Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Beyond Fruit: Examining Community In A Community Orchard, Emily Jane Becker

Dissertations and Theses

The Fruits of Diversity Community Orchard, located in Portland, Oregon in an affordable housing neighborhood, is a site of alternative food provisioning in which a group of people, organized by two nonprofits, work together to manage fruit and nut producing plants. Through conversations with volunteers who participate regularly and participant observation, this study explores the questions: What does community mean in the context of a community orchard? In what ways does partnering with a nonprofit from outside the neighborhood influence community and the way the project is operationalized?

This thesis situates community orchards within the literature on alternative food networks …

Gender Difference In Working Parents' Perceptions Of Work/Family Conflict And The Role Of Occupational Prestige, Heather Kirsten Mccabe

Dissertations and Theses

As many Americans move away from the traditional homemaker-breadwinner family model, research on gender and work/family conflict has become increasingly important and the question of gender difference in experiences of work/family conflict continues to be relevant. While there is research that shows women tend to experience significantly greater work/family conflict than men, there are also studies that have shown little or no gender difference, and some that offer evidence that men are reporting more work/family conflict. This study contributes to the debate by examining gender and occupational prestige in regard to working parents' perceptions of work-to-family and family-to-work spillover, with …

Does Gender Matter? Human Elephant Conflict In Sri Lanka: A Gendered Analysis Of Human Elephant Conflict And Natural Resource Management In A Rural Sri Lankan Village, Katherine Eileen Griffin

Dissertations and Theses

This study is a gendered analysis of natural resource management at the local scale of a poor rural Sri Lankan village in a conservation buffer zone. This village experiences destruction of forests and human elephant conflict. The objective of this study is to gain an in-depth knowledge of residents' use and understandings of environmental resources, and to investigate if gender helps shape these factors. This study relies on a social sustainability conceptual framework. It tracks participation of local women and men in natural resource management, and in conservation within and outside of the Bibile community. Local nongovernmental organizations focus on …

Evaluation Of Washington State Department Of Corrections (Wadoc) Swift And Certain (Sac) Policy Process, Outcome And Cost-Benefit Evaluation, Zachary Hamilton, Jacqueline G. Van Wormer, Alex Conrad Kigerl, Christopher M. Campbell, Brianne Posey

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 2012, the Washington State Department of Corrections (WADOC) embarked on an ambitious effort to restructure their community supervision model. These changes were driven by the passage of Senate Bill 6204, which created substantial operating changes to the Community Corrections Division (CCD) of the WADOC, including matching the level of supervision to offender’s risk level, utilizing evidence-based treatment and implementing swift and certain (yet moderate) jail sanctions for community supervision violations (Washington State Department of Corrections 2008; 2014). The Swift and Certain (SAC) policy was implemented in May of 2012, with the intent of expanding the HOPE model to a …

The Multilevel Effects Of Supervisor Adaptability On Training Effectiveness And Employee Job Satisfaction, Joseph Alvin Sherwood

Dissertations and Theses

The present study explored the multilevel effects of supervisor learning adaptability on training effectiveness, and post-training employee job satisfaction in a work-family and safety-based intervention aimed at increasing family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) and safety behaviors. Using a sample of 291 municipal public works field workers from two independent organizations, it was hypothesized that supervisor adaptability positively relates to post-training FSSB and employee job satisfaction. Specifically, it was hypothesized that learning adaptability prepares those supervisors to be more inclined to engage actively in training, thereby increasing employee reported FSSBs more significantly for those supervisors and leading to intervention target results, …

Therapy And The Nontraditional Transgender Narrative, Dylan Ellingson Waller

Dissertations and Theses

The history of transgender identity is inextricable from the mental health industry. Since the late 1970's transgender people have required permission from mental health professionals to make medical modifications to their sex characteristics. During the time of this research, it was difficult for transgender individuals to receive the hormones or surgeries they desire without first being diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (GID).

This study applies labeling theory to the label of GID. Labeling theory poses that if an individual is labeled with a mental illness, they will either reject or accept the label. Acceptance of the mentally ill label will …

Staying On Script: Sexual Scripts And Sex Education, Elizabeth Carol Hauck

Dissertations and Theses

Existing research suggests that men and women develop differing sexual scripts that influence their behavior, interactions and emotions regarding sex. The objective of this project is to examine the experiences of men and women with formal sex education programs, especially in regards to information about: anatomy and biology, sexual responsibility and risk taking, sexual desire, virginity and abstinence, as well as to explore sources of sex education outside of school. Several studies suggest masculine sexual scripts dictate that men generally construct a more body-focused approach to sex, with an emphasis on competition, aggression and achievement. Conversely, emphasized feminine sexual scripts …

Evaluation Of The Potential For Adapting The Green Dot Bystander Intervention Program For The Construction Trades In Oregon, Maura Kelly, Sasha Bassett

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project was conducted by researchers from the Department of Sociology at Portland State University (PSU) in partnership with the staff of Oregon Tradeswomen Inc (OTI), Green Dot etc Inc (Green Dot), and Portland Community College (PCC). The goal of the project was to evaluate the potential for adapting the Green Dot bystander intervention program for the construction trades in Oregon in order to reduce harassment on construction job sites. The intent of bystander interventions is to encourage people to intervene when they see harassment occurring and, ultimately, to change the social norms so that harassment is viewed as unacceptable …

Democratizing The City Through The Colonization Of Public Space: A Case Study Of Portland Food Not Bombs, Trent Adam Saari

Dissertations and Theses

The implementation of neoliberal economic and political policies is often touted as a way to increase overall individual well-being and freedom. While these policies may benefit those already wielding economic security and political power, marginalized populations often bear the negative cost associated with such policies. As deregulation and privatization increases, social safety nets and social spending are dramatically reduced. At the local level, liberalization has resulted in increased surveillance and regulation of public space. Organized resistance to global corporatization and increased economic and political marginalization has occurred across the globe. Resisting neoliberalism is complex as the adaptability of the state …

Assessing Unique Core Values With The Competing Values Framework: The Ccvi Technique For Guiding Organizational Culture Change, Anthony John Santoriello

Dissertations and Theses

Extensive research suggests organizations have unique guiding principles, called core values, which play a central role in strategic decision making, sustaining high-performance cultures, and guiding organizational culture change. Although the Competing Values Framework (CVF) has been widely used to identify a standardized set of core values, it has not been used to identify unique core values at a given organizations. Unique core values help to distinguish organizations and drive market success.

The present research focused on development of a technique to extend the application of the CVF to identify the core values unique to a given organization. The CVF-based Core …

Building Social Sustainability From The Ground Up: The Contested Social Dimension Of Sustainability In Neighborhood-Scale Urban Regeneration In Portland, Copenhagen, And Nagoya, Jacklyn Nicole Kohon

Dissertations and Theses

In response to growing social inequality, environmental crises, and economic instability, sustainability discourse has become the dominant "master signifier" for many fields, particularly the field of urban planning. However, in practice many sustainability methods overemphasize technological and economic growth-oriented solutions while underemphasizing the social dimension. The social dimension of sustainability remains a "concept in chaos" drawing little agreement on definitions, domains, and indicators for addressing the social challenges of urban life. In contrast, while the field of public health, with its emphasis on social justice principles, has made significant strides in framing and developing interventions to target the social determinants …

Got Hair That Flows In The Wind: The Complexity Of Hair And Identity Among African American Female Adolescents In Foster Care, Lakindra Michelle Mitchell Dove

Dissertations and Theses

African American children are disproportionately over-represented in the child welfare system. Many of these children linger in the system and experience disconnection from their biological families, communities, cultural beliefs, values, and practices. Familial socialization and cultural exposure are essential to developing a positive ethnic identity and self-concept. For African American female adolescents, hair and hair care are critical areas for such socialization and support. This qualitative study explored the hair and hair care perceptions and experiences of African American female adolescents in foster care. The goal was to examine hair and hair's connection to, and influence on, sense of self …

Building Resources At Home And At Work: Day-Level Relationships Between Job Crafting, Recovery Experiences, And Work Engagement, Allison Marie Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

Work engagement is an increasingly popular construct in organizational and occupational health psychology. However, despite substantial advances in our understanding of work engagement at the between-person level, scholars have argued for increased investigation into what drives engagement on a daily level for individual employees. In the current study, a within-person, day-level design was employed to examine the relationships between nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors, and daily work engagement. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (Hobfoll, 1989) theory, nonwork mastery experiences and job crafting were operationalized as employee-driven, resource-building strategies that assist employees in generating important psychological and job resources that …

The Ability Of Narrative Communication To Address Health-Related Social Norms, Meghan B. Moran, Sheila T. Murphy, Lauren B. Frank, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social norms are an important predictor of health behavior and have been targeted by a variety of health communication campaigns. However, these campaigns often encounter challenges related to the socially specific context in which norms exist: specifically, the extent to which the target population identifies with the specific reference group depicted and the extent to which the target population believes the campaign’s message. We argue that because of its capacity to effect identification among viewers, narrative communication is particularly appropriate for impacting social norms and, consequently, behavioral intention. This manuscript presents the results of a randomized trial testing the effectiveness …

Racial Disparities In Infant Mortality, 1990 To 2004: Low Birth Weight, Maternal Complications And Other Causes, Ginny Garcia-Alexander, Hyeyoung Woo

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Demographers have long studied the unacceptably high rates of infant mortality in the U.S., relative to other advanced countries. These higher rates are largely attributable to persistent racial gaps in infant health outcomes and are likely a reflection of social inequalities, which manifest as poorer infant health outcomes in certain groups. We extend on previous research in this area by utilizing the restricted 1990 and 2000 cohort linked birth-death files to examine the risk of infant death due to several main causes including: maternal complications, low birth weight, and other causes, and how it has changed over time. We estimate …

Trends And Disparities In Postpartum Sterilization Following C-Section, 2000-2008, Ginny Garcia-Alexander, Dawn M. Richardson, Kelly Gonzales, Adolfo Gabriel Cuevas

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objectives. We examined variations in the prevalence of postpartum tubal sterilizations following cesarean sections (C-sections) from 2000 to 2008. Methods. We used data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) to estimate odds ratios for patient- (race, marital status, age) and system-level factors (hospital size, type, region) on the likelihood of receiving tubal sterilization after C-section. Results. A disproportionate share of postpartum tubal sterilizations following C-section was covered by Medicaid. The likelihood of undergoing sterilization was increased for Black women, women of older age, and non-single women. Additionally, they were increased in proprietary and government hospitals, smaller hospital settings, and …

Impact Of A Psychology Of Masculinities Course On Women's Attitudes Toward Male Gender Roles, Sylvia Marie Ferguson Kidder

Dissertations and Theses

Individuals are involved in an ongoing construction of gender ideology from two opposite but intertwined directions: they experience pressure to follow gender role norms, and they also participate in the social construction of these norms. An individual's appraisal, positive or negative, of gender roles is called a "gender role attitude." These lie on a continuum from traditional to progressive. Traditional gender role attitudes have been linked to primarily negative outcomes.

This thesis examines attitudes toward--and beliefs about--male gender in women completing an elective course on the psychology of men and masculinities. Study 1 assessed how these students' (N = …

Most Americans Are Now Opposed To Laws Against Interracial Marriage, But Their Behavior Does Not Yet Reflect These Attitudes, Ginny Garcia-Alexander, Richard Lewis Jr., Joanne Foed-Robertson

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent decades have seen a dramatic fall in the number of people that support laws which prohibit interracial marriages, and an increase in the number of these marriages. But why does the rate of interracial marriages remain so low, when compared to same-race marriages? Using national data from the past three decades, Ginny E. Garcia, Richard Lewis Jr., and Joanne Ford-Robertson show that while attitudes towards interracial marriages have changed, many groups still have negative attitudes towards Black-White unions. They find that those who perceive social and economic competition with Blacks, such as those with lower levels of education, were …

Measuring The Support Networks Of Transition-Age Foster Youth: Preliminary Validation Of A Social Network Assessment For Research And Practice, Jennifer E. Blakeslee

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Multi-dimensional social support is an important factor in any positive transition into young adulthood, and youth who are exiting foster care ideally receive comprehensive social support from a range of informal and formal sources. Yet the social networks of transition-age foster youth are likely influenced over time by child welfare involvement, which can weaken or disrupt natural support relationships, while introducing service-oriented relationships that are not intended to last into adulthood. To better understand the social support context of youth aging out of care, we can apply social network theory and methods to systematically identify their networks of supportive relationships …

Conceptualizing Risk And Effectiveness: A Qualitative Study Of Women’S And Providers’ Perceptions Of Nonsurgical Female Permanent Contraception, Elizabeth K. Harrington, Diane Gordon, Isabel Osgood-Roach, Jeffrey T. Jensen, Jennifer Aengst

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective: Novel approaches to nonsurgical permanent contraception (NSPC) for women that are low cost and require no incision or hysteroscope/surgical equipment could improve access to, and the acceptability of permanent contraception (PC). To better understand opportunities and limitations for NSPC approaches, we examined women's and OB/GYN providers' perceptions of NSPC in Portland, OR.

Study Design: Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with 40 women recruited from outpatient clinics with purposive sampling, and a focus group was conducted with 9 OB/GYNs in academic and community practice. Transcripts were coded and inductively analyzed with a grounded theory approach.

Results: The majority of women …

Activist Doctors: Explaining Physician Activism In The Oregon Movement For Single-Payer Healthcare, Jennifer Cullen Loomis

Dissertations and Theses

Changes in American healthcare over the last half century have created social and economic crises, presenting challenges for doctors and patients. The recently-implemented Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an incremental reform that does little to change the complex multi-payer financing characterizing American healthcare. There have been growing demands for more equitable financing arrangements, notably, a single-payer healthcare system in which medical care is financed through a single, non-profit payer and in which medical care is treated as a public good and medically-necessary care is available to everyone.

Nationally-representative surveys have demonstrated widespread physician support for single-payer legislation. Yet, …

Association Of Childhood Physical And Sexual Abuse With Intimate Partner Violence, Poor General Health And Depressive Symptoms Among Pregnant Women, Yasmin V. Barrios, Bizu Gelaye, Qiuyue Zhong, Christina Nicolaidis, Marta B. Rondon, Pedro J. Garcia, Pedro A. Mascaro Sanchez, Sixto E. Sanchez, Michelle A. Williams

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective

We examined associations of childhood physical and sexual abuse with risk of intimate partner violence (IPV). We also evaluated the extent to which childhood abuse was associated with self-reported general health status and symptoms of antepartum depression in a cohort of pregnant Peruvian women.

Methods

In-person interviews were conducted to collect information regarding history of childhood abuse and IPV from 1,521 women during early pregnancy. Antepartum depressive symptomatology was evaluated using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. Multivariable logistic regression procedures were used to estimate adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).

Results

Any childhood abuse was associated with …

Institute For Sustainable Solutions Annual Report (2013-2014), Portland State University. Institute For Sustainable Solutions

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

This brief annual report from Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions captures the highlights from the year and signals where sustainability at PSU is headed in the years to come.

Enacting True Partnerships Within Community-Based Learning: Faculty And Community Partners Reflect On The Challenges Of Engagement, Seanna Kerrigan, Vicki L. Reitenauer, Nora Arevalo-Meier

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the past two decades, the literature on campus-community partnerships as core components of pedagogies of engagement has grown exponentially. In this article, the director and a longtime faculty member of Portland State University’s capstone program report on interviews conducted with ten faculty-community partner pairs, gleaning insights on both the challenges of and lessons learned through partnering. This research adds to the literature through its use of relational methods that bring the voices of interviewees to readers, revealing a depth of connection across the institutional divide.

Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect Of California’S Realignment Act On Public Safety, Jody Sundt, Emily Salisbury, Mark G. Harmon

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research Summary: Recent declines in imprisonment raise a critical question: Can prison populations be reduced without endangering the public? This question is examined by testing the effect of California’s dramatic efforts to comply with court-mandated targets to reduce prison overcrowding using a pretest-posttest design. The results showed that California’s Realignment Act had no effect on violent or property crime rates in 2012, 2013, or 2014. When crime types were disaggregated, a moderately large, statistically significant association between Realignment and auto theft rates was observed in 2012. By 2014, however, this effect had decayed and auto theft rates returned to pre-Realignment …

Online Community-Based Learning As The Practice Of Freedom: The Online Capstone Experience At Portland State University, Deborah Smith Arthur, Zapoura Newton-Calvert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Given the design of Portland State University’s (PSU) undergraduate curriculum culminating in a capstone experience, the dramatic growth in online courses and online enrollments required a re-thinking of the capstone model to ensure all students could participate in this effective learning model and have a powerful learning experience. In recent years, a number of capstone courses have been developed that are offered fully online. This article examines PSU’s development of and institutional support for community-based learning (CBL) capstone courses in a fully online format. Emerging best practices and lessons learned may be useful for other institutions seeking to integrate experiential …

Effects Of A Workplace Intervention Targeting Psychosocial Risk Factors On Safety And Health Outcomes, Leslie B. Hammer, Donald M. Truxillo, Todd Bodner, Jennifer Rae Rineer, Amy C. Pytlovany, Amy Richman

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The goal of this study was to test the effectiveness of a workplace intervention targeting work-life stress and safety-related psychosocial risk factors on health and safety outcomes. Data were collected over time using a randomized control trial design with 264 construction workers employed in an urban municipal department. The intervention involved family- and safety-supportive supervisor behavior training (computer-based), followed by two weeks of behavior tracking and a four-hour, facilitated team effectiveness session including supervisors and employees. A significant positive intervention effect was found for an objective measure of blood pressure at the 12-month follow-up. However, no significant intervention results were …