Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Partner Influence In Diet And Exercise Behaviors: Testing Behavior Modeling, Social Control, And Normative Body Size, Brea Perry, Gabriele Circiurkaite, Christy Freadreacea Brady, Justin Garcia

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Previous research has documented social contagion in obesity and related health behaviors, but less is known about the social processes underlying these patterns. Focusing on married or cohabitating couples, we simultaneously explore three potential social mechanisms influencing obesity: normative body size, social control, and behavior modeling. We analyze the association between partner characteristics and the obesity-related health behaviors of focal respondents, comparing the effects of partners’ body type, partners’ attempts to manage respondents’ eating behaviors, and partners’ own health behaviors on respondents’ health behaviors (physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and fast food consumption). Data on 215 partners are extracted …

Community To Clinic Navigation To Improve Diabetes Outcomes, Gabriele Circiurkaite, Nancy E. Schoenberg, Mary Kate Greenwood

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Rural residents experience rates of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) that are considerably higher than their urban or suburban counterparts. Two primary modifiable factors, self-management and formal clinical management, have potential to greatly improve diabetes outcomes. “Community to Clinic Navigation to Improve Diabetes Outcomes,” is the first known randomized clinical trial pilot study to test a hybrid model of diabetes self-management education plus clinical navigation among rural residents with T2DM. Forty-one adults with T2DM were recruited from two federally qualified health centers in rural Appalachia from November 2014–January 2015. Community health workers provided navigation, including helping participants understand and implement …

A Case Study Demonstrating The Use Of Appreciative Inquiry In A Financial Coaching Program, Lucy M. Delgadillo, Lance Palmer, Joseph Goetz

Human Development and Family Studies Faculty Publications

This article presents a case study of Appreciative Inquiry applied to client work within the context of a solution-focused, financial coaching model. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a process –a generative process—wherein a client envisions, describes, and constructs a new meaning or reality through structured questions and answers, and then designs a way to get there (to their destiny). The origins, tenants, and applications of AI approach are described, followed by a real case study involving the utilization of this approach to facilitate a client’s overcoming of a specific, maladaptive money script. The article provides implications for financial practitioners and a …

Mountains Of Our Future Earth: Defining Priorities For Mountain Research, Erin H. Gleeson, Susanne Wymann Von Dach, Courtney G. Flint, Gregory B. Greenwood, Martin F. Price, Jörg Balsiger, Anne Nolin, Veerle Vanacker

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The Perth conferences, held every 5 years in Perth, Scotland, bring together people who identify as mountain researchers and who are interested in issues related to global change in mountain social-ecological systems. These conferences provide an opportunity to evaluate the evolution of research directions within the mountain research community, as well as to identify research priorities. The Future Earth Strategic Research Agenda provides a useful framework for evaluating the mountain research community's progress toward addressing global change and sustainability challenges. Using a process originally set up to analyze contributions to the 2010 conference, the abstracts accepted for the 2015 conference …

Framing The Human Dimensions Of Mountain Systems: Integrating Social Science Paradigms For A Global Network Of Mountain Observatories, Courtney G. Flint

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The Global Network of Mountain Observatories (GNOMO) is an international initiative seeking to increase communication and collaboration and align methodologies to assess commonalities and differences across the world's mountain landscapes. Oriented toward sustainable mountain development, GNOMO requires the integration of social and natural sciences, as well as a diverse array of stakeholder perspectives. This paper highlights challenges associated with integrating social sciences because of the inherent paradigmatic differences within the social sciences. The value orientations of mountain researchers, as well as the divergent societal and institutional values regarding mountains, create a need for new approaches to observing mountain landscapes. A …

How Do Children Become Workers? Making Sense Of Conflicting Accounts Of Cultural Transmission In Anthropology And Psychology, David F. Lancy, Christopher A.J. Little

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

This article uses children’s work as a lens to examine methodological concerns in the study of cultural transmission and children’s learning of useful domestic and subsistence skills. We begin by providing a review of the relevant literature concerning cultural transmission in the context of the ethnographic record, as well as more recent studies originating largely from psychology. We then offer an ethnographic case study concerning Asabano (PNG [Papua New Guinea]) childhood to make an important methodological contribution in the interdisciplinary study of cultural transmission. The case study centers on the paradox that Asabano parents, in interviews, claim that their children …

Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In this chapter I argue that teaching, as we now understand the term, is historically and cross-culturally very rare. It appears to be unnecessary to transmit culture or to socialize children. Children are, on the other hand, primed by evolution to be avid observers, imitators, players and helpers—roles that reveal the profoundly autonomous and self-directed nature of culture acquisition (Lancy in press a). And yet, teaching is ubiquitous throughout the modern world—at least among the middle to upper class segment of the population. This ubiquity has led numerous scholars to argue for the universality and uniqueness of teaching as a …

Build It, But Will They Come? A Geoscience Cyberinfrastructure Baseline Analsys, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Karen S. Baker, Nicholas Berente, Dorothy R. Carter, Leslie A. Dechurch, Courtney G. Flint, Gabriel Gershenfeld, Michael Haberman, John Leslie King, Christine Kirkpatrick, Eric Knight, Barbara Lawrence, Spenser Lewis, W. Christopher Lenhardt, Pablo Lopez, Matthew S. Mayernik, Charles Mcelroy, Barbara Mittleman, Et Al.

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Understanding the earth as a system requires integrating many forms of data from multiple fields. Builders and funders of the cyberinfrastructure designed to enable open data sharing in the geosciences risk a key failure mode: What if geoscientists do not use the cyberinfrastructure to share, discover and reuse data? In this study, we report a baseline assessment of engagement with the NSF EarthCube initiative, an open cyberinfrastructure effort for the geosciences. We find scientists perceive the need for cross-disciplinary engagement and engage where there is organizational or institutional support. However, we also find a possibly imbalanced involvement between cyber and …

The Socioecology Of Territory Size And A "Work-Around" Hypothesis For The Adoption Of Farming, Jacob Freeman

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

This paper combines theory from ecology and anthropology to investigate variation in the territory sizes of subsistence oriented agricultural societies. The results indicate that population and the dependence of individuals within a society on “wild” foods partly determine the territory sizes of agricultural societies. In contrast, the productivity of an agroecosystem is not an important determinant of territory size. A comparison of the population-territory size scaling dynamics of agricultural societies and human foragers indicates that foragers and farmers face the same constraints on their ability to expand their territory and intensify their use of resources within a territory. However, the …

New Studies Of Children’S Work, Acquisition Of Critical Skills, And Contribution To The Domestic Economy, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In spite of the fact that the very earliest ethnographers who paid any attention to children took note of the “precocity” displayed by children in both learning the household (e.g., caring for a younger sibling) and subsistence (harvesting and processing grain), tasks characteristic of the societies under investigation, the first synthesis and cross-cultural compilation of this large body of descriptive material is quite recent. This first, introductory, article in this collection reviews those efforts to systematize the study of children’s work and leads the reader through a catalog of the major conclusions or generalizations that have emerged from this analysis. …

A Population-Based Analysis Of Increasing Rates Of Suicide Mortality In Japan And South Korea, 1985–2010, Eric N. Reither, Sun Jeon, Ryan K. Masters

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Background: In the past two decades, rates of suicide mortality have declined among most OECD member states. Two notable exceptions are Japan and South Korea, where suicide mortality has increased by 20 % and 280 %, respectively.

Methods: Population and suicide mortality data were collected through national statistics organizations in Japan and South Korea for the period 1985 to 2010. Age, period of observation, and birth cohort membership were divided into five-year increments. We fitted a series of intrinsic estimator age-period-cohort models to estimate the effects of age-related processes, secular changes, and birth cohort dynamics on the rising …

Community Planners’ Perceptions On Balancing Wellbeing And Development In Wasatch Mountain Communities, Kent Taylor Dean

Research on Capitol Hill

The Wasatch Mountains are home to 80% of Utah's population. As part of a larger study of the Wasatch Mountains for a growing Global Network of Mountain Observatories (GNOMO), this research was conducted to assess perceptions of city planners in Wasatch Mountain communities using qualitative interviews. Questions focused on perceived values or benefits and vulnerabilities or threats associated with living in or near the Wasatch Mountains as well as key issues for sustainability.

Utah’S Oldest Show The Most Concern For Future Water Shortages, Viviane Baji

Research on Capitol Hill

Utah is set to double in population by 2050. It is unclear whether current water supplies will be able to accommodate the needs of the future growth. Young people will be in their prime when water shortage predictions come to fruition, so it is important to know how concerned they are about the water issues that will affect them. An understanding of the relationship between age and water shortage concern may also contribute to the development of social science theories relating age and environmental attitudes and behavior.

Research Question: "Are young people more concerned about water shortages?" to understand how …

Links Between Outdoor Recreation And Environmental Concern Among Utahns, Matthew J. Barnett

Research on Capitol Hill

• Research has shown that the processes which drive the way that people experience and perceive the environment around them are complex and dynamic. This extends to the perceptions that people have regarding environmental and natural resource concerns.
• Outdoor recreational activity allows for people to have varying types of tactile experience with bodies of water, as well as providing a social space in which distinct subcultures may develop. This study explores the possibility that recreation specialization, or type and frequency of water-based activities may influence the perceptions of Utahns regarding water quality.
• Investigating the ways in which social processes intersect and …

School Families: The Impact Of Participation In High School Extracurricular Activities, Erica Hawvermale

Research on Capitol Hill

The present study was designed to analyze the relationship between participation in extracurricular activities and high school adolescents' psychological sense of community (PSOC). Extant research has linked PSOC to the several benefits (below). As such we believe that PSOC acts as a buffer between adolescents and negative high school outcomes.

Psychological Sense of Community

The perception held by a member of a group that one belongs and matters. Further, PSOC captures that the group matters to each other and that through group commitment, shared needs will be met. Thus, PSOC encompasses four main concepts: membership, influence, fulfillment of needs, and …

Teaching: Natural Or Cultural?, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

An important part of the common lore of anthropology is that “other people have culture.” That is, most people fail to recognize or appreciate how much of their lives are governed by habits, values, and expectations that are largely the product of history and culture. They fail to acknowledge that their own way of doing things is not necessarily universal or even widely shared. This ethnocentrism can have enormous consequences for the construction of child development theory and education.

Preparing Future Child Welfare Professionals To Strengthen Couple Relations, Ted G. Futris, David G. Schramm, Jeneé Duncan

Human Development and Family Studies Faculty Publications

This study evaluates the potential value of integrating a family science-focused course on strengthening couple and coparenting relationships into the training of social work students and future child welfare professionals. The 15-week graduate course offered 30 MSW students an opportunity to learn and practice relationship and marriage education (RME) skills in order to teach relevant concepts to clients and to support future integration of these skills in their careers. Evaluation data showed that students demonstrated improvements in multiple domains of knowledge and self-efficacy and applied the concepts learned with clients within six months of completing the course. Implications for future …