Digital Commons Network^™

Cooperation, Competition And The Development Of Institutional Capacity: Civil Rights And Public Transportation In Southern Nevada, Bruce Erwin Turner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the implementation of social goals through government action and the context and relations of agencies charged with demonstrating and enforcing equality in transit. Specifically, I explain complexities involved in the top-down federal mandate to demonstrate equal transit service for minority communities and low income residents. Institutional entrepreneurship by local government agencies influenced the legislation and regulation that they were charged to enforce. The local Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), created to enable a local voice in major capital road projects, acquired new institutional capabilities as federal agencies tasked them with implementing new social goals. Engineers and planners, initially …

Identity And Intersectionality For Big City Mayors: A Phenomenological Analysis Of Black Women, Constance J. Brooks

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The role of a mayor is integral within local governance. Their leadership and influence directly effectuates outcomes for the cities over which they preside. For big city mayors, their impact extends beyond local government and into the national policy arena. The way an individual demonstrates the role of mayor can be influenced by his/her perception of their own identity. However, within the realm of academic research dedicated to mayoral leadership and African Americans in politics, Black female mayors have largely been ignored. In particular, there are no known attempts at investigating the intersection of race and gender in understanding Black …

Catastrophes And The Role Of Social Networks In Recovery: A Case Study Of St. Bernard Parish, La, Residents After Hurricane Katrina, Carrie E. Lasley

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the experiences of St. Bernard Parish, La., residents as they coped with the impact of the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. An estimated 50,000 St. Bernard Parish residents relocated to a new home one year after Katina in 2006, and many of those residents moved again. This study examines the effects of the decisions of St. Bernard residents to relocate or to return on their social connections. The utility, adaptability and durability of social networks of these residents will be explored to enrich our knowledge about the social effects …

Understanding The Dimensions Of Trust In Public Relations And Their Measurements, Joosuk Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Trust judgment of an organization’s publics validates the existence of an organization as well as being one of the most powerful moderators of public relations effectiveness. The ideas of trust as one of the key dimensions to explain relational status between an organization and its key publics has been around more than a decade. Over the last two decades, the idea of trust in fact has been showing rising prominence across many diversified studies of relationship and relationship management. In relationship management, one of the important goals of public relations is to build mutually beneficial relationships among organizations and their …

What Incarcerated Women At The Women’S Center Say They Need From The Criminal Justice System, Jillian Foley

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to give a voice to Maine’s incarcerated women and potentially influence the ongoing policy revision process in Maine. The researcher conducted 3 focus groups with 18 residents of the Women’s Center- a gender-responsive facility that houses about 70 to 80 incarcerated women at the Maine Correctional Facility in Windham, ME. The perspectives of the participants varied, however, the findings of the study were largely in line with the literature guidelines for gender-responsive policies and practices.

Influences Of Health Insurance And Primary Care On Breast And Cervical Cancer Screening Among Black Women In Boston, Gail Barlow Gall

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Healthy People 2010 promoted breast and cervical cancer screening to reduce cancer among all women and reduce disparities in cancer deaths between Black and White women. The REACH 2010 program targeted improving screening rates among Black women and funded a demonstration project to provide outreach, screening, patient navigation and case management for Black women in Boston. The purpose of this study was to describe associations between health insurance and primary care (having a primary care provider [PCP], quality of communications and relationship with PCP) on differences in breast and cervical cancer screening reported by Black women born in the United …

State Juvenile Justice Spending Decisions: The Effects Of Federal Aid, Race, Politics, And Other Socioeconomic Factors, Willie B. Coleman Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Historically, juvenile justice in the United States has been the responsibility of state governments with limited federal support. There is a notable gap in the empirical literature on factors that affect funding policies for state juvenile justice programs. In this dissertation research, I used two theoretical perspectives to examine determinants of juvenile justice spending: economic theory on intergovernmental aid and tenets of the Politics of Social Order Framework, developed by Stucky, Heimer, and Lang (2007) to investigate corrections spending. Two research questions were considered: 1) What impact does federal aid have on state spending on juvenile justice programs? and 2) …

Retrospective Evaluation Of Oral Health Services For Underserved Children In Clark County, Nevada, Earl Taylor Spader

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Disparities in utilization of oral health services have been shown to exist through epidemiological investigations and data analysis. Specifically, disparities exist for utilization of preventative dental care (PDC) and unmet dental need (UDN). The disparities in utilization of PDC and UDN are associated with demographic and insurance variables.

To address the oral health disparities, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas-School of Dental Medicine (UNLV-SDM) was created to improve the health of the citizens of Nevada through innovative programs of oral healthcare services to the community. More recently, UNLV-SDM opened a pediatric dental residency training program to provide care directly to …

Creating A Benefit Index For Targeting Investment In Pedestrian Connectivity Improvements East Bayside Neighborhood: Portland, Me, Damon Yakovleff

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

This project demonstrates how a GIS-based analysis of pedestrian accessibility to selected amenities from locations in and around the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland, Maine can help identify and guide decisions about public investment in improving such access. Two street network configurations are analyzed: the current (2011) condition, and a hypothetical configuration including several connectivity improvements currently under discussion or in the process of construction. The GIS tools are used to calculate the network distances between the centroid of the area’s census blocks and two amenities: the nearest full-service grocery store, and an outdoor fitness station available to the public. …

Acts Of Defiance : Local Policy Innovation And Diffusion In Same-Sex Marriage, Karyn Teressa Andrade

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Like many other controversial social issues, same-sex marriage has followed the ebb and flow of the political stream for almost 30 years in the United States. What pulled this policy issue out of the policy stream and placed it front and center in the public's mind were the actions of a handful of local officials who, in the winter of 2004, acted against the status quo and instituted public policies in favor of same-sex marriage. This research provides a case study analysis of the six localities whose officials acted in defiance of law and social custom, and began issuing marriage …

The Development And Regulation Of Civil Society : Perspectives From The Andes, Susan Marie Appe

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is an empirical analysis of a government policy tool--registry of civil society organizations--targeted toward civil society, how civil society and nonprofit organizations respond to the policy tool, and how it influences the development of civil society. The theoretical framework is based on concepts from literature on mapping civil society, policy studies, nonprofit studies, and development studies. The analysis is based on data collected through administrative and legislative documents and 82 interviews with nonprofit leaders in Ecuador and Colombia, South America.

Essays On The Effects Of Public Policies On Emergency Department Use In Us, Niyousha Hosseinichimeh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Continuous growth of Emergency Department (ED) visits in the US has raised many concerns. Several studies have been devoted to determine the causes of ED use growth but few of them have examined impacts of public policies on ED visits. This dissertation includes three essays that investigate causes of increase in ED visits and examine the effect of some public policies on ED use. Specifically, essay 1 investigates the effect on ED use of the Massachusetts Healthcare Reform. Essay 2 examines the association of ED visits in a state with the share of the population with different types of insurance …

Can Representativeness Decrease Youth Violence In Juvenile Detention Facilities?, Ginger Silvera

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Using the theory on Representative Bureaucracy, this study considers the minority representative role, which suggests that administrators who are minorities are more inclined to represent minority interests. This study examined whether officers perceive themselves as advocates based on shared demographics and whether they develop attitudes toward reducing youth violence. Considerably more researchers conduct studies in adult prisons than juvenile correctional facilities, which focus on rehabilitation for youth. Therefore, this study further examines youth correctional staff attitudes toward inmates. The way correctional officers' treat minors may impact the amount of violence in juvenile detention facilities.

The purposes of the study are …

An Analysis Of Regularizations Of Undocumented Residents In Spain And The Underground Economy: Insight For United States Policy Makers, Jon R. Davis

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

There were an estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the United States in 2010. The issue of undocumented migration and how it should be addressed is a contentious topic in the United States. However, the discussions about how to address illegal migration into the United States rarely include any comparisons to other measures that have been taken in other countries. There are many countries, such as Spain, that have large undocumented resident populations.

This analysis looks at policies that have been enacted in Spain since 1985 to enable undocumented residents to receive legal resident status, referred to as regularizations and …

The Relationship Between The Social Construction Of Race And The Black/White Test Score Gap In, Toriano M. Dempsey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This research is an investigation into the relationship between the resegregation of American

public schools and the social creation of race. This research is based on the popular notion that

American public schools are failing to produce students capable of competing in today's global society.

The proof most often used to assert the failure of American public schools is the Black/White Test Score

Gap. For the purposes of this research the Black/White Test Score Gap is defined as the gap between

the scores on academic standardized tests between Black public school students and White public school

students regardless of …

Building On The Strengths Of Indigenous Knowledge To Promote Sustainable Development In Crisis Conditions From The Community Level: The Case Of Palestine, Jehad Yousif Alayasa

Dissertations and Theses

This study began focused on the use of traditional knowledge in promoting sustainable development in crisis conditions. Presented the question: How have successful community-level sustainable development efforts undertaken under crisis conditions drawn upon indigenous knowledge to achieve positive outcomes? The study is a cross case analysis. The three cases addressed in this study have explained some of the ways that indigenous knowledge has played significant positive roles in promoting sustainable development for communities living under crisis conditions in Palestine. Indigenous knowledge community based patterns indicated significant focus on strengths of local culture, social cohesion, the integration process, and special advantages …