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An empathic indigenous virtual agent to encourage medication adherence
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 45-52.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Literature review -- Chapter 3. Methodology -- Chapter 4. Results & discussion -- Chapter 5. Conclusion and future work -- References.Australia’s First Peoples suffer from poor health and significantly lower life expectancy than most Australians. In response, the Australian Government launched the Closing the Gap Campaign, Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) have been used to promote health in many situations using empathy to build a working alliance. While the results of prior work using IVAs is very encouraging, there has not been an attempt to use IVAs to help with the Closing the Gap campaign by Australian governments. This study created an IVA, an Indigenous IVA (IIVA) called Aunt, with Australia’s First Peoples characteristics (including appearance, voice and name) to encourage adherence to prescribed medication, healthy eating and exercise to a group of Australia’s First Peoples attending a medical centre on the NSW Central Coast. The poor uptake of the delivered technology highlights the endemic issues with reaching this group. Nevertheless, the artefacts developed and experiences resulting from this study aim to shape further development of IVAs to suit specific populations and inform researchers of the effectiveness of this technology.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (iv, 52, 11 pages) colour illustrations, 1 colour ma
Psychological wellbeing and help-seeking among fly-In fly-out employees in the Western Australian mining industry
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 163-183.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Industry context -- Chapter 3. FIFO employment : evidence from the literature -- Chapter 4. Conceptual framework and model -- Chapter 5. Methodology -- Chapter 6. Results -- Chapter 7. Discussion and conclusions -- References -- Appendices.The psychosocial health outcomes for fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers can been strongly influenced by whether or not they seek help and support. Yet there is an apparent puzzle whereby an increase in psychological distress can lead to a decrease in help-seeking. This may be due to an employee's heightened perceptions of mental health stigma, although research is yet to explain the underlying causes. Despite public interest and recent parliamentary inquiries into the mental health of fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) employees in the Australian mining industry, there is currently little empirical evidence to help explain this issue. Concerns about FIFO employee mental health and anecdotal reports of increased prevalence in this group have precipitated some empirical assessments using valid measures of mental health symptoms. The importance of examining mental health among the FIFO workforce and what factors influence this, and those variables that subsequently explain help-seeking among FIFO employees has been highlighted by some previous research.Drawing on the Process Theory of Help-Seeking, the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Jobs-Demands Resources model, this study surveyed the psychological wellbeing and help-seeking intentions of 629 FIFO employees in the Western Australian mining industry. A quantitative research strategy was employed, with a questionnaire survey used to collect FIFO workers' perceptions on adjustment, psychological wellbeing, stigma, help-seeking and job demands. The structural relationships between study variables were analysed to test the study hypotheses through the use of structural equation modelling (SEM). The thesis investigated (i) the mediating role of stigma on the links between adjustment, psychological distress and help-seeking, and (ii) the moderating role of job demands on these processes. The results showed that the demands of high-compression work rosters and long work hours affected how well FIFO workers could adjust and, in turn, contributed to psychological distress, signalling a need for prevention strategies to better protect the wellbeing of the mining workforce. The results also demonstrated that adjustment, psychological wellbeing and stigma all influenced employee help-seeking. This is a significant finding because it helps to predicate intervention and prevention strategies. In other words, the study contains practical implications for treating the psychological distress of FIFO mining employees, an area severely lacking in empirical research. Overall, the results of this thesis makes a contribution in terms of theory, research, and prevention and early intervention programs.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xiii, 227 pages) diagrams, table
Thinking In semicircular terms?: cooperation practices in the Polish-German and Danish-German borderland
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 257-277.Introduction -- 1. Ideas of borders -- 2. The space and time of borders -- 3. The reproduction of inner-European borderlands -- 4. Researching cooperation practices -- 5. Entering the field -- 6. Practices 1: urban and regional development -- 7. Practices II: education -- 8. Practices III: the cultural sector -- Conclusion.State borders are powerful markers of difference. Despite changes in socio-spatial organisation associated with contemporary globalisation processes, there are no indications that borders have lost their significance. Quite on the contrary, border s continue to have an organising and controlling function across and between societies. This is most evident in the case of the European integration project, where border reorganisation has come to inform imaginaries of Europe and European space. Beyond the rhetoric of a 'borderless Europe', the process of Europeanisation illustrates particularly well how practices of de-and re-bordering must be seen in context. Yet the evolution of the Schengen area and the abolition of stationary border controls tell little about the persistency of socio-cultural boundaries across inner-European borderlands. This dissertation project aims to develop a better understanding of the character of inner - European borders in the face of the Schengen Agreement and, more specifically, the role of cross-border practices in reproducing or challenging exclusive ideas of citizenship and space. By studying cooperation practices amongst 'borderlanders', the dissertation focusses on a particular variant of cross - border practices intended to dismantle restrictive socio-cultural boundaries and geographical imaginaries. The question of how cooperation practices are related to the reproduction of inner-European borders provides a significant means to analyse how and to what extent these borderlines represent latent and potential resources for political narratives of exclusion. This perspective is becoming increasingly important in the face of the EU's handling of migration and refugee flows, including temporary reintroductions of stationary border controls. This dissertation is grounded in a qualitative, reconstructive investigation of cooperation practices across the Polish-German and Danish-German borderland, focussing on the fields of urban & regional development, education, and the cultural sector.1 online resource (283 pages
Woman in Early Imperial China: the socio - political forces and gender norms surrounding elite women in the Han Dynasty
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 225-232.Introduction -- Chapter 1. The mother of them all: Xiwangmu -- Chapter 2. Han Dynasty ideology and women -- Chapter 3. The family as the political unit -- Chapter 4. Gender segregation -- Chapter 5. Biography as history in the Han Dynasty -- Chapter 6. Liu Xiang and the Lienüzhuan -- Chapter 7. 'Woman' in the Lienüzhuan -- Chapter 8. The writings of the ban women -- Chapter 9. Imperial women's roles -- Chapter 10. Women without virtue, politics in the imperial harem -- Chapter 11.The presentation of Empress Lü -- Conclusion.This thesis focuses on gender norms within literary and historical texts from Han Dynasty China a s they pertain to women. It examines the role of women within that society, with an emphasis on women in the political sphere and imperial court. The study of such history is significant for its own sake. It also contribute s to the understanding of the early underpinnings of the Confucian principles that still influence Chinese society and the Chinese cultural diaspora. Understanding how historical works nuance their discussion of women and analysing the motive s for the presentation of women means historian s are better equipped to critically evaluate the place of women through out history. This thesis engages in analysis of several key Han Dynasty texts that discuss ' women ' , the roles women held and important female members of the Han Dynasty political elite. Because of this historical analysis , it is possible to see that women in the Han Dynasty were politically significant, could hold real political power and yet were increasingly bound and constricted by notions of appropriate female behaviour as the dynasty progressed. The increasing removal of power from maternal relatives of the emperor resulted in historical sources often undermining the legitimacy of female political power within the Han Dynasty system. This was bolstered by an increased conservatism regarding female behaviour which attempted to constrain women's roles and actions and , at the same time , stated that female action could have moral value.1 online resource (xvi, 232 pages
Choosing among stakeholder strategies: how do managers make sense of stakeholder management?
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 126-133.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature review -- 3. Research methodology -- 4. Research results and discussion -- 5. Conclusions -- 6. References.This thesis explores how managers make sense of stakeholder management. The stakeholder literature is deficient in describing stakeholder management praxis. This deficiency and criticism has led to scholars calling for research into managerial praxis, to explain how managers interpret, practise and make sense of stakeholder management, but to date, these calls for greater research are unanswered. This thesis’ contribution, therefore, addresses this deficiency and responds to calls for further research through an exploration of managerial sense making.This research follows an embedded design, single case study methodology, as detailed by Yin (2014), using multiple data sources. A theoretically derived model develops the interview questions for the 28 field-based semi-structured interviews. Interviews are undertaken with 17 executive managers from two global medical device manufacturers, plus 11 additional executives from their stakeholders to provide depth to the study. To corroborate the findings from the interviews, and to provide breadth to the study, 100 (online) recruitment notices that use the terms ‘stakeholder’ and ‘stakeholder management’ are included. The recruitment notices are an unbiased data source that explains managers’ application of stakeholder management. Finally, another theoretically derived model frames data analysis (i.e., coding) by three approaches to stakeholder management: communications, relationships and positioning. The research findings provide an exploration of how managers make sense of the concept, which includes the foci, implications and the‘why’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of each approach.This research contributes to stakeholder management theory by explaining how managers make sense of the concept and outlining the implications of the various stakeholder management approaches, which represent opportunities for further research. The contribution to practice explains how common stakeholder management approaches may be more effective in one situation than another.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (vii, 133 pages) table
The political subject and its experiences: an alternative reading of Rancière on political subjectivity
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 269-280.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Politics and political subjectivity in Dis-agreement -- Chapter 2. The seeds of politics as political subjectivity in the young Rancière -- Chapter 3. Rancière's complex relation to Marx -- Chapter 4. The proletarian life -- Chapter 5. Politics and pedagogy in The ignorant schoolmaster -- Chapter 6. The subject of aesthetics and politics -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.This thesis aims to outline a rich account of the notion of political subjectivity using the work of Jacques Rancière as its main reference. I anchor my research question on Rancière’s work because he is one of the contemporary political philosophers whose theory of politics depends most significantly on a conception of the political subject. In fact, in his own theory, there is a struggle and tension about what exactly constitutes a political subject. I attempt to show that the way Rancière conceptualized his notion of political subjectivity, including its hesitations, provides invaluable material for reflection on how we should understand politics at present and on how we should think of our specific roles as political subjects. I suggest a reading of Rancière that is focused on the “experiences” of the subject of politics. This alternative reading proposes that underneath the famous model presented in Disagreement, which is premised on a formal theory of the subject and the principle of the equality of intelligence, there lies a thick layer of subjective experiences. This is a reading of Rancière’s work, which has not received substantial attention among critics. I focus on all the passages in Rancière’s writings that point toward a theory of political action, which emphasizes embodied experiences, feelings, and dreams as the beginning of politics.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (v, 280 pages
Clutter-buddies: a volunteer program to assist clients undergoing group cognitive behavioural therapy
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 31-34.1. Literature review -- 2. Methodology -- 3. Results -- 4. Discussion -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.The aim of the current study was to determine the efficacy and feasibility of a volunteer-based supplementary home intervention for individuals currently attending group Cognitive behaviour therapy (GCBT) for Hoarding Disorder (HD). Current treatment outcomes are only moderate and have a high rate of dropouts. Volunteers were trained by an experienced researcher in HD; they were taught the current treatment of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), additional Motivational Interviewing (MI), decisional balance scales and client-centered skills for eliciting behavioural changes. Self-identified participants with HD attending GCBT at a community organization opted into the study. There were six participants in each group: control and intervention. Participants were provided eight weekly two-hour sessions in their homes with two volunteers. The focus of these sessions was to help participants practice the skills learned during Group CBT sessions in their home environment. From pre-treatment to post-treatment, the intervention group showed a significant reduction in scores on the SIR (F(1, 11) = 12.486, p = .006, ηp2 =.581), compared to the control group. Smaller changes were seen on the Home Environment Index (F(1, 11) = 8.8, p = .016, ηp2 =.494) and changes were not statistically significant for the Clutter Image Rating (F(1, 11) = 2.16, p = .175, ηp2 =.194). The control group did not experience statistically significant change on any of the outcome measures in this study. The effectiveness and feasibility of co-leading the intervention with the community organization are discussed alongside the feedback from participant interviews. The program shows promise for enhancing treatment outcomes for participants beyond group CBT with large effect sizes for the results, however, the small sample size and lack of specific demographic data from the sample limits the generalizability of these findings. Future studies should make gathering demographic data a requirement for participation in the program, seek to reach more participants, consider longitudinal studies and observe the durability of intervention effects.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (41 pages) table
Applying automatic program verification techniques to spreadsheets
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 59-65.1. Introduction -- 2. Background -- 3. Design considerations -- 4. The system -- 5. Results -- 6. Conclusions and future research -- Appendices.Errors in spreadsheets cost the global economy billions of dollars every year. Spreadsheets are a Turing complete functional end-user programming language. As such, it is not surprising that researchers have investigated how spreadsheet errors can be minimised and resolved using traditional software engineering practices. Despite general success in this field of research, spreadsheets exhibit many unique features that can make standard software engineering techniques difficult. In particular,as we will show, spreadsheets are a partially ordered, non-recursive class of programming languages that support native, automatic type conversion. We further spreadsheet research by proposing and creating a spreadsheet static analyser that automatically verifies whether a spreadsheet will execute without errors over a variety of inputs. The system statically analyses a program to locate spreadsheet specific errors then translates the spreadsheet into C so existing trace abstraction refinement verification tools can be used for common verification challenges. Using the tool, we analyze several spreadsheet corpora to determine the tool's efficacy.The tool was able to correctly determine the validity of all spreadsheets tested, find an undetected type system error, and determine lines of C code generated are a likely indicator of spreadsheet quality.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (vxiii, 65 pages) diagram
LGBT parents' school support
No full textTheoretical thesis.Running title: LGBT parents' school support.Bibliography: pages 82-97.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. LGBT parents literature review -- Chapter 3. Theoretical framework -- Chapter 4. Methodology and methods -- Chapter 5. Findings on Australian LGBT parents and schooling -- Chapter 6. LGBT parents in schools : ‘Another’ or an ‘other’ form of family diversity? -- References -- Appendices.Australian educational policy and guides dictate school inclusion of LGBT identities within schools typically privileging the perspective of LGBT students; possibly excluding the perspective of LGBT parents as a recognised member of school communities. This study explored the perspective of Australian LGBT parents in terms of positive experiences and supportive structures commonly endorsed by educational authoritative bodies. It employed an online survey informed by Bronfenbrenner’s Theory of Ecological Development; 73 LGBT identifying parents with children currently enrolled in Australian schools responded. Results indicated a high level of uncertainty regarding whether schools included key supports, with the most common supportive structures provided by schools being inclusive school forms. Supportive structures deemed most important were teacher training and inclusive school forms, followed by resources and activities that reflect LGBT parented families in schools. Leximancer assisted qualitative analysis indicated all supportive structures shared similar perceived benefits in creating welcoming school environments including; raising awareness, tolerance and knowledge of different forms of diversity within school environments; addressing potential misconceptions held by school community members and overcoming potential exclusionary experiences. The findings – particularly LGBT parents’ rejection of exceptional status – have implications for educational stakeholders including school administration, policy development authorities, teachers and LGBT researchers.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xii, 112 pages) diagrams, table
The role of oral vocabulary in the development of children’s orthographic representations
No full textThesis by publication."Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University Centre for Reading, Faculty of Human Science, sMacquarie University, Sydney, Australia" -- title page.Includes bibliographical references.Chapter 1. General introduction -- Chapter 2. Children reading spoken words : interactions between vocabulary and orthographic expectancy -- Chapter 3. The contributions of lexical phonology and semantics to the generation of orthographic expectancies -- Chapter 4. Partial or complete? The early form of orthographic expectancies -- Chapter 5. Tracking the evolution of orthographic expectancies over building visual experience -- Chapter 6. General discussion -- Supplementary materials -- Ethics approvals.When children learn to read, how do they come to be able to recognise whole written words quickly and accurately? Knowledge of letter-to-sound correspondences and the sound structure of language are known to be important early in reading acquisition but other cognitive factors must also contribute to the development of skilled reading. One such factor is oral vocabulary (knowledge of the pronunciation and meaning of words), yet its association with reading acquisition remains poorly understood. This thesis aims to elucidate the nature of the relationship between oral vocabulary and reading, with a particular focus on how they might interact as children acquire representations of new written words. According to the orthographic skeleton hypothesis (Chapter 2), children can draw on their knowledge of phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences to generate expectations of the spellings of known spoken words prior to viewing them in writing for the first time. In a series of training studies, Grade 4 children are taught novel oral vocabulary prior to reading these trained items and matched untrained items in sentence contexts while their eye movements are monitored. In each experiment the orthographic skeleton hypothesis is interrogated with a view to providing an elaborated account of their generation and influence on written word learning. Results shed light on the roles of lexical phonology and semantics within the development of orthographic expectancies (Chapter3); the form of the skeleton (Chapter 4); and the influence of the skeleton on subsequent visual exposures to target words (Chapter 5). Findings are linked back to established theories of reading acquisition, the role of oral vocabulary within this process and the causal mechanisms that support this influence (Chapter 6).Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (x, 242 pages) diagrams, table