Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Race And Gender On Income And Workplace Position Of Professional Engineers In Ontario: Can Homophily Preferences Help Explain Barriers?, Jayzer E. Flores

MA Research Paper

Canada has an extensive history of anti-discrimination legislation to reduce inequality for minority groups, yet, they continue to experience disadvantage. Recent literature has suggested that barriers for minority groups into and within work persists in part because of subtle processes like homophily as individuals develop a preference for similar others. Studies of professions are important because previous studies suggest homophily preferences along dimensions of race and gender are high within professions, contributing to widening inequalities. Engineering provides an excellent case for analysis of homophily within professions, since Statistics Canada data suggests that engineering is among the most common professions for …

Social Isolation: Do Helpers Help Ward It Off?, Kirsten Young Brown

MA Research Paper

Social isolation is particularly relevant among elderly individuals who are more likely to need care and help with their physical and living needs. Little is known about whether receiving help correlates with social isolation in older adults living at home as often there is no focus from caregivers and helpers on older adults' social needs. Using data from the 2018 US National Health and Aging Trends Study, a sample of adults aged 65 plus on Medicare/Medicaid (N=4,321), I examine the relationship between social isolation and help. I estimate ordinary least squares regression models to test the association between receiving help …

The Life Satisfaction Of Immigrants In Canada: Does Time Of Arrival Matter?, Laura G. Monteiro

MA Research Paper

The subjective life satisfaction of individuals reveals valuable information about the overall well-being of a society. Furthermore, the large prevalence of international migration has led to the importance of studying the life satisfaction of immigrants within host-countries, including Canada. This study uses secondary data from the 2013 Canadian General Social Survey, Cycle 27, to assess the life satisfaction of immigrants in Canada in comparison to Canadian-born individuals, and to determine if immigrants’ year of arrival has a significant impact on their life satisfaction. Using bivariate and multivariate statistical models, the results reveal that the life satisfaction of immigrants does not …

On Unequal Terms: The Indigenous Wage Gap In Canada, Taylor N. Paul

MA Research Paper

Research has demonstrated that Indigenous peoples are economically disadvantaged relative to the rest of the Canadian population. However, research on the Indigenous wage gap specifically has received little attention until recently. In this article, I draw on data from the 2016 Canadian Census to investigate differences in wages between Indigenous peoples and White Canadians, and among Indigenous groups. First Nations face the widest residual gap in wages when compared with White individuals, followed by those with Indigenous ancestry. While Indigenous women experience an 11% to 14% wage gap, only registered First Nations men experience a wage gap of approximately 16%. …

The Mental Health Culture In Hockey: A Scoping Review, Lauren Dormer

MA Research Paper

In any major Canadian city, one can find hockey arenas, outdoor rinks, or a Tim Horton coffee shop on every corner. Between September and April, many Canadians will adorn their favourite players jersey or their favourite teams toque, exuding team pride, further strengthening the idea that Canadian culture is entangled within the world of hockey.

Due to hockey’s role within Canadian identity, this study conducted a scoping literature review in order to conceptualize what we know of mental health within hockey literature. There were three overarching research questions that guided this study: 1) How is mental health defined, measured, or …

Disability And Health Outcomes Of Eastern European Immigrants To The United States, Ina Palii

MA Research Paper

Eastern European immigrants are one of the largest groups of immigrants in the United States. However, little is known about their health outcomes after arrival to the US. This study addresses the importance of differentiating Eastern European immigrants as a distinct category of immigrants with health outcomes that may differ from those born in the US, or other immigrants. This study examined the health of Eastern European immigrants in the United States, by focusing on three measures of disability – ambulatory, independent living, and self-care difficulties – and comparing them to US-born Whites and to other immigrants. The study uses …

The Effect Of The Analyst-Officer Relationship On Crime Analysis: Experiential Knowledge Vs. Data-Driven Decisions, Emma Brown

MA Research Paper

This article examines the importance of the relationship between police officers and crime analysts in the production and application of analyst outputs. Using qualitative interview data on ten analysts and two officers from one province in Canada, we illustrate the role and responsibilities of analysts, the effects of their relations with officers on their work, as well as the intended objectivity of crime analysis within intelligence-led policing (ILP). Specifically, we analyze the use of experiential knowledge by police officers in their patrols resulting in the underutilization of analyst products. The rampant miscommunication between officers and analysts leads to a cycle …

Assessing The Impact Of Denizenship In The Making And Evaluation Of Temporary Foreign Worker Policies In Canada, Sihwa Kim

MA Research Paper

Despite the larger number of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) that are channelled through a long-standing Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), their experience with the program and, more broadly, within the Canadian society has been overlooked.

This study examines the ways in which a denizen status coupled with other social factors, such as race and amount of human capital, create marginalizing migratory experience for low-skilled TFWs in Canada. As denizens, these migrant workers are isolated in the geographical, economic, political, and social periphery of Canadian society. The longstanding inequality embedded in the structure of TFWP legitimizes differential entitlements and experiences of …

Personality Traits And Transition To First Marriage, Sumangala Sasudevan

MA Research Paper

Context: During the search for a potential partner, individuals emphasize personality as a key factor. The Big Five personality types (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) have been commonly used in social psychology literature to analyse personality types in relation to marital satisfaction and relationship outcomes (Botwin, Buss and Shakelford 1997; Holland & Roisman 2008). Objectives: The purpose of this study is to 1) analyse the relationships between the big five personality types and the transition into first marriage; and 2) explore how childhood socioeconomic status moderates the relationship between childhood personality types to first marriage. Data and Methods: I …

The Impacts Of Housing Affordability On Immigrant Household Formation And Homeownership, Wanyun Cheng

MA Research Paper

Rising housing costs, in terms of both rent and ownership costs, have been posing challenges to the Canadian population in forming independent households and attaining homeownership, especially to immigrants who had lower homeownership rates since the 1980s. This paper investigates the impacts of housing affordability and the three elements of the housing pathways framework - economic resources, family composition, and cultural variations - on household formation and homeownership differences between the Canadian-born and five racialized immigrant groups. Using the Public Use Census data and the “double cohort” analytical approach, the study also assesses their housing progress from 2006 to 2016. …

In #Flatearth We Trust: The Danger Of The Self-Representation Of Flat Earthers On Twitter, Lauren Gomes

MA Research Paper

The Flat Earth movement has gained substantial online publicity over the last few years as demands for the ‘truth’ in an era of post-truth are increasingly centered on anti-government and anti-expert regulations of knowledge. More individuals are self-identifying as Flat Earthers, or those who believe the earth is flat, on social media applications, such as Twitter. Flat Earthers self-represent on their Twitter accounts as ‘truth seekers’ or uncorrupted by knowledge authorities endorsed by the government, but in representing themselves this way, they mislead the public and further aggravate the public mistrust of the government, experts, and science. Flat Earthers claim …