Digital Commons Network^™

Physical Health, Transportation And Sustainability Impacts Of Shared Micromobility Services, Yi Wen

Doctoral Dissertations

Electric scooters (e-scooters) have reached a wide popularity since launch in 2017. Key questions around their mobility, safety and sustainability impacts have been raised and partially addressed by the existing literature. However, the physical activity aspects of riding an e-scooter have not been assessed. We recruited 20 subjects from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville network to measure the physical and muscle activity of riding an e-scooter, in comparison to walking and driving, the two common substitutes by e-scooters on a designated route. We used Cosmed Fitmate PRO for the physical activity measurement and the Delsys EMGworks Acquisition Software for the …

The Quotidian Quantifier: Fitness Tracking And The Mundanity Of Surveillance, Marianne Neal-Joyce

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses the rise of wearable fitness tracking as a lens through which to examine the predominance of quantification in everyday life. With over a third of U.S. adults owning a tracker, the increased use of body-surveilling technologies provides an opportunity to investigate some central sociological questions. In this project, I ask why individuals track their health behaviors with technology and how we may understand this behavior in the context of medical and corporate interests. I further ask how people think about the privacy implications of their use and what concerns they have about data collection and sharing. I …

Policing And Health: Police Encounters As A Fundamental Cause Of Racial Health Disparities, Richard S. Carbonaro

Doctoral Dissertations

Structural racism has taken many forms throughout American history and to this day continues to drive social, economic, and health inequalities. Mass incarceration is a modern tool of social marginalization with well documented and deep-rooted racial inequalities. Research has continually shown that mass incarceration negatively impacts the health of disadvantaged communities. Even police stops, the most common and mundane form of criminal justice contact has been linked with deleterious health outcomes at the individual and community level. In this dissertation, I identify specific social and biological mechanisms connecting encounters with the police and health outcomes. In the first chapter, I …

‘A Better Country To Die In’: Self-Determination, Drugs, And The Limits Of Medical Assistance In Dying In Canada, Wendy Pringle

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines Canada’s legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Specifically, it focuses on how the debates surrounding the legalization process, the cultural history of euthanasia drugs, and the ethical dimensions of disability shaped assisted dying outcomes in the country in the period between the precedent-setting February 2015 Carter v. Canada Supreme Court case and the legislation, passed in June 2016, that enacted legalized MAiD. This mixed methods project uses discursive analysis of media texts, pharmacological history, and rhetorical analysis of first-person testimonies. The first analytic chapter, “Self-Determination, Euthanasia, and the Right to Die,” considers how the shift toward …

Compassion Fatigue Among Mental Healthcare Providers And The Impact On Overall Wellbeing, Ruchi Patel

Doctoral Dissertations

Compassion, a virtue of the helping profession, can be jeopardized by a provider’s continuous exposure to the trauma experiences of others. The impact of burnout, secondary stress and compassion fatigue on a mental healthcare provider’s work and personal life has been increasingly studied due to negative ramifications on our community healers. The present study used a cross-sectional design to survey mental healthcare providers across specialty and discipline in efforts to gain a better understanding of the relationship between a provider’s degree of compassion fatigue and specific demographic variables, physical health and their spirituality. One hundred and thirty-seven participants across the …

Three Essays On Health, Risk And Behavior, Irene Mussio

Doctoral Dissertations

Health-related decisions could be explained by a variety of factors, ranging from the perception of the risk the activity involves to the knowledge of the long-term effects of the decision. An individual deciding to eat unhealthy or not to exercise could face health problems in the long-run. Individuals with health issues have been found to be more risk averse when it comes to financial decisions, such as portfolio allocation. Financial incentives to engage in healthier behaviors have been successful but short-lived. Prior research leaves many questions such as: What are the factors that explain why an individual decides to engage …

Three Essays On Network Dynamics And Liminality, Diego F. Leal

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the emergence and evolution of social networks by paying particular attention to the spanning of cultural boundaries that segregate actors in the context of specific societies. In particular, I use systems science methods to study the bridging of cultural holes in small and relatively dense artificial societies, as well as in an American high school. I also study the significance of local triadic configurations in giving rise to the highly hierarchical system of aggregate-level migration flows in place in the Americas during the late 20th century. I use the concept of liminality as a way to …

Gender, Class, Caste And Health Status Of Abandoned Elderly Women In Bangalore, South India, Olya Clark

Doctoral Dissertations

The research study centers on issues of health, quality of life, and access to health care among abandoned elderly women in Bangalore, India, specifically focusing on interrelationship of class, caste, structural factors and health. Despite increasing feminization of India’s older population, elderly women’s abandonment and its health consequences has received little attention in existing research literature. The study seeks to explain the causes of elderly female abandonment and concomitant social and health consequences, by examining how their life experiences are shaped, sustained and changed by their class, caste, and gender positions. Elderly abandonment is not unique to India but exists …

Hiv-Related Stigma And Health Among People Living With Hiv In Middle Georgia: Examining The Roles Of Stress And Coping, Kaylee Burnham

Doctoral Dissertations

Objective – HIV-related stigma and discrimination are drivers of health disparities among people living with HIV (PLWH). The U.S. South bears much of the burden of the domestic HIV epidemic. This study seeks to explore the dynamic effects of HIV-related stigma on health outcomes in a population of PLWH in middle Georgia. Experiences of enacted HIV stigma in the past year were assessed and participants indicated how stressful these events were and how they coped with the most impactful event. The primary study aim tested a moderated serial mediation model of HIV stigma on health in this population.

Method – …

Three Essays On The Social Determinants Of Early Childhood Health And Development, Andrew Barenberg

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-paper dissertation examines the social determinants of early childhood and in-utero health. The first chapter examines the impact of early childhood stunting on educational outcome in Tanzania. Using the extent of third-trimester overlap with the Tanzania hunger season to create an exogenous variation in stunting, I find that a one standard deviation stunting decreases educational achievement by .88 school years compared to a child's siblings. A placebo group not affected by the hunger season is used to confirm that in-utero nutrition deprivation is the cause of the education differences. The second paper utilizes the food price shocks and price …

Psychometric Properties Of Three Common Depression Measures In Breast Cancer Patients With Major Depressive Disorder, Audrey Ashton File

Doctoral Dissertations

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women in the United States and MDD is the most common mental health problem in women with breast cancer. There is lack of research on measures of depression in this population. This study examined the psychometric properties of three commonly used depression measures, the BDI-II, CES-D, and HRSD, with clinically depressed breast cancer patients (n = 127). Findings revealed the measures displayed good distributional characteristics, internal consistency, and convergent validity. Discriminative validity with the BAI was not demonstrated, however, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the existing models of these …

The Physical Uplift Of The Race: The Emergence Of The African American Physical Culture Movement, 1900-1930, J. Anthony Guillory

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, “The Physical Uplift of the Race: The Emergence of the African American Physical Culture Movement, 1900—1930,” situates the early twentieth century of African American physical culture within a historical narrative that shaped philosophical viewpoints of African American urban community development. Previous inquiries of related topics attempt to describe a physical culture movement that was somehow separate and apart from the larger historical narrative of African people in the United States. My work does not continue in that vein. My objective is to illustrate how the black physical culture movement was primarily a reaction to African Americans’ new geo-political …

The Effects Of Trade Competition On Health, And Determinants Of Workplace Behavior, Thomas Clayton Mcmanus

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation consists of three essays related to workplace behavior. In the first paper, we design a controlled laboratory experiment to study image motives in a setting where decisions signal intelligence. The experiment results show that in some settings social scrutiny can discourage individuals from making choices that signal their intelligence, despite evidence that the signal was privately valuable. In the second paper, we study the effect of Chinese import competition on occupational safety and health at US manufacturers. We find that a change in US trade policy and Chinese import shocks significantly increases worker injury and illness rates in …

Enduring Impact Of Childhood Stressors On Adult Health: Testing Psychological And Behavioral Pathways, Tracy Keirns

Doctoral Dissertations

Stress and health has been a topic of interest among researchers in a variety of fields such as medical sociology, psychology, public health, child abuse, and epidemiology. For decades this research had largely been conducted in silos within each of the respective fields. In recent years, these silos have started to diminish. Sociologists have begun to consider the accumulation of stressors over the life course, including how serious childhood stressors (such as child abuse) impact morbidity and mortality later in life. Using Wave I, Wave III and Wave IV data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health …

A Transdisciplinary Analysis Of Sweetened Carbonated Soft-Drink Consumption And Related Policy Options, Charles R. Rhodes Ph.D.

Doctoral Dissertations

In Essay One, I estimate how demographic characteristics associate with habitual purchase of sweetened carbonated soft drinks (sCSDs), as different demographic groups respond to marketing variables controlled by the sCSD industry. My method and assumptions cleave neither to conventional economic analysis nor to medical and nutrition literature interested in sugar and soft-drink consumption. No assumption in my estimation process violates arguments in later essays. Results identify household purchase behaviors for relatively fine demographic groupings, are not linear in income or education level, and further vary by gender of the head of household and by type of sCSD industry …

The Impact Of Sleep Quality And Duration On College Student Adjustment And Health, Robert L. Krenek Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

College years are a time of change and transition that involves complex challenges in academic, social, personal/emotional, and institutional adjustment. Stress, anxiety, and tension are often associated with college transition and adjustment; stress and worry have been related to poor sleep quality. Studies have found that college students have more sleep problems than the general public. Research has shown that poor sleep has adverse effects on cognition, mood, and other physiological and psychological aspects of human functioning. Recent research has indicated that sleep quality may be more important than amount of sleep. Relationships have been found between sleep problems and …