Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Finding The Ghost With The Machine: Breaking Through The Assessment Center Validity Ceiling By Exploring Decisional Processes Using New Sources Of Behavioral Data Within Virtual Assessments, Brett W. Guidry

Open Access Dissertations

Decades of assessment center (AC) research has resulted in an inevitable “validity ceiling” whereby increasing the validity of the AC method is becoming increasingly difficult. To overcome this challenge, new avenues for collecting and evaluating AC participant behaviors must be explored, with a particular focus on overcoming the inherent limitations of human observation—a hallmark of the AC method. This study examines detailed logs of AC participant behaviors captured automatically and unobtrusively during a computer-based simulation assessment. Using a decision making framework, basic characteristics of the new behavioral data are tested against existing theories of decisional efficacy. The construct-related validity of …

Quantifying Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Dynamics With Mechanistically-Based Biogeochemistry Models And In Situ And Remotely Sensed Data, Shaoqing Liu

Open Access Dissertations

Terrestrial ecosystem plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle and climate system. Therefore, it is important to accurately quantify the carbon dynamics of terrestrial ecosystem under future climatic change condition. This dissertation evaluates the regional carbon dynamics by using upscaling approach, mechanistically-based biogeochemistry models and in situ and remotely sensed data.

The upscaling studies based on FLUXNET network has provided us the spatial and temporal pattern of the carbon fluxes but it fails to consider the atmospheric CO2 effect given its important physiological role in carbon assimilation. In the second chapter, we consider the effect of atmospheric CO2 …

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 …

The Swiss German Language And Identity: Stereotyping Between The Aargau And The Zurich Dialects, Jessica Rohr

Open Access Theses

Swiss German dialects contribute to the social identity of a speaker, especially on a local level (Christen, 1995). Many dialects of Switzerland are associated with a common stereotype which relates to the identity of the speakers (Rash, 2002). This research looks at these notions and investigates concepts of identity ascription and stereotyping that arise between and from the dialects of canton Aargau and canton Zürich, in Switzerland. The generation of a definition of identity for the project, drawing off existing identity theories in sociolinguistics, and stereotyping theories, allow for an investigation of how the Aargau and Zürich dialects fit into …

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 …

State Judicial Selection Methods As Public Policy: The Missouri Plan, James A. Gleason

Open Access Dissertations

State judiciaries are foundational institutions of governance in the United States. They are coequal, policy-making branches of government whose members, along with the legislative and executive branches, are constitutionally authorized and empowered in all fifty American states. Extant research on judicial selection in the American states provides neither a comprehensive theory of why states choose their particular judicial selection method nor a comprehensive empirical assessment of this important question. This research seeks to fill this lacuna by increasing understanding of American state courts through the formulation of a theory of state judicial selection, a short but comprehensive history of state …

Understanding The Formation Of American Mental Health Policy Preferences, 1952-1981, Andrew D. Tuholski

Open Access Dissertations

In the United States, the emergence of an outpatient-centered, drug-based model of mental health care was physically feasible from the 1950s onward, with the introduction of thorazine and other first-generation antipsychotics. However, it was not until 1981, with President Reagan’s veto of the Mental Health Systems Act, that American mental health policy tipped over definitively into the outpatient-centered, drug-based model. In this quantitative study of the formation of policy preference, the delay between the feasibility of the outpatient-centered, drug-based model and its adoption was explored through five research questions answered through corpus analysis and time series statistics: How do shifts …

Identifying And Prioritizing Critical Success Factors For Fixed Base Operators In The United States: A Mixed Method Approach, Yu Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Fixed Base Operators (FBOs) are major service providers for the general aviation (GA) sector, which closely connect the public with the aviation industry. However, over the past decade, the U.S. GA industry has experienced a decline in the numbers of registered aircraft, pilots, and airports. Due to the fact that FBOs significantly contribute to the aviation industry, further research studies regarding the FBO-sector at a national level are needed. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and prioritize the critical success factors (CSFs) that promote the success of FBO operations in the United States.

The methodology consisted of a …

Facebook And User Experience: Evaluating Brand Equity Of Purdue University Residences, Jackelyn Perkins

Open Access Theses

This study investigated how brand equity was perceived on the Purdue University Residences’ Facebook page by applying a user experience method. From a review of previous literature, Website Experience Analysis was identified and performed to evaluate brand equity. This study addressed and explored various themes throughout the data. The results showed how page content and user interactions within a Facebook page influence participants’ perceptions of brand equity.

Three Essays In Economics, James R. Bland

Open Access Dissertations

How Many Games Are We Playing: An Experimental Analysis of Choice Bracketing in Games

A subject brackets two decisions if she "choose[s] an option in each case without full regard to the other" Rabin (2009). Although in most situations such behavior is unlikely to be optimal, it is well documented in experiments where subjects make decisions in the absence of strategic considerations. This paper uses an economic experiment to investigate whether subjects also bracket their decisions in games. Subjects played two Volunteer's Dilemmas at the same time, with the payoffs from both games added to their earnings. In a lottery …

Post-Transition Human Rights Performance In Peru, Uruguay, And South Korea, Nusta Pitushca Carranza Ko

Open Access Dissertations

The literature on transitional justice and international human rights norms has been useful for explaining norm internalization for transitioning states. And yet, the literature could not account for the variations to state behavior after norms were implemented via domestic transitional justice policies of truth-seeking, prosecutions, and reparations. Why have states where great efforts were put into confronting an ugly past relapsed in their behavior? This research fills this lacuna be examining the period after states institute transitional justice policies to determine how states have varied in respecting norms. Taking the case of Peru, Uruguay, and South Korea that have advanced …

The Politics Of Town Hall Meetings: Analyzing Constituent Relations-In-Interaction, Robert J. Green

Open Access Dissertations

The politics of town meetings proposes that town hall meetings are institutions of representative democracy that present an opportunity for constituents to hold their elected representatives accountable in a public setting. Constituent relations-in-interaction glosses a complex set of interactional practices and procedures through which ensembles of participants bring town hall meetings, as structures of social interaction, into being. This study uses conversation analysis, the study of talk-in-interaction, to show that the politics of town hall meetings orients to three types of accountability: Interactional accountability, political accountability, and public accountability. The articulation of these accountability types provides a sense of overall-structural …

Us Strategic Retrenchment And Security-Seeking Behaviors Of The Us Allies In Northeast Asia, Seok Ryul Kang

Open Access Dissertations

This research is planned to explore how a regional state could improve its security during the time of its patron’s strategic retrenchment. It introduces a theory of a regional state’s security-promoting behaviors during the time of its patron’s retrenchment. According to this theory, it is hypothesized that there is covariation between the level of a regional state’s security concern and the scope of its domestic drives to increase societal contribution to autonomous defense posture. It also hypothesizes the existence of covariation between the level of a regional state’s security concern and the level of its commitment to the pursuit of …

State Based Financial Liberalization, Robert J. Kulzick

Open Access Dissertations

In the last 40 years, states around the globe have increased the role of markets in their financial systems. Using newly collected information on the educational backgrounds of Central Bankers, I demonstrate that the beliefs of state officials about the proper role of markets in the financial system influence the extent to which state's liberalize their financial systems. By tracing the liberalization experiences in both France and China through secondary sources, I show that bureaucrats within the state suggest reforms that conform to their neoliberal training when political leaders turn to them for solutions to what are perceived as technical …

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 …

Knitting Rebellion: Elizabeth Zimmermann, Identity, And Craftsmanship In Post War America, Maureen Lilly Marsh

Open Access Dissertations

At mid 20th century, hand knitting in the United States was practiced as a minor and fading chore of the domestic economy, with decreasing pattern publications in national women’s magazines, and the demise of Vogue Knitting Book by the late nineteen-sixties. By 1990, it had rebounded into major new publications in periodicals and books, new and revived artisanship practices, gallery exhibitions and major international conferences and gatherings. A driving figure in this resurgence was the knitter, writer, teacher, designer, and publisher Elizabeth Zimmermann. With her initial publication in 1955 up to her retirement in 1989, Elizabeth’s philosophy of knitting stressed …

Tail Risk In International Markets, Yanchu Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Tail risk, defined as extreme event risk in asset markets, is an important consideration for investors when making investment decisions. This paper empirically tests the role of tail risk in international market. Using sample of 40 countries from 1980 to 2014, I show that tail risk positively predicts future market returns. Across all countries, stocks with high sensitivity to past global tail risk on average will earn higher returns than stocks with low sensitivity. In addition, I show that tail risk act as a global transmission channel of contagion during crisis.

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. …

The Labor Market Consequences Of Endogenous Low-Skill Migration With A Market-Based Immigration Policy, German A. Marquez Alcala

Open Access Theses

The undocumented migration of Mexican nationals to the U.S. is largely influenced by labor demand in low-skill sectors. The legal migration channels available to Mexican nationals with little education are based on family petitions and subject to visa quotas which are dwarfed by the demand for entry to the United States; visa approval can take upwards of 20 years for a Mexican national with little education and few resources. Thus, undocumented immigration is a more responsive unskilled labor distribution mechanism than the existing quota-based immigration policy. However, the restrictive legal migration channels and increased costs of undocumented migration are stifling …

Mergers And Acquisitions In Food And Agribusiness: Returns, Drivers, And Long Run Performance, Josiah M. Ringelberg

Open Access Theses

Food and agribusiness in the U.S is a dynamic and ever changing business. The industry has seen booms and busts, considerable consolidation, and continued globalization in the past few decades. Businesses operating within its sectors have had to demonstrate flexibility and adaptability as the industry’s landscape consolidates at the consumer, supplier, and producer level. One strategy companies have used to grow and position themselves throughout years of industry consolidation has been merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions.

During the eleven years from 1985 and 1995, the food industry was listed in the top 10 M&A most active industries ten times. It …

Firm Demography And Location Decisions In The United States After 1990, Francisco Albert Scott

Open Access Theses

This thesis deals with firm formation and location choice of firms in the manufacturing (and commercial service) sector in the United States after 1990. The topics of firm formation and location choice are part of a wider field that is usually referred to as "firm demography.'' We start off with a description of the size structure of firms by looking at the evolution of the average size of manufacturing firms in counties in the USA between 1990 and 2011. We hypothesize that the size of manufacturing firms depends on the firm sizes in proximate regions as well as on the …

Impact Of Communication Appeals On Recycling Behaviors Among Undergraduate Students, Ning Zhu

Open Access Theses

The present thesis aims to understand factors influencing student recycling behaviors, and to investigate effective communication approaches to increase such behaviors. An online survey was conducted to examine the relationships between student recycling frequency in different contexts, students’ attitudes toward the environment, barriers to their recycling, students’ perceptions of communication messages, and communication media they think to be effective. Descriptive statistics, ANOVAs, t-test, simple linear regressions, categorical multinomial logistic regression, and a chi-square test were conducted, and the data was collected from a large land-grant university in the Midwestern United States. A total of 537 questionnaires were answered.

The …

Essays In Experimental Economics On Contract Design, Jacob A. Brindley

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation contains three related essays which examine contracting environments with moral hazard. I use laboratory experiments to study how across treatment variations affect contractual outcomes including the types of contracts that principals design, the overall efficiency of the contractual relationship, and the surplus distribution between the principal and agent(s).

In the first chapter, which is joint work with Steve Wu, I investigate relational contracting within a bilateral relationship. Specifically, I explore how contracting is impacted by a reduction in the agent's market power as proxied by an exogenous decrease in the agent's expected outside option. Surprisingly, principals did not …

Essays In International Migration, Marcelo J. Castillo

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the effects of high-skilled immigration on various economic outcomes within the receiving country. In the first essay, I study how skilled immigrants affect wages and employment in US industries during 1995-2007, using novel microdata on approved H-1B visas. These data show that most H-1B employers specialize in the production of high-skilled services used as inputs by other businesses. In light of this, I consider the downstream effects of skilled immigrants on industry labor market outcomes: how wages and employment in an industry respond to immigration shocks to its suppliers. The identification strategy relies …

Essays On Health Insurance, Amanda C. Cook

Open Access Dissertations

Uninsured individuals receive fewer health care services for at least three reasons: higher prices, responsibility for the entire bill, and potential provider reductions for concern of non-payment. This study isolates differences in service levels between insured and uninsured individuals that are attributed to different effective prices; the uninsured pay the bill without a contribution from an insurance company. I capitalize on Maryland's highly regulated health care system, where prices are set by the state, are uniform across all patients, and hospitals are compensated for free care and bad debt, to isolate the difference in quantity demanded by the uninsured. While …

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. …

South Asian Women's Sexual Relationship Power: Examining The Role Of Sexism, Cultural Values Conflict, Discrimination, And Social Support, Chandni D. Shah

Open Access Dissertations

The lack of literature examining sexual experiences of South Asian women in dating relationships has important implications for the healthy development of long lasting romantic relationships. It is important to understand South Asian women’s relationship experiences in the context of power and sexism (interpersonal power framework; Pulerwitz, Gortmaker, & DeJong, 2000) and the role of specific sociopolitical factors (e.g., discrimination). Understanding South Asian women’s experiences of power in a sociopolitical context will help professionals when working with them to develop healthier sexual relationships through therapy outreach, and community programming. I used a correlational, quantitative study to examine the associations between …

Demand Uncertainty And Investment In The Restaurant Industry, Jayoung Sohn

Open Access Dissertations

Since the collapse of the housing market, the prolonged economic uncertainty lingering in the U.S. economy has dampened restaurant performance. Economic uncertainty affects consumer sentiment and spending, turning into demand uncertainty. Nevertheless, the highly competitive nature of the restaurant industry does not allow much room for restaurants to actively control prices, leaving most food service firms exposed to demand uncertainty. To investigate the impact of demand uncertainty in the restaurant industry, this study focused on the implications of demand uncertainty for investment.

The first essay in chapter 3 examined the impact of demand uncertainty on investment and how the impact …

Risks And Health Consequences Of Forgoing, Delaying, Or Having Trouble Accessing Needed Health Care Among Medicare Beneficiaries, Angelitta M. Spells

Open Access Dissertations

Medicare provides health care coverage for approximately 93% of non-institutionalized older adults. Compared to uninsured adults, Medicare beneficiaries have greater access to needed healthcare including preventative care. However, disparities in accessing needed health care still exist among Medicare beneficiaries. Prior research has described barriers to accessing needed health care among older Medicare beneficiaries, such as transportation and health system characteristics, but little is known about prevalence, risks, or health consequences of older Medicare beneficiaries delaying, forgoing, or having trouble accessing needed health care. The three studies included in this dissertation followed a nationally representative sample of older Medicare beneficiaries to …

Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Study Of Funeral Directors In Indiana, Aubrey Thamann

Open Access Dissertations

This work is an ethnographic study of funeral directors in Indiana, focusing on the social role they play. Funeral directors, through performances as director and actor, with their living tableaux and focus on the life of the deceased individual, rather than his or her death, offer us the illusion of a modern American ideal—a society with no death. In the face of a great loss, we are reminded how much we depend upon others, which runs contrary to the traditional American concept of the individual. Individualism is so important to us that our funerary ritual, in place for the living, …