Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Oklahoma'

Background: While the data indicate that Oklahoma’s nursing home care is lower in quality than the national average, there is a gap in the literature as to what staff perceive as barriers to quality care in Oklahoma. Staff perceptions impact organizational outcomes. Examining staff-perceived barriers presents the opportunity to approach improvement from the perspective of those responsible for implementing interventions.

Hypothesis: Nursing home staff in Oklahoma perceive the following as common barriers to delivering high quality care: (i) culture and structure of the organization; (ii) lack of authority and autonomy related to tasks and care delivery; (iii) high job demands related to disease burden; and (iv) limitations of the physical environment. The central question addressed is what do staff perceive as barriers to providing high quality care in Oklahoma nursing homes?

Methods: A written survey and interview guide were used to collect information from 28 nursing home staff from seven nursing homes in Oklahoma. The survey was crafted to test the perceptions of barriers in alignment with the conceptual model. Quantitative methods were used to determine the sample and analyze written survey responses. Qualitative methods were used to code themes from the interviews to elements of the conceptual model to determine if responses aligned with the hypothesis.

Results: Frequently cited barriers to delivering quality care include: social relationships inclusive of meals, care planning, activities, and dedicated staff time with residents; environmental factors inclusive of room size, privacy, layout, and access to outdoors; job demands inclusive of workload, time pressures, cognitive load, and demands from residents and families; performance evaluation, rewards, and incentives inclusive of recognition, appreciation, wage, bonus pay, performance feedback; and, supervisory and management style inclusive of consistency, equity, perceived fairness, and stress.

Conclusion: Real and perceived barriers to high quality care exist. Perceptions vary by staff role, and perceptions can be aligned with organizational structure and strategies through communication, transparency, and a justice-based approach. Along with changes to regulation and rules, improvement efforts must occur at the facility level with support from leadership and engagement of staff.

Daily ring formation has been validated for a variety of fish species, but there is little known information or data on ageing young of year Alligator Gar (Atractosteus spatula). Artificially spawned Alligator Gar fry with a known spawn date, hatch date, and swim-up date were stocked into two ponds at Tishomingo National Fish Hatchery and reared from 9 to 91 days post-hatch. Up to 10 individuals were sampled each week, and age in days was estimated from counts of presumptive daily rings in the otoliths (sagittae, lapilli, and astericsi). Mean daily ring count and known age were closely related to swim-up (sagitta r² = 0.98, lapillus r² = 0.99, asteriscus r² = 0.93) indicating that daily ring deposition occurred in the otoliths of Alligator Gar 2 days after swim-up. Daily increment counts were accurate through 73 (sagitta), 86 (lapillus), however accuracy for asteriscus was very low throughout 86 days from swim-up. Age-bias plot for the lapillus visually showed no bias between readers. The resulting regression of ring counts against known age (age = -0.96 + 1.03*estimated age) was applied to wild caught Alligator Gar collected in the summer of 2013 from Lake Texoma, Oklahoma, to estimate spawn dates. Spawn dates seem to coincide with rising pool elevation of Lake Texoma and water pulses of tributaries.

Up until recently research on Paleoindian archaeology has focused on Clovis hunters and the demise of 35 genera of megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene. However, with increasing evidence of Pre-Clovis settlement many megafaunal sites older than Clovis are now under scrutiny. In this endeavor, geoarchaeology plays a key role, particularly with assessing the stratigraphic and geomorphological aspects of sites suspected of being Pre-Clovis. This Thesis looks at, and analyzes three mammoth sites in western Oklahoma; Helena, Grandfield, and Foss. These sites were analyzed on a geologic, geomorphologic, hydrologic, anthropologic, and soil pedogenic basis. Understanding of soils and their developmental processes can help give us a better understanding of the landscape and the environment in which they were formed. These sites were then compared to known sites Domebo, Hajny, and Burnham, all of which have had both an absolute date and an in depth soil analysis. The purpose of the comparison is to try and apply relative dating to a site when absolute dating is not obtainable, either due to funding, or technical issues that prevent obtaining a reliable date. It has been hypothesized that older mammoth finds should be found in higher terraces, while those of younger age, possibly with archaeological significance, should be found in lower terraces near flood plains. The three mammoth sites studied through this research are associated with lower terraces regardless of age. This example shows how complex the relationship is between site age and site distribution in the landscape. This research shows also how important is to evaluate soil development for estimating relative ages. This approach in turn is important for assessing late Pleistocene paleontological sites with potential association with Pre-Clovis human populations.

Prior studies have demonstrated that most college dropouts happen at the transition to the third semester of college. Using a state dataset that includes student data for the 2013-2014 time span in the state of Oklahoma, the researcher examined the validity of students’ background characteristics, high school performance, and financial aid status in predicting first-year college performance and persistence beyond the second semester of college.

Data from 116,991 degree-seeking first-year students enrolled at research universities in Oklahoma from fall 2013 to fall 2014 were entered in the SPSS software for data analyses, which include both multiple linear regression and multiple logistic regression.

The researcher finds that students’ enrollment status and federal Perkins loans do not yield strong predictions of how students will perform academically or whether they will return to the second year of college. For tuition waivers, the associations with college performance and persistence are stronger, but still not significant. In contrast, spring GPA, Oklahoma’s Promise, high school grade point average, American College Testing scores, and gender are useful for predicting persistence to the third semester, and have a strong association with their college performance.

These findings might reflect current efforts by the Federal Government, State agencies, institutions and schools to promote student success, help them pay college tuition, and increase students’ pre-college performance.

Over the last twenty years the number of earthquakes in the State of Oklahoma has increased significantly. This study investigates the relationship between hydraulic fracturing wastewater injection wells and the increase in seismicity. In this work SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Sciences) was used to analyze all the data for correlations between wastewater well injection volumes. And psi (pounds per square inch), and earthquakes. SPSS was also used to examine the relationship between the injection of wastewater and the time-delay of seismicity. ArcGIS 10.3.1 (Geographic Information System) was used to explore the density of earthquakes and their distance from wastewater injection wells. This study finds that there is a relationship between wastewater injection volume, distance and time-delay of the injections and earthquakes. Pore pressure was not found to be a contributor to seismicity. However, the depth of the wastewater wells, which was not one of the variables in this study, showed a positive correlation to the increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma. This study reveals some important practical suggestions for the wastewater disposal industry. By setting up industry standards, such as, keeping volume below 150,000 barrels/month, and shortening well depth to at least 1km from the Precambrian crystalline basement the wastewater disposal industry could be more confident that they are lowering their risk of inducing earthquakes and thereby reducing their risk of insurance liability claims and litigation.