Brock University Digital Repository
Brock University’s Digital Repository is an online archive showcasing and preserving the Brock community’s scholarly output as well as items from the Library’s Special Collections and Archives. Researchers can disseminate their work by depositing it in this Open Access repository, which provides free, immediate access to users while also allowing Brock scholars to track downloads and views of their scholarship.
For more information, see the repository's policies and procedures.
Share Your Work - Not sure where to start? Have Library Staff deposit your work on your behalf. Just fill in this form and we'll proceed on your behalf.
Self Submission - Deposit your paper or research material directly into the repository. Simply login with your Portal Information at this link and follow along.
Thesis Submission - If you need to submit your thesis to the repository to complete your graduation requirements you can do so here. Login with your Portal Information and fill in the form.
Researcher Profiles
Communities in Brock University Digital Repository
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Recently Added
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Off track or on point? Side comments in focus groups with teensSide comments and conversations in focus groups can pose challenges for facilitators. Rather than seeing side comments as problematic behavior or “failed” data, we argue that they can add to and deepen analyses. Drawing on focus group data with grade nine students from a study on early work, in this methodological paper we discuss three patterns. First, side comments have highlighted where participants required clarification, and illustrated their views and questions about the research process. Second, side comments added new data to our analysis, including personal reflections, connections to others’ comments, and information about participants’ uncertainties about the research topics. Third, these comments offered insight into peer relations and dynamics, including participants’ reflections on age, and how they deployed gender relations in their discussions. Provided that their use fits within established ethical protocols, we argue that there is a place for attention to side comments, especially in focus group research with young people where adult-teen hierarchies and peer dynamics might lead young people to engage more with peers than directly respond to researchers’ questions.
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Beyond plagiarism: ChatGPT and the future of AINetworking Event by Graduate students at the CSSHE conference at York University, ON, Canada (May 30, 2023)
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Prediction of Critical Medical Resources for Combatting Future PandemicsThe COVID-19 pandemic wrecked an avalanche of resource management disaster on many countries. Preventable deaths occurred due to lack of resources, especially ventilators. One major unforgettable lesson we can learn from the COVID-19 disaster is that proactive planning of ventilators can save a huge number of lives globally in future pandemics. In this study, we aim to address this need by developing a predictive model for ventilators. Using open-source data from ‘Our World in Data’, we employ an ensemble of existing time series analysis techniques and missing data handling strategies to predict ventilators at a population level. A full-scale application of the proposed modelling framework was demonstrated for India, Nigeria, Uruguay and Poland as representative cases of different scenarios. Furthermore, as part of the robustness checks, we test the model’s performance for periods of increased severity (e.g., increased death rate) and reproduction rate during a pandemic with USA, UK, Germany and France as sample cases. We consider the population-based model and implications of the prediction results for a possible extension to ventilator associated other critical medical resources in an ICU unit. This thesis contributes to the existing body of knowledge and methods for predicting ventilators and other critical medical resources that are mostly addressed at local settings. More importantly, the proposed framework can be used to predict resources for COVID-19 like pandemics for any global population level where ICU patients data is scant. In addition to the methodological contribution, this thesis demonstrates the role of evidence-based decision-making in healthcare disaster preparedness and recovery plan.
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Power research in adaptive water governance and beyond: a reviewPower dynamics are widely recognized as key contributors to poor outcomes of environmental governance broadly and specifically for adaptive water governance. Water governance processes are shifting, with increased emphasis on collaboration and learning. Understanding how power dynamics impact these processes in adaptive governance is hence critical to improve governance outcomes. Power dynamics in the context of adaptive water governance are complex and highly variable and so are power theories that offer potential explanations for poor governance outcomes. This study aimed to build an understanding of the use of power theory in water and environmental governance and establish a foundation for future research by identifying power foci and variables that are used by researchers in this regard. We conducted a systematic literature review using the Web of Science Core Collection and the ProQuest Political Science databases to understand how power is studied (foci, variables of interest, and methods) and which theories are being applied in the water governance field and in the environmental governance field more broadly. The resulting review can serve as a practical reference for (adaptive) water governance inquiries that seek to study power in depth or intend to integrate power considerations into their research. The identified power variables add to a much needed groundwork for research that investigates the role of power dynamics in collaboration and learning processes. Furthermore, they offer a substantive base for empirical research on power dynamics in adaptive water governance.