers, the dissociation attendant on depression and fraught family relationships, and the search for a sense of belonging in the face of dislocation. Stray Home cuts deeply to discover the buried emotions and insights universal to all suffering and compassionate human beings. “Clark is able to imbue our small, usually overlooked moments with unexpected grandeur. A quiet humor is employed in service of her twin gifts, imagination and metaphor. This is an accomplished, deft, and important debut.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Tender Hooks and judge
Date:
April 15, 2010
Creator:
Clark, Amy M.
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Always for the Underdog: Leather Britches Smith and the Grabow War
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Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Louisiana’s Neutral Strip, an area of pine forests, squats between the Calcasieu and Sabine Rivers on the border of East Texas. Originally a lawless buffer zone between Spain and the United States, its hardy residents formed tight-knit communities for protection and developed a reliance on self, kin, and neighbor. In the early 1900s, the timber boom sliced through the forests and disrupted these dense communities. Mill towns sprang up, and the promise of money lured land speculators, timber workers, unionists, and a host of other characters, such as the outlaw Leather Britches Smith. That moment continues to shape the place’s cultural consciousness, and people today fashion a lore connected to this time. In a fascinating exploration of the region, Keagan LeJeune unveils the legend of Leather Britches, paralleling the stages of the outlaw’s life to the Neutral Strip’s formation. LeJeune retells each stage of Smith’s life: his notorious past, his audacious deeds of robbery and even generosity, his rumored connection to a local union strike—the Grabow War—significant in the annals of labor history, and his eventual death. As the outlaw’s life vividly unfolds, Always for the Underdog also reveals the area’s history and cultural landscape. Often using the particulars of …
Date:
December 15, 2010
Creator:
LeJeune, Keagan
Object Type:
Book
System:
The UNT Digital Library