Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Occupational Therapy Doctorate

Department

Brain Health

First Committee Member

Donnamarie Krause

Second Committee Member

Jefferson Kinney

Number of Pages

114

Abstract

Underrepresented students (URS) in graduate occupational therapy (OT) programs often struggle with a sense of not belonging due to a lack of representation in their cohort and curriculum. This has been evident among students who are from racial/ethnic backgrounds, first-generation college students (FGCS), and have had low-income experiences. Research has shown that a sense of belonging (SB) is important for URS' ability to cope with everyday stressors in higher education.This capstone project focused on developing a web-based resource addressing the perceived SB among URS in graduate OT programs. Data was collected from participants at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) to understand the effectiveness of the web resource and gather quality improvement using a 7-point Likert Scale. The study involved 22 participants who provided insights on the behaviors, perceptions, and knowledge of information identified from the web-based resource. The findings indicated that the web resource improved perceived SB among OT URS, helping with everyday stressors in their program.

Keywords

Belonging for occupational therapy students; First generation occupational therapy students; Fostering the OT; Low socioeconomic occupational therapy students; Underrepresented occupational therapy students; University of Nevada Las Vegas COTAD Chapter

Disciplines

Occupational Therapy

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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