Digital Commons Network^™

An Examination Of Relations Among Fear, Guilt, Self-Compassion, And Multicultural Attitudes In White Adults, Whitney W. Black

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Structural racism is often perpetuated by well-intentioned White individuals who passively accept or are unaware of its existence. However, when their perceptions and understanding of the world are challenged through learning about structural racism, White people may experience emotions such as fear, and guilt, which seem to serve either a debilitating or a motivating role in multicultural attitude development. Self-compassion, which is the ability to process distressing emotions without resorting to avoidance of the emotional experience, may help White individuals work through strong negative affect that accompanies an awareness of structural racism and ultimately aid in the development of multicultural …

Gender, Sexuality, And Categories Of Risk: Physician Views Of Cervical Cancer In Bangalore, India, Emily G. Capilouto

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

India has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer morbidity and mortality globally. Despite this, there are no national or state-wide screening efforts for cervical cancer and its prevention in India. In an effort to understand the magnitude of cervical cancer in Bangalore, India, this research draws upon data collected in hospital contexts over a month-long period to explore the ways in which physician attitudes contribute to understandings of cervical cancer and its prevention in the growing urban context of Bangalore.

Unending Mazes: Gendered Inequalities, Drug Use, And State Interventions In Rural Appalachia, Lesly-Marie Buer

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Prescription opioids are associated with rising rates of overdose deaths and hepatitis C and HIV infection in the US, including in rural Central Appalachia. Yet there is a dearth of published ethnographic research examining rural opioid use. The aim of this dissertation is to document the gendered inequalities that situate women’s encounters with substance abuse treatment as well as additional state interventions targeted at women who use drugs. These results are based on ethnographic fieldwork completed from 2013 to 2016 and centered around one county seat in rural Central Appalachia. Data are ascertained through semi-structured interviews with women who have …

Stories Of Strength: Chicago Latin@S' Navigation Of Health, Well-Being, And Chronic Disease, Lilian L. Milanés

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Health inequalities take many forms related to race, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnic, language and many other axes throughout communities around the world. Type two diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are examples of conditions (among many others) that disproportionately affect Latino@s in the U.S.. The research of this dissertation is based on fieldwork conducted throughout several predominantly Latin@ neighborhoods in Chicago, IL. This dissertation examines how Latin@s in Chicago navigate health and well-being, and how they engage in agentive strategies in the face of chronic disease. I recorded individual life histories and semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation …

Precarity In Paradise: Tourism, Migration, And The Broader Causes Of Instability In Roatán, Honduras, Heather Jan Sawyer

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Since the 1990s, the population on the Honduran island of Roatán has grown from around 20,000 (mostly English-speaking Islanders) to roughly 100,000 residents (at least half of which are native Spanish-speaking Ladinos from the Honduran mainland) (Bay Islands Voice 2014b). This population growth has occurred alongside increasing forms of economic and environmental precarity that have fueled widespread instability on the island. While ethnic tensions between Ladinos and Islanders have existed since colonial times, conflict between the groups reached a crescendo in 2014 after the murder of a cruise ship employee in Roatán by a Ladino migrant. This sparked a …

Late Pleistocene Adaptations In The Midsouth: The Paleoindian Occupation Of The Carson-Conn-Short Site And The Lower Tennessee River Valley, James Scott Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

The Midsouth has long been known to be a locus of Paleoindian (13,200-10,000 yrs B.P.) populations. Paleoindian populations have generally been characterized as highly mobile hunter-gatherers with egalitarian social structure. Utilizing the theoretical lens of diversification and intensification of resource use, the Late Pleistocene adaptations of the region’s populations are examined from both a large scale or coarse grain perspective as well as more fine grain data from the site level. Previous models of Paleoindian adaptations are defined and tested in this study to determine the applicability of these models with new data. Coarse grain data are derived from lithic …

“We’Re Being Left To Blight”: Green Urban Development And Racialized Space In Kansas City, Chhaya Kolavalli

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

In this dissertation, I explore ‘green’ urban development and urban agriculture projects from the perspective of residents of an African American majority neighborhood in Kansas City—who reside in an area referred to as a ‘blighted food desert’ by local policy makers. In Kansas City, extensive city government support exists for urban agricultural projects, which are touted not just as a solution to poverty associated issues such food insecurity and obesity, but also as a remedy for ‘blight,’ violence and crime, and vacant urban land. Specific narratives of Kansas City’s past are used to prop up and legitimate these future visions …

Music Training As A Neuro-Cognitive Protector For Brain Aging: Cognitive And Neuropsychological Profiles In Professional Musicians, Catherine E. Schneider

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

The proportion of older adults living with cognitive impairments is increasing rapidly. This shift will likely increase mortality rates, reduce perceived quality of life, and cause economic burden to patients and health care systems. Currently evidence of highly effective and noninvasive interventions that prevent or slow the onset of cognitive impairment are limited. This study aims to better understand what drives cognitive aging variability among musicians versus non-musicians. Music playing has been shown to improve brain and cognitive functions by engaging networks of brain areas, simultaneously involving cortical mechanisms associated with executive, high-level cognitive and motor functions, and multiple sensory …

Comparing Two-Year Colleges Under A Common Sustainable Development Framework: Personal Egocentric Networks And Perspectives, Bobby Ann Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The study purpose is to advance implementation of sustainable development at colleges, and to contribute to organizational change research using social network analysis. The researcher conducted document analysis using 2012-2016 sustainability reports of 16 purposefully selected two-year colleges under a common framework. Interpreting and coding resulted in ranking sustainable development activities as well as grouping colleges using cluster analysis. A survey and interviews were employed by the researcher to determine major themes as challenges to sustainability implementation, and personal network themes using social network analysis measures and sociograms. Challenges to sustainability implementation identified as study themes were: (1) college leadership …

Growing Economic Possibility In Appalachia: Stories Of Relocalization And Representation On Stinking Creek, Kathryn Engle

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

This project explores the agricultural heritage and current social landscape of the Stinking Creek community of Knox County, Kentucky, and the legacy of the local nonprofit organization the Lend-A-Hand Center. Through participatory research, this project presents a reflexive account of the Lend-A-Hand Center Grow Appalachia Gardening Program examining the diverse economy of the Stinking Creek watershed and possibilities for new economic imaginings and post-coal futures for central Appalachia. This dissertation includes an oral history project, a theoretical examination, and an ethnographic reflection, bridging several literatures in the fields of agricultural history, Appalachian Studies, Participatory Action Research, research within the diverse …

Empowering Hidden Voices: A Photo Narration Of Community Food Needs By Two Cross-Town Middle Schools In Kentucky, Tori E. Summey

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Children are among those most directly affected by food insecurity, a condition in which households lack access to adequate food because of money or other resources (Gundersen & Ziliak, 2015). According to the latest United States Department of Agriculture (2016) reporting, 1 in 5 children experiences hunger on a daily basis. That ratio increases for African American and Latino children whom experience 1 in 3 ratios. While many programs exist to address this growing problem among youth and impoverished families, the efficacy of those programs is yet to be determined and the problem of hunger in America persists. This qualitative …

“Beyond Sisterhood There Is Still Racism, Colonialism And Imperialism!” Negotiating Gender, Ethnicity And Power In Madagascar Mangrove Conservation, Manon Lefèvre

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Understanding women’s experiences of mangrove forest conservation in the Global South is important because mangrove forests are a crucial defense against climate change, and are also increasingly the targets of global climate change policies. The intervention of postcolonial feminist theory combined with feminist political ecology has the potential to bring forward women’s seldom-heard experiences of climate change in these valuable ecosystems. This work supports previous feminist political ecology scholarship focused on understanding women’s complicated relationships to the environment and the gendered effects of climate change policies, while challenging dominant conservation discourse around women as a monolithic group. This thesis focuses …

Three Essays On Public Finance And Public Policy: Financial Disclosure And Policy Reinvention In U.S. State And Local Governments, Jinhai Yu

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay, or Chapter 2, advances the literature by examining the conditional effects of lobbying on the relationship between policy learning and policy reinvention. Scholars have consistently shown that learning of successful policies in other states leads to higher likelihood of policy adoption. This essay extends this finding two ways. First, policy learning can also lead to more comprehensive adoption of successful policies. Second, the effect of policy learning on policy comprehensiveness is conditional on lobbying by interest groups, an alternative source of information about policy success. To test these hypotheses, I conduct …

Three Essays On College Earnings Premium And China’S Higher Education Expansion, Chenxu Hu

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

My dissertation consists of three essays that study the college premium in China and how it has been affected by China’s higher education expansion.

In the first essay, I utilize the high education expansion as exogenous source to estimate the college premium. The rapidly changing access to college provides a rare opportunity to estimate a local treatment effect (LATE) of college education on earnings by utilizing the drastic increase in college admission rate in 1999. I also utilize the yearly admission rate as an instrumental variable for the endogenous college education. Using China Household Income Project 2013, the two IV …

Three Essays On Credit Markets And The Macroeconomy, Timothy P. Bianco

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Historically, credit market conditions have been shown to impact economic activity, at times severely. For instance, in the late 2000s, the United States experienced a financial crisis that seized domestic and foreign credit markets. The ensuing lack of access to credit brought about a steep decline in output and a sluggish recovery. Accordingly, policymakers commonly take steps to mitigate the effects of adverse credit market conditions and, at times, conduct unconventional monetary policy once traditional policy tools become ineffective. This dissertation is a collection of essays regarding monetary policy, the flow of credit, financial crises, and the macroeconomy. Specifically, I …

Evaluating The Relationship Between Phq9 And Global Pain Scale (Gps) Scores In Opioid Dependent Adults: A Retrospective Correlational Study, Lori Nolan

DNP Projects

Background: Depression, chronic pain and opioid dependence are conditions commonly encountered in primary care settings. These comorbidities create treatment challenges while negatively influencing outcomes of care. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9) and Global Pain Scale (GPS) are valid screening tools used to score depression and pain symptoms. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the PHQ9 and Global Pain Scale (GPS) scores in opioid dependent adults with chronic pain to determine whether both tools are necessary.

Methods: This was a descriptive study using a retrospective correlational research design. Data was obtained from the electronic medical records …

Collaborative Organizational Structures Among Artist Member And Other Related Organizations, Kelsey Shackelford

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Kentucky has a rich cultural and artistic tapestry that is part of the economic future of the state. An important consideration of this future is the artist-member organizations that serve Kentucky creatives and how they work together collaboratively, both internally and externally. The objective of this study was to see how ten different organizations viewed themselves and interacted with their communities in the way in which they are structure, or lack a definite structure as is the case with several different groups. Through web analysis and a series of interviews with organizations that provide benefits to Kentucky artists, we learn …

Three Essays On Local Public Finance, Thomas Daniel Woodbury

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation seeks to develop the subject of local public finance in a manner consistent with the political economy of local governments. For ease of description, each essay will be discussed briefly.

The first essay is titled "The Provision of Generalized Local Public Goods Financed by Distortionary Taxation." This essay models the provision of a local public good that is simultaneously utilized as a public consumption good and a public intermediate good. Since the public good can simultaneously enter both utility and production functions, it is considered a "generalized public good." This is done to model the provision of infrastructure …

Medium To Long Term Impacts On Former Participants Of The Shoulder To Shoulder Global Brigades To Ecuador, Craig Borie

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

Medium to Long Term Impacts on Former Participants of the Shoulder to Shoulder Global Brigades to Ecuador. International service learning and voluntourism programs in global health evoke benefits for both community and the intervener. While it is clear that the Shoulder to Shoulder Global program at the University of Kentucky provides a service to an economically resource poor community in Santo Domingo, Ecuador, what is unclear is the impact these interprofessional experiences have on the participants that travel with the four times a year health brigades. This study proposes to answer the question of what are the educational, personal and …

Essays On The Role Of Government Regulation And Policy In Health Care Markets, Grayson L. Forlines

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Understanding how health care markets function is important not only because competition has a direct influence on the price and utilization of health care services, but also because the proper functioning, or lack thereof, of health care markets has a very real impact on patients who depend on health care markets and providers for their personal well-being. In this dissertation, I examine the role of government policies and regulation in health care markets, with a focus on the response of health care providers. In Chapter 1, I analyze the impact of Medicare payment rules on hospital ownership of physician practices. …

Diabetes-Related Distress Screening: A Survey Of Primary Care Providers' Knowledge, Attitudes, And Practices In Treating Patients With Difficulty Meeting Glycemic Goals., Michele Patrice Paxton

DNP Projects

A patient with diabetes is two to three times more likely to be depressed than the general population. Furthermore, the combination of diabetes and depression is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, research has shown that treatment for depression does not correlate with lower HbA1c levels or a decrease in morbidity and mortality. Recently, a body of evidence has shown that increased HbA1c levels and depression are associated with the emotional burden of managing diabetes. The emotional burden is caused by the constant behavioral and mental demands of managing the disease and the worry and fear of the impending …

A Comparative Study Of Aesthetic And Performance Properties Of Womens T-Shirts Made Of Lyocell, Organic Cotton, And Viscose From Bamboo, Katelyn Eubank

Theses and Dissertations--Retailing and Tourism Management

The purpose of this research was to evaluate and compare the performance, aesthetic and material properties of women’s t-shirts composed of three different sustainable fibers (lyocell, organic cotton, and viscose from bamboo) before and after repeated home laundering. A convenience sample was comprised of thirty-nine t-shirts. Thirteen black t-shirts from each fiber content were used for testing according to ASTM and AATCC standards. The evaluations and measurements were performed initially and after wash intervals one, five, ten, and twenty. The t-shirts were tested for fabric weight, fabric count, color fastness, smoothness appearance, pilling, dimensional stability and skewness.

“One More Way To Sell New Orleans”: Airbnb And The Commodification Of Authenticity Through Local Emotional Labor, Ian Spangler

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Since 2014, Airbnb has been the poster-child for an impassioned debate over how to best regulate short-term home rentals (STR’s) in New Orleans, Louisiana. As critical perspectives toward on-demand economic practice become increasingly common, it is important to understand how the impacts of STR platforms like Airbnb extend beyond the realm of what is traditionally conceptualized as the economic (i.e., pressure on housing markets). In this thesis, I explore the ways in which Airbnb recalibrates the spatial and temporal rhythms of everyday neighborhood life for people external to the formal trappings of an STR contract. Drawing in particular on theories …

Leveraging Overhead Imagery For Localization, Mapping, And Understanding, Scott Workman

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Ground-level and overhead images provide complementary viewpoints of the world. This thesis proposes methods which leverage dense overhead imagery, in addition to sparsely distributed ground-level imagery, to advance traditional computer vision problems, such as ground-level image localization and fine-grained urban mapping. Our work focuses on three primary research areas: learning a joint feature representation between ground-level and overhead imagery to enable direct comparison for the task of image geolocalization, incorporating unlabeled overhead images by inferring labels from nearby ground-level images to improve image-driven mapping, and fusing ground-level imagery with overhead imagery to enhance understanding. The ultimate contribution of this thesis …

Exploring Critical Consciousness, Facilitating Black Liberation, Della V. Mosley

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

The current study aimed to uncover processes and experiences that led individuals to critically engage in racial justice activism, specifically the Black Lives Matter movement. A constructivist grounded theory approach was utilized under critical-ideological and Black feminist paradigms in order to build a practical theory related to developing critical consciousness about oppression facing the Black community. Black activists in the movement between the ages of 23 and 60 (N=12) participated in intensive individual interviews. The result of the study is a co-constructed theory of racial justice activism development (the Critical Consciousness of Anti-Black Racism [CCABR] model) that can be used …

Risk And Protective Factors For Sexual Desire Among Women With Children And Their Romantic Partners, Christine E. Leistner

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Romantic couples with children struggle to balance the needs of their romantic relationships with the responsibilities of parenting and mothers report difficulty viewing themselves as sexual beings after having children. Understanding the risk and protective factors for sexual and relational outcomes for couples with children or those that may have children in the future may provide insight into the dynamics of these couples and the ways in which parents can preserve relational health over time. The current study utilized Basson’s Model of Sexual Response (2000) as a conceptual theoretical framework and the Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kenny et al., …

“Well, Don’T Walk Around Naked... Unless You’Re A Girl”: Gender, Sexuality, And Risk In Jamtronica Festival Subcultural Scenes, Kaitlyne A. Motl

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The purpose of this study was to explore emerging issues surrounding gendered fear, threat, and violence perpetration at music festivals – particularly events that feature a synthesis of jam band and electronic dance music acts – a genre termed jamtronica by its fans. Though gendered violence perpetration and prevention have been widely studied within other party-oriented settings (i.e., sexual violence perpetration on college campuses), very little research exists to address how wider disparities of gender and sexuality permeate a community whose members frequently claim the scene’s immunity from external inequalities.

In this three-year multi-sited ethnography, I incorporate participant observations, group …

#Hashtags: A Look At The Evaluative Roles Of Hashtags On Twitter, Leah Rose Schaede

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Social media has become a large part of today’s pop culture and keeping up with what is going on not only in our social circles, but around the world. It has given many a platform to unite their causes, build fandoms, and share their commentary with the world. A tool in helping group posts together or give commentary on a thought is the hashtag. In this paper I explore the evaluative roles of hashtags in social media discourse, specifically on Twitter. I use a sample of randomly selected tweets from the Twitter API stream I collected and compiled myself. I …

Identifying Perceived Risks To Environmental Pollutants And Needs For Risk Communication In A Rural Appalachian Community, Elizabeth H. Travis

Theses and Dissertations--Nutrition and Food Systems

The goal of this study is to determine issues rural Appalachian residents consider most important, their perceived environmental health risk, and how community engagement can potentially improve those issues. The University of Kentucky Superfund Research Center held the Appalachian Community Health and Well-being Forum at the Letcher County Cooperative Extension Office in Eastern Kentucky. A four-member panel consisted of two local health officials, a nutrition expert, and a federal scientist; answered questions from community members. The expert panel and audience members shared concerns, success stories, and highlighted efforts to promote health in the region. Community members completed a questionnaire collecting …

Attachment Styles And The Michelangelo Phenomenon: Role Of Individual Differences In Interpersonal Growth Striving, Laura Marika Patrick

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

Michelangelo Phenomenon provides an interpersonal model of goal pursuits and suggests that close partners sculpt one another and help them move toward their ideal selves. Attachment theory also provides a parallel explanation of how close others can help one another move toward their goals. The purpose of the current research was to look at the influence of attachment on the Michelangelo Phenomenon and test whether it best fit as a predictor, mediator, or moderator. The hypotheses were tested across three studies (two longitudinal and one cross-sectional) using a maximum likelihood estimation path analysis following APIM assumptions. The results provided strong …