Role-Taking vs. cultural identity: Defining disability in an able-bodied environment

Are people with physical impairments seen as a minority group or as individuals who take on the role of being disabled only in certain circumstances? While minority group membership has a variety of social, psychological, and legal advantages, it forces people to give up some individuality and gives the disability a more permanent connotation (Berbrier, 2004; Watson, 2002). Alternately, viewing disability as a role, and attaching the label disabled in certain circumstances, allows for a broader spectrum of individual choice. However, the label assumes someone who is disabled to be less than able, thus carrying a strong stigma. Through my personal experience with a temporary disability, I examined the labels placed on people with physical impairments, both by the individual and by society in general. I conclude that the lived experiences of those with disabilities do not demonstrate that people with physical impairments self-identify as a member of the disabled community, but that they take on this label only when the environment fails to meet their needs

Exploring minority stress processes and social supports in the workplace: how individuals in same-sex relationships manage the work/family border

Studies of minority stress processes (Meyer, 2003) in the workplace have focused on individual level outcomes, such as individual mental health (Velez, Moradi, & Brewster, 2013), or outcomes within the work context, such as job satisfaction or productivity (Button, 2001; Ragins Singh, & Cornwall, 2007). Very little attention has been given to the ways in which experiences with minority stressors in the work domain affect the same-sex partners of sexual minority employees and their relationships. This dissertation project used a convergent parallel mixed-methods approach involving quantitative secondary data analysis and qualitative case study analysis to examine the couple-level effects of minority stress processes and supports in the work domain. Results show that sexual minority employees continue to experience minority stress processes in the work place, and specifically social stigma and other subtle microaggressions appear to be the predominant prejudice event reported. Further, these experiences with prejudice events and other forms of minority stress processes are associated with couple-level outcomes, such as decreased relationship satisfaction. However, participants in the case study analysis also reported ways in which their relationships were positively affected by these experiences, by being able to support one another for example. Findings from this project enhance our understanding of minority stress processes theoretically, but can also be applied to workplaces broadly to inform policy and practices within organizations

The validation of the field-environment-duty occupational classification system and interest test

Vocational interest is a dynamic, subjective, positive attraction towards a job, occupa tion or occupational field, based on the individual's perception of the structure of occupations and situations already experienced or expected to produce pleasurable feelings. Interest test tields are usually statistically derived from characteristics of individuals. This study develops and validates an interest test based on the perceived occupationaI structure. After examining various classification models and occupational classification systems, including work by Holland, Gati and Roe, a new network access model was pro­posed, based on many-to-many correspondence in set theory. Categories are arranged on levels. Choice of a category on one level precludes access to another category on the sanK level, but does not restrict access to categories on other levels. It was hypothesised that occupational structure is perceived to consist of the three levels of lields, environments and duties. Each category is a horizontal sirus group and includes all vertical status levels. Career choice is based on preferences at each level. 1200 jobs have been classified by allocation to one category on each level, and each is described by a field, environment and duty. The field-environment-duty (FED) system was operationalised in a ten minute interest test asking testees to choose from each level the three categories that interest them for a job. Extensive use was made of x to the power of 2 and empty sets to the power of two statistics in analysing nominal measurement scores. The FED test was applied to 1280 school-leavers in Gauteng, South Africa. Research supports Gati's division of occupations into "soft" (people-oriented occupations preferred by females), and "hard" (not-people-oriented occupations preferred by males), and introduces a third "neutral" division which is preferred equally by both males and females. Construct and concurrent validity was shown with the I 9Fll, VIQ, SDS and l6PF. In a four to five year longitudinal study the FED was found to predict future studies (80%) and occupation (86%). Research with working adults found that the FED test predicts concurrent job satisfaction, job tenure and self-assessed performance. Inter-rater reliability in assigning jobs to categories is around 80%. Test-retest reliability was significant to the 0,0001 level using the x to the power of 2 goodness of fit test.Industrial and Organisational PsychologyD.Com. (Industrial Psychology

Autonomous adaptive data acquisition for scanning hyperspectral imaging

Non-invasive and label-free spectral microscopy (spectromicroscopy) techniques can provide quantitative biochemical information complementary to genomic sequencing, transcriptomic profiling, and proteomic analyses. However, spectromicroscopy techniques generate high-dimensional data; acquisition of a single spectral image can range from tens of minutes to hours, depending on the desired spatial resolution and the image size. This substantially limits the timescales of observable transient biological processes. To address this challenge and move spectromicroscopy towards efficient real-time spatiochemical imaging, we developed a grid-less autonomous adaptive sampling method. Our method substantially decreases image acquisition time while increasing sampling density in regions of steeper physico-chemical gradients. When implemented with scanning Fourier Transform infrared spectromicroscopy experiments, this grid-less adaptive sampling approach outperformed standard uniform grid sampling in a two-component chemical model system and in a complex biological sample, Caenorhabditis elegans. We quantitatively and qualitatively assess the efficiency of data acquisition using performance metrics and multivariate infrared spectral analysis, respectively

Service-Learning: An Administrator\u27s Tool for Improving Schools and Connecting with the Community

What should students know and be able to do by the time they graduate high school? This basic question is at the heart of most education reforms in recent years. Increasingly, the answer lies not just in strong academic skills but also in a sense of self and the individual’s role in supporting and building a vibrant community

Giving Voice to the Silence of Family Estrangement: Comparing Reasons of Estranged Parents and Adult Children in a Non-matched Sample

This study investigated 898 parents’ and adult children’s reasons for estrangement in light of research on interpersonal attributions and the relational consequences of perspective taking. Three primary categories emerged: estrangement resulted from intrafamily, interfamily, or intrapersonal issues. Within each category, the frequency of parents’ and children’s reasons for estrangement differed significantly from each other. Parents reported that their primary reason for becoming estranged stemmed from their children’s objectionable relationships or sense of entitlement, whereas adult children most frequently attributed their estrangement to their parents’ toxic behavior or feeling unsupported and unaccepted. Parents also reported that they were unsure of the reason for their estrangement significantly more often than did children. Examining estrangement from the perspective of both parents and adult children offers potential avenues for family reconciliation and future communication research