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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

School-Based Sexuality Education, Gender, And Relationship Self-Efficacy: A Moderated-Mediation Analysis Of Sexual Behavior In First-Year College Students, Sara C. Schmidt Dec 2014

School-Based Sexuality Education, Gender, And Relationship Self-Efficacy: A Moderated-Mediation Analysis Of Sexual Behavior In First-Year College Students, Sara C. Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

While the effectiveness at abstinence-only versus comprehensive sexuality education in preventing adolescent risky sexual behavior is widely researched, little is known about whether material learned in secondary school sexuality education classes impacts emerging adult sexual behavior in the college environment. Furthermore, research suggests that self-efficacy – or beliefs in one’s abilities to organize and execute actions – may be more critical than knowledge or skills in terms of how individuals enact behavior. We hypothesized a moderated-mediation effect by which the causal impact of type of sexuality education on four different sexual behaviors during the first year in college is transmitted …


An Analysis Of The Cultural Invariance Of A Visual-Motor Integration Measure, Emma Kate C. Wright Dec 2014

An Analysis Of The Cultural Invariance Of A Visual-Motor Integration Measure, Emma Kate C. Wright

Theses and Dissertations

As diverse populations within schools increase, the need for culturally-sensitive assessment is essential; however, test of ability vary in their degree of influence from culture. No test is “culture free,” but the low-linguistic demands on test of visual-motor integration (VMI) make them appropriate for use with diverse populations. Variation in VMI test performance due to cultural factors has negative implications for test interpretation and use with diverse populations because of VMI’s significant association with school readiness, academic achievement, social-emotional functioning, and neuropsychological assessment. The current study explored the cultural invariance of the Bender Motor Gestalt Test, Second Edition (BG-II), a …


Independence At Large: Contemporary China's Alternative Music Scenes And The Cultural Practices Of Post-Socialist Urban Youth, Shan Huang Dec 2014

Independence At Large: Contemporary China's Alternative Music Scenes And The Cultural Practices Of Post-Socialist Urban Youth, Shan Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Using contemporary Beijing’s alternative music scenes as a focal point, this ethnographic research seeks to enrich the understanding of China’s post-socialist urban youth by examining their cultural practices. First, this thesis offers an analytical account of the popularizing embrace of “independent cultures,” which is defined as a collection of experienceable objects and activities in musical, filmic, theatric, and other cultural forms that are well recognized yet believed by advocates as having aesthetic and participatory features that are different from those produced in the popular culture industry. While the vogue for independent cultures is substantially conditioned by the socioeconomic attributes of …


The Influence Of Organizational Climate On The Use And Quality Of Evidence-Based Practices In School Mental Health, Katherine Knies Dec 2014

The Influence Of Organizational Climate On The Use And Quality Of Evidence-Based Practices In School Mental Health, Katherine Knies

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational climate is defined as the reflection of workers’ perceptions of, and emotional responses to, the characteristics of their work environment (Glisson & James, 2002). While previous research explored the importance of organization climate for the adoption of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in mental health settings, there is a dearth of organizational climate focused research in school mental health settings (SMH). The current study examines the influence of organizational climate on two separate dependent variables: the extent to which EBPs were used and the quality of clinician delivery for the evidence-based practices used in a quality improvement intervention for SMH practitioners. …


Essays On Battle Clusters In Internal Armed Conflicts And Insurgencies: Concept, Causes And Consequences, Chifeng Liu Dec 2014

Essays On Battle Clusters In Internal Armed Conflicts And Insurgencies: Concept, Causes And Consequences, Chifeng Liu

Theses and Dissertations

With the purpose to re-conceptualize the intensity of internal armed conflicts, I argue that the characteristics such as location, scale and duration of “major battlefields,” i.e. the spatio-temporal clusters of combat events are important in the evaluation of impact of modern civil wars and insurgencies. I start with elaborating and constructing a new concept of conflict magnitude with battle clusters using up-to-date geo-referenced data and spatial statistic methods. In the second article, I first explain the location and duration of major battlefields. The findings indicate that an area with multiple non-state armed groups (NSAGs) is more likely to become main …


Pattern Extraction From Spatial Data - Statistical And Modeling Approches, Hu Wang Dec 2014

Pattern Extraction From Spatial Data - Statistical And Modeling Approches, Hu Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Exploratory and statistical spatial data analyses are commonly used in a wide range of research fields, such as epidemiology, disease surveillance and crime analysis. Spatial epidemiology, for example, needs to detect significant spatial clusters of disease incidents to help epidemiologists identify environmental factors and spreading patterns associated with certain diseases. Existing spatial analysis approaches mostly focus on the analysis of spatial lattice data, i.e., observations organized by locations such as county or census tract. With the wide spread of location-aware technologies such as GPS and smart phones, spatial interaction data have become increasingly available, e.g., human daily mobility, traveling and …


Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And Academic Performance: Student Engagement In The Classroom, Emily B. Mancil Dec 2014

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And Academic Performance: Student Engagement In The Classroom, Emily B. Mancil

Theses and Dissertations

Youth with Attention/Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have many obstacles to positive development (including difficulties in school settings) and are in need of support. However, few studies have focused on the ways in which positive factors, such as student engagement (SE), may be beneficial for this population to identify strategies for supporting their strengths. Although many studies have examined academic and behavioral aspects of SE, few studies have examined the psychological (i.e., teacher-student relationships, peer support for learning, family support for learning) and cognitive (i.e., control and relevance of school work, future aspirations and goals, extrinsic motivation) sub-components of engagement. The current …


Task-Specific Human Capital Accumulation And Wage Outcomes Among Young Men: An Empirical Analysis, Morgan Holland Dec 2014

Task-Specific Human Capital Accumulation And Wage Outcomes Among Young Men: An Empirical Analysis, Morgan Holland

Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature suggests that investment in different kinds of task-specific human capital may have significant effects on wage outcomes and overall economic wellbeing of individuals. To examine this claim, the accumulation of task-specific human capital in young male workers with no college education and its effects on wages is measured. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel data merged with six task-specific human capital measures derived from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles task contents data, fixed effects regression was utilized to measure how workers’ taskspecific human capital develops over time. This process shows that among the task measures used, accumulation …


Life Satisfaction And Academic Performance In Early Adolescents: Evidence For Reciprocal Relationships, Zi Jia Ng Dec 2014

Life Satisfaction And Academic Performance In Early Adolescents: Evidence For Reciprocal Relationships, Zi Jia Ng

Theses and Dissertations

Student well-being remains a relatively neglected topic despite its intimate link to positive school outcomes. As academic achievement is the yardstick of student success and school accountability, school-based mental health research and practice have focused primarily on the assessment and treatment of learning and behavioral problems. This shortterm longitudinal study sought to establish the role of student subjective well-being in academic achievement. Based on the engine model of well-being (Jayawickreme, Forgeard, & Seligman, 2012), the study focused on life satisfaction as a process variable and academic performance as an outcome variable. Using two waves (five months apart) of data, the …


Defining And Supporting Organizational Readiness In The Interactive Systems Framework For Dissemination And Implementaion, Jonathan Peter Scaccia Dec 2014

Defining And Supporting Organizational Readiness In The Interactive Systems Framework For Dissemination And Implementaion, Jonathan Peter Scaccia

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction. In the implementation literature, organizational readiness is associated with an increased likelihood of achieving innovation outcomes. Organizational readiness consists of organizational capacity (general and innovation-specific) and organization motivation. Organizations who wish to get results from their innovations have an interest in making sure that certain factors and subcomponents are in place. However, having awareness that certain capacities and factors that influence motivation are linked to improved innovation outcomes does not necessarily help organizations to get “more ready.” There is a need for organizations to know if and how they can effectively put these factors and subcomponents into place. This …


A Theory Of Reward Stability, Justice Evaluations And Group Cooperation, Hyomin Park Dec 2014

A Theory Of Reward Stability, Justice Evaluations And Group Cooperation, Hyomin Park

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to introduce a theory of the stability of rewards, justice evaluations and group cooperation with the results from three empirical tests of the theory. According to justice theory, rewards from exchange relations produce justice evaluations among individuals, leading to emotional and behavioral reactions. Specifically, unjust rewards cause lower levels of justice evaluations, positive emotions, and cooperative behaviors. Prospect theory and research on negativity bias posit the asymmetry between negative and positive events: negative events have a stronger effect than the same size of positive events on individuals’ perception. Combining the previous arguments, the theory …


Innovation Among Georgian Journalism Educators: A Network Analysis Perspective, Ana Keshelashvili Dec 2014

Innovation Among Georgian Journalism Educators: A Network Analysis Perspective, Ana Keshelashvili

Theses and Dissertations

Rapid developments in technology in recent years have disrupted the media’s traditional role as a main informer for citizens. The changes have challenged journalism educators worldwide, pushing them to innovate and experiment. One purpose of this dissertation is to examine adoption of innovations by journalism educators in Georgia, a small post-Soviet country with partly free media and lack of professional outlets, that has been and still is a beneficiary of Western aid for media development. Employing innovation diffusion theory and the network analysis perspective, this dissertation uses a census of journalism educators and journalism program leaders in Georgia to understand …


Conflicted Union: Culture, Economics And European Union Media Policy, Daphney Pernola Barr Dec 2014

Conflicted Union: Culture, Economics And European Union Media Policy, Daphney Pernola Barr

Theses and Dissertations

The constant tension between internal market development and cultural preservation remain within European Union audiovisual media services regulatory policy. While market harmonization and liberalization are key to developing a formidable European media market, the preservation of and promotion of ‘European-ness’ depends upon the protection of cultural diversity, a necessity for a confederation of 27 sovereign nation-states with distinct cultures and languages. It may not currently be possible to reconcile the intrinsic duality of audiovisual media through EU regulatory policy mechanisms. However, a regulatory policy clearly that addresses the potential of cultural harmonization/economic liberalization conflict, that explicitly connects the EU’s audiovisual …


Determinants Of Product Upgrading In The Argentine Wine Industry, Lucas Marc Cyr Dec 2014

Determinants Of Product Upgrading In The Argentine Wine Industry, Lucas Marc Cyr

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the impact that a firm's connections and internal resources has on the firm's ability to develop new products. The capability to make improvements to products is crucial to the long term success and growth of a firm. By using structural equation modeling, I take a different approach to network analysis to analyze data from the Argentine wine industry. While I did not find strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the combination of external networks and internal knowledge are key drivers to product upgrading, there was strong evidence to support each individual determinant’s impact on …


Determinants Of Cross-Country Differences In The Equity Risk Premium: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, William John Arant Dec 2014

Determinants Of Cross-Country Differences In The Equity Risk Premium: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, William John Arant

Theses and Dissertations

The equity risk premium (ERP) is a critical factor in financial decision-making and allocating capital for the future. The ERP can indicate the aggregate risk in an economy and thereby the price agents attach to that risk. Understanding the factors that determine ERPs across countries is important for understanding investors’ actions in a globalized environment. This study will focus on long-run measures of the ERP across countries while applying four common measures. Variations in the size of the ERP across countries and across measures will be examined. Then, country-specific determinants of the long-run ERP will be investigated. These determinants include …


Understanding Geo-Social Network Patterns: Computation, Visualization, And Usability, Caglar Koylu Dec 2014

Understanding Geo-Social Network Patterns: Computation, Visualization, And Usability, Caglar Koylu

Theses and Dissertations

Geo-social networks are formed by flows of physical entities (e.g., humans, vehicles, sensors, animals), and communication (e.g., information, ideas, innovation) that connect places to places and individuals to individuals. Several major problems remain to be addressed for understanding the complex patterns in geo-social networks. This dissertation makes the following contributions to the theory and methodologies that aim at understanding complex geo-social data by integrating methods of computation, visualization and usability evaluation. Chapter 2 introduces a novel network-based smoothing approach that addresses the size-difference and small area problem in calculating and mapping locational (graph) measures in spatial interaction networks. The new …


Perception Of Police In Public Housing Communities, Taylor Brickley Dec 2014

Perception Of Police In Public Housing Communities, Taylor Brickley

Theses and Dissertations

Research on the relationship between police and citizens consistently finds that attitudes toward police (ATP) are least positive among black citizens in areas of concentrated disadvantage. While much of the research in this area focuses specifically on ATP among young black males in low-income communities because they have the most contact with police, there has been relatively little research that has included older and/or female residents. Additionally, research has yet to examine ATP in racial and economic enclaves that may have different social and environmental characteristics than the surrounding community. This study utilizes in-depth interviews with 60 residents of two …


Situating Belonging Through Multi-Sited Identities: Community Building Among Middle Eastern Christians In Upstate South Carolina, Amelia Ayoob Dec 2014

Situating Belonging Through Multi-Sited Identities: Community Building Among Middle Eastern Christians In Upstate South Carolina, Amelia Ayoob

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a Human Geography perspective on immigrant identity and integration. Using the case of a diverse, multigenerational Middle Eastern Christian population in the Upstate region of South Carolina, I explore how Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants have negotiated belonging and identity in the United States by simultaneously building new social networks in the Upstate and maintaining ties to the Middle East. The focus on a single case allowed for an in-depth exploration of how geographic and historical contexts have shaped the present-day dynamics of the community (broadly defined) constructed around two Catholic churches, one Latin and one …


Alterations To Taste Preference In Mc4r Haploinsufficiency Manifest Prior To Dietary Induced Obesity And Are Accompanied By Dendritic Spine Alterations To Medium Spiny Neurons Of The Nucleus Accumbens In Adulthood, Robert Francis Roscoe Jr. Dec 2014

Alterations To Taste Preference In Mc4r Haploinsufficiency Manifest Prior To Dietary Induced Obesity And Are Accompanied By Dendritic Spine Alterations To Medium Spiny Neurons Of The Nucleus Accumbens In Adulthood, Robert Francis Roscoe Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and has become an increasing public health concern for developed nations. Haploinsufficiency of melanocortin receptor 4 has been identified as the single most common monogenetic cause of obesity in humans. Using the MC4R +/- haploinsufficient rat, we sought to determine potential alterations in body weight and morphology, locomotor activity, sucrose concentration preference, and progressive-ratio operant testing in a dietary-induced obesity environment. Rats were placed on four separate diets corresponding to 1.7% saturated fat with 12.2% total kcal/fat, 6% saturated fat with a 40% total kcal/fat, 12% saturated fat with a 40% …


Going Up The Country: A Comparison Of Elite Ceramic Consumption Patterns In Charleston And The Carolina Frontier, Rebecca E. Shepherd Dec 2014

Going Up The Country: A Comparison Of Elite Ceramic Consumption Patterns In Charleston And The Carolina Frontier, Rebecca E. Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations

The 18th century colonial world is characterized by a dramatic increase in the consumption of goods identified as the “consumer revolution.” During this period fashionable material culture and the social performances associated with their use became universally recognized symbols of group membership. This thesis uses archaeological evidence to explore variation in the degree of participation in the consumer revolution between urban and rural settings in late eighteenth-century South Carolina. The data used for this research will be taken from excavated ceramic assemblages of two domestic archaeological sites, both of which were homes owned consecutively by the wealthy Brewton and Motte …


Southern Language, Ideology, And Identity In A High School Sorority, Sara Lide Dec 2014

Southern Language, Ideology, And Identity In A High School Sorority, Sara Lide

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the language practices of high school sorority members in a mid-sized city in the U.S. South. Specifically, it describes how economically privileged, white, female youth in the Young Ladies’ Society of Midway (YLSM) used Southern language to position themselves and others in relation to widely and locally circulating ideologies of language, region, gender, and class. Drawing on sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods, this study addresses the issues of how Southern language practices and language ideologies relate and how indexical meanings and social identities emerge through linguistic interaction. As a study that examines the language of a group …


The Prevalence Rate And Neurocognitive Morbidity Associated With Obstructive Sleep Apnea In Children With Sickle Cell Disease, Tal Katz Aug 2014

The Prevalence Rate And Neurocognitive Morbidity Associated With Obstructive Sleep Apnea In Children With Sickle Cell Disease, Tal Katz

Theses and Dissertations

Sickle-cell disease (SCD) refers to a group of genetic blood disorders resulting from the inheritance of genes for S-type hemoglobin. The disease is life-long and is associated with multiple complications including pain episodes, organ damage, and neurological morbidities such as stroke, and silent cerebral infarcts which often lead to cognitive dysfunction. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious medical condition characterized by intermittent hypoxemia (reduction in blood oxygen levels), hypoxia, and fragmented sleep that can lead patients to suffer from daytime behavioral and cognitive dysfunction and reduced quality of life. Children with SCD are at high risk for developing OSA, …


Substance Use And Risky Sex: A Longitudinal Investigation, Darren Todd Woodlief Aug 2014

Substance Use And Risky Sex: A Longitudinal Investigation, Darren Todd Woodlief

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to prospectively examine the relationship between substance use and risky among a nationally representative sample of adolescents longitudinally from the ages of 16 to 29. Using data collected for the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N=8,984), we found the use of marijuana, alcohol, and cigarettes to be consistently associated, across these ages, with an increased probability of having engaged in sexual intercourse with a stranger. Marijuana was found to have the strongest association with risky sex across the years of the study, followed by cigarettes, then alcohol. The current study improves on previous …


A Multi-Sited Examination Of Pregnancy, Birth And Women’S Perceptions Of Care In Ghana, Jessica M. Posega Aug 2014

A Multi-Sited Examination Of Pregnancy, Birth And Women’S Perceptions Of Care In Ghana, Jessica M. Posega

Theses and Dissertations

In Ghana, both governmental and non-governmental agencies have been working to reach the 2015 United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The fourth and fifth goals are related to reproductive health, reducing infant and maternal mortality respectively. Through a combination of increasing midwifery and nursing training programs, public awareness programs, and programs designed to retain skilled birth attendants. This paper explores how the policies and practices intended to create better birth outcomes in Ghana are perceived by those targeted for intervention, and by the reproductive health workers. Drawing from in-depth interviews with pregnant women, mothers with children under one year, and …


Engagement In Technical Assistance And Its Impact On Prevention Capacity, Jennifer L. Duffy Aug 2014

Engagement In Technical Assistance And Its Impact On Prevention Capacity, Jennifer L. Duffy

Theses and Dissertations

Lack of widespread implementation of evidence-based prevention programs has been identified as a major challenge in the field of teen pregnancy prevention. Technical assistance (TA) has been proposed as an important strategy for building capacity of the community organizations to implement evidence-based strategies. This study uses data from an evaluation of Promoting Science-Based Approaches to Teen Pregnancy Prevention, a five-year project conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to build the capacity of organizations to implement teen pregnancy prevention programs using science-based approaches. Data from 104 organizations nested within 12 TA providing organizations were analyzed using OLS regression …


Integrating Biomedical And Psychosocial Approaches To Study Pain In Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease, Alyssa M. Schlenz Aug 2014

Integrating Biomedical And Psychosocial Approaches To Study Pain In Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease, Alyssa M. Schlenz

Theses and Dissertations

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of inherited blood disorders characterized by recurrent pain. A distinctive obstacle to managing pain in this condition is the substantial heterogeneity of outcomes observed in children, including the rate, intensity, duration, and extent of disability from pain. Previous studies have largely examined this heterogeneity by focusing on either biomedical or psychosocial approaches to this condition rather than pursuing an integrated approach that is consistent with modern conceptualizations of pain. In addition, few studies have examining genetic heterogeneity in pediatric SCD, which remains one of the only strategies for establishing a preventative approach to …


Psychometric Evaluation Of An Executive Function Battery For Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease, Melita T. Stancil Aug 2014

Psychometric Evaluation Of An Executive Function Battery For Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease, Melita T. Stancil

Theses and Dissertations

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a genetic disorder which affects hemoglobin and is associated with high rates of neurologic and neurocognitive deficits. Recent studies have indicated executive functioning (EF) as a common area of impairment for children diagnosed with SCD; however, there is no consensus about which measures of executive function are best to use in clinical practice or research. The purpose of the present research is to assess the properties of a new executive function measure, the “EXAMINER” to determine its utility with the SCD population. Thirty-two children with SCD and 86 demographically-matched controls completed established cognitive measures known …


How Much Do Groups Still Matter To Politics? An Examination Of Group Influences On Public Opinion, Lauren E. Smith Aug 2014

How Much Do Groups Still Matter To Politics? An Examination Of Group Influences On Public Opinion, Lauren E. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Public opinion plays an important role in democracy. A system of government designed specifically to be by the people, for the people and of the people must by necessity listen to the opinions of the people. Accordingly, an important research agenda is determining conditions under which public opinion is listened to and translated into government responsiveness. Most of the public opinion literature answering this question focuses specifically on individual opinion. I argue that this is problematic because politics is ultimately carried out in terms of the collective. Further, I argue that collective opinion is often voiced through groups in society …


The Emergence Of U.S. Hospital-Based Doula Programs, Violet Dawn Beets Aug 2014

The Emergence Of U.S. Hospital-Based Doula Programs, Violet Dawn Beets

Theses and Dissertations

Labor and birth related health outcomes remain suboptimal in the US. New initiatives and improvement efforts include peer and social support. Doula support is built on the concept of social support, including emotional support, comfort measures, information, and advocacy. Benefits of doula support include increases in women’s satisfaction with their childbirth experiences, postpartum interaction with infant, breastfeeding initiation, and APGAR scores, and reductions in cesarean deliveries, length of labor, use of analgesia, and healthcare costs to healthcare systems. Doula services based within the hospital are a relatively new phenomenon. How and why hospitals are incorporating doula services has not been …


Adultification In Juvenile Corrections: A Comparison Of Juvenile And Adult Officers, Riane Miller Bolin Aug 2014

Adultification In Juvenile Corrections: A Comparison Of Juvenile And Adult Officers, Riane Miller Bolin

Theses and Dissertations

The growing recognition throughout the nineteenth century that juveniles were different than adults culminated in the establishment of the first juvenile court in Cook County, Illinois in 1899. By 1945, every state had developed its own juvenile justice system separate and distinct from the criminal justice system. Since its inception, the juvenile justice system has experienced two waves of adultification in which the lines between the juvenile and criminal justice systems were blurred. While a number of studies have focused on the adultification of juvenile courts, no study has examined the adultification of juvenile corrections. Thus, the present study aims …