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"Oye Mi Voz!" (Hear My Voice!): The Perceptions Of Hispanic Boys Regarding Their Literacy Experiences, Rubylinda Zickafoose

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to uncover the perspectives that pertain to the literacy experiences of young Hispanic boys. Hispanic boys will be asked to describe, feel, judge, and make sense of their public and private literacies (Faulkner, 2005). This phenomenological study embraces two methods of data collection, participant focus groups and individual interviews. The primary question guiding this inquiry was: What are the perceptions of adolescent Hispanic boys who are considered low level readers (by state achievement tests) regarding their literacy experiences?

In order to help provide background information and set the stage for future work when considering …

Beauty Standards: Negotiations Of Social Life Among African American College Women, Sheena Kaori Gardner

Theses and Dissertations

The literature concerning the relationship between black women and beauty has revealed conflicting findings: some argue that black women are negatively affected by ‘white’ beauty ideals while others argue for the existence of an alternative ‘black’ beauty standard. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze young African American women’s awareness of beauty standards and their perception of themselves with relation to these standards, examine whether beauty standards are negotiable, and explore how perceptions of self affect daily social interactions. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with black females between the ages of eighteen and twentyive that were …

Menstrual Cycle And Visual Information Processing, Michelle Nash

Theses and Dissertations

This project examined the effects menstruation may have on visual attention in women. A recent study examined electroencephalographic (EEG) gender differences using a visual object recognition task. Results indicated certain EEG amplitudes (specifically, P300 and N400) are greater in women than men. This study extended the previous findings to determine if these increased EEG amplitudes vary across menstrual phases. Eighteen female participants participated in a series of 3 EEG recording sessions using the same visual object recognition task from the previous study; 18 male participants completed this task once. Analyses from 15 of the 18 female and 16 of the …

Designing An International Friendship Model For Children, Charlotte Martins

Theses and Graduate Projects

In 2006 this writer traveled to Windhoek, Namibia to take the course Walking the Truth; Culture, Gender and HIV/AID,S in Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of that class each student was assigned to work with an organization or individual whose mission was working with HIV/AIDS patients or there families. It was from this experience that the project was born. The purpose of this project is to design a friendship model that links children of middle school age from different cultures and different nations together through letter writing.

Female Participation In The Police Promotion Process: Are Women Competing For Promotion In Numbers Proportionate To Their Statistical Representation In Policing?, Brent Shea

MPA Major Research Papers

This paper examines the participation rate and success of female officers in the police promotion process viewed within the theoretical context of organizational culture, systemic discrimination, and the pipeline and glass ceiling theories. A survey of female officers employed with the Ontario Police Services between 2000 and 2007 was conducted. The findings reveal that although the challenges and obstacles faced by women have not disappeared, encouraging progress has been made. For both the sergeant and staff sergeant ranks, women are seeking promotion in proportions that exceed the historic and weighted seniority requirements associated with police promotions that previously required pre-determined …

Contributing Factors To The Bachelor's Degree Attainment Of Males In The United States, Theresa Carol Novotny

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The degree attainment of college students is a critical issue that institutions of higher education are considering. Colleges want to improve their retention, progression, and graduation rates for all students. Over the past decades men, based on the literature reviewed, have earned fewer degrees than women. In addition, men are not enrolling in college at the same rates as women. This study uses the NELS Database to analyze the factors that contribute to the degree attainment of men. The research used a logit model to determine the probability for the significant factors.

Teaching Science In The Bible Belt Of The South, Carole Crosby Gilbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is an inquiry that utilizes personal ' passionate ' participatory research (He & Phillion, 2008) to delve into the conflicting experiences encountered by science educators as they teach in the predominantly Christian environment of the rural South. Science standards require teachers to instruct students about scientific concepts that directly contradict theological ideology. Veteran and new teachers alike skate the edges of the chasm that separate science and religion in the performance of their job which is complicated by the homogeneity of the population. Church involvement is an integral part of this community. Christian churches anchor their respective communities providing …

Race And Gender In The Leadership Experiences Of Three Female African American High School Principals: A Multiple Case Study, Angela Mosley Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this multiple case study was to describe how three female African American high school principals understand the influence of race and gender on their educational leadership experiences. The study focused on the professional background, barriers each informant encountered in her pursuit of a principalship, strategies utilized to facilitate attainment of a principalship, and leadership conceptualization. Through indepth interviews, rich narratives revealed how the duel oppressions of race and gender intersected the professional lives of the three principals involved in the study. The theoretical foundation for the study was black feminist thought as defined by Patricia Hill Collins. …

Boys' Love And Female Friendships: The Subculture Of Yaoi As A Social Bond Between Women, Amy Ann O'Brien

Anthropology Theses

In this thesis I argue that the yaoi community addresses a gap in subculture studies through the ways in which women use the genre to socialize. Yaoi is a genre of Japanese animation and comics which focuses on romantic relationships between two men and is directly geared towards women. Through ethnographic research in the United States, I look at how the women I interviewed conceptualize their participation within the community and what yaoi means to them. The women within the yaoi community are not rebelliously opposing the mainstream as many subcultural theories suggest, but are instead carving out a social …

Athens Of The South: College Life In Nashville, A New South City, 1897-1917, Mary Ellen Pethel

History Dissertations

The Progressive Era affected the South in different ways from other regions of the United States. Because Southern society was more entrenched in patriarchy and traditional social strictures, Nashville provides an excellent lens in which to assess the vision of a New South city. Known as “Athens of the South,” Nashville legitimized this title with the emergence of several colleges and universities of regional and national prominence in the 1880s and 1890s. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Nashville’s universities solidified their status as reputable institutions, with Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities garnering national prominence. Within Nashville, local …

Racial And Geographic Differences Among Callers To The Georgia Tobacco Quit Line, October, 2005- April, 2007, Ban A. Majeed

Public Health Theses

The majority of smokers - regardless of race - wish to quit. Quitting tobacco use is a top national priority to improve the quality of life for all people. There is a wide range of effective tobacco addiction treatment strategies. Telephone counseling services or Tobacco Quit Lines (TQL) is one of the effective smoking cessation aids available to all people in the U.S. free of charge. This is a cross sectional analysis of data from Georgia Tobacco Quit Line (TQL). The study examined the differences in the utilization rates of the Georgia TQL by different smoking population. Analysis revealed that …

Cancer Patients With Pain: Examination Of The Role Of The Spouse/Partner Relationship In Mediating Quality Of Life Outcomes For The Couple, Mary Ann Morgan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A diagnosis of cancer, regardless of type or site, raises much fear and loss of control for patients and their spouses. While being married is associated with lower mortality from a wide range of illnesses, including cancer, the quality of marital interactions and the relationship is the stronger predictor of health outcomes, rather than marital status. When people are faced with their greatest life challenges, they attach great importance to the behavior of their intimate partner, with trust being a key component of relationship quality, thus lending stability, and emotional and practical support. The purpose of this study was to …

Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely …

Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy And Gender In Social Class Reproduction, Spencer L. James

Theses and Dissertations

The observation that middle class parents tend to have middle class children is rather obvious. Why this is so has been the subject of less research than the fact that it is so. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), I employ theories about social class reproduction to examine and evaluate a model that scrutinizes the influence of self-efficacy and self-esteem on college completion or current enrollment and investigate gender differences. I find that self-esteem and self-efficacy play a vital role in social class outcomes. However, I find no evidence of gender differences in the social class reproduction …

Maternity Leave Policy In U.S. Police Departments And School Districts: The Impact Of Descriptive And Social Group Representation In A Context Of Gendered Institutions, Corina S. Schulze

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

United States federal law regulating leaves of absence for maternity-related purposes pales in comparison to other nations' policies, an observation only recently receiving attention from political scientists. Providing an understanding of how maternity leave is handled by individual organizations in the United States only, a quantitative study is conducted that examines local variation in policy formulation. Employee leave due to maternity is primarily a women's issue and its treatment will vary depending on the socio-political context that the policy dictating the leave is found in. Three main determinants of a policy's level of comprehensiveness are identified as being the political …

Factors Associated With Traffic Crashes In Pasto, Colombia: 2005-2006, Adam L. O'Bryant

Public Health Theses

Road traffic injuries (RTI) currently rank as the 11th leading cause of death world wide and the leading cause of injury related deaths worldwide. Globally, road traffic crashes kill over 1.2 million people per year with over 90% of the deaths occurring in low and middle income countries. Pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, collectively called vulnerable road users, are often times the victims. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the factors that are associated with traffic fatalities as well as the factors that are associated with being a vulnerable road user in traffic injuries and traffic fatalities in …

Operation Help: Counteracting Sex Trafficking Of Women From Russia And Ukraine, Nadezda Shapkina

Sociology Dissertations

Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal activities in today’s world and a violation of human rights. Sex trafficking of women from Russia and Ukraine was enabled by the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the incorporation of the new countries into the global economy. At the same time, this social problem generated a series of anti-trafficking campaigns in Russia, Ukraine, and internationally. This research analyzes social responses to the risks of sex trafficking of women from Russia and Ukraine. The analysis is based on sixteen-month multi-sited field research in Russia and Ukraine. I collected data through …

Women In Municipal Politics: Barriers To Participation, Carol Down

MPA Major Research Papers

This paper examines the barriers to participation that women face when attempting to enter municipal politics based on a review of the programs and recommendations made by three initiatives that have been developed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Equal Voice, and the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities to increase the number of women in municipal government. The findings reveal that the barriers to participation can only be removed through major political and cultural changes and the deterrents to equal participation, such as systemic discrimination, sexism, power gender imbalances, and the marginalization of women and minorities, must be addressed …

Correlates And Predictors Of Cognitive Complexity Among Counseling And Social Work Students In Graduate Training Programs, Christopher Simmons

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For this study, a web-based survey method was used as a means of collecting data to test a predictive model of education, supervised clinical experience (SCE), age, human services experience (HSE) and cognitive complexity. The theoretical framework for the study was Perry's (1970; 1999) scheme of intellectual development. The sample consisted of 332 counseling and social work students in graduate training programs in four different regions of the United States. The instruments used in the study were a researcher-developed demographic questionnaire and the Learning Environment Preferences (LEP) instrument (Moore, 1987). The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that education …

Net/Work: Composing The Posthuman Self, Julia L. Mason

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overall question this dissertation asks is: what does it mean to teach posthumans? To answer this question, this dissertation turns toward scholarship on the body in order to understand the virtual and material presence that students develop, it looks to online video gaming communities as alternative classrooms providing effective models of learning, and it investigates the circulation of service learning pedagogies within academic institutions as a marker of the persistence of humanistic values within the framework of a posthuman work environment.

The American university in general, and the humanities specifically, is struggling to make sense of its place in …

Family Business Daughters: The Ties That Bind And Divide, Angela M. Day

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the relational contradictions experienced by family business daughters, and to investigate how they responded to these tensions. For this project, I interviewed twelve second and third generation family business daughters from eleven different family businesses. I utilized research procedures similar to grounded theory to analyze my interview transcripts. I examined relational tensions at both a personal level and an organizational level involving the larger work-family system. At a personal level, the connection/separation contradiction is significant to family business daughters and to their relationships with work and family. Many family business daughters helped …

The Association Between Social Context And Phase Of Recovery Among Drug Court Clients: A Gender Comparison, Jennifer Lee Zorland

Psychology Theses

The association between drug court clients’ pro-drug and pro-recovery social context at multiple ecological levels, and phase of recovery was assessed, and gender comparisons were evaluated. Drug courts provide alternatives to incarceration for substance abusing offenders, providing treatment within clients’ social environments. The findings indicated that social context is associated with recovery, and that this relation differs by gender. Specifically, increased favorable attitudes toward drug use among social referents were associated with men being in an earlier phase of recovery and women being in a later phase of recovery. Furthermore, perceived encouragement to use drugs was associated with being in …

African American Women's Perceptions Of And Experiences With Mandated Substance Abuse Treatment: Implications For Counselors, Kathryn Newton

Counseling and Psychological Services Dissertations

African American women, in particular those who are economically marginalized, are disproportionately subject to surveillance by social service and criminal justice agencies (James et al., 2003) and are vulnerable to race- and gender-biased policy implementation (Chibnall et al., 2003; Zerai, 2002). They also experience population-specific personal (Ehrmin, 2001, 2002), social (Riehman, Iguchi, Zeller, & Morral, 2003; MacMaster, 2005), and economic barriers (Tighe & Saxe, 2006) to accessing and entering substance abuse treatment services. These factors contribute to lower rates of treatment entry follow-through (Siqueland et al., 2002) and higher drop-out rates (Scott-Lennox, Rose, Bohlig, & Lennox, 2000) than women from …

Academic Libraries As Feminine And Feminist Models Of Organization., Marie F. Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because academic libraries are primarily staffed by women and are relatively autonomous entities in colleges and universities, they offer a unique model of workplace gendering and feminism. This qualitative, ethnographic study examined 3 small college libraries in 3 regions of the United States and explored issues of bureaucracy and gendering in these libraries. Feminist challenges to bureaucracy emerged in the areas of hierarchy, division of labor, competition and collaboration, decision-making, and communication. Feminine practice in the libraries reflected private sphere attitudes toward work (values of community, emotionality, and caring) and an affirmation of feminine roles in the workplace. The organizational …

The Role Of Occupational Values And Support In Career Choice: An Emphasis On Women In Science, Heather Meikle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine how occupational values and social support for career pursuits influenced career choice, with a specific focus on women in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). A sample of 62 college graduates participated in telephone interviews that addressed gender differences in seven occupational values and three sources of social support. Results showed that differences in occupational values differ by both gender and between individuals in STEM and non-STEM careers. The strength of STEM values better predicted a career in STEM than did gender. Finally, women in STEM received the least amount of social …

Effects Of Gender On The Career Aspirations Of Administrators In The Minnesota State Colleges And Universities System, Christine C. Lepkowski

Culminating Projects in Higher Education Administration

A recent national survey found women hold only 23% of higher education institution presidencies (American Council on Education, 2007). However, women now earn 58% of all bachelor’s degrees and 4% of all doctorates (U.S. Department of Education, 2005). These findings suggest something may be interfering with the pool of capable women moving through the pipeline to attain higher education administrative positions. Gender differences in career aspirations have been suggested as one potential reason for this disparity.

This study examined the career aspirations of women and men holding administrative positions of dean or higher (excluding presidents) within the institutions in the …

Sexuality: Social And Cultural Constructs Of Women Represented Through Art, Gayle Shaw Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Life is one beauty pageant after another. There is always competition, be it physically or mentally. Societal rules have always determined the constructions of gender both accepted and taboo. My research explores how these social constructs pertaining to sexuality began and how they have been perpetuated throughout history in art. Because of my personal struggles with social constrictions as a woman, an artist, and as one whose sexual identity has been designed from these social constructs, I have explored women's roles as artists: how women and their sexuality have been portrayed in the past through artworks using various media; how …

Title Ix And It's Effect On Collegiate Athletics, Holly J. Schmidtbauer

Culminating Projects in Kinesiology

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gender Gap In Quantum Physics, Gordon Stecklein

Pomona Senior Theses

Why is it important to study the gender gap in physics? Despite entering the workforce in increasing numbers over the last fifty years, women remain severely underrepresented in science and technology-related careers, particularly in positions of authority. Simultaneously, numerous studies verify that women have the ability to perform as well as – or better than – males in physics, and, when presented in certain lights, as many women as men show an interest in physics. Changes must be made in order to strive for equality and, given the changing demographic of the workforce, increase our country’s diminishing scientific prowess.

Identifying Factors That Produce Blame For Sexually Harassing Behavior, Colin W. Key

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigated how individual differences impact ratings of blame for sexual harassers and their victims and whether or not any relationships could be explained by defensive attribution theory. This theory claims that blame is a product of the relevance of the situation and the actors within that situation. Participants completed an online questionnaire in which they read hypothetical cases of sexual harassment. They rated the relevance of the situation and the individuals in the scenarios, attributed blame to hypothetical harassers and victims, as well as other information expected to predict ratings of blame. Results suggested that 1) defensive attribution …