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Factors That Influence Plans To Have Children: An Application Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior To Fertility Decision-Making Across The Reproductive Years, Amanda Chappell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Fertility intentions include plans to have one or more children; intentions can be used to predict fertility behavior. The focus of the current study was to examine the influence of age and gender on factors involved in estimating fertility intentions (measured with 5 items), including attitudes (i.e., how one feels about becoming a parent; 13 items), norms (i.e., pressure from important others to have children; 5 items), and perceived control (beliefs about capability of becoming a parent; 4 items) in a U.S. sample. The study included a sample of N = 289 (51% men) participants (75.6% White) between the ages …

Women In Extension Persevering In Leadership Roles, Lexis Danielle Trickett

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Over the last several decades, the rates at which women have been pursuing higher levels of education have steadily increased. However, there is a discrepancy between the number of women graduating, and the amount entering the workforce, specifically in leadership roles. The purpose of this study was to share a current profile of women in the West Virginia Cooperative Extension Service by allowing them to describe their career journeys, supports and barriers they may or may not have faced, and mentoring experiences. By using a non-experimental quantitative methodology, a population of male and female Extension Agents and Specialists were surveyed …

Navigating Place And Gender: A Multicontextual Critical Narrative Inquiry Of Rural Trans* Student Experiences, Jessie Lynn O'Quinn

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The purpose of this critical narrative study was to understand how rural West Virginia trans* students navigate cultural norms of their rural home communities and higher education contexts. An essential part of this critical narrative was to provide rural trans* students with an avenue to share their unique experiences and give them a platform to share their voices. The resulting narratives suggested that the normative tensions rural trans* college students experience across contexts stemmed from negative regional experiences that reinforced traditional gender norms. Negative home contexts and experiences forced students to feel like they had to build walls and distance …

The Women Of Salò: Roles And Expectations In The Italian Social Republic, Johnathon N. Keller

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This thesis aims at investigating the national discourse around women in the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in three distinct spaces: urban, family, and rural. During the RSI, women were primarily constructed as one of three symbols: exemplary wife and mother, militant woman citizen, and woman soldier. The re-emergence of the urban, working-class woman was accelerated by the socializzazione program and the crisis the Italian nation faced. The RSI saw a shift away from family planning and a new emphasis was placed on family assistance and care of the existing young. Finally, during the RSI, rural spaces, central during the 1930s …

Designing King Lear: How Costume Design For A Theatrical Production Is Affected By A Transition To Film, Jacob Steven Currence

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Designing King Lear: How Costume Design for a Theatrical Production is Affected by a Transition to Film

Jacob Steven Currence

William Shakespeare’s King Lear was written in 1606, and it recounts the folktale of a king losing his power and sanity. Several hundred years later, in 2022, West Virginia Public Broadcasting aired the West Virginia University School of Theatre & Dance production of King Lear. As costume designer for the play, it was my task to depict King Lear’s decline through his wardrobe. My costume work needed to reflect his descent into madness and ultimate loss of power. Moreover, this …

A Multi-Method Examination Of The Effects Of Students’ Unconscious Biases On Student Evaluations Of Instructors, Brittany M. Kowalski

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In this dissertation, I complete three studies to evaluate potential reactions to target role congruity, especially gender role congruity, through an examination of Student Evaluations of Instructors (SEIs). Target role congruity refers to assessments an observer makes of whether or not the various roles a target person fills “fit” with one another. For example, a woman surgeon may be perceived as being in an incongruent role due to the masculine characteristics associated with the occupation and the continued dominance of men in the field. Researchers utilizing congruity theories has shown that both women and men in roles that are incongruent …

“Where Did Your Christ Come From”? Exploring The Significance And Prevalence Of The White Jesus Phenomenon Among Black Baptist Women And Men, Stephanie Marshelle House-Niamke

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Berger's theory of religion and world construction fails to consider the critical issue of power and who is allowed to construct their own reality and thus, does not adequately capture the experience of Black Christians and the Black religious experience. I use White Jesus as a case study to analyze this process. Though the White Jesus phenomenon has been more readily explored in theological and historical fields, very little sociological research discusses this phenomenon. I argue that a Europeanized Jesus has had harmful sociocultural effects on Black Christians and Black people, in the form of cultural trauma. Yet, the White …

Adult Delinquency And Victimization: A Test Of Differential Association Theory With New Data, Shah Alam

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The theory of differential association applies not only to adolescent people but also to the adult population. A lot of studies tested this theory on delinquent behavior but tests on victimization are rare. Using West Virginia Social Survey 2020 data, this study finds that there is an association between having delinquent friends and learning of self-delinquency in the adult population. It also reports that self-victimization can be predicted with having delinquent friends. The highest probability of victimization is twice for people for having pain medication misuser friends than of people having marijuana user friends. But self-delinquent behaviors do not report …

[K], [G] And [ʔ] In Amman: Social Associations And Identity Perception In Young Rural [Fallahin] Palestinian Speech, Shahd Abu Nahel

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Built after several immigration waves, Amman developed its own dialect. Previous studies investigated the stylistic and social reallocation process (Britain & Trudgill, 2005) that happened to some major phonemes. The three phonemes [k], [ʔ] and [g] are dialectal reflexes of the Arabic modern standard uvular phoneme [q], and they correlate with social aspects like gender, identity and social class. This study has two parts the first investigates the distribution of the phonemes of the first generation of rural Palestinians hypothesizing that they will follow the generalizations found in Al-Wer (2011). The second part is a large-scale questionnaire targeting the social …

Gendered Use Of Language In Facebook Status Updates Among Jordanian And American Youths: A Sociopragmatic Study, Ashraf Wenas Al Sad

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The study examines the types of speech acts of Facebook status updates that are posted by Jordanian and American youth. The participants were from Yarmouk University which is located in northern Jordan and from West Virginia University which is located in the US. The data was elicited from 50 American males, 50 American females, 50 Jordanian males, and 50 Jordanian females. Searle’s taxonomy was used to do the content analysis of the data. Searle’s taxonomy and additional speech acts were found: directive, expressive, assertive, God’s invocation, humor, and quotation. The findings of the study indicate that the religious and cultural …

Development And Dynamics Of Us Welfare Policy, Liza Gordon

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In this dissertation I analyze the development of contemporary US welfare policy with special consideration given to the importance of race and gender. In the introductory chapter I outline how the development of the American welfare state has continuously neglected the needs of women and minorities as well as how classist, racist, and sexist appeals have been prevalent throughout US history in relation to welfare policies. The remaining chapters analyze how contemporary welfare policies including the 1996 welfare reforms and state drug-testing for welfare laws carry on these American legacies. In Chapter 1 I examine how the classist, sexist, and …

Women, Water, And Well-Being: Gendered Experiences Of Household Water Contamination In Parkersburg, West Virginia, Emily Brooke Tingler

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DuPont Washington Works chemical plant knowingly pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic C8 waste into local waterways, water tables, and landfills for over 40 years, contaminating the drinking water for more than 100,000 residents in and around Parkersburg, West Virginia. Drawing on feminist political ecology and the political ecology of water with literature on perceptions of risk in contaminated communities, environmental reproductive justice, modern water, and hydrosocial waterscapes, I examine, through a qualitative case study, the lived experiences of women who have an intimate understanding of C8 water contamination from the DuPont Washington Works chemical plant. Specifically, I …

Resilience In The Mountains: Exploring The Labor And Motives Of Food-Caregiver Women Repairing Broken Food Systems In West Virginia Communities, Heidi Lynn Gum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Over the past four years the Food Justice Lab, now housed within the Center for Resilient Communities at West Virginia University, hosted a series of food access planning workshops across the state of West Virginia. Mobilizing more than 200 participants, the Nourishing Networks workshop training program was designed to build grassroots capacity for food system change. Eighty-percent of workshop participants were women and dialogues recorded at these events revealed how women are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and disproportionately labor to repair a broken food system. Women in West Virginia are not only growing food, feeding their families, selling it …

Early Black Poetry, Social Justice, And Black Children: Receptions Of Child Activism In African American Literary History, Tabitha Lashay Joy Lowery

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In spite of the substantial amount of critical work that has been produced on the recovery of early African American literature in the last few decades, our representations of black authors are still limited. Current studies of early African American poets privilege the identification of African American literature with resistance to slavery. This identification has persisted and has made the field one-dimensional. My dissertation provides reception histories of four early black poets—Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, Frances Harper, and Paul Laurence Dunbar—to argue for and present an expansive understanding of African American literature. A thorough examination of these authors’ circulation …

Microfinance In Latin America: Poverty Alleviation And The Impact Of Institutional Mimicry, Lindsay Jouben

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Microfinance has become a program of choice in the international development community. The World Bank has promoted microfinance programs under the idea that poverty alleviation can be accomplished by mainly providing credit. [1] As such, these policies are often replicated throughout the developing world. This replication is done through international organizations adopting a standard of best practices for the microfinance field. Best practices consist of a complex set of standard by which all banks must adhere if they receive funding from the World Bank or International Monetary Fund. These best practices, following neoliberal economics, lay out how microfinance should operate …

Relation Between Depression Symptoms And Suicide Risk In Adults And Older Adults, Ruifeng Cui

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Suicide consistently ranks among the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States. Depressive disorders as well as depression symptoms are risk factors for suicide. Depression symptoms typically fall under a cognitive affective domain and a somatic domain. Males and older adults may have a more somatic presentation of depression. Among those with physical health problems, these somatic symptoms may be confounded with symptoms of physical conditions. Not all symptoms of depression are equally useful for predicting suicide risk. The types of depression symptoms that are risk factors may vary depending on the characteristics of the sample and …

Vi Et Armis: Londoners And Violent Trespass Before The Common Pleas In The Fifteenth Century, Lindsey Mcnellis

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Civil litigation in early fifteenth-century England encompassed a variety of actions, but only one writ covered acts of violence: trespass vi et armis. These writs, all before the central Court of Common Pleas, detail a variety of violent torts, or wrongs, such as housebreaking, theft, imprisonment, abduction, and assault. The Londoners who entered pleadings in this court between 1405 and 1415 have left a fascinating glimpse into both interpersonal violence and the world of savvy litigators. Through a close examination of eighty-two cases, I demonstrate that Londoners were knowledgeable litigants who used the Court of Common Pleas and its …

Persistence Of Undergraduate Women In Stem Through Timsi, Heather L. Henderson

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There is a need to increase the persistence of women in science careers. This study focuses on undergraduate women majoring in or interested in science. Despite interest early on in their academic careers, women are leaving STEM at higher rates than other fields. Through the framework of the Tripartite Integration Model of Social Influence (TIMSI), this study explores psychosocial factors leading to integration in science careers. 484 undergraduate women from 9 universities in the Colorado/Wyoming Front Range and the Carolinas were recruited into this study and surveyed through 8 waves of data collection. A model building process was performed using …

Bridging The Gap: Utilizing Socratic Inquiry Facilitation In Cross-Cultural Communication And Conflict Exploration, Mikaela G. Zimmerman

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The objective of this research is to explore the possibilities for improving governmental relations (local, national, and international) using microcosms of cross-cultural dialogues facilitated with Socratic Inquiry methodology and their potential to project situational similarities into more formal political conversation. Using twenty-five recorded dialogues from The Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Public Diplomacy (World in Conversation), I have broadly observed the role of Socratic Inquiry facilitation in cross-cultural dialogues whose content varies across a span of contentious social topics. By generally accounting for a range of relevant social factors such as gender, body language, conversational tools, and proxies for empathy, …

Queen Louise Of Prussia: Gender, Power, And Queenship During The Sattelzeit Era, Samantha Sproviero

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Louise of Meckelburg-Strelitz was born on March 10, 1776 and died just thirty-four years later. In her short time as the queen consort of Prussia, she would give birth to nine children, command her own dragoons, negotiate with Napoleon, and eventually become a complex and celebrated German historical figure. Immensely popular in life, her early death was considered a national tragedy, and commemorations of her life only solidified her role as a new type of Prussian queen. Using Louise as a case study, this work will examine how the role of queen changed, not only in Prussia, but also between …

Communicated Sex Roles And Gender Identity Gaps., Janelle Vickers

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Using Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) and the Bem Sex Role Index (BSRI), this study addresses the potential impact of societally-created, gendered expectations on the satisfaction of emerging adults. Two hundred twenty-nine undergraduates at a large mid-Atlantic university participated in the study by completing an online survey assessing gender, identity, and a relationship with a close other of their choosing. Results replicate previous research using CTI, which suggests that identity gaps relating to gender are dissatisfying. Specifically, gaps at the personal-enacted, personal-relational, and the newly-created personal-personal levels were negatively related to participant satisfaction, and personal-relational gaps were negatively correlated with …