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About MacSphere

MacSphere is McMaster University's Institutional Repository. MacSphere brings together the institution's scholarly works under one umbrella to preserve and provide ongoing open access to them. MacSphere works have been selected and deposited by members of the McMaster community as part of our collective committment to sharing our knowledge with the world.

MacSphere is supported and hosted by the McMaster University Libraries.

To contribute, sign on to MacSphere with your McMaster Account. If you have any questions, refer to the user guide or contact the MacSphere Support Team for assistance.

Students wishing to deposit their PhD or Masters thesis, please follow the instructions outlined by the School of Graduate Studies.

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Recent Submissions

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    Supporting the evaluation of patient engagement in health system organizations
    (2026) Dafel, Andrea; Abelson, Julia; Health Policy
    Patient engagement is increasingly recognized as an important aspect of patient-centred care. As patient engagement has evolved, a greater emphasis has been placed on evaluating these efforts. Evaluation is essential to understand what elements of engagement are effective, what isn’t working and areas for improvement. Despite the various evaluation tools available, there remains limited practical guidance to support health system organizations in carrying out evaluation efforts. This thesis aims to understand how health system organizations can be effectively supported in evaluating their patient engagement initiatives by 1) summarizing how health system organizations approach evaluation efforts, 2) identifying common challenges associated with evaluation and supports that help to foster evaluation efforts and 3) how to improve an evaluation tool to increase its usability to better support evaluation practices. These studies offer practical guidance to support health system organizations in their patient engagement evaluation efforts, including developing robust and comprehensive evaluation plans.
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    Findings of the 2025 McMaster Textbook Affordability Survey
    (2026-04) Bekele, Rebecca; Harding, Katie; Kehoe, Joanne
    Textbook prices have increased significantly over the past few decades at a rate that has been well above the rate of inflation. In addition to textbooks, other course materials such as online homework platforms and required software may also be unaffordable for students. Students often must make difficult decisions about whether to purchase course materials, and these decisions can have serious consequences for their learning and their grades. High course materials costs can lead to inequity in the classroom, with some students able to afford access to important learning resources and others going without. In Fall 2025, we surveyed undergraduate students from all faculties at McMaster to determine how much money McMaster students are spending on course materials, whether they are forgoing purchasing required textbooks and other required course materials, what they are doing instead, and how they are affected by high course material costs. This report documents our findings about the affordability of textbooks and other course materials based on the 2,757 responses received from undergraduate students at McMaster.
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    Anemia-Induced Bleeding Risk and Red Blood Cell Transfusion Strategies in Acute Leukemia
    (2026) Modi, Dimpy; Arnold, Donald; Health Sciences
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    Characterization of Lanthanide Loaded Polymeric Nanoparticles Using Time-Resolved Fret
    (2026) Ziyue (Joyce) Xie; Hildebrandt, Niko; Engineering Physics