Browsing by Subject "Decision-Making"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    African American seniors’ perspectives on advance care planning: a virtue ethics community-based participatory research approach
    (2012-12) Crump, Saundra Kaye
    Some findings not previously noted in the literature were found in this research. African-Americans are far less likely to write advance directives than white Americans but little is known about African-Americans’ perceptions of planning for who would speak for them if they were unable to speak in critical health situations. Health professionals’ lack of knowledge about culture, ethnicity and/or religion is an obstacle to effective end-of-life care. This research is aimed at exploring African-American seniors’ perspectives and providing health professionals with information to build skills to support ethnically diverse families of patients who are seriously ill and unable to speak. A community-based participatory research (with focus groups) approach was used to produce knowledge with participants from one Midwestern urban community. A community advisory board was active in all aspects of the research. A virtue ethics framework was used to maintain the integrity of the research. The history and ethics of conducting research is reviewed. Forty-five female and 7 male African-American seniors (aged 59-92) participated in the nine, one time, focus groups. A PowerPoint about advance care planning and a questionnaire (based on the literature) were used to stimulate thought prior to focus group discussions. Data revealed 30 themes which were divided into five primary categories: Trust, fear, relationships, lack of information/knowledge, and procrastination; and six secondary categories: Deracination (cultural uprooting), deterioration of family/community, past discrimination, experience, self-fulfilling prophecy, and religion. Study participants expressed that African-Americans distrust the dominant society and their families; and have a general fear of death and dying. They connected deterioration of the African- American community and family to ongoing discrimination and racism and cited this as contributing to the reluctance to write advance directives. Another major finding is that choosing a proxy decision-maker requires “analyzing personal relationships” and this can be painful and cause avoidance of addressing advance care planning. This had not been previously identified in the literature. Recommendations are that healthcare providers treat African-American seniors with respect, and get to know them socially so they aren’t uncomfortable and afraid around them. Participants suggested patients connect with providers and share their goals for health and personal life; and that providers have more information about advance care planning in their curriculum and training. The researcher recommends providers use clinical opportunities to identify situations where they could empower patients to take charge of their advance care planning; and community members should identify their personal value system, and think about quality of life issues. Community education programs by a trusted professional are recommended to give African-American seniors information needed to understand the importance and urgency of advance care planning. Assistance of a skilled professional to assist with difficult decision-making and planning is also needed. Further research is needed to better understand how the African-American historical experience in the United States contributes to their reluctance to engage in advance care planning. Further research is also needed to find the social and economic value and the political implications of advance directives.
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    Real-Life Dilemmas Make Learning Fun
    (1999) Dunrud, Tammy; Reicks, Marla; Simmons, Steve
    Decision cases are a valuable, participatory learning tool. Youth enter the process with prior experiences and knowledge on which to build a new understanding of subject matter. The decision case experience encourages life skill development while delivering new subject matter. Decision cases encourage the development of problem-solving and decision-making skills through practice, and positive and enjoyable for youth. The effectiveness of decision case experiences in meeting instructional goals can be greatly enhanced by skilled facilitators.
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    Self-Regulation and Adolescent Decision-Making
    (2021-08) Almy, Brandon
    Adolescence is generally considered a developmental period of increased risk-taking, however, recent research has advocated for a more specific approach to describing decision-making and consideration of information contexts risks occur in. The current study utilizes a task that allows for a behavioral distinction between risk-taking and rational decision-making (i.e., expected value sensitivity). 150 early adolescents between the ages of 10 and 15 participated (Mean age 13.0, 53% female). The study also assessed regulation and reactivity tendencies with both behavioral and self-report measures. Minimal age-related increases in risk-taking were observed. Observed developmental changes in risk-taking were specific to the domain of gains and decreased with development, inconsistent with some theories of adolescent risk-taking. Additionally, with increasing age, adolescents made more adaptive decisions as defined by selecting choices consistent with expected value. This age-related trend was partly explained by a decrease in maladaptive risk-taking with age. There were no developmental differences in adaptive risk-taking. Working memory and numeracy were the most consistent predictors of expected value sensitivity. These findings were present in the gain frame but not the loss frame. Eye-tracking analyses scaffolded these findings as greater attention towards probability (compared to outcomes) was associated with expected value sensitivity. There were several gender differences in decision-making and these differences appear to be accounted for, at least in part, by commensurate differences in working memory, numeracy, and attention allocation during the decision-making task. While there is minimal evidence for approach-related tendencies influencing adolescent decision-making, there is evidence for disrupted attention in the loss frame that may be exacerbated by avoidant tendencies and reduced by regulation tendencies. Overall, adolescents made more rational decisions with age. This finding and predictors of rational decision-making are discussed in relation to existing theories of adolescent development.
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    Sport Brand Communities: A Social Network Analysis Perspective
    (2015-08) Lupinek, Joshua
    This dissertation was created and bound by an “alternative format” where three separate journal articles were created in a sequence that ties brand community literature, social network analysis (SNA) literature, and an empirical case study together. Paper #1 (Chapter 2) serves as conceptual literature review paper which traces the evolution of brand community research from its beginnings in the general business literature to the current brand community research in sport marketing today. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) define brand communities as a specialized and non-geographically bound community based around a set of structured social relationships amongst admirers of a brand, and are often recognized as the most integral relationship component of consumers to brands (Muge & Ozge, 2013). An attachment to brand community (ABC) framework is proposed through variables gathered in a review of brand community literature. Paper #2 (Chapter 3) is a conceptual paper that proposes several brand community sport marketing applications for the emergent SNA methodology from a foundation of relevant literature. The conceptual direction and methodological techniques of SNA in areas such as fan identification, team success, player movement, internal marketing, marketing to the lifetime fan, and small fan groups as well as subcultural analyses were explicitly utilized. Paper #4 (Chapter 4) is an exploratory analysis of a single off-site fan group, which produced an applicable fit to the Attachment to Brand Community (ABC) framework revealing consumer brand loyalty group structure towards practical marketing implications.
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    Testing group-level differences in political decision-making.
    (2009-11) Griffin, Dana Raye Buckley
    A sizeable body of work in political science implies that elected officials differ from citizens in how they think, reason, and react to politics. Some suggest that indirect democracy provides an efficient and adequate representation of the public's interests, while others advocate a more deliberative democracy with direct public involvement in governance and decision-making. Amidst the clamor of this debate, these competing viewpoints have overlooked a simple but fundamental question: how different are elected officials from everyday citizens, really? Via an information board experiment of ninety elected officials and one hundred seventy-nine everyday citizens in two states, I examined how individuals use information to make political choices. In the study, participants were asked to solve two hypothetical public policy problems. I equalized the amount and content of information available to them, and tracked how individuals used information before selecting one of three policy options to solve the policy problems. I found that while elected officials differ from everyday citizens on several demographic factors (on average, elected officials tend to be significantly more educated, more knowledgeable about politics, more politically involved, and wealthier than everyday citizens), these groups do not differ significantly in how they use information to make political choices. By way of the volume of information sought, their tendency to compare alternatives, and decision-making speed, elected officials and everyday citizens in the study were far more similar than different. These findings held across both decision-making problems and under a variety of experimental contexts. The findings of this study suggest that the potential benefits and potential limitations of direct democracy are far less clear than previous research suggests.