2 resultados para Fasting intervals
em Digital Commons at Florida International University
Resumo:
The purpose of this research was to examine the fasting practices of Eastern Orthodox Christians (EOCs) in northeastern Pennsylvania. Fasting, according to Eastern Orthodox Church doctrine, is primarily abstinence from meat, dairy products, fish and certain other foods during Easter Lent and other periods, for approximately 180 days annually. Goals were to discern what EOCs consider their fasting rules to be, their actual fasting practices, what factors influence this practice and the relationship of fasting to nutrition. Methodology included 29 months of ethnographic fieldwork at local parishes, content analysis of local written materials and semi-structured interviews of 58 core church members. A pile sort was conducted whereby subjects classified various foods according to fasting or non-fasting status and then sorted the fasting foods into a hierarchy of avoidance. Data were analyzed using ANTHROPAC and NVivo software. Results included identification of a cognitive hierarchy of avoidance, with meat the most important to avoid, followed by dairy and alcoholic beverages. An important finding was the differences in subjects' knowledge of Church doctrine and a wide variation in their actual fasting practices. Contrary to Church doctrine, fish was not usually perceived as a food to abstain from. A historic Byzantine Catholic presence in the area (with a different fasting doctrine), family members who did not fast, and health concerns were some factors that affected fasting practices. A conclusion is that while meat, dairy and alcoholic beverages were usually categorized as foods to avoid during fasts, it is not possible to generalize with regard to actual practices or the impact of fasting on nutrition, due to individual variation. It was demonstrated that qualitative data could provide information that can be crucial to know prior to conducting quantitative nutrition research or counseling. Findings of this study suggest that one cannot assume subjects who belong to a given religion that has prescribed food avoidance practices are following them homogeneously and/or according to official doctrine. ^
Resumo:
This thesis proposes some confidence intervals for the mean of a positively skewed distribution. The following confidence intervals are considered: Student-t, Johnson-t, median-t, mad-t, bootstrap-t, BCA, T1 , T3 and six new confidence intervals, the median bootstrap-t, mad bootstrap-t, median T1, mad T1 , median T3 and the mad T3. A simulation study has been conducted and average widths, coefficient of variation of widths, and coverage probabilities were recorded and compared across confidence intervals. To compare confidence intervals, the width and coverage probabilities were compared so that smaller widths indicated a better confidence interval when coverage probabilities were the same. Results showed that the median T1 and median T3 outperformed other confidence intervals in terms of coverage probability and the mad bootstrap-t, mad-t, and mad T3 outperformed others in terms of width. Some real life data are considered to illustrate the findings of the thesis.