Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Technology From The Perspective Of Society And Public Interest, Chanwoon Park

Purdue Polytechnic Doctoral Dissertations

The ultimate goals of this study were to determine ways to reconcile technology with public interest and to understand the relationship between what we know and how we feel about technology. To achieve the goals, related literatures were reviewed; the mechanism of technology development was described with empirical data; and human perception of technology was tested with a survey. The duality of technology that implied technological inherencies of technical reason and social meanings was the principle assumption of the study. Neutrality of technology becomes a myth with the presence of social meanings embodied in technology. Given the huge impact of …

Race, Class And Gender In Engineering Education: A Quantitative Investigation Of First Year Enrollment, Canek Moises Luna Phillips

Open Access Dissertations

Research explanations for the disparity across both race and gender in engineering education has typically relied on a deficit model, whereby women and people of color lack the requisite knowledge or psychological characteristics that Whites and men have to become engineers in sufficient numbers. Instead of using a deficit model approach to explain gender and race disparity, in the three studies conducted for this dissertation, I approach gender and race disparity as the result of processes of segregation linked to the historic and on-going perpetuation of systemic sources of oppression in the United States. In the first study, I investigate …

Essays On Malawian Agriculture: Micro-Level Welfare Impacts Of Agricultural Productivity; Profitability Of Fertilizer Use; And Targeting Of Fertilizer Subsidy Programs, Francis Addeah Darko

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation comprises of three essays that address different aspects of agriculture in Malawi using a two-wave panel data collected by the National Statistical Office of Malawi with support from the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) program. Each essay stands alone as an independent study because of differences in research questions and the methodologies used in addressing the questions.

The first essay analyzes the micro-level welfare impacts of agricultural productivity. Welfare is measured by various dimensions of poverty and food insecurity; and agricultural productivity is measured by maize yield and value of crop …

Local Matters: Regulating Economic Development In Two Indiana Cities, Christopher A. Malackany

Open Access Dissertations

Since the 1970s, local governments have utilized similar redevelopment tools to counteract economic dislocations but cities often experience divergent development pathways. This project explores why these divergences occur through a comparative case study of a college town and factory town in Indiana. Qualitatively, I compile data from interviews with city officials, local government documents, and related research to address the towns’ divergent development paths. Two findings are noteworthy. First, a locality’s extant resources act as path-dependent liabilities for local growth. Second, state and federal aid greatly assists local development. Yet the defunding of these revenue streams, and a city’s reliance …

China Twenty Years After: Substance Use Under Rapid Social Changes, Xiaozhao Y. Yang

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation discusses how China’s rapid modernization and social transformation over the last twenty years since a series of reforms at the end of 1980s contribute to the changes in substance use behaviors. Specifically, there are three individual empirical chapters in this dissertation, each exploring one dimension of social change and its association with substance use. First, I have demonstrated how substance use can be a protective factor against unemployment over the long term, especially against the background of massive layoffs among former socialist industrial workers and landless peasants during this period. Second, another chapter examines how social mobility (i.e. …

Early Parental Loss, Socioeconomic Stressors, And Health In Later Life: Evidence For Gender Disparity, Rong Fu

Open Access Dissertations

Drawing from the stress process model and the cumulative disadvantage theory, this dissertation examined how childhood and later life stressors affected cognitive and subjective health in older adults. Using three main articles, this dissertation investigated (1) the effect of early parental loss on cognitive well-being in Chinese oldest old; (2) the effect of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility on cognitive and subjective health in advanced age; and (3) the effect of different dimensions of socioeconomic status and perceived financial strain on subjective health in later life. Data were derived from the 2002 and 2005 waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey. …

A Cross-Sectional And Mixed-Method Assessment Of Safety Culture And Safety Climate At A Regional Airline, Micah S. Walala

Open Access Dissertations

The researcher applied a mixed methods approach to conduct a cross-sectional assessment of the safety culture, safety climate, and SMS at a regional airline in the United States. Data collection techniques were comprised of interview, on-line-survey, and a focus group activity. Participants in the current study were maintenance technicians, flight attendants, dispatchers, pilots, and managers. Results indicated significant differences of perception of safety climate, safety culture, and Safety Management System between the maintenance technicians and flight attendants. The length of time a participant had worked at the subject airline and age of the participant appeared to be significant factors of …

The Things They Carried: The Biological Residue Of Childhood Misfortune, Patricia M. Morton

Open Access Dissertations

There is a well-established relationship between childhood misfortune and adult health, but how these early-life experiences “get under the skin” to later manifest as poor health is less clear. To elucidate this process, this dissertation investigates (1) how childhood conditions influence immune functioning and (2) whether these physiological consequences of early misfortune lead to poor health, indicated by ischemic heart disease (IHD) onset. Guided by cumulative inequality theory and biological embedding, this dissertation also examines adult health lifestyles and socioeconomic status (SES) as possible mechanisms linking childhood misfortune to inflammation and IHD in later life. Data come from six waves …

The Role Of Workplace Supervisor Support In Cargivers' Marital Relationships, Kenona H. Southwell

Open Access Dissertations

Family caregivers make important contributions to care recipients and the economy. However, providing care for ill or disabled family members can be challenging, particularly when the role of caregiver is accompanied by additional roles such as employee, spouse, and parent ( Hammer & Neal, 2008). There is some evidence that the demands of caregiving may negatively influence the quality of caregivers’ marriages (Bookwala, 2009). Much of caregiving research, however, is focused on the influence of caregiving and multiple caregiving roles on caregivers’ health (see Pinquart & Sörensen, 2011), but less attention has been paid to other aspects of caregivers’ lives …

Neural Activity Reveals Effects Of Aging On Inhibitory Processes During Word Retrieval, Ranjini Mohan

Open Access Dissertations

Word retrieval difficulties are one of the most frustrating problems in older adults. Poorer access to phonological (speech sound) representation of the target word has been postulated as the underlying deficit, supported by findings of improvement in word retrieval after phonological priming. But the great variability in naming performance among older adults may reflect cognitive scaffolding or compensatory neurophysiological processes related to maintenance or decline of naming abilities. In order better understand aging effects in the underlying neurophysiological changes associated with phonological retrieval, the present study examined electrophysiological correlates of phonological priming and word retrieval in adults across the lifespan. …

Understanding The Communicative Processes Of Baby Boomer Women Adjusting To Retirement: Connecting Micro And Macro Discourses, Patricia E. Gettings

Open Access Dissertations

Baby Boomers are changing the face of retirement in the United States. For example, retirement traditionally refers to the time when an individual who has worked full-time for the majority of her life chooses to entirely and permanently exit the workforce, but now includes a range of formations (e.g., bridge employment). Baby Boomer women are most affected by this “new” retirement because they have worked a broader range of jobs for longer periods of time than ever before. Transitioning to retirement implicates processes of adjusting beyond just a change in one’s employment status as retirees potentially confront instrumental (e.g., where …

The Impact Of Early Life Adversity On Later Life Health, Abigail R Howard

Open Access Dissertations

The preponderance of the literature on early life adversity suggests that adversity has negative effects on later life health; however, an emerging body of literature suggests that early life adversity may develop a sense of resilience in individuals. Drawing from life course perspective, the present research seeks to address this by asking how 16 early life adversities affect individuals' health over a 20 year period in adulthood. Further, the present research seeks to understand how individuals' perceptions of their health over the next few years may actually impact their health seven years later. In general, the more adversity a person …

Modeling The Impacts Of Hospitality And Tourism Enterprises On Community Quality Of Life, Sangchoul Yi

Open Access Dissertations

The present research examined the impacts of hospitality and tourism businesses on community quality of life using existing public domain databases. In the tourism literature, various methodological approaches have been proposed to investigate the impacts of tourism on a host community and its residents. However, these approaches are limited because of innate methodological constraints such as the bias of the survey respondents' perceptions. To overcome such a limitation, alternative research constructs have been proposed. Among them, Quality of Life (QOL) has become a good alternative for measuring tourism impacts. Accordingly, the present researcher introduced QOL as a research tool for …

Culturally Responsive Engineering Education: A Case Study Of A Pre-College Introductory Engineering Course At Tibetan Children's Village School Of Selakui, Marisol Mercado Santiago

Open Access Dissertations

Culturally responsive teaching has been argued to be effective in the education of Indigenous youth. This approach emphasizes the legitimacy of a group's cultural heritage, helps to associate abstract academic knowledge with the group's sociocultural context, seeks to incorporate a variety of strategies to engage students who have different learning styles, and strives to integrate multicultural information in the educational contents, among other considerations. ^ In this work, I explore the outcomes of a culturally responsive introductory engineering short course that I developed and taught to Tibetan students at Tibetan Children's Village of Selakui (in Uttarakhand, India). Based on my …

White Racial Attitudes In The Age Of Obama, Ryan Jerome Lecount

Open Access Dissertations

What is the nature of White racial attitudes in the age of Obama? This dissertation project seeks to answer this question in three distinct ways. The first empirical chapter examines the role of economic insecurity and education on White racial attitudes. The second empirical chapter evaluates the relative importance of individual vs. contextual factors in shaping Whites' attitudes about race. The third empirical chapter seeks to evaluate the extent to which racial color-blindness (as opposed to other racial attitudes) motivates White opposition to race-targeted programs. Findings in empirical chapters one and two are conditional, while clear evidence is demonstrated that …

The Nature Of Parental Involvement In Middle School: Examining Nonlinear Associations, Elizabeth A. Wehrspann

Open Access Theses

Middle school is a time during which the importance of school performance and academic motivation increases, yet actual adolescent achievement and motivation tend to decline during this period. Extent research and theory highlight the importance of parental involvement in education for adolescents, as most work shows that parent involvement is positively related to academic achievement and motivation. However, there are also many mixed findings regarding the link between specific types of involvement (i.e., home-based involvement and academic socialization) and these outcomes. Further, little work has been done to examine the possible age-related differences in these associations. Guided by Self-Determination Theory …

Attachment Representations And Mother-Child Dialogue, Baiba Barene

Open Access Theses

With the emerging linguistic competencies of the child, dialogue becomes a regular part of mother-child everyday interactions, and may serve as one of the mechanisms of transmission of attachment in early and middle childhood. The goal of this study was to investigate the hypothesis about the co-constructive nature of children's knowledge of secure base script. Formation of the secure base script is a result of child-caregiver interactions that have been consolidated into a unit of knowledge available for use in attachment related situations. Individual attachment narratives and mother-child co-constructed narratives were collected from 86 mother-child dyads when children were 3.7 …

Coping With Emotions During Reintegration: An Evaluation Of Service Members' Psychological Health, Christina Marie Marini

Open Access Theses

Upon returning home from deployment, service members are likely coping with strong emotions related to deployment stressors. In addition, service members and their intimate partners may be tasked with emotionally reconnecting with one another after an extended period of separation. Reintegration is therefore a critical, transitory time to evaluate associations between emotional coping strategies utilized by service members and their partners as predictors of service members' well-being. Previous research has indicated that service members' expression of emotions is positively related to their well-being post-deployment, whereas their avoidance is negatively related. These relationships were reevaluated in the current study. The current …

The Role Of Traditionalism In Patterns Of Support From Adult Children To Fathers In The Later Years, Michael William Steinhour

Open Access Dissertations

This study explores the effects of fathers' gender role attitudes on the receipt of instrumental and expressive support from their adult children. Using data on 1159 fathers aged 50-94 from the National Survey of Families and Households (W-1), I sought to determine if fathers' traditional gender role attitudes would predict receipt of support in two domains: help with instrumental tasks (e.g., help around the house and help with repairs), and expressive support (e.g., expressive support, encouragement, moral or emotional support). : My research question was: what are the effects of fathers' traditional gender role attitudes on receipt of support from …

Patient Perceptions Of Physicians And Medication Adherence Among Medicare Part D Beneficiaries, Lori Marquinne Ward

Open Access Dissertations

Ward, Lori Marquinne. Ph.D., Purdue University, December, 2013. Patient Perceptions of Physicians and Medication Adherence Among Medicare Part D Beneficiaries. Major Professor: Joseph Thomas III.

An observational database analysis using Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey data was conducted to examine patient perceptions of physicians and associations with adherence to antihypertensive medication among Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Part D. The study sample included beneficiaries if they were 65 years or older, dwelling in the community, had a diagnosis of hypertension in 2007, were enrolled in Medicare Part D all 12 months in 2008, and had Medicare Part D claims for antihypertensive …

Understanding Teacher/Coach Role Stressors And Burnout, Kevin Andrew Richards

Open Access Dissertations

Teaching has long been considered a stressful profession and is becoming even more stressful because of recent changes in state- and national-level educational policies that govern K-12 education. Teachers who take on additional, extracurricular roles, such as athletic coaching, may be even more prone to stress and burnout. Using occupational socialization theory and role theory, the purpose of this dissertation was to develop a more comprehensive understanding of role stressors, burnout, and resilience among teacher/coaches and non-coaching teachers. The study was divided into two phases. In phase one, 415 teachers (209 teacher/coaches, 206 non-coaching teachers) across a variety of academic …

Maternal Sensitivity, Maternal Mind-Mindedness, And Infant Socioemotional Functioning: An Examination Of Concurrent Associations, Nancy Ignacia Longoria

Open Access Dissertations

Associations between maternal sensitivity, maternal mind-mindedness, and infant socioemotional (SE) functioning were examined in a sample of 40 mother-infant dyads. Semi-structured home observations were conducted to assess maternal sensitivity and collect maternal ratings of maternal depression and infant SE functioning. Mind-mindedness was assessed during free play and teaching interactions during the home visit. Sensitivity at home was positively associated with mind-mindedness during a free play interaction, but not during a teaching interaction. Neither sensitivity nor mind-mindedness was significantly associated with total infant SE scores, or scores on 3 SE subscales (adaptive functioning, self-regulation, and interaction with people). A trend between …

Modeling The Marketability Of Tourism Small Businesses: Oman's Experiences, Hamed Ibrahim Al Azri

Open Access Dissertations

Tourism Small Businesses (TSBs) are vital factors in the prosperity of local communities and the development of authentic and satisfying tourism experiences. Because of their small size, they are unable to effectively use textbook marketing models and techniques. The purpose of this study is to help TSBs market their products in a way that suits their unique nature and business environment. Specifically, this study aims to develop a theoretical model of TSB marketing, identify the main factors affecting TSB marketing, and discern relationships between these factors. Since the aim of the study is to develop a theoretical model, the method …

Visitor Perspectives Of The Authenticity At A Heritage Destination: South Luogu Hutong In Beijing, China, Xiaolin Shi

Open Access Theses

The present study examined visitors' perceptions of authenticity at the South Luogu Alley, a famous Hutong with more than a 700-year history in Beijing. The reconstruction of many historical heritage sites raises the issue about authenticity in tourism. After reconstruction, many Hutongs combined with traditional Chinese style and Western style in terms of architectural design, restaurants, tourism souvenirs, and activities. However, visitors' perceptions toward authenticity at Hutongs continue to be mostly unknown. The study applied a self-administered questionnaire to collect the data from July, 2012 to August, 2012 at the South Luogu Alley. Visitors were asked to rate the authenticity …

Law, Media And Political Dissent: The Case Of The Faln, Yanira Reyes

Open Access Dissertations

Inspired on the works of scholars and activists that had denounced state repression of political activists in the United States, this research explores the theoretical proposal about the criminalization of political dissidence. The proposal of the criminalization of political dissidence is analyzed through the study of the case of Puerto Rican pro-independence organization Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaci6n Nacional, F.A.L.N. The subjects of this research were charged with seditious conspiracy and other charges. They claimed the status of prisoners of war and deny the jurisdiction of US courts over them. Affirming their right to fight for the independence of Puerto Rico, …