Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

All Politics Is Local: How The South Became Republican, Alexander Amico

Honors Capstone Projects - All

From 1876 until 1964, the Democratic Party held virtual dictatorial control over the American South. Beginning after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that year’s presidential candidacy of anti-Civil Rights Act Republican Barry Goldwater, the South shifted reliably into the Republican column for presidential elections. Democrats still held a majority of all other offices in the region until the mid-1990s. This paper examines public opinion data in the American South, as well as partisan change in four Southern states, with an emphasis on the first time each state elected a Republican governor. I find that in …

Politics Of Exclusion: An Analysis Of The Intersections Of Marginalized Identities And The Olympic Industry, Emily Bonzagni

Honors Capstone Projects - All

“Politics of Exclusion: An Analysis of the Intersections of Marginalized Identities and the Olympic Industry” analyzes the policing power of the Olympic governing bodies and the media on marginalized athletes in the Olympic Games and the ways in which this system constructs norms of gender, race, class, and sexuality. By employing intersectional, Black feminist, research methods in four case studies over the span of Modern Olympic history, this research centers the stories and experiences of Babe Didrikson, Tidye Pickett, Caster Semenya and Chris Mosier to expose the discriminatory and exclusive practices of the Olympic Industry. The case studies reveal the …

International Intervention In Bosnia-Herzegovina And Macedonia From The 1990'S Through The 2000'S, Katherine Brisson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This study researches international intervention and what makes it successful and unsuccessful. The analysis of the Bosnian and Macedonian interventions from the 1990’s through the 2000’s provides clues as to what makes intervention more successful for other international actors considering intervention. These two interventions are a great analytic tool because of their similar situations yet divergent outcomes and studying the successes and mistakes of each intervention is helpful in deciding what should be emphasized in future interventions. Bosnia and Macedonia were the two most multiethnic republics in Yugoslavia before their independence, each had forces from the United Nations and other …

Three Essays In Urban Policy, Judson E. Murchie

Dissertations - ALL

The papers in this dissertation share a common theme of measuring policy effects in urban markets. Though focusing on different outcomes – access to rental housing, property values, and school enrollments – the desire to understand how policy influences the composition of an urban ecosystem provides the link. A particular emphasis is placed on housing, because housing is simultaneously and a basic requirement for humans to thrive and the primary source of most local finance in the U.S. When policy affects housing, be it directly or indirectly, it can have important and far-reaching consequences. Understanding the intended and unintended consequences …

Social Security Under Decentralized Authoritarianism: Politics Of The Public Pension Program In China, Jing Lin

Dissertations - ALL

Welfare provisions are commonly regarded as an intrinsic product of democracy. Why do authoritarian rulers provide welfare programs to the people? How do authoritarian rulers promote welfare development under decentralized authoritarianism? This dissertation investigates these theoretical puzzles through a detailed study of the urban pension program for enterprise employees in authoritarian China. The decentralized fiscal and administrative structure in China makes the operation of the pension program a particularly challenging one. What are the redistributive incentives of the Chinese rulers? How does the central government differ from local governments in their redistributive calculation? How do these two levels of governments …

Dual-Thin Marriage And Labor Markets: Location Choices And Employment Outcomes For Ph.D. Workers, Xirui Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation comprises two papers that examine the employment outcomes and location choices of Ph.D.-trained individuals that often face dual-thin marriage and labor markets. The first paper investigates the degree to which single Ph.D.-trained workers, both domestic and foreign-born, face trade-offs between marriage and labor market opportunities. When job markets are not geographically overlapping with marriage markets, single PhDs may be forced to choose between metropolitan areas (MSAs) that offer better employment opportunities versus better marriage markets. I find significant evidence of a “sorting” effect – the local marriage market is a location-specific consumer amenity for which highly trained foreign-born …

Linking Descriptive Assessment To Functional Analysis And Treatment Of Transition-Related Problem Behavior, William Edward Sullivan

Dissertations - ALL

Activity transitions are difficult for many children with developmental disabilities, leading to problem behavior and decreased instructional time in schools. Assessing the function of transition-related problem behavior, especially in the school setting, requires special attention. Functional analysis methodology has been employed and can demonstrate functional relations. However, functional analyses may not always capture the naturally occurring contingencies or detect idiosyncratic variables. Thus, the current study examined the concurrent validity and treatment utility of assessing transition-related problem behavior descriptively. Two boys with autism (8 and 11-years-old) and one boy with Down syndrome (6-years-old) participated. All sessions were conducted at an outpatient …

Increasing Cessation Motivation And Treatment Engagement Among Smokers In Pain, Emily L. Zale

Dissertations - ALL

Tobacco smokers are at increased risk for the development and progression of chronic pain, and smokers with co-occurring pain tend to report greater difficulty and less confidence in quitting. Smokers in pain face unique cessation challenges and may benefit from tailored interventions that address smoking in the context of pain. This pilot study is the first to test the effects of an intervention tailored for smokers with co-occurring pain on motivation to quit and engage cessation treatment. Smokers with chronic pain (N = 76, 57.9% Female, 52.6% White, Mcpd = 17.64) were randomly assigned to either the tailored or control …

Developmental Pathways Between Low Birth Weight Status And Children’S Academic And Socioemotional Competence: The Role Of Parenting Processes As A Moderator, Sangita Pudasainee-Kapri

Dissertations - ALL

The present study examined the longitudinal associations among moderate low birth weight (MLBW), parenting factors, and children’s developmental outcomes within an at-risk sample (N= 1,809), using secondary data from Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) study. Of particular interest was whether parenting factors moderate the associations between MLBW and indicators of both socioemotional and cognitive/academic competence. Birth weight and prenatal data were taken from medical records. Parenting factors were assessed during in-home assessments at ages 3 and 5. Mothers and teachers reported on externalizing behaviors and teachers reported on social skills at age 9. In addition, cognitive/academic outcomes were assessed …

Economic Integration In East Africa: The Case Of Ethiopia And Kenya, Dawit Ayalew Alemneh

Theses - ALL

Abstract

This study answers the question of which of the four economic integration areas, that is, trade, security, roadways, and energy, can help both Ethiopia and Kenya to speed up their integration more effectively. It hypothesizes that trade and security accelerate integration more than roadways and energy. The results of this study support this hypothesis. However, empirical evidence about the road that connects Ethiopia and Kenya modify somewhat the hypothesis by revealing that roads have contributed more than expected, to the integration of the two countries.

Even though the volume of trade is quite small and there are many more …

Three Essays On Returns To Education, Health And The Spatial Wage Curve In Turkey, Haci Mevlut Karatas

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation comprises three papers on wage and health returns to education and spatial wage curve in Turkey. The second and third chapters make use of the exogenous variations generated by the 1997 Eight-Year Compulsory Schooling Law and the accompanying middle- school class openings to estimate economic and health returns to education. The findings suggest that the reform and the intensity of the reform substantially increased the educational attainment. The second chapter investigates the wage returns to education. Results show that one additional year of schooling increases individual wages by around 9 percent. The third chapter examines the causal impact …

Who Participates And Why? What Do They Expect And What Do They Accomplish? An Evaluation Of The Superfund Technical Assistance Grant (Tag) Program, Lance R. Cooper

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

This research was performed to investigate public participation in highly technical policy

scenarios and the outcomes of this participation. A detailed evaluation of community

involvement at Superfund sites (via the Technical Assistance Grant, or TAG, Program) was

performed by researching a specific type of complex, highly-technical policy problem, using a

mixed methods approach, incorporating a quantitative econometric evaluation and qualitative

multiple case study of selected Superfund sites.

The existing literature on public participation argues that citizen involvement is central to

democratic decision-making and is an important part of the policy process. This study was

rooted in a series of …

Families Designed Through Art: Exploring Embodied Experience And Conception Disclosure Based On Sexual Identity, Natalee Mayonne Simpson

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation uses data from an original online survey including a diverse sample of individuals across different sexual and gender identities, who have given birth to at least one child successfully conceived using ART (N=114). I use a mix of qualitative and quantitative techniques to examine parents’ experience undergoing fertility treatment as well as conception disclosure. My research has two overall research objectives: first, to explore and analyze variations in the experience of fertility treatment process based on sexual identity; second, to examine differences in attitudes towards conception disclosure as well as disclosure importance and behaviors based on sexual identity. …

All The King's Men: Slavery And Soldiering At The Cabrits Garrison (1763-1854), Zachary James Mccray Beier

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation investigates the archaeology of Atlantic world wars and slavery on the island of Dominica during the Age of Revolution (c. 1774-1848). Using archival and archaeological evidence from households at the Cabrits Garrison occupied by lower status personnel in the British army, including enslaved laborers and soldiers of African descent, this study attempts two broad goals: (1) to critically examine the anthropological phenomena of African-Caribbean social formation through a study of settlement patterns and material culture, and (2) to write an archaeological history describing the everyday lives of subordinate groups living within the walls of this fort. My analysis …

Presidential Instability In A Developing Country: Reassessing South Korean Politics From A State-Society Relations Perspective, Kyung-Hwa Kim

Dissertations - ALL

This study attempts to explain why ALL of South Korean presidents, without exception and notwithstanding their individual major contributions to the process of Korea’s development, have fallen victim to disgraceful downfalls.

For the analysis, I employ S.N. Sangmpam’s middle-range theory that establishes a causal link between society-rooted politics and political outcomes. Building on his analytical frameworks that non-Western countries are characterized by over-politicization in politics as a function of social context, I argue that patterned downfalls of all Korean presidents are an institutional outcome of over-politicization in Korean politics, which is itself a function of not fully entrenched capitalist society. …

Impact: The Supreme Court In American Politics, Logan Ray Strother

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation I seek to answer the question: when, how, and under what conditions does the Supreme Court make or influence policy and politics in the United States? In working to answer this question, I demonstrate that the Supreme Court has significantly more power and influence than scholars have typically given it credit for. I argue that the nature of the Court’s power is interpretive: it is the power to say what the law is. This power gives the Court the ability to make policy routinely, in every case that comes before it. Often the exercise of this policymaking …

The Impact Of Environmental Policies And Innovation On The Investment In And Use Of Natural Gas-Fired Combined Cycle Generators In The Us Electricity Sector, Kelly Ann Stevens

Dissertations - ALL

Developments over the past thirty years have contributed to increased natural gas generation in the US electricity sector. As a result, natural gas generation surpassed coal for the first time in history in 2016. In addition to low natural gas prices, developments with the natural gas-fired combined cycle generator (NGCC) have contributed to the rise of natural gas. In the 1990s, technological innovations led to substantial efficiency gains for NGCC, rendering these generators cleaner and more efficient than other widely available sources of power generation during that period. In the early 2000s, the US experienced the largest short-term increase in …

Privacy Vs. Security: Fear Appeals, Terrorism And The Willingness To Allow Increased Government Surveillance, Angela Marie Rulffes

Dissertations - ALL

This study investigates the relationship between fear and privacy by using the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) to examine whether there is an association between fear appeals and the willingness to allow increased governmental surveillance of online and phone communications. Research suggests that, in the United States, privacy is important. Moreover, courts have inferred privacy rights in the U.S. Constitution, including protection from intrusions by the government. However, the threat of terrorism is also very real. There are indications that some people may be willing to allow intrusion by the government if it means keeping them safe. This study uses …

Building The Airplane While It Flies: A Case Study Approach Of Police Development In Kosovo, Liberia, And Timor-Leste, Kevin Krupski

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the development of police forces during post-conflict reconstruction to determine what makes some police development interventions more successful than others. It addresses three questions: First, does goal incongruence between donors and host states have a negative impact on the outcome of police development? Second, does the structure of organizations, political power, and international agreements predetermine the outcome of police development? Third, does the agency of individuals have an effect on the outcome of police development? The dissertation aims to fill a gap in our understanding of how the international community develops policing institutions by examining the interaction …

Healthy Immigrants? Exploring Country Of Origin, Pre-Immigration Experiences, And Acculturation In Relationship To U.S. Immigrants’ Health, Ynesse Abdul-Malak

Dissertations - ALL

Immigrants belonging to some racial/ethnic minority groups might not be benefitting from the healthy migrant effect. With data from the New Immigrant Survey (2003), which includes immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica, I examine the odds of three health outcomes, chronic conditions, depressive symptoms, and fair or poor self-rated health using a series of logistic regression analyses. I draw on segmented assimilation and the cumulative inequality theories to understand and explicate the extent to which immigrants’ demographic characteristics, pre-immigration experiences, and acculturation in the U.S. might have an impact on immigrants’ health outcomes. Compared to Mexican immigrants, …

Using Affirmation Theory To Further Understand The Distinction Between The Individual Self And The Collective Self, Gaven Allen Ehrlich

Dissertations - ALL

Research in social psychology points to a discontinuity between the individual self and the collective self such that operating at the collective level of identity leads one to be more biased, defensive, and hostile than when operating at the individual level of identity. One area of research where this distinction is particularly apparent is that of identity threat and affirmation theory. Although affirming the self has been shown to reduce individual-level biases in the face of threat, affirming the group in response to a collective-level threat has been shown to accentuate biased tendencies. This may be a result of the …

Enabling Justice: State Cooperation With The International Criminal Court, Franziska Boehme

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation analyzes state cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC, or the Court). State cooperation is the precondition for the Court to bring perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity to justice. The Court does not have a police force of its own to enforce its arrest warrants and court requests. Consequently, the ICC depends on the cooperation and assistance of states and international organizations to arrest suspects and facilitate the Court’s work in various ways. Through qualitative methods, including case studies, content analysis, and process tracing, I investigate how states support or undermine the Court’s work …

The Effect Of The Hope Scholarship Program On Interstate Migration, Can Zhou

Dissertations - ALL

The HOPE scholarship program, created by the state of Georgia in 1993, is the first large scale, merit-based higher educational scholarship program in the United States. In this research, I use border analysis and difference-in-differences estimates to test the hypothesis that the HOPE scholarship program attracts interstate education migration from Georgia’s neighboring states. My results support my hypothesis. I find that border areas in Georgia attract high school seniors from the adjacent areas in border states that do not have the HOPE scholarship program. In addition, I use the IPUMS dataset to provide further analysis to the effect of the …

Over The Hurdle: A Quantitative Study Examining The Obstacles Of Achieving Professional Certification And The Perceived Effective Practices For Overcoming Them, John Patrick Stinnett

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this study was to identify the issues that Information Systems (IS) professionals face when pursuing professional certification as well as the perceived effective practices to overcome these issues. I have observed many students seeking professional certification while only a small subset achieves it. This document provides a review of relevant literature on the topic of professional certification and a research study that examined why some IS professionals achieve this certification and what obstacles they overcame to do so. The study has relevance to organizations that offer professional certifications, those firms who offer exam preparation for these certifications, …

Essays On Misspecification In High Dimensional Econometrics And Asset Pricing, Jaewoo Oh

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines misspecification issues in two contexts: (i) signal (or equivalently factor) detection in high-dimensional factor models and (ii) the identification of the physical probability distribution of stock returns in the asset pricing literature.

The first essay revisits the panel information criteria (IC) proposed by Bai and Ng (2002), which is a popular estimator for the number of factors in high-dimensional factor models, and studies its over-detection risk in finite samples. First, we analyze the finite sample performance of IC by computing the over-detection probability bound. In particular, we specify the asymptotic over-detection condition of IC in terms of …

The Presence Of Groove In Online Songwriting Projects, David Lamar James

Dissertations - ALL

Collaboration for groups with members who are disconnected by geography or time is convenient for many reasons, but remains a challenge due to time zone differences, network congestion, and the attenuation of nonverbal communication cues. Virtual collaborators engaging in creative work often deal with these challenges, even more so when tasked with expressing their emotions to distant partners.

This study seeks to determine the social factors and tools that impact the quality of an online creative collaboration. Members of the Kompoz.com music composition community were surveyed to solicit projects that had the potential to be optimal collaborations. Judges listened to …

Occupational Stress And Health Among Home Health Care Workers, Jeanette M. Zoeckler

Dissertations - ALL

Home health care workers fill an essential role in the daily lives of elderly persons. However, the work is physically and emotionally exhausting. This mixed-methods study explicates sources of stress found in agency-based caregiving in the post-industrial economy. Agencies operate under a highly regulated legal and organizational framework, but little is known about how to reduce sources of job strain to better protect workers’ health. Drawing on existing occupational health stress theories (Karasek; Siegrist; Landsbergis) and sociological stress theory (Pearlin; Fenwick & Tausig), this study explores how workers’ experiences and agency characteristics are related to home health care worker’s occupational …

Encounters With Authority: Tactics And Negotiations At The Periphery Of Participatory Platforms, Gabriel Mugar

Dissertations - ALL

Digital participatory platforms like Wikipedia are often celebrated as projects that allow anyone to contribute. Any user can sign up and start contributing immediately. Similarly, projects that engage volunteers in the production of scientific knowledge create easy points of entry to make contributions. These low barriers to entry are a hallmark feature in digital participatory labor, limiting the number of hoops a new volunteer has to jump through before they can feel like they are making a difference. Such low barriers to participation at the periphery, or edges of participatory platforms, have presented a problem for organizational scholars as they …

Understanding Information Use In Online Consumer-Health Support Groups: A Look Into Interactive Health Communications, Naybell Hernandez

Dissertations - ALL

UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION USE IN ONLINE CONSUMER HEALTH SUPPORT GROUPS: A LOOK INTO INTERACTIVE HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS

The exponential growth of the Internet in the past two decades has been accompanied by an increased interest by Internet users in communicating among each other electronically about all sorts of topics, including health-related issues. This increased interest in peer-to-peer communication for health topics raised lots of questions about the potential harmful effects of these communications on those participants who might take some health-related action without consulting with a doctor first. This potential problem has motivated the researcher to investigate how people with certain health …

The Roberts Court Constitution Of Freedom Of Speech: Preferences, Principles, And The Study Of Supreme Court Decision-Making, Brandon Metroka

Dissertations - ALL

Since the appointment of Chief Justice G. Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, political scientists and legal scholars have assessed the Court’s behavior in a diverse array of cases and issue areas, including those touching on federalism, reproductive rights, voting rights, and economic liberty (cases involving businesses and corporations). Few issues have proven as vexing as the Court’s constitution of the First Amendment’s command “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”

In light of the Court’s ongoing constitution of the scope and coverage of the First Amendment, a narrative has emerged that paints the Court as distinctly conservative. …