Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Towards Food Justice: Strategies Of Community Engagement For Local Food Nonprofits, Garrett Stern

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Nonprofit Studies Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades there had been a significant shift in American values around food and health. The increase of diet-related illness and the growing awareness of the local food movement have helped to shape the discourse on healthy, nutritious, sustainably grown food. Food justice advocates and organization have inserted social justice principals of equity and self-determination into the dialogue of health and food. There has been a similar shift in the nonprofit sector in regard to local food programing, with local food nonprofits advocating for equity and inclusion in nonprofit food programing. Community engagement is key to putting …

Motivations For Charitable Giving Among Generations X And Y: Applying An Extended Theory Of Planned Behavior To Independent School Alumni, Elizabeth L. Harvard

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Nonprofit Studies Capstone Projects

Generational shifts in wealth, perspective and influence are forcing private schools, and colleges and universities to grapple with how to establish productive alumni relationships for long-term financial sustainability. Empirical data about Generation X and Y’s motivations to donate is limited and not easily accessible. An extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used to measure the influence of attitude, perceived behavioral control, social norms, and past behavior on intention to donate among Gen X and Y alumni of private schools in Virginia. Respondents (N=504) were born between 1965-1980 and 1981-1995 respectively. The results demonstrated that attitude, perceived behavioral control, moral …

The Effects Of Health Literacy On Treatment Adherence And Health Optimism In Chronic Kidney Disease Patients, Heather Gardiner

Honors Theses

Health literacy is a very critical aspect of a patient's recovery, and low levels of it have been correlated to a large range of negative health outcomes. Health literacy's effects on treatment adherence and health optimism was examined in a sample of 32 Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients who were recruited from a transplant center in the southeastern section of the United States. Participants had a mean age of 47.55, with 45.2% (n=14) of the participants being female and 54.8% (n=17) being Caucasian.The participants completed a survey, which incorporated the tools of Health Literacy Questionnaire, Life Orientation Tool, and the …

Leadership And Intergroup Relations : Which Leader Is More Favorable Or More Effective While Leading Distinct Subgroups?, Jieyi Ding

Honors Theses

While leading distinct subgroups nowadays, leaders need to address intergroup bias and establish beneficial intergroup relations. They could do so by promoting a collective identity that emphasizes commonality between subgroups or an intergroup relational identity that recognizes distinct characteristics of both subgroups and focuses on their dependency on each other as part of the identity. The research investigated the influence of leader's rhetoric and race interacting with moderators like identity distinctiveness threat on leader evaluation and intergroup bias. The results showed a complicated relationship between how much a leader was liked and how effective a leader could be.

"It's Part Of My Responsibility To Help" : Developing A Measure Of Motivations For Extrinsic Emotion Regulation, Sara Cloonan

Honors Theses

Previous research in the field of emotion regulation has largely focused on the ways in which we regulate our own emotions, but not as much work has been done to examine the processes by which we regulate the emotions of others. The current research aims to develop a measure of motivations for engaging in extrinsic emotion regulation (EER), with a focus on why we attempt to down-regulate negative emotional experiences of those around us. Study 1 used narrative responses to formulate and validate a qualitative coding schema for categorizing motives for engaging in EER. The wide variety of EER motivations …

Tmi : An Examination Of Excess Returns Surrounding Phase Iii Fda Approvals, Luke Chiotelis

Honors Theses

Over the past three decades, the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical industry has had the largest growth rate of any sector in the U.S. economy. Currently, the largest 10 companies have a market cap of over 700 billion dollars. In the past 20 years, Biotech has outperformed the Standard and Poor’s 500 index earning superior returns for those willing to invest in this risky, high growth industry (Bloomberg L.P.). This upward trend is expected to continue as both institutional and private investment in biotech continues to soar.

A better understanding of the FDA approval process and the way a company’s stock price …

Marketing Disability : Navigating The Ethics Of Nonprofit Development And Marketing, Peyton F. Carter

Honors Theses

In this paper, I explore how nonprofit organizations arrived at their current model, which often include a heavy emphasis on the need for private donations, and the resulting need of organizations to assert their value and be competitive in the marketplace.By attending to the specific marketing practices of one disability services nonprofit, I show how the complexities of power relations and issues of representation manifest themselves in the non profit sector.

The Effect Of Health Literacy On Chronic Kidney Disease Patient Health Outcomes, Mia Castagnero

Honors Theses

The current study seeks to enhance knowledge of health literacy among patients diagnosed with CKD. Identifying gaps in kidney-specific health literacy may help direct specific interventions to improve patient education and support. The goal of the current study is to investigate the associations between health literacy (general health literacy and kidney-specific health literacy) and patient health outcomes, such as medication adherence and barriers in access to care.

Rationality, Revisions, And Real-Time Data, Jason Hall

Honors Theses

Revisions to macroeconomic variables are a significant part of the process by which researchers, the general public, and the government get information about the state of the United States' economy. They are also substantial: this can have large implications for forecasting, macroeconomic research, business decisions, and monetary and fiscal policy. In this paper, I examine the cyclicality of various aggregate variables in U.S.data, and determine that of the major NIPA variables analyzed, only consumption andreal imports revisions display a large degree of cyclicality. I also examine the rationalityof the same set of variables under different definitions of the final value, …

Gender And Sport Inequities : Perceiving Injustices And Galvanizing Change, Ashey E. Gross

Honors Theses

We examined the effect of procedural and distributive justice on activism intent and donation. We did not find a direct effect from the justice messages on either activism intent or donation, however we also looked at moderators such as belief in a just world. We found that belief in a just world moderated activism intent, that is, people who scored low on the BJW scale had higher activism intent after reading the messages, and the messages had an inverse effect on those who scored high on the BJW scale. We did not find any effect on donation from either message.

When Does The Positivity Effect Emerge? : Age-Related Emotional Biases At Encoding And Retrieval, Hannah Wolfe

Honors Theses

The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that as their future time perspective shrinks, older adults tend to be more motivated by emotionally meaningful goals and therefore experience what is called the “positivity effect” with age (Carstensen, 2006). The positivity effect had been studied in both attention biases (Isaacowitz et al., 2006a) and memory biases (Kensinger, 2008), with older adults dwelling longer on and better remembering the positive stimuli over the negative. Yet, few studies have measured emotional biases at both the encoding and retrieval phases, which is why this study uses eye-tracking to determine whether any biases in gaze patterns …

Self-Interest Versus Social-Interest Policy Framing : The Case Of School Choice, Benedict Roemer

Honors Theses

This study examines the role of self-interest and social-interest framing in determining support for school choice policies. I make a new contribution to the field of political psychology and policy framing by comparing the effects of self-interest and social-interest. My research focuses on the domain of education policy and school choice in an original experimental study and a case study of newspaper editorials. I find evidence that the self-interest frame garners significantly mores upport for school choice policies among certain population, but policy advocates most commonly use social-interest framing when arguing for school choice policies.

Driving Anxiety In Young People With Autism Spectrum Disorder : A Driving Simulator Pilot Study, Rebecca Pasch

Honors Theses

The goal of this project was to investigate how driving anxiety changes overtime in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when using a driving simulator technology. Additional exploratory measures were collected on duration of participation,. stopping distance, and reaction time.

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy As Treatment For Child Physical Abuse : Relation To Internalizing Symptoms, Emily Kaminsky

Honors Theses

This paper explores the effectiveness of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) in reducing child internalizing symptoms in physically abused children as compared to the standard community group treatment. The data for this study was taken from a randomized control trial by Chaffinet al. (2004), which found that PCIT significantly reduced re-reports of physical abuse. The participants were 110 parent-child dyads referred by child welfare due to a recent report of child physical abuse. Both PCIT and the standard community group showed significant reductions in child internalizing symptoms over time, however there was no interaction effect between treatment group and time. Additionally, …

Draw Some Awesome : The Effect Of Art And Awe On Grief And Giving, Jamie Katz

Honors Theses

Prior research has shown that awe can have positive psychological effects on people who experience it. We conducted two experimental trials to test whether awe can be evoked by art and whether this art induced awe can increase people's charitable donations and decrease their grief in the face of losing an important relationship. We concluded that spectacular videos of art production were significant evokers of awe compared to their mundane control counterparts. We also found that the awe videos increased charitable donations through a mediating variable of feeling the "presence of something greater than oneself." Lastly, we found that there …

Re-Imagining Student Achievement : The Egalitarian Failure Of The Carrot-Stick Model In K-12 Public Education, Michael Johnson

Honors Theses

Achievementgaps between low-income and minority students and their counterparts are among the most pressing education policy issues today. Cash incentivization to students has gained momentum as a potential remedy to reduce disparities in studentachievementoutcomes. Grading incentive schemes function identically as objections to cash-incentives positioning both within the broader carrot-stick motivation model. Rather than eliminate the widely used grading scheme, however, I conclude that efforts should be redirected towards reducing the saliency of standardized evaluative benchmarks to which incentives are aimed as opposed to reforming the incentives themselves which I refer to as the Revisionary Proposal.

The Relationship Between Housing Price And Proximity To Public Land In Denver, Co, Connor Wyman

Honors Theses

This study examines how proximity to public lands influences housing values. This will be done using a hedonic pricing strategy, which is useful when analyzing heterogeneous goods such as a house or apartment. The data for this study comes from the American Community Survey (ACS) of Denver, CO from 2010 and 2017. This study also includes four variables related to distance from large open public spaces: one each for the distance from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, Cherry Creek State Park, and Chatfield State Park. Multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the …

It's Written All Over Your Face : Examining The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status And Empathic Accuracy, Megan Roherbeck Wirtz

Honors Theses

What, exactly, is the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and emotional intelligence? Is it possible that emotional intelligence can explain the well-established positive relationship between SES and wellbeing? The purpose of this study was to investigate a) a potential mediational pathwaybetween SES, emotional intelligence, and wellbeing and b) conflicting research in the relationship between SES and emotional intelligence. This study was conducted using avariety of measures of socioeconomic status and wellbeing, as well as a performance-based measure of empathic accuracy.