The impact of parent participation in a hospital-based kangaroo care program on time spent with their preterm infant in the neonatal intensive care unit

Occupational therapists and other health professionals are faced with the challenge of helping parents cope with the birth of their preterm infant and fostering parent-infant bonding and attachment. Kangaroo care, or skin to skin contact, has the potential to minimize the delay in the parent-infant attachment process and facilitate more normal infant growth and development. The present study investigated the impact of parent participation in a hospital-based kangaroo care program on time spent with their preterm infant in the NICU. Fourteen parents with preterm infants in the NICU participated in the study. The results indicated that parents who participated in the kangaroo care program spent significantly more time with their infant than the parents who did not participate in the program (p $<$.022). In addition, parents in the kangaroo care group visited their infant more frequently than the control group (p $<$.037). However, the mean time with baby per day did not show a significant difference between the groups (p $<$.194). This information may assist occupational therapists in developing family-centered early intervention programs beginning in the NICU. ^

The relationship between higher education curricular variables and human flight performance in a preliminary flying training program

The ability of the United States Air Force (USAF) to sustain a high level of operational ability and readiness is dependent on the proficiency and expertise of its pilots. Recruitment, education, training, and retention of its pilot force are crucial factors in the USAF's attainment of its operational mission: defense of this nation and its allies. Failure of a student pilot during a training program does not only represent a loss of costly training expenditures to the American public, but often consists of loss of human life, aircraft, and property. This research focused on the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps' (AFROTC) selection method for student pilots for the light aircraft training (LATR) program. The LATR program is an intense 16 day flight training program that precedes the Air Force's undergraduate pilot training (UPT) program. The study subjects were 265 AFROTC cadets in the LATR program. A variety of independent variables from each subject's higher education curricular background as well as results of preselection tests, participation in varsity athletics, prior flying experience and gender were evaluated against subsequent performance in LATR. Performance was measured by a quantitative performance score developed by this researcher based on 28 graded training factors as well as overall pass or fail of the LATR program. Study results showed participation in university varsity athletics was very significantly and positively related to performance in the LATR program, followed by prior flying experience and to a very slight degree portions of the Air Force Officers Qualifying Test. Not significantly related to success in the LATR program were independent variables such as grade point average, scholastic aptitude test scores, academic major, gender and the AFROTC selection and ranking system.

The relative influence of social support, rehabilitation program participation, and inmate preincarceration characteristics on incarcerated substance abusers' perceptions of adjustment to community reintegration

This dissertation identifies, examines, and assesses the relative influence of identified empirically and conceptually relevant variables on incarcerated substance abusers' expectations of postrelease adjustment. A purposive sampling procedure was used to recruit 101 male and female substance-abusing offenders participating in prison- and jail-based drug treatment programs in south Florida. A 92-item survey questionnaire was used to collect basic demographic data; measure inmate preincarceration characteristics, social support, and rehabilitation program participation; and record archival data. Regression equations were developed utilizing ten different measures of the participants' expectations of their postrelease adjustment. Two equations yielded statistically significant F ratios; maintaining a stable living and maintaining abstinence. Twenty-two percent of the variance in respondents' expectations of maintaining a stable living was explained by preincarceration characteristics, social support, and rehabilitation program participation (F = 1.89; df = 13,87; p $<$.05). The only significant predictor variable was perception of social support (b = $-$.05; t = $-$3.6; p $<$.001). Twenty-three percent of the variance in respondents' expectations of maintaining abstinence from substances was explained by preincarceration characteristics, social support, and rehabilitation program participation (F = 2; df = 13,87; p $<$.05). Once again, the only significant predictor variable was perception of social support. The results of the analyses indicate that social support was the only important variable for understanding these respondents' efficacy expectations of postrelease abstinence and stable living. The results of this investigation demonstrate the complexity of the social support variable for prisoners, and identify social support as a potential rehabilitative resource for substance-abusing inmates. The results of this investigation underscore the importance of continued, detailed empirical study in order to understand and clarify how social support, efficacy expectations, and actual postrelease performance interrelate for this population of offenders.

The effects of a creative movement program on long-term incarcerated women

The Multicultural Communication Bridge Program, an ongoing project at the Broward Correctional Institution, utilizes creative movement, writing, and drawing as treatment modalities with long-term incarcerated women. This type of programming is new in the prison system thus literature and research supporting the outcomes with this population are lacking. Therefore, a qualitative study was conducted to determine the efficacy of the program. Nine inmates, who have been involved in the program for at least one year, were interviewed to gather information about their personal experiences as a result of their participation. Common themes that were noted include an increase in trust, the expression of emotions, an increase in self esteem, and an improvement in interactions with others. These attributes are believed to be beneficial to these women to ensure a successful community reintegration upon their release from prison. ^

An evaluation of an intervention strategy for retention and determination of predictors of success for high -risk students in an associate degree nursing program

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to evaluate the effect of a specific instructional Intervention, a Nursing Theory Laboratory, on increasing the retention of high risk students in the associate degree nursing program at Miami-Dade Community College in Miami, Florida; and (2) to identify predictors of success of high risk nursing students in this associate degree nursing program.^ Data were collected from the 195 nursing students enrolled in Nursing Fundamentals during the 1985-1987 academic years, and identified as high risk students. Control and experimental groups were selected based on enrollment in the Nursing Theory Laboratory.^ Results were determined by analyzing several cross-tabulations of selected variables and yielding chi square values, t-tests, and two discriminant analyses. There was no significant relationship between age or ethnic background and enrollment in the Nursing Theory Laboratory. There was no significant relationship between enrollment in the Nursing Theory Laboratory and success in Nursing 1 (Nursing Fundamentals). There was a significant relationship between enrollment in the Nursing Theory Laboratory and success in Nursing 3 (Medical-Surgical Nursing). Writing assessment test scores in two entrance tests and high risk categories, based on the number of enrollments in required science courses, were identified as predictors of success in this program.^ The conclusion was that the Nursing Theory Laboratory does not significantly improve retention of high risk associate degree nursing students if they are enrolled in this intervention at the same time they are enrolled in Nursing Fundamentals. Since those students who were enrolled in the Nursing Theory Laboratory had a significantly higher success rate in Nursing 3, than those students who were not enrolled in the Nursing Theory Laboratory, a recommendation of this study was to offer the Nursing Theory Laboratory to high risk students prior to the beginning of nursing courses. Another recommendation was that students deficient in reading and writing skills should be required to enroll in developmental courses prior to enrollment in the nursing course. ^

The effects of a creative movement program on long-term incarcerated women

The Multicultural Communication Bridge Program, an ongoing project at the Broward Correctional Institution, utilizes creative movement, writing, and drawing as treatment modalities with long-term incarcerated women. This type of programming is new in the prison system thus literature and research supporting the outcomes with this population are lacking. Therefore, a qualitative study was conducted to determine the efficacy of the program. Nine inmates, who have been involved in the program for at least one year, were interviewed to gather information about their personal experiences as a result of their participation. Common themes that were noted include an increase in trust, the expression of emotions, an increase in self esteem, and an improvement in interactions with others. These attributes are believed to be beneficial to these women to ensure a successful community reintegration upon their release from prison.

The effects of writing process instruction on the writing and reading performance of students with learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of a writing process approach for the instruction of language arts with learning disabled elementary students. A nonequivalent control group design was used. The sample included 24 students with learning disabilities who were in second and third grade. All students were instructed in resource room settings for ninety minutes per day in language arts. The students in the treatment group received instruction using the writing process steps to create complete meaningful compositions on self-chosen topics. A literature-based reading program accompanied instruction in writing to provide examples of good writing and to provide a basis for topic selection. The students in the control group received instruction through the use of the county-adopted textbooks and accompanying worksheets. The teacher followed basic textbook and curriculum guide suggestions which consisted mainly of fill in the blank and matching type exercises. The treatment group consisted of 12 students: five second-graders and seven third-graders. The control group consisted of 12 students: four second-graders and eight third-graders. All students were pretested and posttested using the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement-Revised (WJ-R ACH) for writing samples and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (WRMT) for reading achievement. T-tests were also done to investigate the gain from pre to post for each reading or writing variable for each group separately. The results showed a highly significant difference from pretest to posttest for all writing and reading variables for both groups. Analysis of Covariance showed that the population mean posttest achievement scores for all variables adjusted for the pretest were higher for the treatment group than those for the control group.

The role of death qualification in venirepersons' evaluations of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in capital trials

Death qualification is a part of voir dire that is unique to capital trials. Unlike all other litigation, capital jurors must affirm their willingness to impose both legal standards (either life in prison or the death penalty). Jurors who assert they are able to do so are deemed “death-qualified” and are eligible for capital jury service: jurors who assert that they are unable to do so are deemed “excludable” or “scrupled” and are barred from hearing a death penalty case. During the penalty phase in capital trials, death-qualified jurors weigh the aggravators (i.e., arguments for death) against the mitigators (i.e., arguments for life) in order to determine the sentence. If the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, then the jury is to recommend death; if the mitigating circumstances outweigh the aggravating circumstances, then the jury is to recommend life. The jury is free to weigh each aggravating and mitigating circumstance in any matter they see fit. Previous research has found that death qualification impacts jurors' receptiveness to aggravating and mitigating circumstances (e.g., Luginbuhl & Middendorf, 1988). However, these studies utilized the now-defunct Witherspoon rule and did not include a case scenario for participants to reference. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether death qualification affects jurors' endorsements of aggravating and mitigating circumstances when Witt, rather than Witherspoon, is the legal standard for death qualification. Four hundred and fifty venirepersons from the 11 th Judicial Circuit in Miami, Florida completed a booklet of stimulus materials that contained the following: two death qualification questions; a case scenario that included a summary of the guilt and penalty phases of a capital case; a 26-item measure that required participants to endorse aggravators, nonstatutory mitigators, and statutory mitigators on a 6-point Likert scale; and standard demographic questions. Results indicated that death-qualified venirepersons, when compared to excludables, were more likely to endorse aggravating circumstances. Excludable participants, when compared to death-qualified venirepersons, were more likely to endorse nonstatutory mitigators. There was no significant difference between death-qualified and excludable venirepersons with respect to their endorsement of 6 out of 7 statutory mitigators. It would appear that the Furman v. Georgia (1972) decision to declare the death penalty unconstitutional is frustrated by the Lockhart v. McCree (1986) affirmation of death qualification. ^

Students' recollections of participating in a first year residential learning community experience

The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain an understanding of what participation in a first year residential learning community meant to students 2–3 years after their involvement in the program. Various theories including environmental, student involvement, psychosocial and intellectual, were used as a framework for this case study. Each of the ten participants was a junior or senior level student at the time of the study, but had previously participated in a first year residential learning community at Florida International University. The researcher held two semi-structured interviews with each participant, and collected data sheets from each. ^ The narrative data produced from the interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed to gain insights into the experiences and perspectives of the participants. Member checking was used after the interview process. A peer reviewer offered feedback during the data analysis. The resulting data was coded into categories, with a final selection of four themes and 15 sub-themes, which captured the essence of the participants' experiences. The four major themes included: (a) community, (b) involvement, (c) identity, and (d) academics. The community theme is used to describe how students perceived the environment to be. The involvement theme is used to describe the students' participation in campus life and their interaction with other members of the university community. The identity theme is used to describe the students' process of development, and the personal growth they underwent as a result of their experiences. The academics theme refers to the intellectual development of students and their interaction around academic issues. ^ The results of this study showed that the participants valued greatly their involvement in the First Year Residents Succeeding Together program (FYRST) and can articulate how it helped them succeed as students. In describing their experience, they most recall the sense of community that existed, the personal growth they experienced, the academic development process they went through, and their involvement, both with other people and with activities in their community. Recommendations are provided for practice and research, including several related to enhancing the academic culture, integrating faculty, utilizing peer influence and providing further opportunities to create a seamless learning environment. ^

Practical secure information flow in programming languages

If we classify variables in a program into various security levels, then a secure information flow analysis aims to verify statically that information in a program can flow only in ways consistent with the specified security levels. One well-studied approach is to formulate the rules of the secure information flow analysis as a type system. A major trend of recent research focuses on how to accommodate various sophisticated modern language features. However, this approach often leads to overly complicated and restrictive type systems, making them unfit for practical use. Also, problems essential to practical use, such as type inference and error reporting, have received little attention. This dissertation identified and solved major theoretical and practical hurdles to the application of secure information flow. ^ We adopted a minimalist approach to designing our language to ensure a simple lenient type system. We started out with a small simple imperative language and only added features that we deemed most important for practical use. One language feature we addressed is arrays. Due to the various leaking channels associated with array operations, arrays have received complicated and restrictive typing rules in other secure languages. We presented a novel approach for lenient array operations, which lead to simple and lenient typing of arrays. ^ Type inference is necessary because usually a user is only concerned with the security types for input/output variables of a program and would like to have all types for auxiliary variables inferred automatically. We presented a type inference algorithm B and proved its soundness and completeness. Moreover, algorithm B stays close to the program and the type system and therefore facilitates informative error reporting that is generated in a cascading fashion. Algorithm B and error reporting have been implemented and tested. ^ Lastly, we presented a novel framework for developing applications that ensure user information privacy. In this framework, core computations are defined as code modules that involve input/output data from multiple parties. Incrementally, secure flow policies are refined based on feedback from the type checking/inference. Core computations only interact with code modules from involved parties through well-defined interfaces. All code modules are digitally signed to ensure their authenticity and integrity. ^

Technology professional development for principals: Impact on the integration of technology in elementary schools

The use of technology in schools is no longer the topic of educational debates, but how to ensure that technology is used effectively continues to be the focal point of discussions. The role of the principal in facilitating the successful integration of technology in the school is well established. To that end, the Florida Department of Education implemented the FloridaLeaders.net: a three-year professional development project in technology for school administrators. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of this professional development project on integrating technology in elementary schools. ^ The study compared a group of schools whose principals have participated in the FloridaLeaders.net (FLN) program with schools whose principals have not participated in the program. The National Technology Standards for School Administrators and the National Technology Standards for Teachers were used as the framework to assess technology integration. ^ The sample consisted of three groups of educators: principals (n = 47), media specialists (n = 110), and teachers (n = 167). Three areas of technology utilization were investigated: (a) the use of technology in management and operations, (b) the use of technology in teaching and learning, and (c) the use of technology for assessment and evaluation. Analyses of variances were used to examine the differences in the perceptions and use of technology in each of the three areas, among the three groups of educators. ^ The findings indicated that the difference between FLN and non-FLN schools was not statistically significant in most of the technology indicators. The difference was however significant in two cases: (a) The use of technology for assessment and evaluation, and (b) The level of technology infrastructure in FLN schools. Additionally, all FLN and non-FLN groups reported the need for technology training for teachers to provide them with the necessary "know-how" to effectively integrate technology into the classrooms. ^ These findings would indicate that FloridaLeaders.net was not effective in integrating technology in schools over and above other current efforts. It is therefore concluded that the FLN project had some favorable impact but had not met all of its stated objectives. ^

A methodology to estimate time varying user responses to travel time and travel time reliability in a road pricing environment

Road pricing has emerged as an effective means of managing road traffic demand while simultaneously raising additional revenues to transportation agencies. Research on the factors that govern travel decisions has shown that user preferences may be a function of the demographic characteristics of the individuals and the perceived trip attributes. However, it is not clear what are the actual trip attributes considered in the travel decision- making process, how these attributes are perceived by travelers, and how the set of trip attributes change as a function of the time of the day or from day to day. In this study, operational Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) archives are mined and the aggregated preferences for a priced system are extracted at a fine time aggregation level for an extended number of days. The resulting information is related to corresponding time-varying trip attributes such as travel time, travel time reliability, charged toll, and other parameters. The time-varying user preferences and trip attributes are linked together by means of a binary choice model (Logit) with a linear utility function on trip attributes. The trip attributes weights in the utility function are then dynamically estimated for each time of day by means of an adaptive, limited-memory discrete Kalman filter (ALMF). The relationship between traveler choices and travel time is assessed using different rules to capture the logic that best represents the traveler perception and the effect of the real-time information on the observed preferences. The impact of travel time reliability on traveler choices is investigated considering its multiple definitions. It can be concluded based on the results that using the ALMF algorithm allows a robust estimation of time-varying weights in the utility function at fine time aggregation levels. The high correlations among the trip attributes severely constrain the simultaneous estimation of their weights in the utility function. Despite the data limitations, it is found that, the ALMF algorithm can provide stable estimates of the choice parameters for some periods of the day. Finally, it is found that the daily variation of the user sensitivities for different periods of the day resembles a well-defined normal distribution.