Empowerment initiatives like the Family Development Credential (FDC) and Family Support (FS) program demonstrate how strengths-based practice can be used to help family workers become successful in partnering with families to help them reach their goals. As these two initiatives converged in Allegheny County Pennsylvania in 2005, families, workers, advocates and policy-makers in FS aimed to improve the skills of workers and improve School Readiness outcomes for children by increasing parent i...
Jean P Harvey.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Heasley, Robert L. Committee members: John Anderson; Barbara Mooney.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

The current study begins to close a gap in the restaurant industry literature that fails to recognize the independently operated restaurants as a viable resource for industry data. The majority of employee job satisfaction literature in the restaurant industry gathers data from corporate run, chain restaurants. This study aims to bring the independent restaurants to the forefront of industry discussions in regards to employee job satisfaction of front-of-the house (FOH) employees in full-serv...
Lisa M Dupnock.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Nowak, Thomas Committee members: Valerie Gunter; Alex Heckert.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2010.
English

Since 1996, K-12 schools are increasingly moving from a traditional, face-to-face educational environment to an online learning environment utilizing technologies to deliver instruction primarily via the Internet. As this trend continues, administrators familiar with traditional supervisory methods will observe and evaluate teachers of online learning as per state and local mandates. The rapid growth of online learning is outpacing federal, state and local instructional supervision policy, cr...
Gregory Charles Farley.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Creany, Anne; Lare, Douglas Committee members: Joseph Ashcroft.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2010.
English

This study focuses on the population of women voluntarily entering the United States via arranged, often through the Internet, marriages. A congressional report (Immigration and Naturalization Services 2006) on "International Matchmaking Organizations" reports that the number of immigrants coming to the United States with a "K-1 fiancee visa", the temporary visa status used to have a non-native individual enter the United States for the purpose of marriage, to be growing rapidly. Of these ind...
Elizabeth Rafferty Duncan.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Tannacito, Dan J. Committee members: Gary Dean; Gian Pagnucci.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

This research involves a legal impact study of the State College Nuisance Property Ordinance and an assessment of State College Rental Property Managers in the role of place manager/intimate handler of offender. The impact of the Ordinance was assessed by employing an interrupted time series design which examined five years of pre-ordinance violations against five years of post-ordinance violations. The assessment of State College Rental Property Managers in the role of place manager/intimate...
Gregory M Koehle.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Martin, Randy L. Committee members: Kate Hanrahan; John Lewis; Jennifer Roberts.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Prior research has implicated the frontal lobes and associated executive functions in clinical populations showing impairment in empathy, including those diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, traumatic brain injury, and fronto-temporal dementia. Limited research has investigated executive abilities and variability in empathy in the normative population. The current investigation evaluated empathy and executive functioning in 219 male and female college students. Empathy was evaluated u...
Alicia Puskar.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Meil, William Committee members: Krzysztof Kaniasty; David LaPorte.
Psy.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Private nonprofit juvenile justice organizations are facing a workforce crisis because of the high turnover of their frontline staff. Since frontline workers have a direct impact on youth and families in the juvenile justice system, their stability in agencies is critical for achieving good outcomes. Yet researchers have conducted few studies to understand turnover in the field of juvenile justice, particularly with private nonprofit agencies. This study provides a unique, in-depth, longitudi...
Richard Dirk Matson.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Snyder, Kay A. Committee members: Robert Heasley; Daniel Heckert.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

The present language attitude study documents the perception of L2 writing on the part of a group of L1 students taking composition at an American university and it inquires into the impact that learning about linguistic diversity could have on these attitudes. The participants were 202 college students divided into the experimental and the control group. The experimental group participated in a two-week intervention during which they discussed linguistic diversity and became familiar with L2...
Ana Maria Wetzl.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Hanauer, David I. Committee members: Gian Pagnucci; Gloria Park.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

The primary purpose of this study was to examine Saudi EFL college students' perceptual learning styles in order to determine whether their perception of their learning styles is a predictor of academic persistence, satisfaction and success in different learning environments. Participants' perceptions about their learning styles in both online-based and class-based environments, and their resulting satisfaction/dissatisfaction and persistence/non-persistence decisions, were explored. This ...
Mubarak Alkhatnai.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Fontaine, Jeannine Committee members: Gary Dean; Michael Williamson.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Effective listening comprehension skills are important as the world becomes increasingly global and television, radio, and the Internet become forums for English communication. However, many countries, such as Tunisia, do not use English as a first or second language, but as a foreign language. Therefore, realizing the importance of English, the Tunisian government encourages university students to specialize in the English language. Universities students, who elect to study English, are requ...
James Mitchell Ishler.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Tannacito, Dan J. Committee members: Nancy Hayward; Ben Rafoth.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2010.
English

This qualitative research examines literacy in a transnational setting. More specifically, this study explores the literacy experiences and cultural negotiations of 15 Israeli MBA study abroad students in an American University in three phases: the application process, the academic coursework, and the on-campus employment seeking. The multiple case study design utilized document and interview data analysis. This study elucidate that the participants' discourse is replete with myths, misconc...
Ayelet Sasson.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Hanauer, David I. Committee members: Sharon Deckert; Reuven Lehavy.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2010.
English

Academic accommodations for college students with learning disabilities are intended to ensure equal access to education, yet some accommodations, such as course waivers, are potentially advantageous to all students, with or without disabilities. This study sought to develop a method to detect malingering by college students on learning disability evaluations. A total of 57 volunteer students were divided into three groups: uncoached malingerers, coached malingerers and controls. They were ad...
Andrea L Sanders.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: LaPorte, David J. Committee members: Donald Robertson; Susan Zimny.
Psy.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Clients with disabilities participating in vocational rehabilitation services and vocational rehabilitation professionals providing services have each developed unique disability beliefs, attitudes, and roles as a result of their personal experiences, established values, and societal interactions. Identifying the beliefs, attitudes, and roles related to disability among clients and professionals may help improve client-professional relationships. My dissertation research measured the belie...
Melissa Murray.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Heckert, D. Alex Committee members: John Anderson; Rosalyn Darling.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2010.
English

Examining popular film, news stories, and relevant literature, primarily from America published in the 20th and 21st century, one can see the theme of motherhood is explored, revealing that men and women are often given messages that reinforce prescribed gender roles. Men who engage in maternal practices are often shown in one of three ways: as a source of horrifying potentiality; as an example of comedy; or, the most rare, as a real, working model of masculine maternity. Women, on the other...
Amy B Hagenrater-Gooding.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Emerick, Ronald Committee members: Karen Dandurand; Lingyan Yang.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Current research continues to report that novice teacher attrition rates are unacceptably high but that induction and mentoring may have an effect on retention. The purpose of this study was to examine a particular group of beginning teachers to determine how the induction experience of alternate route teacher candidates who work in low socio-economic, underperforming, urban areas in Northeastern New Jersey influenced their retention decision-making. Specifically, this mixed methods research ...
Steven LoCascio.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Whitehead, Andrew; Tidwell, Monte Committee members: Margot Waddington Vagliardo.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

This study examines the extent to which high school students from an affluent, college preparatory high school were able to transfer their knowledge about reading and writing from high school to college. The participants' perceptions of the transition from high school reading and writing to college reading and writing revealed that they did not perceive college work to be harder, but faster paced. They generally perceived similarities between high school writing and college writing; those s...
Jennifer Marie Holcomb Wells.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Rafoth, Bennett A. Committee members: Gian Pagnucci; Kathleen Yancey.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

This dissertation explores how teaching Spanish and English as second languages in the United States has been traditionally defined, the common assumptions that are held about each context, and the influence these assumptions have on instructional practices and student learning. In order to explore how teaching English and Spanish is constructed in a local context, I employ a Foucauldian discourse analytical approach in conjunction with ethnographic methods to provide detailed descriptions o...
Nicole M Houser.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Deckert, Sharon K. Committee members: David Hanauer; Nancy Hayward; Anne Pomerantz.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Research on minority aging has been done extensively in many fields such as sociology, psychology, economics, medicine, and so forth. However, the research is still lacking in the literary field and, consequently, minority aging has too often been a missing trope in contemporary literary theory. Although historians, sociologists, and psychologists have largely overlooked the important roles that elderly blacks can play in society, the authors of fiction show that they are central in the commu...
Ihab M Freiz.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Emerick, Ronald R. Committee members: Karen Dandurand; Ronald Shafer.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

This dissertation explores the process I took for developing perspective pedagogy, a pedagogical approach for teaching first-year research composition college courses. Theoretical foundations come from both composition and ethnography scholars and situate the pedagogy within its interdisciplinary walls. Specifically, perspective pedagogy asks that students examine local subcultures from many perspectives: observations, interviews, artifact collections, ethnographic photography, ethnographic ...
Joanna Nancy Paull.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Hurlbert, Claude-Mark Committee members: Nancy Hayward; Cindy LaCom; Gian Pagnucci.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

The problem of this study was to examine Associate Degree non-traditional students' perceptions of their ability to form caring relationships upon entry to the nursing program and, to determine if those perceptions change as the student progresses through the nursing curriculum. Measures of association, such as participants' former career and perceived ability to form a caring relationship were completed. The Caring Ability Inventory (CAI) developed by Nkongho (1990) was administered to a c...
JoAnn Evanko Thistlethwaite.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Corbett, Frank Committee members: James Hooks; Kelli Paquette; Mary Williams.
D.Ed. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

Empathy has been studied in composition since the 1960s, although it has not yet been adequately defined or theorized. Compositionists tend to employ the common definition of empathy as a feeling of identification with others using the familiar metaphor "walking in another's shoes," derived from the liberal-humanist therapeutic paradigm of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, which assumes a universal and transparent human experience. The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework...
Janet M Lucas.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Rafoth, Bennett A. Committee members: Gian Pagnucci; Michael Williamson.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

There is a current and growing nursing shortage in the United States, at the same time that more aging baby boomers require health services. This problem is further complicated by continued growth in the home health industry and an aging RN workforce. The purpose of this study was to understand the work perceptions of older home health nurses and identify ways to keep older home health RNs working when appropriate. My initial goal involved using a mixed methodology, including not only...
Therese L Rossman.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Snyder, Kay A. Committee members: Valerie Gunter; Daniel Heckert.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English

This project seeks to discover and disseminate information pertaining to the language practices and values of a selected group of Onodowa'ga:' (Seneca) at Ohi:yo', or the Allegany Territory, in upstate New York. The goal is to find where the current practices and values are situated in the larger picture of Seneca preservation as well as the even broader frame of indigenous cultural preservation. This study is important for its contribution to the understanding of the broader issues of lan...
Melissa E Borgia.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Fontaine, Jeannine M. Committee members: Resa Bizzaro; Wallace Chafe.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2010.
English

The current study sought to examine the relationship between perceived parenting styles and level of criminal involvement. Baumrind's typology of parenting styles is based on research conducted approximately 40 years ago (Baumrind, 1967, 1971, 1972; Baumrind & Black, 1967). Despite its longevity in the social sciences, the typology has enjoyed limited empiricism in the field of criminology. Four parenting styles form the crux of Baumrind's typology. These four styles: authoritarian, authori...
Jason D Spraitz.
Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Martin, Jamie S. Committee members: Kathleen Hanrahan; John Lewis; Jennifer Roberts.
Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2011.
English