The Black Male Achievement Gap: Strategies for Intervention

Black male students in America are graduating at a much lower rate than white students. The purpose of this systematic review is to answer the question, “what interventions can school social workers implement to improve high school graduation rates for Black male students?” The first phase of this project included an examination of the existing research surrounding the achievement gap in American schools. All research studies included in this project were directly related to the ways in which schools could support better quality education for Black males. Research studies were carefully selected using criteria of inclusion and exclusion to ensure their relevance to this project. Criteria of inclusion were the words “Black”, “male” and “achievement”. Articles older than ten years were discarded. Then, themes were gathered from each of the six research articles that were deemed relevant. Finally, suggestions for social work practice and policy are made in an effort to support equitable education for all students

How Equine-Facilitated Psychotherapy Addresses Military Sexual Trauma among Female Veterans: Systematic Review

There were roughly 5, 061 reports of MST since the Department of Defense\u27s (DOD) fiscal year of 2012. The DOD believes that MST is vastly under reported and estimates that less than 20% of sexual assaults have been reported over the past seven years. The research question for this systematic literature review was: In what ways does equine-facilitated psychotherapy (EFP) address military sexual trauma (MST) among female veterans? Levels of publication utilized in this systematic review included peer-reviewed articles, gray literature, and dissertations. Types of studies included in this systematic review include empirically supported studies and qualitative and quantitative studies. The key search terms included: military, sexual trauma, sexual assault, rape, veterans, women, equine-facilitated therapy, equine-assisted therapy, equine, horse, holistic, therapy, animal, animal assisted therapy, equine-assisted learning, equine-facilitated learning, animal-assisted interventions, MST, mind-body, trauma-informed, complementary therapy, and integrative therapy. Primary findings included: EFP decreased PTSD symptomology through mindfulness, EFP improved relational functioning, EFP led to mind-body reintegration, EFP improved the therapeutic encounter, and EFP led to recovery and empowerment. The systematic review illuminated that equine-facilitated psychotherapy is a non-traditional form of therapy that may be appealing, and relevant, to female veteran survivors of MST who may otherwise not be amenable to traditional talk therapy. Equines are arguably more effective than other animals when it comes to therapeutic interventions with female survivors of MST. Mounted work could be considered one of the most powerful, movement-based therapies for sexual trauma due to the unique circumstances of riding

Test suite prioritization techniques applied to Web-based applications

Web applications have rapidly gained importance in many businesses. The increased usage of web applications has created a challenging need for efficient and effective web application testing strategies. This thesis examines one aspect of web testing, that of test suite prioritization. We examine new test suite prioritization strategies that may improve the rate of fault detection for user-session based test suites. These techniques consider test-lengths and systematic coverage of parameter-values and their interactions. Experimental results show that some of these prioritization strategies often improve the rate of fault detection of test suites when compared to random ordering of the test cases. In general the most effective prioritization strategies consider the systematic coverage of the combinations of parameter-values as early as possible

A Practical Meta-Analysis of Prayer Efficacy in Coping with Mental Health

Given the large number of people who identify as religious in the United States and the large number of the overall population diagnosed with a mental illness, there is a need for linking an easily accessible practice like prayer to a common and often painful problem of managing mental health symptoms. Using a Practical Meta-Analysis, this research project examined prayer’s efficacy when used as a coping strategy to relieve mental health symptoms. A Practical Meta-Analysis is a statistical method that synthesizes findings from multiple research studies and provides a quantitative measure of an intervention’s efficacy as a whole. Of 598 articles located in five databases searched, the thirteen included studies produced thirty unique effect sizes that were used in the Practical Meta-Analysis calculations. The meta-analysis’ result was an average effect size of -0.0184 with a p-value of 0.3665, which is a small, yet insignificant magnitude. However, when considering the overall group of included studies, sixty percent of these studies showed prayer being associated with improved mental health symptoms. The findings of this study support the need for future research on how prayer can be a helpful intervention for people to use in coping with mental health symptoms

Sexual Revictimization

Based on interviews with six women, this study describes each participant’s personal experience of childhood sexual victimization, and revictimization while serving in the military. These traumatic experiences in childhood may have increased their risk of developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when exposed to sexual trauma in adulthood. Using a grounded theory approach, the interviewer identified common themes among the stories: early sexual abuse, and subsequent revictimization, poor family support, and poor choice of intimate partners as adults. Moreover, they experienced lessened ability to protect self and low self-esteem and denial. The subjects described a personal culture that included abuse as a normal experience, substance abuse, a need for medical and psychological health care, and poor academic outcomes before military service, and following discharge. The participants’ sexual revictimization was associated with greater psychological distress, and higher levels of psychological symptomology. These women described the military’s response to their in-service sexual trauma as severely deficient. The military failed to provide basic medical care or proper counseling for these victims and in no case was the attacker prosecuted

Secondary Trauma: Agency support as a Protective Factor

Secondary trauma is something that any clinician could experience if they work with clients who have a trauma history. This is where the clinician exhibits symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by hearing about the details of a client’s trauma. There has been much research done on possible protective and predictive factors for secondary trauma. One of these protective factors is receiving supervision. Supervision is time spent with a clinician’s supervisor to debrief about clients, talk about work in general, receive feedback from documentation and client interactions, and receive psychoeducation from the supervisor about relevant client issues. It is the debriefing about clients that can be especially helpful for secondary trauma. A quantitative survey was sent to clinicians who work with clients who have experienced trauma. This survey asked questions about supervision, self-care, outside hobbies, etc. This survey also included the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale, which measured symptoms of secondary trauma in three categories: intrusion, avoidance, and arousal. There was a significant negative correlation between receiving supervision and arousal symptoms. No other analysis comparing secondary trauma to supervision was significant. There was a significant relationship between spending quality time with friends and lower rates of secondary trauma, however

The Impacts of Adolescent Parenthood on Latino Mother’s Educational Attainment

Adolescent parenthood is an important topic that has been researched for many years. It has an overall effect on social work practice, policy, and research. Although teen parenthood has declined in the United States, birth rates remain high compared to other countries. This study examines the impacts of adolescent parenthood on the lives of seven Latina mother’s educational attainment. There were many factors that influenced the women’s lives. Some of the factors included what their educational goals were prior to becoming pregnant, how their families reacted to their pregnancies, how the dynamics in their families changed, and how their education was directly impacted by their pregnancies. The mother’s shared their experiences candidly. The findings of the study represent a very small sample size of women from a specific well known highly populated Latino neighborhood in the Metro area. Implications for policy, practice and social work research are reviewed

Investigating the Use of Creative Mask-Making as a Means to Explore Professional Identity of Doctoral Psychology Students

The goal of this qualitative study is two-fold: to explore doctoral psychology students\u27 current sense of self-identity as clinicians (nearing graduation) and their future sense of who they hope to become as practicing clinical psychologists using a creative arts methodology and to illustrate how the use of creative arts processes have clinical relevance for not only mental health clinicians and psychologists but also educators. Seven doctoral psychology students nearing graduation participated (individually) in a guided imagery and mask-making experience and in a phenomenological, semi-structured, in-depth interview following the art making. Through the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), an integrative, hermeneutically and phenomenologically-based interpretive research method used to analyze the narrative data, this study explored how the participants\u27 experiences as doctoral students and who they hope to become as future clinical psychologists (Domain 1—Doctoral student as future psychologist) and their experiences about art-making and what they learned about themselves during the process (Domain 2—Guided visualization and art-making as catalysts). Results from the domain “Doctoral Student as future psychologist” suggest that the doctoral psychology students nearing graduation often feel overwhelmed with the multitude of remaining tasks and obligations influencing their ability to make future career plans and that their primary focus for the future is hope that they will have a sense of greater self-agency and a more balanced life. Results from the second domain, “Guided visualization and art-making as catalysts” indicated that the vast majority of participants appreciated the creative arts/mask-making process and also were surprised about how much they learned about themselves, how the process helped them gain insight into their own identities as future psychologists and their understanding of their own struggles while in graduate school, and provided the participants with an increased understanding about how creative arts processes can be incorporated in the field of psychology for a means of exploration of ideas and problems, not only in a mental health setting with a client but also in an educational setting for use with future doctoral students. The electronic version of this dissertation is at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.ed

Investigating the Use of Creative Mask-Making as a Means to Explore Professional Identity of Doctoral Psychology Students

The goal of this qualitative study is two-fold: to explore doctoral psychology students\u27 current sense of self-identity as clinicians (nearing graduation) and their future sense of who they hope to become as practicing clinical psychologists using a creative arts methodology and to illustrate how the use of creative arts processes have clinical relevance for not only mental health clinicians and psychologists but also educators. Seven doctoral psychology students nearing graduation participated (individually) in a guided imagery and mask-making experience and in a phenomenological, semi-structured, in-depth interview following the art making. Through the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), an integrative, hermeneutically and phenomenologically-based interpretive research method used to analyze the narrative data, this study explored how the participants\u27 experiences as doctoral students and who they hope to become as future clinical psychologists (Domain 1—Doctoral student as future psychologist) and their experiences about art-making and what they learned about themselves during the process (Domain 2—Guided visualization and art-making as catalysts). Results from the domain “Doctoral Student as future psychologist” suggest that the doctoral psychology students nearing graduation often feel overwhelmed with the multitude of remaining tasks and obligations influencing their ability to make future career plans and that their primary focus for the future is hope that they will have a sense of greater self-agency and a more balanced life. Results from the second domain, “Guided visualization and art-making as catalysts” indicated that the vast majority of participants appreciated the creative arts/mask-making process and also were surprised about how much they learned about themselves, how the process helped them gain insight into their own identities as future psychologists and their understanding of their own struggles while in graduate school, and provided the participants with an increased understanding about how creative arts processes can be incorporated in the field of psychology for a means of exploration of ideas and problems, not only in a mental health setting with a client but also in an educational setting for use with future doctoral students. The electronic version of this dissertation is at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.ed