Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Meridians 23:1 Indigenous Feminisms Across The World, Part 1, Basuli Deb, Ginetta Candelario

Sociology: Faculty Books

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Habitual Physical Activity And Sedentary Behavior On Objective And Subjective Hot Flashes At Midlife, Sarah Witkowski, Quinn White, Sofiya Shreyer, Daniel E. Brown, Lynette Leidy Sievert

Exercise and Sport Studies: Faculty Publications

The years surrounding the transition to menopause are marked by multiple challenges to health. Hot flashes are a commonly reported symptom of women at this time and their frequency has been associated with disease risk. Regular physical activity and reduced sedentary time are recommended for health and wellbeing. However, the effect of physical activity and sedentary behavior on hot flashes remains unclear. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate relationships between physical activity, sedentary time and hot flashes during both waking and sleeping periods using concurrent objective and subjective measures of hot flashes in midlife women. METHODS: Women …

Acute Increases In Physical Activity And Temperature Are Associated With Hot Flash Experience In Midlife Women, Sarah Witkowski, Quinn White, Sofiya Shreyer, Randi L. Garcia, Daniel E. Brown, Lynnette Leidy Sievert

Exercise and Sport Studies: Faculty Publications

Objective: This study determined the association between acute changes in physical activity, temperature and humidity and 24-hour subjective and objective hot flash experience.

Methods: Data collection occurred during the cooler months of the year in Western Massachusetts (October-April). Women aged 45-55 across 3 menopause stages (n=270) were instrumented with ambulatory monitors to continuously measure hot flashes, physical activity, temperature and humidity for 24-hours. Objective hot flashes were assessed via sternal skin conductance, and subjective hot flashes were recorded by pressing an event marker and data logging. Physical activity was measured with wrist-worn accelerometers and used to define sleep and wake …

Outcomes For Binge Eating Disorder In A Remote Weight-Inclusive Treatment Program: A Case Report, Caitlin B. Shepherd, Rebecca G. Boswell, Jessica Genet, Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, Christine Stockert, Rebecca Brumm, Shaun Riebl, Elsbeth Crowe

Psychology: Faculty Publications

Background: There are no known published reports on outcomes for medically and psychiatrically compromised patients with binge eating disorder (BED) treated remotely in higher level of care settings. This case report presents outcomes of an intentionally remote weight-inclusive partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient program based on Health at Every Size® and intuitive eating principles. Case presentation: The patient presented with an extensive trauma background and long history of disturbed eating and body image. She was diagnosed with BED along with several comorbidities, most notably major depressive disorder with suicidality and non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus. She completed a total of 186 …

Teaching Chinese Politics In The “New Cold War”: A Survey Of Faculty, Sara A. Newland

Government: Faculty Publications

How have worsening US-China relations affected faculty teaching Chinese politics in the US? This paper presents results from a 2022 survey of political science faculty. While student interest in Chinese politics remains high, faculty report a range of new challenges arising from increasingly nationalistic sentiments among both Chinese and American students, negative effects of both US and Chinese government policies, and an increase in anti-Asian bias. This article documents faculty experiences teaching Chinese politics, and offers recommendations for addressing common challenges.

Introduction To The Symposium: China And The Campus, Sara A. Newland

Government: Faculty Publications

The US-China relationship has worsened dramatically in recent years. After decades of pro-engagement policies toward China, a bipartisan consensus began to emerge around 2016 that engagement had neither accomplished US policy goals (such as encouraging China to liberalize politically) nor served US citizens well.1 At the same time, political changes within China have pointed to a declining appetite for engagement with the United States and sidelined the domestic constituencies who remained interested in cooperation and exchange. Further restrictions have shrunk the already limited space for media, civil society groups, and academic exchange in China. Pandemic-related border closures eliminated in-person exchanges …

Trauma Prevalence And Desire For Trauma-Informed Coaching In Collegiate Sports: A Mixed Methods Study, Elizabeth Alma Hertzler-Mccain, Aerin Mcquillen, Shalini Setty, Stephanie Lopez, Erica Tibbetts

Exercise and Sport Studies: Faculty Publications

This study investigated trauma prevalence amongst collegiate student-athletes and openness towards trauma-informed coaching practices among athletes and coaches at two small Division III colleges. Surveys gathered quantitative data from athletes (n = 91) and coaches (n =18) and qualitative data from athletes (n = 33). Quantitative results indicated that 52.7% of athletes experienced at least one potentially traumatic event during their lifetime. The most prevalent trauma was unwanted sexual contact. Additionally, 50.5% of athletes experienced sport-based harassment or abuse during their lifetime, with 21.7% of affected athletes experiencing said abuse in college sports. Athletes reported that 8 out of 10 …

A Conversation With Doris H. Gray On The Power And Limitations Of Restorative Justice Across History, Culture, And Gender, Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Doris H. Gray

Sociology: Faculty Publications

This interview with Doris H. Gray, author of Leaving the Shadow of Pain: A Cross-cultural Exploration of Truth, Trauma, Reconciliation, and Healing, explores the impact of political trauma across time, and the strategies for healing and justice. The conversation with Gray focuses on the ways in which her own experiences, as the child of a traumatized German Jew, intersect with those of formerly persecuted and incarcerated Tunisian women before and after the Arab Spring. What are the possibilities and limitations of restorative justice for those haunted by history?

Meridians: 22:2 Mosaic, Ginetta Candelario

Sociology: Faculty Books

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a mosaic is “a variegated whole formed from many disparate parts,”¹ which perfectly captures this issue’s geographically, historically, intellectually, and artistically wide-ranging, and diverse yet interrelated contents. Each piece—whether poetry, testimonio, essay, creative nonfiction, or interview—touches on key themes iterated in unique ways depending on the context. Featuring work focused on Afghanistan, Canada, Haiti, India, Mexico, Tunisia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Puerto Rico, and the United States mainland, this Mosaic issue reveals a broader picture of the complex, contradictory, and challenging nature of enacting transnational or intersectional feminist solidarities within and across …

Social Contagion Of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, Stephaie Jarvi Steele

Psychology: Faculty Books

This chapter explores the social contagion of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) via interpersonal, media and online exposure among both youths and adults by referencing social learning theory and the Social Exposure to Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Scale. According to social learning theory, people imitate and learn certain behaviors by identifying with people who act as models. The chapter elaborates on the concepts of social learning, modeling, and imitation, and general recommendations for the assessment and treatment of clinical practice addressing social contagion factors. It then suggests utilizing ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and single-case experimental design (SCED) for future studies on social contagion of …

Temperature And Convictions: Evidence From India, Terry Ann Craigie, Vis Taraz, Mariyana Zapryanova

Economics: Faculty Publications

High temperatures have been shown to affect human cognition and decision-making in a variety of settings. In this paper, we explore the extent to which higher temperatures affect judicial decision-making in India. We use data on judicial decisions from the Indian eCourt platform, merged with high-resolution gridded daily weather data. We estimate causal effects by leveraging a fixed effects framework. We find that high daily maximum temperatures raise the likelihood of convictions and these results are robust to numerous controls and specifications. Our findings contribute to a growing literature that documents that the negative impacts of rising temperatures are often …

Assessing The Language Of 2-Year-Olds: From Theory To Practice, Emily Jackson, Dani Levine, Jill De Villiers, Aquiles Iglesias, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Early screening for language problems is a priority given the importance of language for success in school and interpersonal relationships. The paucity of reliable behavioral instruments for this age group prompted the development of a new touchscreen language screener for 2-year-olds that relies on language comprehension. Developmental literature guided selection of age-appropriate markers of language disorder risk that are culturally and dialectally neutral and could be reliably assessed. Items extend beyond products of linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and syntax) and tap the process by which children learn language, also known as fast mapping. After piloting an extensive set of items (139), …

Direct Election, Bureaucratic Appointment, And Local Government Responsiveness In Taiwan, Sara A. Newland

Government: Faculty Publications

Does local democracy induce better service to citizens? While elected officials can be punished at the ballot box if they fail to address citizens’ needs, appointed bureaucrats may have policy knowledge that enables them to better serve citizens. Employing a multimethod design, this paper uses variation in local political institutions in Taiwan to assess the relative merits of direct election and bureaucratic appointment for local government responsiveness. While democratic institutions are often thought to induce responsiveness, I find that in Taiwan, with its historically strong bureaucracy and relatively new democratic institutions, the picture is somewhat more complicated. Elected and appointed …

Paying For What Kind Of Performance? Performance Pay, Multitasking, And Sorting In Mission-Oriented Jobs, Daniel B. Jones, Mirco Tonin, Michael Vlassopoulos, K. Pun Winichakul

Economics: Faculty Publications

How does pay-for-performance (P4P) impact productivity and the composition of workers in mission-oriented jobs when output has multiple dimensions? This is a central issue in the public sector, particularly in areas such as education and healthcare. We conduct an experiment, manipulating compensation and mission, to answer these questions. We find that P4P has significantly smaller positive effects on productivity on the incentivized (quantity) dimension in the mission-oriented setting relative to the non-mission-oriented setting. On the other hand, P4P generates no loss in performance on the non-incentivized (quality) dimension of effort in the mission-oriented setting, whereas it does so in the …

Textbook Affordability At Smith College: Affirming Smith's Commitment To Creating An Inclusive, Equitable And Accessible Educational Community, Natalie Laroche

Other Student Projects

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s (PIRG) Education Fund, notes that “in 2020, 65 percent of students surveyed reported skipping buying a textbook because of cost” (Vitez & Nagle, n.d.). The costs of course materials are rising at astronomical rates. According to the Student PIRGs, “the cost of textbooks and course materials has increased at three times the rate of inflation since the 1970s” (Xie, 2023). Textbooks are unnecessarily expensive and are increasingly a barrier to education access and student success. Extensive research has demonstrated that while publishers can get away with (and profit off of) high prices, students who …

Will Populations Of Macroinvertebrate Functional Feeding Groups Survive Precipitation Changes?, Malika Gottfried, Laura Kim, Sophia Zuccala

Other Student Projects

Climate change is a pervasive issue that has the potential to have detrimental effects on many freshwater organisms and their habitats. Fluctuations in precipitation, changes in temperature, and other long-term shifts in weather patterns are just a few examples of the ways in which climate change is impacting the world around us (“What is Climate Change?” n.d.). The Mill River in Northampton, Massachusetts is an ideal location to measure some of these impacts on macroinvertebrates in various functional feeding groups. Macroinvertebrates are small organisms that lack an internal skeletal system, and their functional feeding groups refer to “the type of …

The Development Of A Parent Report Instrument Of Early Communication And Language Skills Of Infants And Toddlers In Mainland China, Xueman Lucy Liu, Wendy Lee, Eric Rolfhus, Teresa Hutchings, Liqun Yao, Jingqiu Xie, Yaqing Xu, Yongmei Peng, Jill De Villiers

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This study was designed to produce a new parent-report measure, the Diagnostic Receptive Expressive Assessment of Mandarin-Infant Toddler Assessment of Communication and Language (DREAM-IT) in order to provide norms for the developmental skills of children aged 0–36 months in four areas: expressive language, receptive language, cognitive play and social skills.

A Diffusion Network Event History Estimator, Jeffrey J. Harden, Bruce A. Desmarais, Mark Brockway, Frederick J. Boehmke, Scott J. Lacombe, Fridolin Linder, Hanna Wallach

Government: Faculty Publications

Research on the diffusion of political decisions across jurisdictions typically accounts for units’ influence over each other with (1) observable measures or (2) by inferring latent network ties from past decisions. The former approach assumes that interdependence is static and perfectly captured by the data. The latter mitigates these issues but requires analytical tools that are separate from the main empirical methods for studying diffusion. As a solution, we introduce network event history analysis (NEHA), which incorporates latent network inference into conventional discrete-time event history models. We demonstrate NEHA’s unique methodological and substantive benefits in applications to policy adoption in …

Meridians: 22:1 Bipoc Europe, Ginetta Candelario

Sociology: Faculty Books

This special issue, guest edited by leading scholars of BIPOC Europe Nana Osei-Kofi and Shirley Ann Tate, although focused on contemporary populations, prompts us to remember that BIPOC Europe has a long, albeit relatively underrecognized history (Ramey 2016). By definition, to speak of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Europe implies that these populations are distinctive from the presumptively white European. Yet European whiteness is neither natural nor long-standing. Rather, it is an invention resulting from modernity’s settler colonial, colonial, and imperialist projects in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Australia, as are the designations Black …

Simon Doesn’T Say: Minimal Qualitative Distortions From Experimenter Demand, David Danz, Marissa Lepper, Guillermo Lezama, Priyoma Mustafi, Lise Verterlund, Alistair Wilson, K. Pun Winichakul

Economics: Faculty Publications

Experimenter demand is a clear threat to the validity of experimental results. To understand the extent of this threat for lab studies, we apply the quantitative frame- work from de Quidt, Haushofer and Roth (2018) to explore whether experimenter demand can generate flawed qualitative inference in experimental studies, using four classic behavioral findings. In these four settings we examine the extent to which demand can alter the nature of a comparative-static conclusion, a stronger test of the potential distortions resulting from experimenter demand. Starting with the laboratory population, we demonstrate that even in a stark environment with deliberate researcher attempts …

Institutional Design And Policy Responsiveness In Us States, Scott J. Lacombe

Government: Faculty Publications

There is significant disagreement on the moderating role of institutions on policy responsive- ness, yet overwhelmingly research in state politics has focused on single institutions. This project leverages a new aggregate scale of state institutions to evaluate if the collective insti- tutional context moderates the influence of public opinion on policy. I use a recently released latent scale of institutional context and find that high levels of accountability pressure strongly strengthen public opinion’s influence on policy for both economic and social policy, while the strength of a state’s checks and balance system is largely unrelated to policy responsiveness. These results …

Prevalence, Co-Occurring Difficulties, And Risk Factors Of Developmental Language Disorder: First Evidence For Mandarin-Speaking Children In A Population-Based Study, Saishuang Wu, Jin Zhao, Jill De Villiers, Xueman Lucy Liu, Eric Rolfhus, Xiaoning Sun, Et Al

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a condition that significantly affects children's achievement but has been understudied. We aim to estimate the prevalence of DLD in Shanghai, compare the co-occurrence of difficulties between children with DLD and those with typical development (TD), and investigate the early risk factors for DLD.

Physical Activity And Exercise For Hot Flashes: Trigger Or Treatment?, Sarah Witkowski, Rose Evard, Jacquelyn J. Rickson, Quinn White, Lynnette Leidy Sievert

Exercise and Sport Studies: Faculty Publications

Importance and Objective: Hot flashes (HFs) are a prevalent feature of menopause. Hot flashes can be bothersome and affect quality of life. However, HFs have also been associated with the risk for cardiovascular disease. Therefore, providing current evidence on the effect of therapies to reduce HFs can help patients and providers with decision making. This review provides details on the scientific evidence to date related to the effect of physical activity (PA) and exercise to alter the HF experience in women

Methods: The PubMed database was searched between June 2020 and June 2022 for currently available evidence regarding the relation …

The ‘Others’ In John Lanchester’S The Wall, Gregory White

Government: Faculty Books

No abstract provided.

Generic Interpretations Of Possessive Recursion In English-Speaking Children, Tyler Poisson, Jill De Villiers, Hirsto Kyuchukov, Bea Weinand, Lilly Young, Sofia Morales, Laisha Aniceto

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Two-part s-possessives such as the dad’s kid’s bike admit at least two distinct interpretations: the dad has a kid who has a bike, or the dad has a bike that is made for kids. We propose that the former interpretation derives from recursively embedding DP-possessives, whereas the latter derives from representing kid’s bike asa generic NP-possessive. Accordingly, in the right context, two-part s-possessives are fully ambiguous for adults between ‘recursive’ and ‘generic’ readings. These readings can be disambiguated syntactically. Consider the difference in meaning when we insert a relative clause and extract the constituent kid’s bike—the kid’s bike that is …

Making Reflection Critical: Structural And Historical Attributions For Inequity, Esther Burson, Erin B. Godfrey, Riana M. Brown, Deanna A. Ibrahim

Psychology: Faculty Books

Book Abstract: Critical consciousness represents the analysis of inequitable social conditions, the motivation to effect change, and the action taken to redress perceived inequities. Scholarship and practice in the last two decades have highlighted critical consciousness as a key developmental competency for those experiencing marginalization and as a pathway for navigating and resisting oppression. This competency is more urgent than ever given the current sociopolitical moment, in which longstanding inequity, bias, discrimination, and competing ideologies are amplified. This volume assembles leading scholars to address some of the field's most urgent questions: How does critical consciousness develop? What theories can be …

The Impact Of Weather Shocks On Employment Outcomes: Evidence From South Africa, Harriet Margaret Brookes Gray, Vis Taraz, Simon Halliday

Environmental Science and Policy: Faculty Publications

Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, such as drought and heat waves. In this paper, we assess the impact of drought and high temperatures on the employment outcomes of working-age individuals in South Africa between 2008 and 2017. We merge high-resolution weather data with detailed individual-level survey data on labor market outcomes, and estimate causal impacts using a fixed effects framework. We find that increases in the occurrence of drought reduce overall employment. These effects are concentrated in the tertiary sector, amongst informal workers, and in provinces with a higher reliance on tourism. Taken together, our …

The Racial Gap In Exclusionary Discipline Policies, Mia Hwang

Other Student Projects

No abstract provided.

Narratives Reflecting Theory Of Mind Among Bilingual Lyuli Children Of Uzbekistan, Hristo Kyuchukov, Jill De Villiers, Bahodir B. Mamurov, Gulbahor R. Akramova

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This is the first known study of the socio-cognitive development of Lyuli children, a Roma-type group living in Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The research was conducted in schools in Bukhara serving both Lyuli children and Uzbek children, both of whom are multi-lingual but whose sociolinguistic circumstances are somewhat different. There has been less cross-cultural work on later stages of Theory of Mind development, in which children have to make inferences about the mental states of characters in a complex narrative. The research here shows that the children from both groups do remarkably well on these tasks, and their multilingualism is hypothesized …

The Gift Of Giving: Recognizing Donors And Revealing Donation Amounts, K. Pun Winichakul

Economics: Faculty Publications

Publicly announcing how much individuals donate on behalf of themselves is a common fundraising strategy. For tribute gifts made on behalf of others, however, charities only reveal donor identities to the honoree with few revealing the size of their contributions. This paper examines the fundraising consequences of recognizing donors with and without information about donation amounts when notifying honorees of gifts made on their behalf. I find that revealing contribution amounts in addition to recognizing donors benefits fundraisers. I find that both the likelihood of giving on behalf of others and contribution amounts increase when honorees learn how much donors …