Support needs of ASD families in the Manawatu DHB catchment area : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

Figure 1 Te Whare Tapa Whā removed for copyright reasons but may be accessed via https://www.maorimenshealth.co.nz/te-whare-tapa-wha-health-whare/Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is becoming increasingly understood as being both widely heterogeneous and complex for the individual on the spectrum. Similarly, families are also highly variable and complex; they are arguably the most important support unit a child with ASD has, with their own resources, constraints, values and beliefs. Service individualisation, which accounts for such variances within the individual, and the collective, is broadly seen as critical for service delivery success. To date, little research has gauged the extent of ASD service individualisation abroad, and an understanding of how this is done in Aotearoa New Zealand is absent. The intent of this research was to investigate whether or not existing services and supports target the uniqueness of both the individual with ASD, and their families to enable them to participate in society. In particular, a key focus was if services are appropriate, accessible and sufficient. To accomplish the intent of the research a concurrent triangulation mixed-methods design was utilised. Both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered from caregivers of autistic children – firstly, through an online survey featuring several lifespan themes, and subsequently, qualitative data was collected through caregiver interviews carried out with participants recruited from the MidCentral and Nelson Marlborough District Health Board (DHB) areas. Analyses of the prioritised qualitative data indicated that a variety of service delivery factors prevented families with autistic children from optimal functioning, and participating in society. Furthermore, systemic issues were theorised to be the underlying causes of several of the difficulties faced by autistic children, and their families. The importance of individualised care packages that meet the needs of the families spoken to was emphasised, and the 'wicked problem' (Stace, 2011) of services that are appropriate, accessible and adequate remains ongoing. Recommendations for meeting the needs of individuals with ASD and their families are discussed

A\u27s from Zzzz\u27s? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents

Recent sleep research finds that many adolescents are sleep-deprived because of both early school start times and changing sleep patterns during the teen years. This study identifies the causal effect of school start time on academic achievement by using two policy changes in the daily schedule at the US Air Force Academy along with the randomized placement of freshman students to courses and instructors. Results show that starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation. (JEL I23, J13

Factors Affecting Increases in Economic Literacy among High School Students

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/27/07.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Approximate entropy of network parameters

We study the notion of approximate entropy within the framework of network theory. Approximate entropy is an uncertainty measure originally proposed in the context of dynamical systems and time series. We firstly define a purely structural entropy obtained by computing the approximate entropy of the so called slide sequence. This is a surrogate of the degree sequence and it is suggested by the frequency partition of a graph. We examine this quantity for standard scale-free and Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi networks. By using classical results of Pincus, we show that our entropy measure converges with network size to a certain binary Shannon entropy. On a second step, with specific attention to networks generated by dynamical processes, we investigate approximate entropy of horizontal visibility graphs. Visibility graphs permit to naturally associate to a network the notion of temporal correlations, therefore providing the measure a dynamical garment. We show that approximate entropy distinguishes visibility graphs generated by processes with different complexity. The result probes to a greater extent these networks for the study of dynamical systems. Applications to certain biological data arising in cancer genomics are finally considered in the light of both approaches.Comment: 11 pages, 5 EPS figure

The Ranges of K-theoretic Invariants for Nonsimple Graph Algebras

There are many classes of nonsimple graph C*-algebras that are classified by the six-term exact sequence in K-theory. In this paper we consider the range of this invariant and determine which cyclic six-term exact sequences can be obtained by various classes of graph C*-algebras. To accomplish this, we establish a general method that allows us to form a graph with a given six-term exact sequence of K-groups by splicing together smaller graphs whose C*-algebras realize portions of the six-term exact sequence. As rather immediate consequences, we obtain the first permanence results for extensions of graph C*-algebras. We are hopeful that the results and methods presented here will also prove useful in more general cases, such as situations where the C*-algebras under investigations have more than one ideal and where there are currently no relevant classification theories available.Comment: 40 page

Measuring Societal Biases in Text Corpora via First-Order Co-occurrence

Text corpora are used to study societal biases, typically through statistical models such as word embeddings. The bias of a word towards a concept is typically estimated using vectors similarity, measuring whether the word and concept words share other words in their contexts. We argue that this second-order relationship introduces unrelated concepts into the measure, which causes an imprecise measurement of the bias. We propose instead to measure bias using the direct normalized co-occurrence associations between the word and the representative concept words, a first-order measure, by reconstructing the co-occurrence estimates inherent in the word embedding models. To study our novel corpus bias measurement method, we calculate the correlation of the gender bias values estimated from the text to the actual gender bias statistics of the U.S. job market, provided by two recent collections. The results show a consistently higher correlation when using the proposed first-order measure with a variety of word embedding models, as well as a more severe degree of bias, especially to female in a few specific occupations

Rethinking Representations of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: A Case Study of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Focusing on forced marriage or the ‘bush wife phenomenon’ as a category of abuse in the Liberian Civil War, this paper seeks to critically assess the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s analysis of wartime abuses and its representation of sexual and gender-based violence