Service Learning: A Look into the Real World for Criminal Justice Students

The goal of this study was to better understand the impact that criminal justice based service learning experiences have on criminal justice students at Bridgewater State University. For the purpose of this study, the research questions focused on students’ personal and professional outcomes post- service learning experience. The study used an electronic survey that utilized closed and opened ended questions to gather data. Using a grounded theory approach the data was collected and analyzed simultaneously. Through a coding process, themes and concepts specific to the open responses were identified. The results of the study indicate that students felt their service learning experience had a lasting impact on them during and after the course was completed. Personally and professionally, students were impacted in a positive manner. The findings of the study were in line with the current body of literature on service learning. Beyond this, the data gathered greatly contributes to the current and growing body of literature that surrounds the pedagogy of service learning in the discipline of criminal justice

Encouraging Increased PPE Compliance: A Quality Improvement Project

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is used to minimize infection transmission from patient to healthcare worker, or vice versa. During a clinical rotation in a large urban teaching hospital, it was noted that a number of nurses failed to adhere to proper PPE policies. A literature review focusing on thirty-two studies found that average nurse compliance to proper PPE is 34%. This review included an overall discussion of factors affecting compliance, as well as a more in-depth review of the effect of education on PPE compliance, how comfort and proper fitting affects compliance, and the general effectiveness of PPE when used properly. This literature review also indicated that major factors affecting compliance were perception of risk of infection, quality of education received, and the comfort/fit of PPE. These findings support the intervention of emphasizing the importance of PPE adherence through providing donning and doffing education for nurses.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2022/1020/thumbnail.jp

Relaxing the independent censoring assumption in the Cox proportional hazards model using multiple imputation.

The Cox proportional hazards model is frequently used in medical statistics. The standard methods for fitting this model rely on the assumption of independent censoring. Although this is sometimes plausible, we often wish to explore how robust our inferences are as this untestable assumption is relaxed. We describe how this can be carried out in a way that makes the assumptions accessible to all those involved in a research project. Estimation proceeds via multiple imputation, where censored failure times are imputed under user-specified departures from independent censoring. A novel aspect of our method is the use of bootstrapping to generate proper imputations from the Cox model. We illustrate our approach using data from an HIV-prevention trial and discuss how it can be readily adapted and applied in other settings