Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Food Insecurity At A Four-Year College Campus, Danielle Corrado

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper, through an adaption of the United States Department of Agriculture Adult Food Security survey tool, aims to identify food insecurity rates at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the demographic characteristics associated with food insecurity, potential financial factors that contribute and predict food insecurity rates, and the relationship between food insecurity and academic performance. Lastly, this paper examines on and off campus resources available to students and students perception of food insecurity before college as compared to actual food security status in college.

Massachusetts School Discipline Policy Change: Exclusion, Alternatives, And Inequality In Public District And Charter Schools, Aster Richardson

School of Public Policy Capstones

School discipline reform is of growing interest to policymakers as ongoing research reveals the negative effects of current school discipline policies. In the U.S., the most popular models of school discipline use exclusionary practice, which includes suspension and expulsion. Studies have shown that exclusionary discipline contributes to undesired social outcomes such as poor academic performance, school drop out, unemployment, and even incarceration. Additionally, exclusionary discipline and its negative consequences disproportionately affect racial minorities and other vulnerable groups of students. Reform of current state policy is a necessary first step toward implementing alternative discipline practice in schools. In 2012 Massachusetts legislature …

Promoting Healthy Diets: Challenges And Opportunities Of Nutrition Policy Implementation In Food Banks, Sarah Brown-Anson, Elizabeth Leibinger, Hadassah Masudi Minga

School of Public Policy Capstones

In recent years, food banks have grown increasingly aware of the role diet plays in wide-spread public health issues such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity. Food banks already purchase healthy foods directly and select nutritious items distributed by government programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Recently, some banks have implemented nutrition policies to regulate donations made by businesses and individuals to further decrease the volume of less healthy options in their warehouses.

This study explores the challenges and opportunities associated to the implementation of nutrition policies for donated food items by Food Banks in the USA. …

Alcohol Policy Best Practices In Franklin And Hampshire Counties, Massachusetts, Lauren Coakley, Reily Connaughton, Ghida El-Banna

School of Public Policy Capstones

Research question: What are "efficient" policies and best practices to reduce youth alcohol consumption in Franklin and Hampshire counties, Massachusetts?

Motivation: Excessive alcohol consumption leads to monetary and societal costs.

Methodology: A hybrid of quantitative (multiple linear regression) and qualitative (policy evaluation, case studies, phone and in-person interviews) methods.

Access To Technology And Student Academic Achievement: Empirical Evidence From Nepal, Palista Kharel

School of Public Policy Capstones

My research explores the linkage between access to technology and student academic achievement in Nepal. I measure access to technology using four proxies: availability of electricity, radio, TV and computer at home. I measure academic achievement using student test scores in the Grade 10 national level examinations.

My results indicate that students with access to electricity, radio, TV and computer at home, have higher average test scores overall. Particularly, access to a computer has the largest positive effect on a student’s academic achievement. Simple OLS regression results suggest that those with access to a computer score 64 points higher than …

Curating Heritage In The Digital Age: An Exploration Of How America’S National Heritage Areas Are Using Technology To Share Their Stories, Desiree Demski-Hamelin

School of Public Policy Capstones

Research Question

This capstone project answers the following two primary research questions: 1) how are America’s National Heritage Areas (NHAs) using technology to share their stories, and 2) what types of information are NHAs using technology to share? Additional secondary research questions are outlined in the Methodology section.

Data Source

Primary data was collected from the websites and social media accounts of each of the forty-eight active NHAs in the United States as of April 2018.

Methodology

Systematic observational content analysis of the websites and social media accounts was conducted by the author. Two rating schemes were developed to assess …

The Abandoned Shipwrecks Act In Florida, Tyler Wolanin

School of Public Policy Capstones

The Abandoned Shipwrecks Act is a 1988 federal law that grants states jurisdiction over abandoned shipwrecks in their territorial waters. The intention of the law is to allow states to form historic preservation regimes to protect historic shipwrecks from looters and salvagers. One of the most important beneficiaries of this law is the state of Florida, with the longest coastline in the continental United States and a history of attempts to protect historic shipwrecks.

This law has been criticized since inception for removing the profit incentive for salvors to discover new shipwrecks. The Act has been subjected to a considerable …

Adolescents’ Soda Consumption In Mexico Before And After The Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Tax: Results From National Health And Nutrition Surveys, Estefania Martí Malvido

School of Public Policy Capstones

In 2014 Mexico implemented a national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) as a public health strategy. Over the last decades, obesity has significantly increased among adolescents (12-19 years). In addition, the consumption of high-energy beverages among adolescents more than doubled from 1999 to 2006. The current study investigates the relationship between the SSBs tax and the caloric soda consumption in the Mexican adolescent population utilizing cross-sectional data from two nationally representative nutrition surveys. One from 2012 which took place before the tax was implemented and one conducted in 2016, two years after tax implementation.

Results show a positive association between …

Motherwoman And The Massachusetts Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: The Role Of Community Organizations In Education And Outreach For State Employment Laws, Christoph Demers, Laura Sylvester

School of Public Policy Capstones

Since 2013, MotherWoman has been leading the drive to pass the Massachusetts Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), which is likely to be voted on within the current legislative session. While a full vote on the bill has not yet been scheduled, there appears to be significant support for the bill from legislators, coalition members, and the general public, and little public pushback from potential opponents. While MotherWoman continues to help move the legislation through the legislature, they must look to the next phase: implementation. Once passed, it will be up to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) to implement and …

The Financial Health Of Massachusetts Nonprofit Arts Organizations (2009-2014), Derek Krevat

School of Public Policy Capstones

This report analyzes the extent to which nonprofit arts organizations in Massachusetts have recovered from the financial recession of 2009. There are a number of ways to measure financial health, but amid recent concerns surrounding the diversification of revenue streams, long-term financial stability, and the availability of cash on hand among nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts, the analysis focuses primarily on these factors. Specifically, it uses four overarching measures to gauge financial health and recovery: surplus margins (as an indication of profitability), diversification of revenue streams, asset mixes, and months cash on hand (as an indication of liquidity).

Best Practices For Creating And Sustaining Engagement With Urban Communities: Recommendations For The U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service, Mimi Kaplan

School of Public Policy Capstones

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service launched its Urban Wildlife Conservation Program in 2012 in order to increase the relevancy of the service to urban communities, as well as to connect urban communities with nature and environmental conservation. As part of this initiative, the USFWS has designated certain urban centers as Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership Areas. The main goal of the Urban Wildlife Refuges is to engage urban communities in wildlife conservation, often with the help of community partners. These are eight "Standards of Excellence" that serve as a framework to support this goal. While these Standards of Excellence are …

Pathways Out Of Poverty: A Needs Assessment Survey Of Low-Income Single Mothers In Amherst, Ma, Garine Roubinian

School of Public Policy Capstones

The Pathways out of Poverty Needs Assessment Survey is a project undertaken to provide the first mixed-methods evaluation of the critical needs and issues affecting low-income single mothers in Amherst, MA. This analysis seeks to aid community-based social service organizations, local government officials, and other stakeholders to specifically focus on and thus better allocate intervention and support services to low-income single mothers in need in Amherst and neighboring towns. The survey evaluates current needs and challenges experienced by low-income single mothers, current supports and services they utilize, and service gaps and barriers they experience in accessing help. It also examines …

Genetic Discrimination Law In The United States: A Socioethical & Legal Analysis Of The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (Gina), Ken Lefebvre

School of Public Policy Capstones

In the last several years, genetic sequencing technologies have become widely accessible to consumers as prices have fallen at rates faster than the National Institute of Health had initially predicted. With these lower costs more patients now have access to their own genetic information than ever before, thanks to a host of new services.

Though objective in itself, genetic information is often regarded as an indicator of social and medical outcomes, with some associations substantiated and others largely reflecting social attitudes. Our understanding of genetic markers as forecasters for certain physiological disorders is still relatively limited, but associations between certain …

Socioeconomic Assessment Of The Epic Mangrove Restoration Project In Thailand, Jennifer King, Orlando Cordero

School of Public Policy Capstones

Mangroves supply important services to tropical and subtropical communities around the world, but these delicate ecosystems have been degraded, sometimes destroyed, for development interests such as tourism, charcoal concessions, intensive shrimp aquaculture, and growing populations. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is restoring mangroves at two sites in Koh Klang, an island in Krabi, Thailand. The process centers around teaching the surrounding community about the benefits of mangroves as food sources, fish nurseries, and in terms of disaster risk reduction, the ability of mangroves to protect nearby communities from floods, erosion, salinization, and wind. IUCN promotes the …

Evaluation Of The Capacity Building Grant For The Food Bank Of Western Massachusetts, Asya Rozental, Laura Steglich, Mylasha Furnlonge

School of Public Policy Capstones

The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts strives to eliminate hunger in the region by providing resources and food donations to member agencies. In response to a lack of capacity in many of these agencies, the Food Bank established a capacity building grant in 2012 to assist in providing items such as freezers, refrigerators and computers along with many other possible options. The Food Bank collaborated with a graduate student research team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to provide an evaluation of the program in order to assess the success of the grant and to find further ways to improve …

Women's Rights In Pakistan: The Zina Ordinance & The Need For Reform, Minah Ali Rathore

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper will begin with a historical analysis of Pakistan with a particular focus on the pro-equality vision that Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah had. The paper then moves on to Zia-ul-Haq's regime and the rise of Islamization under his military dictatorship. The prerequisites that allowed for Islamization to take place are also highlighted. Zia's dictatorship utilized Islam and Sharia law as a tool to introduce gender-discriminatory laws into the nation. Particular focus is paid to the Zina Ordinance and the loopholes within the ordinance that have been devastating to women's rights in the country. The paper then transcends to …

U.S. Lethal Drone Policy In The Execution Of The Global War On Terrorism: The Case For Reforming The Tactics, Techniques, And Procedures For The Tactical Application Of Lethal Drone Strikes, Gordon E. Adams

School of Public Policy Capstones

Over the past decade-and-a-half of continuous warfare by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Africa, lethal drone strikes have assumed a critical role in the expeditious, time-sensitive environments which U.S. military personnel and private security contactors find themselves operating in. Contentious since their inception, lethal drone strikes, as a tool of war and as a center-piece of U.S. counterinsurgency tactics, require significant policy changes in the form of increasing transparency for legislatures. Equally important, lethal drone strikes also require tactical revision in their application in order to effectively apply the methods of counter insurgency, nation-building, and relationship-development …

Improving Flexibility To Increase Housing Affordability, Russell L. Pandres

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper utilizes Census Bureau and USPS-HUD data sets to examine the relationship between address vacancy and percent of residents who are housing cost burden at the Census Tract level. This research determines there is a statistically significant positive linear relationship for four of the six New England States. Additionally, I examine spatial autocorrelation patterns among the residuals to determine if error term is clustered, dispersed, or random. Finally, I compare my results to how building codes disincentive rehabilitating buildings and incentivize greenfield development. I offer a number of policy suggestions to assist at the local, state, and Federal level …

Environmental Highest Courts’ Decisions: Investigating The Factors That Influence Mining And Oil Cases In Ecuador, Nathalí Costa Unda

School of Public Policy Capstones

The present research is meant to find out some of the factors that influence the Ecuadorian Highest Courts decisions in environmental cases. For answering my research question I analyzed these decisions, from 1998 to 2014, which constitutes the whole population of the decisions in environmental cases. For the Capstone, I focused in oil and mining cases. The research required three steps. First was to collect data from the corps of decisions in the national Court cases. Second, was to design a database: create variables and a codebook to organize them. Third, was to develop an analysis model using this data …

From Battery Cages To Barns: A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of A National Standard For Cage-Free Egg Production, Jonathan Ward

School of Public Policy Capstones

Legislation concerning the well being of farm animals has become a major focus in the animal rights movement, especially as it pertains to intensive confinement systems, such as housing egg-laying hens in battery cages. Informational asymmetries in the market for eggs represent a market failure, as producers have few incentives to inform consumers on modern egg production methods, which they may perceive as cruel. This study uses cost-benefit analysis to examine the effects of a hypothetical U.S. ban on caged egg production to assess whether such a standard would produce use and non-use benefits in excess of producer and consumer …

“Social And Economic Impacts Of Labor Migration On Migrants’ Households In Tajikistan: Working Out Policy Recommendations To Address Its Negative Effects”, Gulchekhra Khuseynova

School of Public Policy Capstones

The limited employment opportunities and low labor costs in the middle of 1990s –beginning 2000s that caused increased unemployment among population were main driving factors encouraging a high scale labor migration of Tajik citizens abroad. The labor migration from Tajikistan which, according to different sources, composes one third of the employable population of the country is probably the most dominant social feature of contemporary Tajikistan having its both positive and negative effects on communities, especially migrants’ households. During hard economic times and post-war recovery period the labor migration had tremendously contributed in reducing the poverty among population and decreasing unemployment …

Can A Default Option Reduce Default Rates?, Vanessa Joyce Megaw

School of Public Policy Capstones

Starting in 2008, major changes to the federal student loan system have increased the generosity and flexibility of repayment options. In theory, these efforts should reduce the effect of the business cycle on default patterns. However, since 2007, student loan default rates have persisted in rising. In response, several student loan advocates have proposed replacing the standard program with the income-based repayment program as the automatic repayment option. This stakeholder analysis explores the potential of this proposal from the perspective of borrowers, academic institutions, and student loan servicers through a literature review of empirical research of student loan default behaviors, …

Civic Engagement In Local Arts Agencies, Maya Kumazawa

School of Public Policy Capstones

Local arts agencies (LAAs), which support, promote, and develop the arts at a local level, can meet a community’s needs for engaging its citizens by using the arts in creative and strategic ways. In this capstone project, I explore how LAAs’ programs perceive and define civic engagement in order to understand how they seek to create civic competencies, and engage communities in crucial activities of local public life. Further, I analyzed current trends, practices, and program outcomes of LAAs that promote or integrate the arts in other civic activities to develop a resource for community leaders wanting to create a …

Evaluating Governance And Market Of Country Code Top Level Domain (Cctld): Lessons For Indonesia’S Cctld .Id, Dwi Elfrida Martina Simanungkalit

School of Public Policy Capstones

Domain name in this term refers to the Internet Domain Name System (DNS), the hierarchical naming system of Internet Protocol (IP) resources. One of the Top Level Domains (TLDs) of this structure is the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), which identifies the location of each nation on the Internet, such as .fr, .us, .id.

Country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) are not just simple identifiers on the Internet but Internet entities that enable people and institutions to exist in virtual countries and space. Moreover, ccTLDs as one of the Internet’s resources have become a business that fosters utilization of …

Encouraging Spanish-Speaking Parent Involvement: Overcoming The Barriers At Crocker Farm Elementary School, Krista Solie

School of Public Policy Capstones

The average student spends between six and seven hours in the classroom each day. However, children need educational support that exceeds the traditional school day in order to develop to their full potential, so parents play a vital role in a child’s ability to succeed. Parent involvement can take a variety of forms both formally in schools and informally at home, yet Spanish-speaking parents often face a variety of barriers that limit their ability to actively participate in their child’s education. While these problems typically occur in urban districts, Massachusetts and the Pioneer Valley in particular have a growing proportion …

Social Enterprise In Latin America: Dimensions Of Collaboration Among Social Entrepreneurs, Kevin Moforte Madsen

School of Public Policy Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Non-­Federal Match Requirement For Head Start: Why Does It Exist And How Does It Affect A Local Head Start Program?, Alan Dallmann

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper looks at the relationship between the non--‐federal match requirement for Head Start Programs and program operations with regard to parent engagement. It argues that the purpose of non--‐federal match is perceived differently depending on the position of the person asked, and an exploratory case study is conducted to identify these differences. Non--‐federal match requirements are compared to practices of capturing this match from parent engagement at a local Head Start program and managers are interviewed from the site, program and federal level. The purpose of the non--‐federal match requirement, its burden on program operations, and the relationship of …

Fostering Connections: A Potential Game Changer For Connecticut To Ease Kids’ Transition From Dcf To Adulthood, Rose Egan

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper examines how Connecticut can best utilize the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008: H.R. 6893 / P.L 110-351 (Fostering Connections Act). As of October 1, 2010, the legislation was amended to expand foster care services using Title IV-E funds. Title II, sec.201 of the Act provides states the option to extend foster care to youth through the age of 21. Connecticut already extends care to youth committed to DCF through age 21, and in some cases through age 23, yet it has one of the highest rates of youth exiting care at age 18. …

The Education Of A Farmer, Matthew D. Kushi

School of Public Policy Capstones

As the history of human civilization has unfolded, it has become clear that providing food security for fellow humans is one of the great moral issues of current times. One way to make food security sustainable is by having adequately trained farmers to take over from the retiring workforce of farmers in order to provide food and resources to people. National studies have found that fewer youth are educated as farmers by growing up on a farm. This has resulted in there being more responsibility put upon the private and public sectors to educate/train farmers, including colleges and universities.

This …

Energy Concierge Services: Analysis Of A Public-Private Partnership Model For Commercial Energy Efficiency, Lucia N. Miller

School of Public Policy Capstones

Energy Concierge Services, a unique model to boost participation in energy efficiency programs, is being piloted in the commercial sector of the City of Northampton, Massachusetts. Energy Concierge Services seeks to overcome barriers to energy efficiency by concentrating benefits and increasing efficiencies for small- and mid-sized commercial property owners. Built on the energy providers’ Mass Save framework, part of the Massachusetts Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2020, the Energy Concierge Services model is a public-private partnership to capture higher market penetration in the Mass Save program by generating an upsurge in interest, leveraging utility investment in small- to mid-sized …