Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Today's Students, Tomorrow's Terrorists: An Analysis Of Education And Extremist Participation, Clara Braun

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

A growing number of studies have identified shared characteristics among homegrown violent extremists (HVEs). While these studies have focused on demographic characteristics such as age and marital status, research on the educational attainment of HVEs is underdeveloped. The current study utilizes general strain theory and examines the relationship between educational attainment and type of criminal participation using a sample of 215 HVEs who engaged in or were charged with extremist participation between 2011 and 2017. We utilized educational attainment as a measure of an individual’s strain to identify a relationship with their decision to engage in violent or nonviolent extremist …

Marked For Life: Young Adults Perspectives On The Impact Of Parental Military Deployment, Megan Humlicek

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This qualitative study explores the long-term impact of parental military deployment (PMD) on young adults 19-25 years of age. While the literature is abundant with studies focusing on the impact of PMD on children and adolescents, it is mute when it comes to the long-term impact on young adults. Thirty-two participants responded to an in-depth Qualtrics questionnaire and seven partook in a follow-up phone interview to gain insights into their adjustment process to PMD, its impact on their personality development, the services and support systems they utilized, and the potential influence it had on their career choice. The outcome demonstrates …

Entertainment-Education Has A Potential Source For Comprehensive Sexuality Education: A Content Analysis Of The Netflix Series Big Mouth, Kristina Medero

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Health communication researchers have studied the potential for entertainment-education, to increase health literacy amongst adolescents regarding sexuality education (Moyer-Guse, 2008). This study will analyze the Netflix series Big Mouth with normative theoretical framework laid out by Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (2008) to provide support about the extent to which the series can act as a potential source for comprehensive sexuality education. This content analysis of Big Mouth will potentially provide a significant level comprehensive sexuality education to its audience, p < .05 through a one-way ANOVA that will test topics covered, relevance of social context, and inclusivity of material presented in the series.

If I Had Something To Add, I Would: Meeting Topic Competences And Participation, Isaac Lindquist

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Most employees participate in workplace meetings, and their experiences in the meetings can vary greatly, which can lead to positive or negative effects on both job attitudes and behavior. In this study, we examined the effect that a meeting attendee’s competence in the meeting topic had on their participation in the meeting and their perception of meeting effectiveness. Results indicated those with higher levels of competence in the meeting topic were more likely to participate and through participation found their meeting more effective, and this relationship was stronger when employee dissent in the meetings was high. Leaders should ensure that …

When Creativity Bites: An Analysis Of Far-Left Online Communiques, Laramie Sproles

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

In recent years, terrorism scholars have proposed that the concepts of creativity and innovation can be applied to violent extremism. Similar to conventional organizations, violent extremist groups use creativity to generate products (e.g., attacks) that are unique, surprising, and effective. Despite the increased attention in creativity and innovation among terrorism scholars, few have applied these concepts to understand far-left extremism. The current study builds upon malevolent creativity and violent extremism research to explore the use of creativity in far-left extremist attacks. More specifically, I examine the relationship between indicators of creativity and agricultural target types using a sample of 206 …

The Role Of Need For Cognition In Creative Thinking Processes, Vignesh Murugavel, Roni Reiter-Palmon, Victoria Kennel

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Expanding on past findings, we examined the effects of need for cognition on different cognitive processes of creative problem-solving. We assessed need for cognition (NFC) and creative abilities of 180 undergraduates in problem construction, idea generation, and idea evaluation tasks. Regression analysis was used to test the effects of NFC on measures of creativity. Our findings indicate that NFC positively relates to the core creative processes of problem construction, idea generation, and idea evaluation. The theoretical and practical implication of our findings are discussed.

Estimating Variations In Metabolic Cost Within The Stride Cycle During Level And Uphill Walking, Arash Mohammadzadeh Gonabadi

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Indirect calorimetry provides the average cost of a stride cycle and prevents from identifying which part of the gait cycle causes increased metabolic cost in patients, however, recent simulation methods allow estimating the time profile of metabolic cost within the stride cycle. In this study, we compare the estimations of the time profile of the metabolic cost of two simulation methods for level and uphill walking. We used kinematic, kinetic and electromyography data from level and uphill walking (one participant) to estimate the time profiles of metabolic cost using the muscle-level metabolic model of Umberger using electromyography and kinematic data …

Reducing The Influence Of Constraints On Volunteers' Word Of Mouth Communication, Sheridan Trent

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study utilized examined organizational constraints and burnout as a predictor of volunteers’ word of mouth communication valence, as well as a potential moderator. Satisfaction with volunteer contribution was found to moderate the indirect relationship between organizational constraints and word-of-mouth valence through burnout at the second stage.

Applicant Reactions To Gendered Wording In Job Advertisements, Sahra Kaboli-Nejad, Eric Scheller, Carey Ryan

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Women account for only 28% of the STEM workforce (Neuhauser, 2014). One contributing factor may be gendered wording in advertisements (e.g., the use of more masculine wording in male-dominated fields). Masculine wording may discourage women from applying for male-dominated STEM careers. Research has shown, for example, that participants perceive there to be more men in occupations that use more masculine than feminine wording in their advertisements, resulting in women finding the jobs less appealing (Gaucher et al., 2011; Horvath & Sczesnya, 2016).

The present research examined whether gendered wording in an advertisement for a male-dominated STEM career affects perceptions of …

Food Insecurity : The Student Experience, B.J. Fletcher

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Food insecurity exists on college campuses among college students. Prior studies have considered the prevalence of food insecurity among college students; this study aims to expand on these past studies by considering how college students experience food insecurity. The study takes a phenomenological approach to understand how students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha experience food insecurity, including the experiences and challenges students face when it comes to being food insecure and the barriers students face in addressing food insecurity. In-depth interviews with six students, ranging from undergraduate to doctoral level students, were conducted. Horizontalization, clusters of meanings, textural …

Experienced Sexual Assault In The Military: An Exploration Of The Organizational Factors Influencing Under-Reporting And Consequences When Victims Report, Medicine Flower Blue Star

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Sexual assault of both male and female service members is a pervasive and serious problem. In 2017, based on data from the U.S. Department of Defense, 5,200 service members reported sexual assault, representing a 10% increase from 2016. Scholars, military and government leaders are concerned that the prevalence of sexual assault is underestimated due to under-reporting. O’Brien, Keith, and Shoemaker (2015), for example, point to a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Defense, which estimates that 67% of women and 81% of men do not report their military sexual assaults. One purpose of this study is to explore the …

An Investigation Of Stimulants: Reviewing Their Effects On The Brain, Including Memory And Microglia, Michael Douchey

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Stimulants are a class of drugs that have a variety of effects on the brain, including changes in receptor activity in the brain areas responsible for- memory, attention, emotion, motor control, and the reward pathway. Stimulants may be generally classified by their availability. For example, prescription stimulants, which include drugs such as methylphenidate (Concerta™, Ritalin™) and mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall™), must be prescribed by medical professionals. Another regulated stimulant, albeit one available without a prescription, is nicotine; a highly addictive chemical that is age-restricted by the U.S. federal government. Nicotine is found in tobacco products, and in tobacco-free alternatives including …

Stress Experiences And Appraisals Influence Global Perspectives On Meeting Satisfaction, Emily Adams, Joseph Allen

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Meetings are inherently group activities, yet perceptions of meeting outcomes may vary by individual stress appraisal. This study explored the relationship between global meetings-related stressor experiences and meeting satisfaction as moderated by stress appraisals. Results are interpreted in light of occupational health theories and meetings science.

Empathetic Nurses And Their Reactions Towards Hostile Patients, Rebecca Marselle

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Nurses and other medical personnel are frequently victims of what the Department of Labor defines as Type II Violence, or customer-to-employee violence, with 80% of health care workers have reported that they have experienced some type of physical aggression at some point in their career (Clements, DeRanieri, Clark, Manno, Kuhn, 2005). Patient aggression consists of direct physical assaults (with or without weapons), written or verbal threats, physical or verbal harassment, and homicide (Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA, 2015). The purpose of this study is to review both organizational factors and personal qualities of medical personnel that influence their responses …

Marmosets Respond Consistently To Threats Across Contexts, Sarah Carp

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Behavioral traits, such as how adventurous an individual is, can vary both across individuals and within an individual across contexts. However, there is evidence that individuals are stable across time in how they respond to certain stimuli. This consistency in behavioral responses to similar environments is termed a behavioral syndrome, or set of correlated behavior. We assessed the degree to which individual marmoset monkeys were consistent across four behavioral tests that measured different aspects of novelty seeking. The four tasks included exposure to a novel object in a familiar environment, exposure to a novel environment, behavioral flexibility in response to …

Pilot Study Of Empathy In Adults, Libby Moberg

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Empathy is of critical public health importance due to its association with relationship satisfaction and well-being (Davis & Oathout, 1987; Davis, 1983). There is growing evidence that bilingual individuals may have higher levels of empathy (Javor, 2016). One potential mechanism for this relationship is that bilingual individuals tend to have higher levels of executive functioning (Costa et al, 2008), which is linked to higher empathy because individuals are able to more easily adopt others’ perspectives. Previous studies examining this question have largely relied on self-report questionnaires assessing empathy as a general tendency (i.e., trait). No studies have examined differences in …

Electronically Monitored Youth: Perceptions Of Stigma, Marijana Kotlaja

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study examines the stigmatizing effects of electronic monitors (EM) among youth currently enrolled in an EM program. EM is viewed as a sanction that is less punitive than incarceration, more cost-effective and provides advantages over other alternatives. A total of 140 participants were randomly assigned to conditions (stigma salient vs. stigma non-salient) for an experiment in which they will be told the purpose of the study is to learn more about their thoughts and behaviors related to wearing an EM. This study can be deemed one of the first assessments to assess stigma consciousness and self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP) as …

Modeling And Predicting Serious Cwbs Using Improved Analytic Methods, Benjamin Thomas, Kyle Kercher

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Research seeking to study and prevent serious forms of employee misbehaviors has been stymied by low incident rates and non-normal responses. Polychoric (cf., Pearson) correlation -based analytic methods offer solutions to these kinds of data. This 2-study (N = 172; N = 454) research provides support for these analytic methods in building models that distinguish serious and minor CWBs.

Gender Identity And Self-Esteem Within The Contexts Of The Same-Sex Peer Group, Nation, And Group Individualism And Collectivism, Mithra H. Pirooz

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Adolescence is a period of development during which needs and relationships shift (Sebastian, Burnett, & Blakemore, 2008). Issues of gender also become more salient, and gender identity has been related to different areas of psychosocial adjustment, such as self-esteem (Egan & Perry, 2001). The current study examined predictors of self-esteem among early adolescents in the context of a multilevel model. We considered felt pressure to conform to gender norms, gender typicality, and gender satisfaction as individual-level predictors within the contexts of the same-sex peer group, nation, and group levels of individualism and collectivism. Multilevel modeling was employed to account for …

Self-Care Among Social Work Educators, Shelby Connett

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Self-Care Among Social Work Educators combines the results of several academic projects completed to understand the intersections of self -care practice and teaching methods among social work educators and presents them as complete work, highlighting themes present throughout the projects and providing recommendations for further efforts.

Is Poverty Colorblind? Implications Of Imagery Used By International Nongovernmental Organizations In The United States, Abhishek Bhati

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs) use images of the beneficiaries in their fundraising campaigns when soliciting donations. Often these images are negative and stereotype poor as victims and helpless. However, there is little empirical research to understand if such representation leads to stereotyping of the poor and subsequently contributes to racial biases. This paper aims at establishing this empirical link by answering the research question: Does the representation of beneficiaries by INGOs lead to stereotyping and racial biases. The study draws on data analysis of images from the 32 largest INGOs in the United States and experimental survey design to investigate …

Creativity In Two Types Of Violent Groups, Laramie Sproles

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Terrorism can be defined as a type of ideologically motivated violence that arises during asymmetrical conflict and has far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate target. This project seeks to isolate and examine one element of terrorism: ideologically-motivated violence. While malevolent innovation has been written about extensively over the past five years, little is known about correlates of creativity in actual violent individuals. At the broadest level, the current project focuses on personality profiles and creative problem solving of two different types of violent individuals. The goal of this study is to examine individual differences that characterize two types of violent …

Team Leadership Emergence And Team Outcomes, Ryan Royston

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Using sequential analysis, we observed how team problem solving and procedural communication differed by leadership (shared leadership, single leader, or leaderless). While all teams engaged in solution identification and elaboration, shared leader teams showed higher performance, and tended to draw more connections with solutions and engage in planning follow-up tasks.

Follow My Voice: The Future Of Phr Authentication, Jeanette M. Rose, Ryan Schuetzler, John R. Windle, Ann L. Fruhling

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The current electronic personal health record (PHR) has low patient adoption [1]. Increasing use and adoption of the PHR will improve patient-centered care. Users often have difficulty remembering passwords or share them, giving multiple people access to one account.

Utilizing biometrics for authentication is becoming more common in our daily lives – think of the fingerprint sensor on a smartphone or retina scanners at high security corporations. The quickly evolving technology that runs our lives calls for incorporating biometric authentication into more systems. Using biometric authentication can ensure that passwords would not need to be remembered and that only the …

Effect Of Mindful Meditation And Gratitude Journaling On College Student Stress And Well-Being Overtime, Stephanie N. Hines, Lisa L. Scherer

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

College students are stressed out! Majority of students tend to use maladaptive mechanisms to cope with stress, which can potentially impact their academics and career planning. This study focused on the potential benefits of two mainstream Mindfulness Training interventions in reducing stress for college students. Specifically, Mindful Meditation and Mindful Gratitude Journaling were implemented into two separate conditions, in which data was collected from 30 Organizational Psychology students online who were randomly assigned to each condition. Students were required to answer a series of questionnaires at times one (pre-test) and times two (post-test) that measured demographics, levels of stress, and …

The Moderating Effects Of Structure In Evaluation Criteria On The Relationship Between Tolerance For Ambiguity And Idea Evaluation Accuracy, Vignesh Murugavel

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study examined how participant’s tolerance for ambiguity affected the accuracy of their evaluations of ideas. Structure in evaluation criteria was used as a moderating variable. Participants assessed 15 solutions to an ambiguous problem and evaluated the originality of the solutions under three experimental conditions. Participants were either given no structure, limited structure, or more structure for evaluating solutions. Participants were also given a measure of tolerance for ambiguity. Tolerance for ambiguity had no bearing solution evaluation accuracy for the quality of a solution in any condition. Tolerance for ambiguity was negatively related to originality evaluation accuracy in the no …

Contextual Fear Learning And Memory In Alternative Stress Coping Styles, Matthew R. Baker, Ryan Y. Wong

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Animals frequently must overcome stressors, and the ability to encode and recall these salient experiences is essential to an individual’s survival. Across many taxa, studies have documented two alternative stress coping styles (proactive and reactive) that differ in behavior, cognition, stress physiology, and underlying neuromolecular mechanisms. The role of stress in cognitive traits (e.g. learning and memory) has been well documented, however, the influence of an animal’s stress coping style on learning and memory capabilities is only beginning to be understood. Here, we developed a contextual fear learning paradigm to characterize learning and memory differences between proactive and reactive stress …

An Exploration Of Employment Factors That Facilitate Or Hinder Working College Students’ Academic Success, Gabrielle M. Gergen, Lisa L. Scherer

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This study was part of a larger study which investigated college student experiences, and how students negotiate multiple roles. This study specifically examined college students’ perceptions of how their employment facilitates versus hinders their abilities to meet the demands of other roles in life such as student, family member, significant other, volunteer, and extracurricular participant. We also assessed students’ suggestions for improving employment conditions to succeed in college. One-on-one interviews with 31 college students were conducted face-to-face, or via Facetime, or Skype. All interviews were taped and transcribed verbatim. Consistent with job facilitation theory, the results showed that students identified …

An Examination Of Within And Between Family Influences On The Intergenerational Transmission Of Violence And Maltreatment, Bradon A. Valgardson

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant problem that results in long-term mental and physical health issues. Previous research has identified a wide range of factors that potentially contribute to IPV perpetration, with childhood and adolescent maltreatment being some of the more commonly examined sources of influence. Despite these contributions, maltreatment has not been adequately distinguished from additional sources of influence that tend to cluster within families, such as other adverse family experiences and genetic influences. The current study attempts to better isolate the influence of maltreatment on IPV perpetration through the use of a sibling sample from the National …

Why Follow? Followership Favorability And Followership Styles, Hanna M. Miller Ms.

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Given the choice between leading or following in a group setting, which would you choose? Leadership and followership both have strengths and limitations. However, the perceptions of followership are typically unfavorable when compared to leadership. This quantitative study expands on the perceptions of followership by analyzing followership favorability among group members and followership styles as they relate to the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory and Follower’s Active Engagement Theory.

Keywords: Followership, Leadership, LMX Theory, Leader-Member Exchange, Unfavorable Perceptions, Followership Styles, Active Engagement