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Course Syllabus: Ppol-G 631 Research Methods Ii, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

This is the second course of the research methods sequence that is required for students in the PhD program in Public Policy. This course will prepare students to produce professional-quality research, and will provide exposure to a variety of special topics in policy analysis. Students will design and implement a research project suitable for conference presentation that is relevant to their field of interest. The instructor, and guest lecturers as necessary, will provide lectures on topics necessary to develop well-rounded policy researchers, as well as special topics that are responsive to students’ particular needs. The primary goal of this course …

Course Syllabus: Ppol-G 741l Urban Housing Policy, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

This course will provide students with the ability to identify and analyze phenomena in cities and urbanized areas related to a socially fundamental need for adequate and affordable shelter that ensures individual well-being and social and community stability and sustainability. Students completing this course will understand the progress the United States, and other countries has made in ensuring decent and affordable housing for its population, as well as the considerable policy barriers that prevent many people enjoying the housing they desire and the individual and social benefits that arise from it.

Batch Uploading To Contentdm With The Help Of Ms Access, Joanne M. Riley

Joanne M. Riley

Microsoft Access is a great tool for minimizing headaches, streamlining data entry and ensuring quality control in preparing batch uploads for CONTENTdm collections. At UMass Boston, we store our descriptive metadata in MS Access tables by way of easy data entry forms. Then we use Access queries to automatically create all of the other necessary fields, to check for errors and, finally to generate a delimited text file that imports easily into the Project Client - almost always ;). This process has saved staff a great deal of time and effort and keeps their metadata safely backed up and available …

Celiac Is A Social Disease: Family Challenges And Strategies, Gonzalo Bacigalupe, Aleksandra Plocha

Gonzalo Bacigalupe, EdD, MPH

Celiac disease is the most common autoimmune inherited disorder in the United States, affecting approximately 1% of the population. Little research exists on the impact of family processes on adherence to a gluten-free diet (GFD), the only treatment for celiac disease. The objective of this qualitative study was to examine the barriers that families with a celiac child face and the strategies they use to adhere to the recommended diet. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 families with a child between the ages of 6 and 12 diagnosed with celiac disease. Grounded theory and narrative analysis were used to analyze …

Do Competing Suppliers Maximize Profits As Theory Suggests? An Empirical Evaluation, Ehsan Elahi, Roger Blake

Ehsan Elahi

This research compares results from laboratory experiments with predictions from theory for decisions made by competing suppliers. We consider a supply chain in which a single buyer outsources the manufacture of a commodity product to suppliers not on the basis of price, but rather on service. Three different criteria on which suppliers compete are evaluated: 1) a guaranteed specific inventory fill-rate, 2) guaranteed level of base-stock, and 3) a parameter optimizing the supply chain in the buyer’s favor. Our results show that in most cases, suppliers’ decisions are significantly different than the Nash equilibrium, meaning that they do not maximize …

Building Connections To Literacy Learning Among English Language Learners: Exploring The Role Of School Counselors, Amy Cook

Amy Cook

English language attainment and literacy acquisition are of significant importance to achieving academic success and college and career readiness in the United States. The rise in evidence-based standards requires concerted efforts by educators to meet the literacy needs of English language learners (ELLs). When collaborating with ELL teachers, school counselors are in a unique position to build literacy skills among ELL students, while simultaneously focusing on life skill development. This article provides specific suggestions for promoting literacy and social-emotional learning that school counselors can employ by collaborating with teachers and parents and through direct services with ELL students.

Doing History With Online Mapping Tools: Handout, Joanne M. Riley

Joanne M. Riley

Handout listing resources and links that accompanied Riley's presentation "Doing History with Online Mapping Tools: an Introduction"

Doing History With Online Mapping Tools: An Introduction, Joanne M. Riley

Joanne M. Riley

In November, 2014 the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Mass., offered a presentation titled "How to Do History with Online Mapping Tools" as part of a series related to the Museum and Library’s collection of historic maps sponsored by the Ruby W. and LaVon P. Linn Foundation. The invited presenters were Jessie Partridge from the MetroBoston DataCommon, a provider of free applications that make it possible to map data, and Joanne Riley, University Archivist and Curator of Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston. Both presenters helped lay historians, data fans, and map enthusiasts discover how visualizations of …

What Factors Determine Disclosure Of Suicide Ideation In Adults 60 And Older To A Treatment Provider?, Steven D. Vannoy

Steven D Vannoy

Correlates of patient disclosure of suicide ideation to a primary care or mental health provider were identified. Secondary analyses of IMPACT trial data were conducted. Of the 107 patients 60 years of age or older who endorsed thoughts of ending their life at least "a little bit" during the past month, 53 indicated they had disclosed these thoughts to a mental health or primary care provider during this period. Multiple logistic regression was used to identify predictors of disclosure to a provider. Significant predictors included poorer quality of life and prior mental health specialty treatment. Among participants endorsing thoughts of …

Information Communication Technologies In Families And The Clinical Encounter: A Cross-National Survey Seft/Etef, Gonzalo Bacigalupe, Maria Camara, Laura Buffardi

Gonzalo Bacigalupe, EdD, MPH

Information communication technologies (ICT) are an integral part of contemporary family life, though the existing research about its impact is scarce, less than definitive, and individually based, as well as failing to attend to cross-cultural and cross-national dimensions. This study investigates how family clinicians construe the impact of ICT in the clinical context. A survey directed at family clinicians (N = 258) in four countries (Canada, Mexico, Spain and the USA) was designed to gather data on their beliefs about the impact of the emerging ICT on families and on their own clinical practice. The study found differences in the …

The Role Of Social Support In Adolescents: Are You Helping Me Or Stressing Me Out?, Gonzalo Bacigalupe, Maria Camara

Gonzalo Bacigalupe, EdD, MPH

Interpersonal relationships are indispensable in helping adolescents cope with stressors, acting as social support sources that protect them from psychological distress. Learning from their experiences may elucidate what strategies could be employed to support adolescents during this vulnerable life stage. Focus groups (N = 80) with adolescents in the Basque Country, Spain, were conducted to capture adolescents' narratives on stress and social support. Findings revealed the dual role of interpersonal relationships – as stressors and as sources of social support. Adolescents draw on sources of support that are familiar, mature, friendly, and, most importantly, worth of trust. Their most valued …

Working With Data In Archival Settings, Joanne M. Riley

Joanne M. Riley

Structured data plays a vital role in archival administration, preservation and access activities. Three case studies are presented that demonstrate different applications of metadata: Medici Archive Project: Documentary Sources for the Arts and Humanities 1537 – 1743 (Relational database); The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590 – 1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma (Text markup – TEI); Healey Library’s OpenArchives (Dublin Core Schema in a proprietary data system).

Leadership: A Concise Conceptual Overview, Joseph B. Berger

Joseph B. Berger

No abstract provided.

The Silent Crisis: Including Latinos And Why It Matters., Miren Uriarte, James Jennings, Jen Douglas

Miren Uriarte

Measure of the economic, social and political inclusion of Latinos at mid-decade in three cities of the Commonwealth where about one fourth of the state’s Latino population lives.

Are Women Really More Risk-Averse Than Men? A Re-Analysis Of The Literature Using Expanded Methods, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

While a substantial literature in economics and finance has concluded that “women are more risk averse than men,” this conclusion merits investigation. After briefly clarifying the difference between making generalizations about groups, on the one hand, and making valid inferences from samples, on the other, this essay suggests improvements to how economists communicate our research results. Supplementing findings of statistical significance with quantitative measures of both substantive difference (Cohen's d, a measure in common use in non-­‐Economics literatures) and of substantive overlap (the Index of Similarity, newly proposed here) adds important nuance to the discussion of sex differences. These measures …

Outsourcing Through Competition: What Is The Best Competition Parameter?, Ehsan Elahi

Ehsan Elahi

In this paper we consider a single buyer who wants to outsource the manufacturing of a product to N potential suppliers. The buyer’s objective is to maximize the service level she receives from the suppliers. The suppliers compete for the buyer’s demand based on a competition parameter which the buyer announces along with an allocation rule. We model each supplier as a make-to-stock queueing system. Using a simple proportional allocation function, we compare two competition parameters: service level and inventory level. We show that inventory competition creates a higher overall service level for the buyer. We also show an optimal …

Health Profile Of Brazilian Mothers In Massachusetts In The Twenty First Century, Carlos Eduardo Siqueira, Teresa Roberts, Fernanda Lucchese

C. Eduardo Siqueira

This paper describes the health profile of Brazilian mothers in Massachusetts according to data collected through Massachusetts Standard Certificate of Live Births (1989 revision) filed with the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics during 1999 and 2009. To our knowledge this is the first time that such information is reviewed with a focus on Brazilian immigrants. The findings of this article suggests that Brazilian mothers who gave birth in Massachusetts between 1999 and 2009 fared better than all mothers in Massachusetts in most obstetric health indicators considered.

Would Women Leaders Have Prevented The Global Financial Crisis? Teaching Critical Thinking By Questioning A Question, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Would having more women in leadership have prevented the financial crisis? This question, raised in the popular media, can make effective fodder for teaching critical thinking within courses such as gender and economics, money and financial institutions, pluralist economics, or behavioural economics. While the question, as posed, demands an answer of 'Yes - sex differences in traits are important' or 'No - gender is irrelevant', students can be encouraged to question the question itself. The first part of this essay briefly reviews literature on the sameness-versus-difference debate, noting that the belief in exaggerated behavioural differences between men and women is …

How Can We Improve The Performance Of Supply Chain Contracts? An Experimental Study, Ehsan Elahi, Narasimha Lamba, Chinthana Ramaswamy

Ehsan Elahi

Although optimal forms of supply chain contracts have been widely studied in the literature, it has also been observed that decision makers fail to make optimal decisions in these contract setups. In this research, we propose different approaches to improve the performance of supply chain contracts in practice. We consider revenue sharing and buyback contracts between a rational supplier and a retailer who, unlike the supplier, is susceptible to decision errors. We propose five approaches to improve the retailer’s decisions which are in response to contract terms offered by the supplier. Through laboratory experiments, we examine the effectiveness of each …

Not-So-Strong Evidence For Gender Differences In Risk, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

In their article "Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking," Gary Charness and Uri Gneezy (2012) review a number of experimental studies regarding investments in risky assets, and claim that these yield strong evidence that females are more risk averse than males. This study replicates and extends their article, demonstrating that its methods are highly problematic. While the methods used would be appropriate for categorical, individual-­‐level differences, the data reviewed are not consistent with such a model. Instead, modest differences (at most) exist only at aggregate levels, such as group means. The evidence in favor of gender difference is …

Fearing Fear: Gender And Economic Discourse, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Economic discourse—or the lack of it—about fear is gendered on at least three fronts. First, while masculine-­‐associated notions of reason and mind have historically been prioritized in mainstream economics, fear—along with other emotions and embodiment—has tended to be culturally associated with femininity. Research on cognitive "gender schema," then, may at least partly explain the near absence of discussions of fear within economic research. Second, in the rare cases where fear is discussed in the contemporary economics literature, there is a tendency to (overly-­‐)strongly associate it with women. Finally, historians and philosophers of science have suggested that the failure to consider …

The Impact Of Exercise On Suicide Risk: Examining Pathways Through Depression, Ptsd, And Sleep In An Inpatient Sample Of Veterans, Collin L. Davidson, Kimberly A. Babson, Marcel O. Bonn-Miller, Tasha Souter, Steven D. Vannoy

Steven D Vannoy

Suicide has a large public health impact. Although effective interventions exist, the many people at risk for suicide cannot access these interventions. Exercise interventions hold promise in terms of reducing suicide because of their ease of implementation. While exercise reduces depression, and reductions in depressive symptoms are linked to reduced suicidal ideation, no studies have directly linked exercise and suicide risk. The current study examined this associ- ation, including potential mediators (i.e., sleep disturbance, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and depression), in a sample of Veterans. SEM analyses revealed that exercise was directly and indirectly associated with suicide risk. Additionally, exercise was …

E-Health Innovations, Collaboration, And Healthcare Disparities: Developing Criteria For Culturally Competent Evaluation, Gonzalo Bacigalupe, Sabrina Askari

Gonzalo Bacigalupe, EdD, MPH

E-Health alters how health care clinicians, institutions, patients, caregivers, families, advocates, and researchers collaborate. Few guidelines exist to evaluate the impact of social technologies on furthering family health and even less on their capacity to ameliorate health disparities. Health social media tools that help develop, sustain, and strengthen the collaborative health agenda may prove useful to ameliorate health care inequities; the linkage should not, however, be taken for granted. In this article we propose a classification of emerging social technologies in health care with the purpose of developing evaluative criteria that assess their ability to foster collaboration and positively impact …

Contested Imaginaries And The Cultural Political Economy Of Climate Change, David L. Levy, Andre Spicer

David L. Levy

This article analyses the evolving cultural political economy of climate change by developing the concept of ‘climate imaginaries’. These are shared socio-semiotic systems that structure a field around a set of shared understandings of the climate. Climate imaginaries imply a particular mode of organizing production and consumption, and a prioritization of environmental and cultural values. We use this concept to examine the struggle among NGOs, business and state agencies over four core climate imaginaries. These are ‘fossil fuels forever’, ‘climate apocalypse’, ‘technomarket’ and ‘sustainable lifestyles’. These imaginaries play a key role in contentions over responses to climate change, and we …

Is Dismissing The Precautionary Principle The Manly Thing To Do? Gender And The Economics Of Climate Change, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Many public debates about climate change now focus on the economic "costs" of taking action. When called on to advise about these, many leading mainstream economists downplay the need for care and caution on climate issues, forecasting a future with infinitely continued economic growth. This essay highlights the roles of binary metaphors and cultural archetypes in creating the highly gendered, sexist, and age-ist attitudes that underlie this dominant advice. Gung-ho economic growth advocates aspire to the role of The Hero, rejecting the conservatism of The Old Wife. But in a world that is not actually as safe and predictable as …

Characteristics, Management, And Depression Outcomes Of Primary Care Patients Who Endorse Thoughts Of Death Or Suicide On The Phq-9, Amy M. Bauer, Ya-Fen Chan, Hsiang Huang, Steven D. Vannoy, Jurgen Unuzter

Steven D Vannoy

BACKGROUND: With increasing emphasis on integrat- ing behavioral health services, primary care providers play an important role in managing patients with suicidal thoughts. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) Item 9 scores are associated with patient characteristics, management, and depres- sion outcomes in a primary care-based mental health program. DESIGN: Observational analysis of data collected from a patient registry. PARTICIPANTS: Eleven thousand fifteen adults en- rolled in the Mental Health Integration Program (MHIP). INTERVENTIONS: MHIP provides integrated mental health services for safety-net populations in over 100 community health centers across Washington State. Key elements of the team-based model …

Documenting A Movement: Creating And Sustaining The Occupy Boston Community Archive, Meghan Bailey

Meghan Bailey

A wave of dissatisfaction swept the country in fall 2011. This uneasiness manifested itself in numerous Occupy movements, featuring throngs of protestors speaking out against income inequality and the corruption in our financial sector. Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston took root on the Rose Kennedy Greenway at Dewey Square in Boston’s financial district during mid-October 2011. Thriving in the shadow of the Federal Reserve Bank, Occupy Boston was a vibrant and diverse community of individuals, from students to the working class, from professionals to the unemployed. The importance of preserving the Occupy movement quickly became clear. It’s been …

Low Wage Earners And Low Wage Jobs In Greater Boston, Anneta Argyres, Brandynn Holgate, Susan Moir

Susan Moir

Anybody who has ever been employed can readily list the qualities of a good job. Some are easily identified factors, such as good wages, health benefits, paid sick and vacation time, and a pension plan. Others are harder to measure, such as job security, reasonable workloads, flexible work schedules, workplace safety and health, or being treated with respect. In either case, it’s clear that job quality is something to which every working person pays attention. We should also be concerned about job quality as a society. A society that is characterized by jobs with family sustaining wages and benefits will …

A Metric And Topological Analysis Of Determinism In The Crude Oil Spot Market, Atreya Chakraborty

Atreya Chakraborty

We test whether the spot price of crude oil is determined by stochastic rules or exhibits deterministic endogenous fluctuations. In our analysis, we employ both metric (correlation dimension and Lyapunov exponents) and topological (recurrence plots) diagnostic tools for chaotic dynamics. We find that the underlying system for crude oil spot prices (i) is of high dimensionality (no stabilization of the correlation dimension), (ii) does not exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, and (iii) is not characterized by the recurrence property. Thus, the empirical evidence suggests that stochastic rather than deterministic rules are present in the system dynamics of the crude …

Postcolonial Feminist Research: Challenges And Complexities, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline the challenges and complexities in conducting research faced by scholars utilizing postcolonial feminist frameworks. The paper discusses postcolonial feminist key concepts, namely representation, subalternity, and reflexivity and the challenges scholars face when deploying these concepts in fieldwork settings. The paper then outlines the implications of these concepts for feminist praxis related to international management theory, research, and writing as well as entrepreneurship programs.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper discusses the experiences of the author in conducting fieldwork on Turkish high-technology entrepreneurs in the USA and Turkey by focusing explicitly on the …