Meaningful Measurement of Diversity Initiative Outcomes

Diversification of students graduating from Nebraska colleges and schools of nursing is essential to providing a diverse healthcare workforce. Diversity related strategic plans typically include goals expressed using terms such as “increase”, “improve”, or “enhance” the diversity of their applicant pools or graduates. Less common is the practice of providing specific quantitative goals for setting or measuring progress towards expressed goals. This session will demonstrate a method for evaluating current diversity of students or graduates, setting concrete, measurable goals or benchmarks, and evaluating the outcome of diversity initiatives. Participants will take home a detailed tool for determining if recruitment, admission, or student support processes have a disparate impact on members of any disaggregated group of individuals based on gender, race, or other category of interest. These data will provide a basis for understanding the current status and setting measurable goals for the future. This is a methodological presentation. Presentation of “outcomes” is not applicable. Sample data sets will be discussed.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/state_pres/1002/thumbnail.jp

New Mexico Bad Faith

With the introduction of the automobile came a marked increase in complaints and tension between insureds and their insurance companies. As a result, a significant development in insurance law is that insurers may be held liable in tort for bad faith performance of their duties to insureds. The law of bad faith contemplates that a special relationship exists between insurance companies and their insureds. Recognizing the unique peculiarities of the insurance environment, courts have fashioned the tort of bad faith as a way of regulating the insurer-insured relationship. The underlying premise of the law of bad faith is that insurers owe their insureds a duty of good faith and fair dealing. Consequently, an insurer who refuses to deal fairly with its insured, or fails to conduct its affairs in good faith may be subject to compensatory and punitive damages upon a finding of bad faith. Bad faith insurance actions arise in two contexts: 1) that of third-party claims, in which the insured is seeking defense and indemnification from liability to a third party, and 2) first-party claims, in which the insured is seeking indemnification from the insurer for a loss suffered by the insured personally. Although the law of bad faith has received wide recognition and acceptance, the term bad faith lacks a single, coherent definition, meaning different things in different contexts. The purpose of this paper is to put the term bad faith into context by explaining the development and application of the law of bad faith in New Mexico

Analytic Appraoch to Determining Causes of Graduate Student Attrition

Student data is collected for a variety of uses from application to graduation. Data is most often collected and stored in a fashion that supports single student data retrieval or mass processing of data, for uses such as preparation for graduation. Because of this, retrieving data for use in analytic reports and for problem solving across cohorts of students is often more difficult. Student services staff may have difficulty explaining to technology staff the nuances required to meet their data needs, particularly when multiple individual queries are needed to reach an answer. One such example is identifying the circumstances leading to graduate student attrition. Personal issues out of the control of the academic institution often lead to attrition. Other reasons stem from organizational policies or procedures that do not optimize chances for student success, or from a failure to advise a student on strategies to maximize their chance of success. The purpose of this poster is to provide the viewer analytic approaches used to evaluate potential cause of graduate student attrition and intervention strategies to address them. This poster will walk the viewer through a step by step process for obtaining data needed to answer student attrition questions. Hypotheses explored with these analyses included the following a) specific courses taken during the first semester, b) starting semester (fall, spring, summer), c) poor grades versus voluntary withdrawal, and d) the role of leave of absences in program withdrawal among others. Implications for the Future of Nursing Practice Student attrition has consequences for the individual, the institution, the community and nursing practice in general. Graduate students who do not graduate have spent time, energy and monetary resources with a less than desirable outcome. Institutions who admit but do not graduate students lose tuition for remaining courses that cannot be replaced and do not obtain a valuable alumnus. The community suffers from the loss of an additional graduate prepared practitioner. An organization that understands the potential reasons for student attrition patterns is better positioned to develop strategies to improve student success. Outcomes/Data as Appropriate The process to be described was successfully used by a graduate specialty group to identify a probable cause of observed student attrition and to develop a strategy to address the relevant issue. Notes: All data on poster is fabricated.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/state_pres/1001/thumbnail.jp

A Survey of Strategies Used by Public School Teachers in Clark County, Illinois to Decrease Unacceptable Behaviors in Elementary School Children

Teachers are presented with the task of classroom behavior management day after day. Teachers must have a broad repertoire of strategies for controlling behaviors they deem undesirable. The purpose of this study is to investigate teacher reported strategies for increasing or decreasing behaviors. It is the intent of this study to present these strategies to others for the purpose of increasing their repertoire and possibly aiding in classroom behavior management. The procedure for determining the strategies that the public school teachers say they use with given behaviors was a survey. This survey was piloted on public school teachers in Mattoon, Illinois. The survey was distributed to teachers through their school mailboxes. The subjects for this study were public school teachers, grades one through six including Special Education, from schools in Clark County, Illinois. The number of subjects that the survey was distributed to was 80. Analysis of the data includes a frequency count and crosstabulations. These analyses are intended to show if there is a difference in the type of strategies chosen between grades and sex, and, if there is a difference, if the difference is significant

Basics of research (Part 12): Qualitative research

Although both the assumptions and methods of qualitative and quantitative approaches in nursing research are different, both have the goal of furthering the scientific basis for practice. A variety of qualitative approaches are available, and which approach to use depends on the purpose of the research. In general, qualitative investigations address broad questions related to description, discovery, or theory building, and, as a consequence, the researcher is concerned with the entire context surrounding the phenomenon of interest rather than concentrating on specific variables thought to influence that phenomenon. The type of data collected and the methods of analysis differ, but qualitative research demands the same careful attention to selecting a design appropriate to answer the research question and the same assurance of rigor in conducting the research and interpreting the results as is required in quantitative studies. When these issues are thoroughly addressed, the clinician has a basis for judging both the accuracy and the applicability of qualitative research findings