Student Motivation, Stressors, and Intent to Leave a Nursing PhD or DNP Program: A National Study Using Path Analysis

The growing need for nurse scientists and nurse faculty researchers has led to the call to double the number of doctorally prepared nurses by 2020 (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2010). Nursing has responded with more doctoral degree programs resulting in an increase from 122 DNP graduates in 2007 to 8,184 nurses who hold DNP degrees by 2013. PhD programs have also seen 5,306 graduates between the years 2004 through 2013 (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2014a). One troubling aspect that affects nursing and other doctoral programs is high attrition rates. A recent ten year longitudinal study from the Council of Graduate Schools indicated attrition rates for doctoral students in the United States is 43% (Council of Graduate Schools [CGS], 2009). The state of the science in relation to nursing doctoral students indicates gaps in the literature. Doctoral students are the least studied student population (Russell, 2015). Research conducted with nursing doctoral students is typically qualitative and exploratory in nature. There is a gap in the empirical evidence concerning the factors which impact nursing doctoral students’ motivation and persistence and consequently, their intent to continue or leave their current programs of study. Doctoral students face many challenges in pursuing their degrees. Nursing doctoral students often have multiple responsibilities and obligations in their lives, creating differing types of stress. Environmental stressors are defined as the multiple responsibilities and obligations that impact the lives of students in current doctoral nursing programs. The purpose of this study was to examine how the effects of environmental stressors, as mediated by the doctoral nursing students’ motivational beliefs, impact their intent to leave their current program of doctoral study. A literature review was conducted that identified six themes of environmental stressors which impact nursing students in doctoral programs. Constructs from the Expectancy Value Theory of Achievement Choice provided measurement for the motivational constructs which impact students. The 57 question Nursing Doctoral Stressors and Motivation survey tool, which was developed with modified and newly developed questions was used to assess all of these factors. An additional 14 question demographic tool was also utilized for the study. Participation requests were sent by email to deans/directors of all PhD and DNP programs across the United States, with the request to forward to all currently enrolled students. Eight hundred and seventy seven participants responded to this survey. MPlus analysis software was employed to analyze demographic data and then assess the best fit for the models. Path analysis was utilized as it made it possible to analyze numerous variables simultaneously, investigating models that are more complex and realistic. Analyses were conducted to confirm the internal consistency of the survey tool. Additional analyses indicated that two environmental stressors of Support Issues and Program Stressors significantly predicted students’ intent to leave. Significant mediation effects were seen from the motivational beliefs of intrinsic value, expectancies for success, and effort cost. DNP participants reported both similar and differing significant impacts from motivational beliefs than did participants in PhD programs. Finally, analyses indicated that the impacts of participation costs were greater than the impact of utility costs for students, thus suggesting the greater need for supportive resources in these areas. It is not possible to remove all stressors from students’ lives during their doctoral studies. But a better understanding of the environmental stressors that affect them offers the potential for nursing programs looking to incorporate adequate resources and support which will help minimize attrition and promote persistence of their doctoral students

Children in Frank Beyer\u27s Holocaust Films

ABSTRACT CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS SEPTEMBER 2016 DELENE CASE WHITE, B.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA M.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barton Byg This dissertation is about central functions children play in the Holocaust films of (East) German director Frank Beyer: Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1963), Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, 1974), and Wenn alle Deutschen schlafen (While all Germans Sleep, 1994). Beyer’s child characters contribute to resistance and challenge oversimplified ways the Holocaust and German division have often been remembered. Beyer’s films do not elide truthful representations of the Holocaust, and they avoid clichéd representations of children, Jews and Germans. Released over a 31-year span, characters in these films demonstrate increasing agency, drawing out universal humanity in people around them—even German soldiers—in the form of storytelling, play, and the desires to protect others and live ordinary, worthwhile lives. Over time, these films also reveal changes in Beyer’s filmmaking artistry, as well as his collaboration with the author Jurek Becker. I explore the intertwined evolution of Beyer’s child characters and his filmic approach in four central chapters. The Introduction sets the stage by outlining German and international films about the Holocaust and reviewing Beyer’s biography. Chapter One provides an overview of adaptation theory, moral philosophy, and methods for analyzing representations of war and the gaze of the child, as well as the biographies of Bruno Apitz and Jurek Becker, the authors whose novels Beyer adapted to film. Chapter Two examines how Naked among Wolves, which is ensconced in antifascist ideology and conventions of Socialist Realism, nevertheless challenges tenets of each, by decentering Communist heroes and focusing on a child. In discussing Jacob the Liar, which is set among Jews in a Polish ghetto and completely displaces Communists, Chapter Three explores how Beyer deploys the narrative devices of fantasy, flashbacks and flashforwards to depict how characters preserve their humanity in the midst of the Holocaust. Finally, Chapter Four shows how Beyer takes his abandonment of antifascist and social realist conventions a step further in While all Germans Sleep, which departs from fantasy and flashbacks in favor of a more objective narrative style, while challenging conventional views of the Holocaust through depictions of childhood autonomy and agency

Exciton operators : commutation relations and dynamics

The electron-hole pair operator commutation relations for a semiconductor are explicitly derived showing that the pairs are quasi-bosons with statistics intermediate between bosons and fermions. These pair operators are transformed into exciton operators, that incorporate the intra-pair Coulomb interaction, and it is found that the commutation relations remain quasi-bosonic. The exciton dynamics written in terms of the exciton operators are derived in the Heisenberg picture and compared with the traditionally used semiconductor Bloch equations

The influence of previous understanding and relative confidence on adult maths learning : building adult understanding on a brownfield site

Expansion of Higher Education has resulted in increasing provision of Access and Foundation programmes, often aimed at mature learners. Adults returning to learn mathematics bring with them a wealth of prior understanding and expectations The two common teaching approaches, remedial 'fill in the gaps' or mythical 'start again', are popular with students but argued to be unrealistic because the teaching of adults is better likened to building on a brownfield site. The purpose of this research was to consider what understandings adults brought with them and explore how these understandings interacted with new learning. 203 foundation students were given questions, on proportional reasoning, percentage calculation and over-generalisations. Responses, and response hierarchies, were compared with those from children in the 1970's CSMS survey (Hart, 1981 a). Individual behaviours were then explored through interview using a framework developed from ideas of Schoenfeld (1992) and Leron and Hazzan (1997). It emerged that multiple interactions and choices of behaviour were taking place, indicating final answers, right or wrong, represented only one possibility from a selection of outcomes. Method selection might be influenced by number and beliefs in non-conservation of operation (Greer, 1994) causing potential difficulties for building new learning by method extrapolation. The habit of selt-checkinq and testing for reasonableness might cause difficulties when reasonableness could not be recognised or was counter-intuitive. Other themes identified included: the false recall of certain number calculations with potential for interference with diagnostic practices and the belief in the 'one right method' based on perceived outcome requirements or confidence from previous success, causing reluctance to consider more efficient or appropriate methods. This research highlights the benefits of making processes and choices explicit to teachers and students facilitating the integration of previous understandings with new ways of working without disempowerment and increasing the potential for new learning to be built

The contribution of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa to social development in South Africa and its potential role as a national partner in development

This research investigates the role of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in social development in South Africa. The hypothesis states that the Church has been involved in social development since its inception and currently contributes significantly to social development in South Africa. Within the context of poverty and the challenges faced by South Africa in alleviating poverty today, the researcher will establish if the Anglican Church could be considered a potential partner in poverty alleviation in South Africa, together with the public and private sectors

Martian Xenon Components in Basaltic Shergottite Meteorites

Analyses of Chassigny, Nakhla, and ALH84001 reveal, in addition to a Xe component from the martian atmosphere, a second component loosely attributed to the martian interior. This appears to be a mixture of solar- and fission- (244Pu) derived xenon components. The proportions are consistent in each meteorite but vary from meteorite to meteorite. The working hypothesis is that this variation reflects different contributions of solar (mantle-derived) and fission (crustal-derived) xenon to each parent melt. This study focused on mineral separates from two basaltic shergottites, Shergotty and EETA79001 Lithology-B (EETA), chosen to reflect, as far as possible, the extremes of crustal assimilation in the parent melt. Xenon analysis was performed revealing martian interior and atmospheric components. Of the mineral separates examined, the opaque phases in both meteorites have higher atmospheric gas concentrations than maskelynite and pyroxene separates. This is attributed to the adsorption of atmospheric gas on the grains and then shock implantation. The opaques, the smallest mineral phases in the meteorites, provided the most surface area and thus resulted in higher gas concentration. The interior component is best defined in the pyroxene separates of both meteorites. This interior component is attributed to ambient xenon trapped upon crystallization of the mineral. The 129Xe excess (129Xe/132Xe ~ 1.2) in the interior component of Shergotty is described as admixture of martian atmosphere to the melt, while this component is absent for EETA. The fission-derived xenon of the two meteorites varies in that Shergotty has a higher 136Xe* concentration than that observed in EETA. A model was constructed to reflect the isotopic evolution of xenon in the martian mantle, crust, and atmosphere during planetary differentiation, outgassing and atmospheric loss. An atmosphere is produced with elevated 129Xexs/130Xe and low radiogenic xenon to excess xenon ratio (136Xe*/129Xexs), along with two interior reservoirs, one consisting of solar xenon with little or no radiogenic xenon and one with a high ratio of fissiogenic 136Xe*/130Xe and a low 129Xexs/136Xe* ratio. These latter ratios are qualitatively similar to those required to produce the interior components of the shergottites

Total Eclipse Aircraft Mission (TEAM)

A unique opportunity exists during the 2017 total solar eclipse that traverses the United States to study atmospheric chemistry by obtaining high altitude aircraft and balloon based measurements during this once-in-a-lifetime event. The Total Eclipse Aircraft Mission (TEAM) is a high altitude aircraft mission concept that is intended to acquire complementary measurements to those taken from high-altitude balloon platforms along the eclipse path using the University of North Dakota\u27s Citation Research Aircraft. Initial plans are to accurately measure temperature, O3, OH-, and NOX as a function of eclipse obscuration. One of the mission architectures under consideration includes a flight that begins and ends in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The research jet would ascend to its mission altitude in the lower stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 13 km, and begin gathering data while total eclipse is still over the Pacific Ocean. The aircraft would then intercept the eclipse line over Nebraska just before totality in that region, and be overtaken by the eclipse. The jet would return to its base in Grand Forks as total eclipse proceeds toward the southeastern portion of the United States, all the while collecting atmospheric data within the stratosphere. This paper will present the TEAM mission objectives, mission architecture, and outline the schedule, cost, and risk associated with this mission, along with tentative high-level functional and operational performance requirements