Graduate Theses

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    The Intergenerational Impacts of Military Service-Related Moral Injury
    (Mount Saint Vincent University, 2025-07) Reeves, Kathryn
    Moral injury, defined as the psychosocial and spiritual distress resulting from actions or events that transgress deeply held moral beliefs, is increasingly recognized as a risk of employment within the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). While much of the existing literature focuses on the internal experiences of morally injured service members and Veterans, there remains a critical gap in understanding the intergenerational experiences of moral injury in families, particularly children raised in military families. This study explores the retrospective experiences of adult children of CAF Veterans who participants perceived to have incurred a military service-related moral injury. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach within interpretive and critical paradigms, this research centers the lived experiences of 11 adult participants through semi-structured interviews. Framed by the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response (FAAR) model, a military-sensitive life course perspective, and a critical ecological lens, the findings reveal the long-term emotional, relational, and identity-based consequences of a parent’s moral injury, as well as adaptive strategies developed in response to moral injury-related family dynamics. The study highlights the need for inclusive policies and support systems that acknowledge moral injury as a family experience. Recommendations are offered for research, policy, and practice aimed at improving the health and well-being of military-connected families.
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    Looking For Group: Exploring How Youth Build Peer Relationships in Online Gaming Communities
    (Mount Saint Vincent University, 2025-09) Gulley, Gabriel
    This research will lay the foundation for future research to help understand how youth form peer relationships in various online gaming communities. This research was conducted by completing a thematic content analysis of five YouTube videos from five different online gaming communities, aiming to identify any activities or experiences are important for meeting and making friends in online gaming spaces. This research found that there are several thematic activities or experiences that are important when meeting new people in their respective online gaming spaces. These included what a player should and should not do to form and keep peer relationships with others met online as well as potential experiences that should be had to help them grow. These experiences and activities fall under several different themes. A few of these themes are “Be Kind”, “Share”, “Be Social/Participate”, as well as several others. This research finds that there are overarching themes for youth making friends in online gaming communities from the videos analyzed. While many of the themes identified do cross the gaming communities studied in this thesis, much more research needs to be done before any definitive patterns or differences can be confirmed for online gaming communities as a whole.
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    Queer Youth in Halifax, Canada: Exploring the Connections Between Dress, Agency and Self-perception
    (Mount Saint Vincent University, 2025-09) Gopakumar, Bharghavi
    Dress has long served as a visual representation of an individual’s identity (Davis, 1992). Dress is defined as the supplements and modifications that are added to the body (Roach-Higgins and Eicher, 1992) and can be distinguished from clothing as it embraces a much wider range of items, including cosmetic use, perfume use, tattoos and body paint (Eicher & Evenson, 2015). Dress is a tool that is used for more than a utilitarian purpose, it is a visual language which conveys areas of an individual’s identity, resistance and belonging (Roach- Higgins and Eicher, 1985). How a person dresses conveys their cultural background, values and socio-economic class which in turn affects our self-perception and social dynamics (Kwon, 1994). Dress is also a form of art, mostly visual art, although it is not exclusive to it. A founding figure in fashion theory, Roland Barthes (1977) argues that dress is “in the fullest sense, a ‘social model’, a more or less standardized picture of expected collective behaviour; and it is essentially at this level that it has meaning” (pg 13). Additionally, Barthes (1990) expressed in his work that clothing must be considered “above all, as an object of appearance” and emphasizes that dress is fundamentally a social phenomenon (Barthes 1990 p. 245, emphasis original in 1967).
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    Exploring the Use of Behavioural and Environmental Domain Nutrition Care Process Terminology by Registered Dietitians Working in Nephrology
    (Mount Saint Vincent University, 2025-09) Gosine, Laura
    Millions of Canadians are living with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Dietetic intervention is integral in preventing and treating CKD. The nutrition care process (NCP), and its associated terminology (NCPT), is a tool used to communicate identified barriers to accessing food and gaps in nutrition knowledge. Registered dietitians (RDs) often use NCPT when charting in the ADIME (Assessment/Diagnosis/Intervention/Monitoring/Evaluation) format. There are four domains of diagnostic terminology: 1) clinical, 2) intake, 3) behavioural/environmental, and 4) no nutrition diagnosis domains.
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    Exploring the Communication Process Model
    (Mount Saint Vincent University, 2025-08) Omojuwa, Boluwatife Andrew
    In this thesis I conduct a systematic content analysis to assess the communication process model portrayal and presentation in undergraduate business textbooks over time. To accomplish this, I analyze 32 undergraduate textbooks published between 2000 and 2025 that feature the communication process model. The goal of the research is to: (1) identify communication theories inserted in undergraduate student business textbooks; (2) observe the evolution of the communication process model in text; and (3) determine the manner and extent of which the communication process model is modified or simplified in business undergraduate student textbooks. The findings reveal a widespread reliance on the Shannon-Weaver model, often presented as a simple sender-receiver communication flow, with limited or no representation of noise (either visually or textually). Where noise is addressed, it is often substituted with vague terms like ‘interference.’ These findings show the oversimplification of the communication model for learners and the need for an up-to-date consistent model in pedagogical materials in business communication.