Digital Commons Network^™

Depressive Symptoms As A Longitudinal Predictor Of Sexual Risk Behaviors Among African American Adolescents: Findings From Project Imppacs, Jacklyn Babowitch

Dissertations - ALL

Research that clarifies individual level factors associated with sexual risk behavior among African American adolescents remains an important public health priority. The current study examined the longitudinal association of depressive symptoms to sexual risk behaviors, and determined whether the association of depressive symptoms to risky sex varies as a function of gender in a sample of African American adolescents. A secondary aim was to examine whether self-efficacy for sex refusal and condom use mediate the depression-sexual risk relationship. Data analyses focused on baseline and three-month assessments of depressive symptoms and sexual behaviors assessed for the previous three-months, including: (a) engagement …

Predicting Social Functioning In Young Adults With 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome: A Longitudinal Study, Kayla Eileen Wagner

Dissertations - ALL

Background: The primary objectives of the current study were to (a) describe social functioning outcomes over a 9-year span in individual with 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11.2DS) and (b) identify childhood predictors of social functioning in young adults with 22q11.2DS.

Method: Using data from a prospective longitudinal study, young adult social functioning was compared among individuals with 22q11.2DS, their siblings, and community controls. Childhood cognitive, emotional, and behavioral predictors of young adult social functioning were examined. In addition, the relationship between psychosis and social functioning was explored. Family environment and factors contributing to parental stress in adolescence were investigated as potential …

Achieving Public Long-Term Care Insurance Through Social Security Wealth: Microsimulation For The Us Case, Alexandre Genest

Dissertations - ALL

The risk of needing long-term care (LTC) at some point in one's life is non-negligible, and the cost of care–whether in formal or informal settings– can be prohibitive for many seniors. In fact LTC is sometimes labeled the last major uninsured expense for seniors in the United States. The majority of LTC costs are currently borne by Medicaid and out-of-pocket spending, while private insurance coverage remains minimal. The take-up of private insurance among American seniors has remained low, in part because of the large (and growing) cost of premiums, as well as the presence of Medicaid. As the payer of …

Pain-Related Anxiety As A Predictor Of Early Lapse And Relapse To Cigarette Smoking, Lisa Renee Larowe

Dissertations - ALL

Pain-related anxiety has been positively associated with tobacco dependence, smoking motives, self-reported barriers to smoking cessation, and expectancies for negative affect reduction via smoking. Although emerging research suggests that pain-related anxiety may play a role in the maintenance of tobacco dependence, no previous work has examined pain-related anxiety as a predictor of smoking cessation outcomes. The goal of the current study was to test the hypothesis that pain-related anxiety would predict early lapse and relapse to cigarette smoking among a sample of 55 daily tobacco smokers who participated in an unaided cessation attempt (i.e., without psychosocial or pharmacological intervention). Pain-related …

“Que(E)Rying Religious Activism: Culture, Identity, And The Politics Of Family In Unitarian Universalist Churches”, Karen E. Macke

Dissertations - ALL

Despite the longstanding debate about religion’s role in social movements, conservative religious opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social movement in the United States has limited sociological research in this area to questions of individual identity or the oppositional strategies used by religious and LGTBQ groups to sway public opinion and policy decisions. This dissertation addresses the less well-understood dynamics of mainstream religious group participation in LGBTQ social movement. Through frameworks of social movement theory, organizational culture, and queer theory, it explores the organizational elements shaping congregants’ practices in two Unitarian Universalist (UU) churches considered “Welcoming Congregations”. …

Reacting To Negative Self-Relevant Information In An Interpersonal Context, Mingxuan Tan

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Using a newly developed perspective provided by cross-cultural research, the concept of face, I conducted three experiments to examine the impact self-construal, feedback source and interpersonal contexts have on one’s reactions to negative self-relevant information. In these experiments, characteristics of contexts including audience’s status, audience’s standard, audience’s performance and publicness of the situation were manipulated to examine participants’ reactions to feedback pertaining to an ostensibly important ability. These experiments revealed that compared to the interdependent self-construal, the independent self-construal was associated with higher levels of self-serving responses. These self-serving responses include attributing failure to external factors and attributing success to …

Parasocial Relationships With Transgender Characters And Attitudes Toward Transgender Individuals, Lizhen Zhao

Dissertations - ALL

The transgender population lives in a condition of serious discrimination, poverty and violence (NCTE, 2014). Few studies, however, have been conducted to understand people’s attitudes toward this population and factors that affect the responses. Applying the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis (Schiappa, Gregg & Hewes, 2005), this thesis investigated the relationship between audiences’ positive and negative parasocial relationships with transgender characters in TV and their attitudes toward transgender people in real life. A survey method was employed to address research questions and test hypothesis. Results show a significant association between parasocial relationship (positive or negative) and attitudes toward trans people in real …

Three Empirical Essays On International Trade And Public Economics, Yusuf Kenan Bagir

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays on the economic impacts of various policy issues on Turkish labor market and international trade. Chapter 1 examines the employment and wage effects of the refugee influx from Syria on Turkish native labor. Results indicate statistically significant negative employment and wage effects on the low-skilled and less-experienced individuals especially in the border regions. The second chapter investigates the impact of the presence of foreign missions on trade. This study uses Turkey’s aggressive expansion in its foreign mission network as the source of variation and finds significant positive effect on both the exports and …

Suffering For Land: Environmental Hazards And Popular Struggles In The Brahmaputra Valley (Assam), India, Mitul Baruah

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The twin processes of flooding and riverbank erosion have over the years re-shaped the Brahmaputra Valley landscape in the northeast Indian state of Assam. While flooding and erosion have always been part of the natural landscape of the valley, they have now turned disastrous causing agro-ecological instability and large-scale displacement of the local population. This dissertation is based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in different parts of Assam, with a special focus on Majuli River Island, located in the middle of the Brahmaputra River, and Rohmoria in the upstream. It examines the political ecological processes of the re-production of …

The Role Of Icts In Social Movements: The Case Of The Honduran National Front Against The 2009 Coup, Fatima K. Espinoza Vasquez

Dissertations - ALL

There is an important academic conversation happening about how social movements adopt, use, and configure Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for political participation. This dissertation contributes to that conversation by taking a holistic look at ICTs, throughout a social movement's emergence and development, while considering its context, its organizational structures and sense-making processes.

I explore the case of the Honduran National Front Against the Coup (NFAC), a relevant case due to its similarities with other movements, like the use of social media, the support from the international community and its geographically dispersed networks; but also, particular in its political and …

Free To Be: One Charter School's Approach To Supporting Gender And Sexual Minority Students, Katherine Sieger

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation presents three and a half years of ethnographic data from an “LGBT” charter school. It explores how gender and sexuality appear within educational spaces and how providing students an anti-heteronormative inclusive education impacts a student’s sense of self. I show how critical pedagogy is deployed as an anti-heteronormative approach to supporting all students. The term anti-heteronormative is used to express an explicit rejection of heterosexism and genderism, acknowledging the complex oppressive factors that develop given the normative expectations of gender and sexuality and the impact such expectations have on all bodies and all students. Findings reveal how the …

Like A Duck On Water: Chinese Academic Migrants In The U.S. And Their Suburban Weekend Chinese School, Jianping Xu

Dissertations - ALL

Current literature is scarce on the diverse experiences of hundreds of thousands of mainland Chinese who, since 1979, have come to the U.S. primarily for graduate study and mostly settled here afterwards in dispersed university or corporate jobs and suburban residences. After the Immigration Act of 1990, many of them have become visible experts in science and engineering. Yet their struggles as Chinese academic migrants simultaneously privileged by their educational backgrounds and disadvantaged by their outsider status in the U.S. often remain invisible. Possibly due to the myth of “model minority,” mainstream America has seen them as doing-well and well-behaving, …

Challenging Behaviors Of Children With And Without Developmental Disabilities In Early Childhood And Parent Management Behaviors, Ellen Gottuso

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this research was to examine the association between challenging behaviors in preschool children with and without developmental disabilities or delays and parent management behaviors. It was hypothesized that a lower incidence of challenging behaviors in preschool children with and without developmental disabilities would be associated with high use of parent management behaviors. The Early Child Behavior Screen as well as the Parenting Young Children (PARYC): Self-Report Parenting Measure were used to capture children’s challenging behaviors and parents’ management behaviors, respectively. The current study surveyed 56 total parents. Out of the parents that responded, 46 were female, 48 …

Parenting Styles, Effortful Control, And Academic Outcomes Among Chinese Adolescents: The Mediating Effect Of Activation Control, Yemo Duan

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The present study examined the associations between parenting styles and adolescents’ academic performance, with a specific focus on examining the mediating role of activation control among Chinese adolescents. A framework of Chinese parenting style, which consists of three dimensions, rejection, emotional warmth, and over-protection, was utilized to predict activation control and academic outcomes. Structural models were fitted with the data collected from a Chinese sample of adolescents aged 15 to 17 years. Parenting styles were found to be associated with children’s activation control skills and academic outcomes. Activation control skills were found to be beneficial for promoting educational attainment expectation …

Perspective Taking And Threat: Do Threatening Situations Have An Effect On Helping Intentions And Perceived Expectations?, Joseph R. Castro

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An important skill for interpersonal communication is the ability to take the perspective of another person. Taking the perspective of a target can aid the perceiver in predicting the target’s mental states and subsequent behaviors. This can be especially important in threatening situations. How a member of an advantaged group believes that disadvantaged group members will react to a threatening situation may influence the advantaged member’s actions and beliefs. In the first study, female and male participants read information regarding gender while using three perspectives; their own perspective, predicting the other gender’s responses, or imagining their responses if they were …

Role Of Information Technology In Policy Implementation Of Maternal Health Benefits In India, Nidhi Vij

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Fifty thousand women died during childbirth in India in 2013, the highest total in the world; that is, one maternal death every 10 minutes. India and Nigeria account for almost one-third of total global maternal deaths. In pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, the government of India directed efforts to improve maternal health and was able to reduce maternal mortality rate from 437 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 140 per 100,000 in 2015, albeit missing the target of 109. Moreover, estimates for maternal morbidity are three to four times that of the mortality rates with even more pronounced …

Intuition: A Silver Lining For Clinicians With Complex Trauma, Sarah Dyanne Stanton

Dissertations - ALL

The following research study intends to explore one potential aspect of the

etiology of intuition in clinician populations, which is complex trauma. The relationship between early developmental trauma is ascertained through the Childhood Traumatic Events Scale (Pennebaker & Susman, 1988), which consists of events that respondents could report having experienced prior to the age of 17. Additional outcome measures that were given include the Post-Traumatic Growth inventory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996), the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (Spreng et al., 2009) and the Types of Intuition Scale (Pretz et al., 2014). There were 28 participants, 23 of which reported one trauma or …

Self-Initiated Creativity In The Elementary Classroom, David Rufo

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In this study, the researcher used an action research methodology to investigate the self-initiated creative processes and artifacts of his fourth and fifth grade students over the course of one school year in an attempt to shed light on the pedagogical effects of an elementary classroom that allows its students significant creative agency. The majority of the literature on the self-initiated creativity of children examines the work of primary grade students in an art room setting, revealing a gap in the literature and the need for a study regarding self-initiated creative processes and products made by children in an intermediate …

Divergence Or Convergence Of Home And School Ethnic-Racial Socialization: Effects On Preschool Children's Self-Regulation, Kimberly Leah Davidson

Dissertations - ALL

As the population in the United States continues to become more diverse, early childhood programs serving our nation’s youngest citizens strive to meet the needs of families from different cultural backgrounds. Despite the established importance of ethnic-racial socialization in the early social and cognitive development of young children, parents and teachers seldom discuss issues related to race and ethnicity with preschool children. Using propositions within the bioecological and developmental niche models, critical race theory, and frameworks that focus on the socialization of children from diverse ethnic-racial backgrounds, the current study examined differences between parents’ and teachers’ use of ethnic-racial socialization …

Cognitive, Academic, And Neuropsychological Effects Of Treatment, David Scott Gordon

Dissertations - ALL

This study explored the effects of number of intrathecal chemotherapies and time off therapy on cognitive, achievement, and neuropsychological functioning of post treatment children with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). Participants consisted of sixteen sibling pairs between the ages of eight and fourteen who were grouped into the high or low group for number of intrathecal chemotherapies (IT), and then regrouped for high or low time off therapy (TOT). Participants were administered a battery of cognitive, achievement, and neuropsychological tests. Matched sibling difference scores from these tests were analyzed. Results found that children with ALL performed in the average range, although …

Racial Incidents In The Classroom: A Qualitative Study On Preschool Teachers’ Perceptions, Melinda Day

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the extent to which 35 early childhood educators’ training and experiences influence their perception of and subsequent teaching strategies racial incidents that occur in a preschool classroom. The study used focus groups to explore the implications of a teacher’s ability to a) perceive the racial situation; and b) act or intervene through curriculum or other choices to turn the situation into a “teachable moment”. Using the theories of social learning, intergroup contact, perspectives on ethnic/race identity formation and foundations of multicultural education, the study addresses what role early educators and their strategies could play in reducing the …

Consumerism, Social Practice, And Slavery: Consumer Practices Among Enslaved Laborers At Poplar Forest Plantation (1828-1861), Lori Ann Lee

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This dissertation is a study of the intersections of slavery, daily practice, and consumerism of enslaved laborers at antebellum Poplar Forest plantation in Central Virginia. Key developments in the antebellum period, including expanded transportation options, industrialization, and increased slave leasing shaped the enslaved laborer’s lives. These factors resulted in increased access to the market economy for many enslaved laborers, which transformed social and economic relationships between whites and African Americans and among African Americans as well. The conditions that shaped this process varied according to regional differences, the forms of labor in which the enslaved were engaged, and the individual …

Understanding Mediators Of The Relationship Between Hiv-Related Stigma And Medication Adherence Among People Living With Hiv (Hiv), Shannon Marie Sweeney

Dissertations - ALL

Although accumulated research demonstrates that HIV-related stigma is associated with medication adherence difficulties for PLWH, this literature is limited by inconsistencies in the conceptualization and assessment of both stigma and adherence. Additionally, few empirical research studies provide tests of the psychosocial mechanisms that may account for the stigma-adherence relationship. The present study sought to clarify these relationships using more refined measures, which assessed multiple domains of stigma (i.e., internalized, anticipated, and enacted stigmas) and multiple domains of adherence (i.e., global and intentional nonadherence). It was further hypothesized that two mediational pathways, depressive symptoms and disclosure concerns, may mediate the association …

The Influence Of Peer-Led Team Learning On Underrepresented Minority Student Achievement In Introductory Biology And Recruitment And Retention In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics Majors, Jeremy David Sloane

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Increasing underrepresented minority (URM) participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is of increasing national importance as the United States continues to fall behind other nations in global economic competitiveness. These students constitute a large pool of potential STEM majors at the college level, but they have been recruited to and retained in STEM programs at significantly lower rates than students from other populations. As such, President Barack Obama’s President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has called on undergraduate science instructors to diversify their teaching methods and employ active learning strategies to improve students’ success in …

Women As Fish: Physical Movement And Social Mobility In Contemporary Vietnam, Linh Khanh Nguyen

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the changing rurality and the profound social stratification in contemporary Vietnam through the lens of rural-to-rural female migration. It is based on eighteen months of ethnographic research in a rural offshore fishing community in northern Vietnam called Hải Thành. I study the migration of two groups of women: 1) transnational women, who are young Hải Thành girls that marry Taiwanese and South Korean men, and migrate to mostly rural areas in East Asia, and 2) translocal women, who are women from other rural Vietnamese communities who migrate to Hải Thành to marry local men. My dissertation analyzes …

Child Sexual Abuse, Interpersonal Difficulties, And Staying In Relationships With Intimate Partner Violence: A Preliminary Study, En-Ting Hsu

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This study explores the relationship between child sexual abuse, interpersonal difficulties,

and intimate partner violence. Three inventories were used to assess each factor in this research: child violence experience (5 items), interpersonal difficulties (16 items), and adult violence victimization (3 items). Twenty-ninth females from the Syracuse University Couple and Family Therapy Center completed inventories. Respondents were categorized into four groups: no victimization (group 1); child violence (CV) victimization with no adult revictimization (group 2); CV with single adult victimization (group 3); CV with long-term intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization (group 4). The researcher hypothesized that 1) child sexual abuse (CSA) …

Oil Industry In Uganda: The Socio-Economic Effects On The People Of Kabaale Village, Hoima, And Bunyoro Region In Uganda, Miriam Kyomugasho

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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the socio-economic effects of oil industry on the people of Kabaale Village, Hoima, and Bunyoro region in Uganda. The thesis analyses the current political economy of Uganda and how Uganda is prepared to utilize the proceeds from the oil industry for the development of the country and its people. In addition, the research examines the effects of industry on the people of Uganda by analyzing how the people of Kabaale in Bunyoro region were affected by the plans to construct oil refinery in their region. This field research was done using qualitative methods and the Historical …

The Relationships Between Confucian Family Values And Attitudes Toward Divorce In Mainland China: An Exploratory Study, Ruiwen Zheng

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The purpose of this study is to examine relationships between Confucian family values and Chinese attitudes toward divorce. The low acceptability of divorce, negative attitudes toward divorce, as well as low national divorce rate are evident in China. Confucian family values, which have influenced Chinese education, moral and ethics for thousands of years, were hypothesized to have an impact on the phenomena based on the Theory of Reasoned Action. There were 289 Chinese college students recruited to participate in this study. The Filial Piety scale (Yeh, 2003), Collectivism scale (Chen & West, 2008), and Attitudes toward Divorce scale (Kinnaird & …

“Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” The Use Of Popular Music After Hurricane Katrina, Jennifer Billinson

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This single-case study explores the use of popular music in response to the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005. Using research in sociology of disaster and uses and gratifications theory in mass communication, data collected included original music written in response to the hurricane, major benefit concerts that aired in the wake, and re-appropriated music that developed new meaning when used in conjunction to the case. Analysis yielded that popular music was used to raise awareness, raise funds, and express emotion following the disaster. Common themes throughout include the impact of genre on how this was …

Ego Identity Development As A Mediator Between Negative Affectivity And Wellness Of College Students, Sarah F. Spiegelhoff

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For emerging adults, the college experience is a time for new experience that create excitement, lifelong memories, spiritual enrichment, cultural development, and success. Yet for many, the college experience presents with a series of physical, emotional, and psychological challenges, and for some even failure. It is expected that many of these students will experience such stressors, given the complexity of the stage of development, as they move away from adolescence and into adulthood. As college students move away from parental figures and develop more independence, a prominent time for identity development to thrive is created. There is a great deal …