Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Stories Of Words, Numbers, And Communities: My Usri Research And Speak Fluent Marketing Internship Experiences, Choi Sze Leung

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

This report illustrates my experiential-learning opportunities, which took the form of two internships. In the summer of 2021, I worked as a marketing intern at Speak Fluent Speech Services, a speech clinic that provides speech and communication training for adults. Aside from designing posters for the clinic’s social-media campaigns, I also had the opportunity to write creative and professional copy and compile a campaign's key performance metrics into a marketing report. In my second internship, I was a research student in the Undergraduate Student Research Internship (USRI) program in the Anthropology department. In this internship, I conducted linguistics anthropology research …

House Church Leaders: A Multisite Case Study, Lance Croy

PhD in Organizational Leadership

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine house church leaders in situ within three typologies of home gatherings. Billings (2011) identified three stages of house church formats: (a) Oikos, where the congregants assemble in the home for a complete meal, including the Eucharist; (b) Domus, where the curate renovates and dedicates rooms in their homes for Christian usage; and (c) Aula, where rented facilities house larger gatherings, the liturgy becomes more formalized, and the Eucharist is no longer a full meal (Billings, 2011). House church leaders and congregants sampled fit the three typologies while addressing a gap in …

A Qualitative Look Into Repair Practices, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This research poster is based on a working research paper which moves beyond the traditional scope of repair and examines the Right to Repair movement from a smaller, more personal lens by detailing the 6 categorical impediments as dubbed by Dr. Alissa Centivany (design, law, economic/business strategy, material asymmetry, informational asymmetry, and social impediments) have continuously inhibited repair and affected repair practices, which has consequently had larger implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) on ourselves, our objects, and our world. The poster builds upon my research from last year (see "The Right to Repair: (Re)building a better future"), this time pulling …

“The Worst Part About My Pregnancy Was Stuff That Didn’T Have To Do With My Pregnancy”: Medicaid Beneficiaries’ Pregnancy Intentions & Experiences In South Carolina, Andrew Michael Chen

Senior Theses

Low-income women and women of color experience adverse birth outcomes at disproportionately higher rates in the United States than most people who give birth. This thesis examines individual interviews conducted with 30 low-income women whose most recent birth was covered by Medicaid, the United States’ largest means-tested public health insurance program. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the women in the study thought about pregnancy, and how they described their intentions to become or avoid becoming pregnant at various times in their life. While public health researchers often frame pregnancy as an event that is either intended …

Pastoral Leadership: The Importance Of Succession Planning Development And Transition In Our Local Churches, Michelle Renee Jenkins

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A pastoral succession plan will address the issues of who will be responsible for leading the respective congregation if something happens to the current Pastor. Without clear direction, leaders leave their flocks in precarious positions. The problem is that churches may not have a concise succession plan to identify a qualified leader to take up the leadership mantle. The study will lay the foundation from a biblical perspective on the importance of identifying a leader’s successor and the advantages of providing a smooth transition for the assembly. The research will stress the importance of pastors not only identifying their successors …

Data Science: A Study From The Scientometric, Curricular, And Altmetric Perspectives, Michael Joseph King

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

This research explores the emerging field of data science from the scientometric, curricular, and altmetric perspectives and addresses the following six research questions: 1. What are the scientometric features of the data science field? 2. What are the contributing fields to the establishment of data science? 3. What are the major research areas of the data science discipline? 4. What are the salient topics taught in the data science curriculum? 5. What topics appear in the Twitter-sphere regarding data science? 6. What can be learned about data science from the scientometric, curricular, and altmetric analyses of the data collected? Using …

Stories Of Teaching On A Conceal And Carry Stage: A Dramaturgical Narrative Inquiry, Christopher J. Miller

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The story of a mass shooting occurring on the place of school seems to be a common one in contemporary American cultural narrative. One of the more controversial solutions offered within this narrative is allowing citizens to protect themselves through the practice of conceal and carry. The practice of legally allowing individuals to conceal and carry a firearm while at the place of school and in the place of class is at the cornerstone of this research inquiry.

This qualitative research study employs a dramaturgical narrative approach to explore the daily lives of full-time community college faculty members. In figuratively …

"Now Thinking About It, It's Freedom": Conceptualizing Sexual Pleasure For Fat, Queer Women, Carolyn Elizabeth Meiller

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Research considering the positive aspects of sexuality, such as pleasure, within a cultural context is especially important for groups of people that are often seen as separate from the experience of sexuality, such as fat, queer women. Due to perceptions of their bodies and how their sexuality goes against traditional heteronormativity, fat, queer women's experiences with sex and pleasure are under represented. Using a critical sexuality framework, the present study sought to explore the definitions and experiences of sexual pleasure for fat, queer women.

In the present study, constructivist grounded theory methods (Charmaz, 2014) were used to analyze the definitions …

From Participants To Co-Researchers: Methodological Alterations To A Qualitative Case Study, Elizabeth M. Pope

The Qualitative Report

Researchers request a variety of levels of engagement from their participants in a research study. This can range from merely serving as a data generation opportunity to being actively involved in each stage of the project. The latter is a co-researcher. In this paper, I explore how nine participants in a qualitative case study became co-researchers by the study’s conclusion. The increase in their active participation required methodological alterations to the project while I conducted the study. This paper presents these alterations by examining: (1) my position as a researcher; (2) my relationship with the participants; (3) the trajectory of …

How To Be Unfaithful To Eurocentrism: A Spanglish Decolonial Critique To Knowledge Gentrification, Captivity And Storycide In Qualitative Research, Marcela Polanco, Nathan D. Hanson, Camila Hernandez, Tirzah Le Feber, Sonia Medina, Stephanie Old Bucher, Eva I. Rivera, Ione Rodriguez, Elizabeth Vela, Brandi Velasco, Jackolyn Le Feber

The Qualitative Report

From a position of academic activism, we critique the longstanding dominance del production of knowledge that solely implicates fidelity to Eurocentric methodological technologies en qualitative research. Influenced by an Andean decolonial perspective, en Spanglish we problematize métodos of analysis as the dominant research practice, whereby las stories o relatos result en su appropriation, captivity and gentrification, first by researchers’ authorship and later by the publishing industry copyrights. We highlight the racializing and capitalist colonial/modern Eurocentric agenda del current market of knowledge production that displaces to la periphery all knowledge o relatos that do not subscribe to Euro-US American methodological parameters …

Refugee Women's Needs: The Athens Case, Melissa J. Diamond

Journal of Refugee & Global Health

Medicins sans Frontiers estimates that twenty-five per cent of new asylum-seeking arrivals in Athens in 2016 were women [1]. Despite the sizable number of women asylum seekers arriving in Athens, women’s voices are often excluded from research on refugee needs. This research sought to understand the needs of women asylum seekers in Athens through the collection of qualitative data on their needs and experiences upon arriving in Athens. Twelve women from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries (background withheld for confidentiality) participated. The sampled women demonstrated an acute understanding of their own needs and the needs of their communities. While many …

Exploring Cherishing: A Qualitative Approach, Pratishtha Bhattacharyya, Rabindra Kumar Pradhan Dr.

The Qualitative Report

The word cherishing is frequently used in our daily jargons. It is also very often mentioned in empirical literature on cherished possessions. However, despite the relevance of the term in the empirical literature on cherished possessions, very little is known about the way it operates in people’s lives. The only link with cherishing happens to be the studies conducted in individualistic cultures on cherished possessions. Besides, there is hardly any consensus on how cherishing operates in collectivistic culture such as India owing to the scarce literature available on the topic. Hence, the present study addresses the gap in the literature …

Advocating For The Use Of Poetry And Mixed Media Work In Analytic Processes, Jason D. Dehart

The Qualitative Report

As part of my analytical process of looking at data collected from a pilot study on the use of film in the classroom, I discovered that I had the space to engage in a creative analysis process. In this article, I propose that creative methods be employed when analyzing data. An arts-based approach to research (Barone & Eisner, 1997) led to two creative products for my research: Poetry, which has been used with research in the past (Cahnmann, 2003; McCullis, 2013) and mixed media. This article explores relevant literature about integrating poetry and other arts into analysis and serves to …

African American Christian Senior Pastor's Beliefs About Mental Health Treatment, Trinaa L. Copeland

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the African American community, the Black Church and its clergy have served as gatekeepers to formal mental health treatment. Little is known about the beliefs of African American Christian senior pastors about mental health treatment and their personal views influencing their counsel to congregants seeking support through the church. This transcendental phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of African American Christian senior pastors in relation to how they understand mental health treatment and provide it to their congregants. The research questions explored three areas: (a) the senior pastors' experiences in rendering mental health treatment, (b) the senior pastors' personal …

Effects Of Cisnormative Beauty Standards On Transgender Women’S Perceptions And Expressions Of Beauty, Delmira Monteiro, Mixalis Poulakis

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The authors conducted a qualitative study exploring the effects of cisnormative beauty standards on transgender women’s perceptions and expressions of beauty. Twelve self-identified Caucasian transgender women completed a semistructured interview that provided descriptive data related to the women’s perceptions of societal beauty standards. Analysis of the data revealed the following primary themes: Participants viewed the beauty of transgender and cisgender women as diverse or as encompassing a broad range of variability; societal beauty standards were influential on participants’ expressions of beauty; and participants’ viewed out-group transphobia as a factor contributing to discriminatory and prejudicial perceptions of transwomen’s beauty.

Object Handling With Contemporary Craft Objects: An Observational Study Of An Embodied, Social And Cognitive Process, Bruce Davenport, Neill James Thompson

The Qualitative Report

This study focuses on the ways that people interact around contemporary craft objects. The ambiguous quality of these objects holds people’s attention and inhibits autobiographical narratives. The study focused on the relationship between the perceptual language used by participants and the ways in which they interacted with the objects. The analytical approach taken here begins with close observation and careful description of single cases and working towards valid generalisations rather than imposing an interpretation from the outset by explicitly positing a hypothesis. Six pairs of women were invited to participate in object handling conversations in an art museum setting. The …

Into The Depths Of Reflexivity And Back Again—When Research Mirrors Personal Experience: A Personal Journey Into The Spaces Of Liminality, Katherine Janzen

The Qualitative Report

The context of this paper surrounds my Master’s thesis which was written in 2010 related to recovering crack cocaine addicted mothers who had lost custody of their children. Every qualitative thesis has a story attached to it—an impetus for engaging in the research. When the research combines sensitive topics and the research mirrors the experience of the researcher, decisions must be made considering the research processes and methods. This paper explores the reflexive processes that were employed in the 10 months preceding taking my first thesis course. Using the preface of my reflexive journal as data, three themes arose from …

From Grapes To Wine To Brands To Culture: A Qualitative Study Of Kentucky Wineries And Kentucky Wine Producers, Benjamin J. Triana

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The Kentucky wine industry has grown from six wineries in 1999 to more than sixty wineries as of 2013. However, the industry has reached a crucial point in its development as funds allotted from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement ended in 2014. As a result, Kentucky wine producers must navigate the demands of local, regional, national, and international wine markets without the same amount of economic support provided in the early stages of the industry’s development.

The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) how Kentucky wine producers use cultural associations to manage their brands, (2) communicate with multiple …

Identifying Strategies To Improve Access To Credible And Relevant Information For Public Health Professionals: A Qualitative Study, Nancy R. Lapelle, Roger S. Luckmann, E. Hatheway Simpson, Elaine Russo Martin

E. Hatheway Simpson

Background Movement towards evidence-based practices in many fields suggests that public health (PH) challenges may be better addressed if credible information about health risks and effective PH practices is readily available. However, research has shown that many PH information needs are unmet. In addition to reviewing relevant literature, this study performed a comprehensive review of existing information resources and collected data from two representative PH groups, focusing on identifying current practices, expressed information needs, and ideal systems for information access. Methods Nineteen individual interviews were conducted among employees of two domains in a state health department – communicable disease control …

Quantum Of Solitude: Lonelines As Experienced By Pastors' Wives, Jama Davis, Fred Milacci

Fred Milacci

This phenomenological study investigated the individual experiences of eight pastors’ wives with the phenomenon, loneliness. Data was collected using informal, conversational, taped and transcribed interviews. Descriptions of the experiences of loneliness and the general factors contributing to loneliness were identified by the participants. The experiences and general contributing factors were compared and contrasted. The findings of this study suggest three factors which most significantly impact pastors’ wives and loneliness. Suggestions for future research involving pastors’ wives and pastors are provided.

Quantum Of Solitude: Lonelines As Experienced By Pastors' Wives, Jama Davis, Frederick Milacci

Faculty Publications and Presentations

This phenomenological study investigated the individual experiences of eight pastors’ wives with the phenomenon, loneliness. Data was collected using informal, conversational, taped and transcribed interviews. Descriptions of the experiences of loneliness and the general factors contributing to loneliness were identified by the participants. The experiences and general contributing factors were compared and contrasted. The findings of this study suggest three factors which most significantly impact pastors’ wives and loneliness. Suggestions for future research involving pastors’ wives and pastors are provided.