Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Analyzing Alcohol Behavior In San Luis Obispo, Ariana Montes

Statistics

No abstract provided.

Light Pollution Research Through Citizen Science, John Kanemoto

STAR Program Research Presentations

Light pollution (LP) can disrupt and/or degrade the health of all living things, as well as, their environments. The goal of my research at the NOAO was to check the accuracy of the citizen science LP reporting systems entitled: Globe at Night (GaN), Dark Sky Meter (DSM), and Loss of the Night (LoN). On the GaN webpage, the darkness of the night sky (DotNS) is reported by selecting a magnitude chart. Each magnitude chart has a different density/number of stars around a specific constellation. The greater number of stars implies a darker night sky. Within the DSM iPhone application, a …

Development Of A Public Education Website: Building Bridges Over Water, Angelina Mckee

Agricultural Education and Communication

Website created by Angelina McKee to educate the public about water resource issues. Water is the basic unit of life, water resources are the basis for what societies and ecosystems are founded upon. Water shortages and droughts are more prevalent in our ever-changing world. It is no shock that there are discrepancies between various stockholders on either sides of the dry riverbed. This senior project resulted in the development of a website that addresses global water resources, water use in California, water conservation, and water allocation. The website informs the public on water resources and related issues and will hopefully …

Water In The 21st Century, Grayson Michael Shor

Social Sciences

The aim of this research project is to provide a comprehensive and global analysis of water use in order to provide the reader with a comprehensive grasp of current and impending issues. The included five (5) chapters discuss water distribution, conservation, purification, law, international development, economic debates, ethical consideration, as well as educated estimations of the effects water related issues may cause in the next one-hundred years.

Climate Planning In Politically Conservative Cities: A Case Study Of Seven Climate Action Plans, Coleman Moore Frick

Master's Theses

Current research indicates that the potential risks associated with human-induced climate change are likely to increase in frequency and intensity. Although there have been several attempts, no effective international treaty or policy has been enacted by the United States with the purpose of combating this global issue. In the past decade, local climate action plans (CAPs) have emerged as a planning solution designed to reduce greenhouse emissions (GHGs). Previous studies have examined CAP attributes, but no research has focused solely on climate planning in politically conservative jurisdictions. This research finds that of 245 CAPs completed to date nationally, approximately 90 …

Predicting Music Genre Preferences Based On Online Comments, Andrew J. Sinclair

Master's Theses

Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) states that individuals adapt to each other’s communicative behaviors. This adaptation is called “convergence.” In this work we explore the convergence of writing styles of users of the online music distribution plat- form SoundCloud.com. In order to evaluate our system we created a corpus of over 38,000 comments retrieved from SoundCloud in April 2014. The corpus represents comments from 8 distinct musical genres: Classical, Electronic, Hip Hop, Jazz, Country, Metal, Folk, and World. Our corpus contains: short comments, frequent misspellings, little sentence struc- ture, hashtags, emoticons, and URLs. We adapt techniques used by researchers analyzing other …

Impact Testing Of Youth-Level Helmets Versus College-Level Helmets, Nicole Hermann

Industrial Technology and Packaging

With so many studies being conducted on professional football players regarding concussions and other related brain injuries, it’s amazing that such an important demographic has been missed. While NFL players are just as subjected to serious injuries as anyone else or even more so, it is important to remember that these players are outfitted, in most cases, with top-of-the-line equipment -- especially their helmets. If the focus is shifted to a younger demographic, youth football players in middle school and high school, the equipment is far less advanced and in a vast majority of cases, has been previously used by …

Determining California National Guard Airmen’S Opinions And Attitudes Regarding Morale, Welfare And Recreation Programs: A Research Project, Natalie Delossa

Journalism

This senior project creates research design parameters that will facilitate two- way communications between the California Air National Guard and its airmen. The benefits of conducting its research are twofold. First, the California Air National Guard can learn more about its airmen. Second, the California Air National Guard can use information about its airmen to better serve its external publics in future public relations and marketing endeavors.

This project addresses the importance of conducting two- way communication between internal and external publics (in this case, the California Air National Guard and its airmen and the California Air National Guard and …

Media Portrayal Of Individuals In The Lower Class And Its Effects On Attributions Of Educational Hardships, Krista A. Burke

Communication Studies

This study investigated how media portrayals of individuals in the lower class affect people’s beliefs about educational hardships in lower socioeconomic areas. Specifically, this study looked at the attributions of these hardships to determine if media consumption had an effect on the internality of attributions. It was hypothesized that increased media consumption would be related to an increased tendency toward internal attributions. It was hypothesized that increased media consumption would lead to lower support for policy changes regarding education. A survey was distributed to assess media consumption habits and attitudes toward educational hardships in the lower class. Correlation results yielded …