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  Audiologic Rehabilitation Needs of Adults with Hearing Loss

  Robbins, Chloe (The University of Arizona., 2018)

  The Living Well with Hearing Loss Audiologic Rehabilitation Program for Adults at the University of Arizona has been in existence since 2010. Over 600 adults with hearing loss and their frequent communication partners have participated in the group audiologic rehabilitation (AR) program at various stages of their journey as a person with hearing loss. This study aims to identify barriers to participation in group AR for University of Arizona Hearing Clinic patients through in-person interview. Patients who receive hearing healthcare services at the UA Hearing Clinic are classified into one of the following billing groups: Medicare, Vocational Rehabilitation (VR), Self-Pay, EPIC provider group, and Sertoma Arizona Hearing Aid Bank (HAB). A purposeful oversampling of HAB patients was performed due to an observed low attendance rate for group AR for this population. Audio-recorded interviews were conducted prospectively with a sample of 30 hearing aid patients between May-October 2016. Content analysis methods were used to gain insight into perspectives of those with hearing loss. Interview response data were coded using the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation and Behavior (COM-B) model (Michie, Atkins, & West, 2014). Results provide insight into current barriers to participation in group AR and specific modifications that may make the program more accessible for adults with hearing loss and their families in Southern Arizona.
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  The Well of the Past: How Experience with Problems While Using Prior Technologies Affects the Adoption of New Technologies

  Paik, Eugene Taeha (The University of Arizona., 2018)

  This dissertation questions how organizations’ experience with problems while using prior technologies affects the adoption of new technologies. It develops and tests a model of technology adoption that takes into account three factors – characteristics of organizations, technologies, and the environment. Drawing on organizational learning theory, this dissertation makes four general predictions. First, focal organizations’ direct experience with problems while using prior technologies increases the likelihood of adopting new technologies. Second, focal organizations’ indirect experience with problems through their production network partners increases their likelihood of adopting new technologies and strengthens the relationship between direct experience and technology adoption. Third, the relationship between learning from direct and indirect experiences and technology adoption is stronger for a new technology developed inside the industry than for that developed outside the industry. Lastly, organizations’ social relationships with production network partners, which are influenced by both types of learning, affect the likelihood of adopting new technologies. I test these predictions in the context of the music recording industry, using a longitudinal dataset of records released in the U.S. music recording industry between 1962 and 2005. Five on-line metadata servers provide detailed information on records, record labels, artists, and other participants in record production. I discuss the implications of my findings for organizational learning theory, social network perspective, and the literature on technological change.
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  Employing the Acoustic Change Complex for Vowel Discrimination

  Cheek, Diane Elizabeth (The University of Arizona., 2018)

  A change occurring within an acoustic stream evokes the cortical potential known as the acoustic change complex (ACC). The present study addressed the effects of level and vowel contrast type on ACC amplitudes and latencies. Nineteen normally hearing adults were tested with vowel tokens, /a/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, of 500 ms duration presented at 2/s, in an oddball paradigm at 40 and 70 dBA in the sound field. The ACC was present for all vowel contrasts. The ACC for vowel contrasts are robust even at low levels (40 dBA), i.e., 25-30 dB HL, as evidenced by the high prevalence of responses in the contrast (vowel change) conditions that were significantly greater in amplitude than in the control (no vowel change) conditions. ACC absolute amplitudes were significantly larger at 70 dBA and amplitudes for control conditions were 4-6 times smaller than contrast conditions, but latencies were not sensitive to level or vowel type. ACC amplitude ratios were then calculated as: amplitude of contrast responses ÷ amplitude of control responses. The ACC amplitude ratios varied with vowel pair and by level. The distribution of amplitude ratios obtained indicated that over 90% of ratios are greater than 1.0, and over 84% are greater than 2.0, suggesting that this metric is a sensitive measure of cortical speech feature discrimination. These data set a baseline for a larger study of the ACC in infants, children, and adults with hearing loss.
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  Exploration of Preconception Education Using Social Media

  Luckart, Julie Kathleen (The University of Arizona., 2018)

  Women that experience unintended pregnancies have significantly poorer maternal, neonatal and fetal outcomes. Nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended, underscoring the need to find more effective strategies to educate women about preconception care. The body of evidence for using social media to disseminate and gain health information is rapidly growing, as one in four Americans now uses social media to seek health information. This pilot project is constructed around the elements of preconception care, the internet, and social media and is designed to explore if and how young women in Clark County, Washington, are using social media to gain knowledge about preconception care. Qualitative description was the design for this study. Twelve non-pregnant, English speaking female residents of Clark County, between the ages of 18 to 24, were recruited via Facebook and snowballing, and took an online survey, using Qualtrics. Results revealed that to learn about health care topics, 75% of respondents use the Internet, 58% use their healthcare provider, and 25% use social media, but to get information that they trust, 58% prefer a health database and 42% prefer a healthcare provider. Respondents also indicated that 81% were not taking folic acid supplementation and 78% were overweight or obese. It appears that the Internet and apps are used and trusted more than social media, and online platforms are preferred for receiving health information. Respondents expressed a high level of trust in health care providers, but used online platforms first to save time, prepare for appointments, and compare information to achieve consensus. Recommendations include collaborative educational interventions with the March of Dimes, the public health department, and local health care delivery entities to share how to protect online privacy, where to look for credible information online, designing an online intervention to promote folic acid supplementation, and suggestions for further research.
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  On Congruence Modules Related To Hilbert Eisenstein Series

  Shih, Sheng-Chi (The University of Arizona., 2018)

  We generalize the work of Ohta on the congruence modules attached to elliptic Eisenstein series to the setting of Hilbert modular forms. Our work involves three parts. In the rst part, we construct Eisenstein series adelically and compute their constant terms by computing local integrals. In the second part, we prove a control theorem for one-variable ordinary \Lambda-adic modular forms following Hida's work on the space of multivariable ordinary \Lambda-adic cusp forms. In part three, we compute congruence modules related to Hilbert Eisenstein series through an analog of Ohta's methods.

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