Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Tailor Made In India: Jaipur's Masters Of Cloth, Doctors Of Clothing, Alisa Weinstein

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is about Jaipur’s tailors, making custom-crafted clothing for individual customers in a rapidly changing and globally fashion-informed India. Indian-crafted clothing and textiles are a source of pride domestically and have long been used and admired throughout the world. So how is that India’s tailors, the people whose knowledge, abilities, and hard work form the backbone of this industry, receive so little thought or recognition? Although tailors are a seemingly well-respected and integral part of shaping Jaipur’s cultural landscape, my inquiries often revealed that tailors and their labor are popularly characterized as mundane. While considerable attention gets paid to …

Rival Brands’ Response Strategies To Mitigate The Negative Spillover Effects During A Brand Crisis, Jan-Juba Y. Arway

Theses - ALL

Effectively managing a crisis is highly essential to any company to protect or restore its reputation, including consumer faith and loyalty to the brand, after the crisis has occurred, especially to competing brands. It is also essential that the rival brand approaches the situation with the correct response strategy (Veil, Dillingham, & Sloan, 2016). Extending Rohem and Tybout's (2016) research about the Negative Spillover Effect (NSE), this study’s purpose is to examine the effective communication strategy a rival brand can employ to lessen and or prevent negative spillover from competing brand scandal and or crisis. Furthermore, exploring differentiation and bolstering …

Investigation Of The Effects Of A Yoga Intervention On Experiential Avoidance, Symptoms Of Psychological Distress, And Substance Use, Samantha Sinegar

Theses - ALL

The current study sought to examine the utility of yoga for reducing experiential avoidance (EA), as well as symptoms of psychological distress (SPD) and substance use. EA refers to the attempt to avoid or control adverse bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, and memories despite negative consequences. Yoga is a holistic system of mind-body practices which includes physical postures, stretching, and breathing exercises aimed at maintaining and improving both mental and physical health. Undergraduates (n = 43) from a yoga class and basic exercise classes were recruited to participate and served as the intervention and active control group, respectively. Self-reported measures of …

The State, Aerospace Multinational Corporations And Variegated Forms Of Corporate Capture In Regional Training Systems: A Cross-National Comparative Study Between Charleston, Sc, U.S.A. And São José Dos Campos, Sp, Brazil, Tiago Roberto Alves Teixeira

Dissertations - ALL

In today’s globalized world, the power of influence of multinational corporations over the state and society is significant. One particular area is related to how MNCs have influenced states and public educational institutions in order to shape their educational agendas and training initiatives. Many scholars have conceptualized such an influence as processes of corporate capture. In this dissertation, I examine and compare the existing processes of corporate capture related to Boeing and Embraer in the regional training systems of Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A., and São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. I also investigate how their distinctive state forms and …

Snowstorms In Upstate New York: Synoptics, Spatial Modeling And Temporal Variability, Justin Joseph Hartnett

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the characteristics of snowstorms that affect Central New York, a subsection of the eastern Great Lakes region, in a series of chapters organized as journal articles. The first article develops a classification scheme to categorize snowstorms in Central New York from the 1985/86 season to the 2014/15 season. Twelve different snowstorm types were classified by their connection to the Great Lakes, the presence or absence of a synoptic low, or their area of cyclogenesis.

The second article uses the 2055 classified snowstorms to examine their relative contribution to seasonal snowfall totals. Although lake-effect snowstorms are the dominant …

Imitation Game: Military Institutions And Westernization In Indonesia And Japan, Evan Abelard Laksmana

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation explains why and how some militaries are better than others at emulating the organization and doctrine of foreign armed forces. I define military emulation as the changes to a pre-existing military organization resulting from an imitation of another military's structure or doctrine. The changes stem from the diffusion of military ideas from one polity to another. I call those ideas `theory of victory' and `theory of corporatism'. The former explains the next mission a military needs to fight and how to win, while the latter details how intra-military institutions and their raison d'etres are designed, maintained, and defended …

The Art Of Subtitling: A Case Study Of A Chinese Online Fansub Group, Xianwei Wu

Theses - ALL

Online fan subtitling (hereafter fansub) groups are a recent phenomenon that have quickly gained global popularity. They are groups of volunteers who produce and distribute subtitles of English televisions shows and films for free. However, to date not much academic attention has been paid to this phenomenon in a critical capacity, with the exception of anime fansubbing. This study closely examines one fansub group in China using a single-case design case study. The methods of data collection include: in-depth interviews with the translators; participant observation as a subtitle translator; and textual/discourse analysis of the subtitles. This study will use the …

Regionalist Social Movements In Contemporary Chile: Production Of Space, Place, Territory, And Scale Through Collective Action, Miguel A. Contreras

Dissertations - ALL

In the last decade, the organization of several territorially based social movements in Chile has expressed a significant level of social discomfort about the political and economic system of the country. The central objective of this dissertation is to analyze how motivations, achievements, and failures of these movements have a dialectical relationship with the spatial features, specifically with the concepts place, territory and scale. Critical geography, political geography, and social movements’ studies provide the theoretical framework for the analysis, highlighting the significance of social movements as producers of collective knowledge. This research used a qualitative approach with a mix-methods design …

The Third Wave Of Graduate Labor Unions, Anthony Walker

Theses - ALL

A 2016 NLRB decision that made graduate labor unions legal has contributed significantly to a wave of graduate organizing, continuing a 50-year history of graduate unions. This research investigates this contemporary wave of graduate unionization using two papers, which take a theoretical and an empirical approach respectively. The first paper uses a Marxist analysis to connect the narrow antagonism between graduates and management with larger-scale phenomena that involves other workers too, such as the growing population of contingent academic workers. It describes how corporate interests have influenced higher education and administrators have become managers of workers in order to help …

A Neural Correlate Of Mindful Acceptance? Relating Individual Differences In Dispositional Acceptance To Error Processing, Emily Lynne Cary

Theses - ALL

Mindfulness is a multi-faceted construct that can be defined with more precision via a two-component model that includes self-regulated attention and an accepting orientation towards one’s experiences. Many of the observed benefits of mindfulness are associated with the orientation of acceptance, which is characterized by having less reactivity and judgment of one’s experiences and may be particularly relevant to the processing of errors, as errors often enlist cognitive and affective responses. Error processing is a system that involves detecting errors and adjusting behavior adaptively to prevent future errors. Error processing can be measured in the brain and thus could be …

A Pilot Study Examining Differences In Tactile Sensory Processing As A Function Of Borderline Personality Disorder Symptomatology And Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, Julia Elizabeth Hooker

Theses - ALL

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by a pattern of instability in self-image, interpersonal relationships, emotional regulation, and impulsivity that significantly impacts functioning in everyday life. Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a hallmark symptom of BPD that serves to regulate affective instability and relieve inner aversive tension. Experimental pain modalities are commonly employed to assess sensory perception in the context of BPD. Although the experience of self-inflicted pain during NSSI is thought to contribute to emotional regulation, individuals with BPD tend to exhibit reduced experimental pain sensitivity when compared to healthy controls. Thus, experimental pain reactivity may not adequately reflect mechanisms …

Consumer Attachment And Corporate Social Advocacy: Leveraging Political Behaviors To Bolster Organization-Public Relationships, Jonathan Borden

Dissertations - ALL

Corporations are increasingly weighing in to advocate for one side or the other in cultural and political debates. As these types of corporate social advocacy become increasingly common, much is still unknown as to how they affect consumer perceptions of the organization, attitudes regarding their relationship with the organization, and their future purchase or behavioral intentions.

This study aims to address this gap.

Utilizing a survey conducted in late spring-2019, this study assesses public perceptions of corporate political engagement/corporate social advocacy and their subsequent attitudes towards the organization and future behavioral intentions.

Analysis revealed that corporate social advocacy does have …

Exploratory Study On Trust, Distrust, And Credibility In Machine Journalism, Stephen Wonchul Song

Dissertations - ALL

The current study investigated the effect of machine-generated journalism. Specifically, the effect of machine journalism compared to human journalist on the perceptions of credibility and distrust for news articles on controversial topics was explored. To further extend the well- established theories of credibility in journalism, this study introduced the concept of distrust as a construct that is distinct from credibility or trust. The relationship between trust and hostile media effect was explored. Finally, this study investigated if trust and hostile media effect are related to the perception of fake news. The results show that distrust was indeed distinct from credibility …

Gender And Legitimacy In United Nations Mediation, Catriona Standfield

Dissertations - ALL

In 2000, the United Nations (UN) adopted Resolution 1325, the foundation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda. It aims to make peace and security more gender-sensitive and inclusive. Scholars have examined the implementation of the WPS Agenda in peacebuilding and peacekeeping; however, mediation, particularly UN-brokered peace processes, remains under-researched. Nineteen years on, progress is inconsistent. Numbers of women have increased in negotiations, but they remain a minority. While the UN has guidelines on gender in mediation, peace processes do not consider gender issues systematically. This project considers the problem of how the UN has institutionalized the WPS Agenda …

Countering Anti-Vaccination Rumors On Twitter, Ji Won Kim

Dissertations - ALL

This study examined the effects of the counter-rumor on changes in the belief about the anti-vaccination claim, anxiety associated with the rumor, intentions to vaccinate a child and share the rumor. Particularly, we tested whether argument strength, source expertise, as well as the recipient’s previously held attitude toward vaccination, could affect these outcomes. First, the pilot tests were conducted to check source expertise (N = 161) and argument strength (N = 74; N = 73) and select sources and messages used in the experiment. A 2 (argument strength: strong vs. weak) x 2 (expertise source: high vs. low) between-subjects factor …

The Longitudinal Association Of Neighborhood Stress And Sexual Risk Behaviors And Outcomes Among Black Adolescents: Main Effects And Theoretically-Informed Mediation, Sarah Rose Lafont

Dissertations - ALL

Neighborhood stress stemming from exposure to physical and social decay, as well as violence and crime may be a critical risk factor for risky sexual behaviors among adolescents. The present study sought to: 1) characterize the prospective association of neighborhood stress with adolescent sexual risk behaviors; 2) test whether depression and perceived peer risk norms mediate this association, as proposed by the stress and coping hypothesis and social control theory, respectively; and 3) test whether plausible alternative hypotheses to the stress and coping hypothesis and social control theory can explain the data as well as these hypotheses. Path analysis was …

Examining The Transfer Of Function Representations, Ashley Nicole Douglass

Theses - ALL

A transfer task was used to test whether people rely on rules or associations to learn a function. The primary function that everyone received was an inverse absolute value function. The secondary transfer functions that had a similar rule were flip conditioned or shift conditioned version of the primary function. The secondary function representing association was a parabola condition shaped function, which had input-output pairs closest to the primary function. It is expected that since the Parabola condition has less deviations from the trained function that if people favor associations then it would be easier, despite it having a very …

Personality Pathology Severity And Hazardous Cannabis Use: Does Instability In Daily Life Mediate This Association?, Nicole Elizabeth Ellerbeck

Theses - ALL

Comorbidities between personality pathology and cannabis use disorders among young adults are a growing public health concern. Young adulthood is the period in which personality pathology and associated dysfunction peak, and evidence suggests personality pathology contributes to substance abuse behaviors. However, the specific aspects of personality pathology that explain these associations remain unclear. Personality disorders tend to share in common three domains of dysregulation that are marked by instability in self-esteem (identity), affect, and interpersonal experiences. This study investigated whether these common domains of personality dysfunction mediated associations between personality pathology severity and patterns of cannabis use. The current study …

Black Lives Matter? Reporting Styles And The Public’S Acceptance Or Rejection Of Racially Charged Protest, Alexandria Haynes

Theses - ALL

Communication and media studies scholars have commonly accepted that the news media has significant influence on the public, so the tendency to marginalize protest groups as socially deviant, can have serious implications for the cause being protested. This two-part qualitative study first examined news coverage of racially charged protests surrounding the controversial judicial ruling regarding the death of Trayvon Martin. News coverage of protests that followed the verdict was analyzed based on elements consistent with Framing theory, using a Critical Discourse Analysis methodology. The second part of the study analyzed the same news articles corresponding comment sections, in order to …

Environmental Enrichment Improves Sociability In Btbr Mice, A Rodent Model For Autism, Bradley Andrew Diamond

Theses - ALL

This study examined the hypothesis that environmental enrichment (EE) would reduce autistic-like symptoms on three behavioral tasks in BTBR mice, an inbred strain used as a genetic model for autism. Based on our previous work with adversity induced symptoms of mental disorder in an outbred mouse strain, we predicted that EE would 1) increase preference for social stimuli in the 3-chamber apparatus, 2) enhance preference for home nest odors versus clean familiar shavings on the odor preference test, and 3) reduce anxiety-like behavior on the elevated plus maze. We found that EE 1) increased BTBR preference for a stranger mouse …

Screening For At-Risk Substance Use And Behavioral Health Concerns In University Primary Care, Clare Elizabeth Campbell

Dissertations - ALL

Harmful substance use is a prevalent and under-treated public health problem, with use of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs among the top preventable causes of death in the United States. The unmet need for treatment is particularly pronounced among young adults, for whom university primary care is an important venue for early detection and intervention. Although a number of different multi-substance use screens have been developed for primary care settings, none have been validated in university primary care. Other behavioral health concerns are also highly prevalent among college students, although little is known regarding how behavioral risk factors co-occur in …

Valuing Vacancy: Land Banking And Property Governance In The U.S. Rust Belt, Patrick Oberle

Dissertations - ALL

In the early 1970s, planning and city officials in St. Louis, Missouri were grappling with the consequences of white flight, urban renewal, and a withdrawal of federal funding on the city’s increasingly abandoned and tax delinquent housing stock. In response, the city government implemented a land bank to acquire tax foreclosed housing and other property and re-sell it through an urban homesteading plan. Later that decade, a similar program was implemented in Cleveland, Ohio. By the early 2000’s the land banking idea had transformed from a city agency to a near-governmental non-profit regional organization with the powers to acquire abandoned …

Parenting In Chinese Immigrant Mothers: The Influences Of Chinese Identity, Cultural And Parenting Cognitions, Grandparent Support And Child Temperament, Kai Sun

Dissertations - ALL

Cultural cognitions have been shown to have important implications for parenting cognitions, behaviors and adjustment across cultures. However, few studies have examined the associations between cultural cognitions and parenting in acculturating Chinese communities. This study explored the following research questions among acculturating Chinese mothers in the United States: 1) How parents’ sense of investment is determined by acculturation processes and its importance for parental involvement; 2) the relationships between parental satisfaction, individualism/collectivism and parenting stress; 3) the moderating role of acculturation on the relationship between grandparent support and parenting stress; 4) the moderating role of gender and acculturation on the …

Modern Health Worries And Emotional Reactivity To Images Of Air Pollution, Garry Spink

Dissertations - ALL

Modern health worries (MHW) represent individual differences in the perceived threat posed to health and well-being by aspects of modern life. Current evidence suggests that MHW are positively associated with trait negative emotionality, and given that trait negative emotionality is associated with state emotional reactivity to environmental stressors, it is reasonable to expect that persons with elevated MHW would show increased state emotional reactivity to MHW-related stimuli. Consequently, this study aimed to investigate the association of MHW with state emotional reactivity (i.e., valence and arousal) to MHW-related stimuli (i.e., images of air pollution). Combining these stimuli with other stimuli varying …

Beyond The Rubicon: Command And Control In Regional Nuclear Powers, Giles David Arceneaux

Dissertations - ALL

What factors explain the origins of command and control systems in emerging nuclear powers? Why do some states implement robust administrative, physical, and technical controls over their nuclear arsenals, while others limit safeguards against nuclear use?

The nature of a state’s nuclear command and control systems underpin the deterrent capacity of a state’s nuclear arsenal, determine the likelihood of accidental or unauthorized nuclear use, and affect the likelihood of conventional conflict escalating across the nuclear threshold. Despite the importance of command and control systems for nuclear stability and security, however, detailed analysis on the sources of nuclear command and control …

Vicarious Racial Discrimination, Racial Identity, And Alcohol-Related Outcomes Among Black Young Adults: An Experimental Approach, Jessica Mae Desalu

Dissertations - ALL

Personal experiences of racial discrimination have been well investigated for its association with diverse alcohol-related outcomes among Black Americans. However, vicarious racial discrimination (i.e., the observation of others’ experience of racial discrimination) has yet to be examined for its alcohol-related outcomes. The extent to which vicarious discrimination experiences influence alcohol outcomes may differ by three components of racial identity: centrality (significance of being Black), private regard (personal evaluative judgments of being Black), and public regard (beliefs about others’ evaluative judgments of Blacks). The current within-subject experiment examined whether associations of vicarious racial discrimination (manipulated by video clips) with alcohol use …

Understanding The Relation Between Mindfulness-Based Interventions, Reading And Attention, Adam Joseph Clawson

Theses - ALL

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), roughly one third of American 4th and 8th grade students perform at or above the proficient level, suggesting that further interventions are needed to support student reading skills. Mindfulness interventions have generally been implemented to impact attentional, social-emotional needs, and internalizing symptoms such as stress and anxiety. However, mindfulness interventions have only recently been deployed to increase academic skills such as reading. This current research evaluated the effects of a brief year-long mindfulness intervention on reading and attention skills across an ethnically diverse at-risk sample of 7th grade students. Five 7th …

Nunavut, A Creation Story. The Inuit Movement In Canada's Newest Territory, Holly Ann Dobbins

Dissertations - ALL

This is a qualitative study of the 30-year land claim negotiation process (1963-1993) through which the Inuit of Nunavut transformed themselves from being a marginalized population with few recognized rights in Canada to becoming the overwhelmingly dominant voice in a territorial government, with strong rights over their own lands and waters. In this study I view this negotiation process and all of the activities that supported it as part of a larger Inuit Movement and argue that it meets the criteria for a social movement. This study bridges several social sciences disciplines, including newly emerging areas of study in social …

Examining The Classification Accuracy Of The Social, Academic, Emotional Behavior Risk Screener And Its Relationship With Writing Performance, Narmene Hamsho

Dissertations - ALL

This study examined the relationship between two school-wide screening measures, one examining classroom behaviors (the Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener; SAEBRS; Kilgus, Chafouleas, & Riley-Tillman, 2013) and another evaluating writing fluency (Curriculum-Based Measurement in Written Expression; CBM-WE). This study also evaluated the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the SAEBRS and CBM-WE for identifying students at-risk for writing achievement deficits. A convenience sample of 147 third-grade general education students across two schools, who were determined to not have any significant impairment impacting their writing performance, participated in this study. The index tests (i.e., SAEBRS, CBM-WE) …

Three Essays On Property Tax Administration, Yusun Kim

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on real property tax administration and related state-local fiscal relations. All three essays exploit variation in state policies as natural experiments to study the various features of the property tax system.

The first essay examines how county governments respond to a state policy that reduced counties' share of state Medicaid costs, in a state where counties are mandated to financially contribute to the state program. The key motivation of this study is to understand the consequences of a change in the way a large public insurance program is co-financed by different levels of …