Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Towards Ending Incarceration Of Indigenous Peoples In Canada: A Critical, Narrative Inquiry Of Hegemonic Power In The Gladue Report Process, Judah Oudshoorn

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Abstract

This study is concerned with the possibility that Gladue perpetuates the hegemonic powers of settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and neoliberalism. Gladue is intended to remediate systemic anti-Indigenous racism by requiring judges to consider all alternatives to incarceration when sentencing Indigenous peoples, yet Indigenous incarceration rates continue to rise precipitously. On the surface, Gladue does not appear to disrupt the hegemonic status quo. How is it that the Canadian state, even when ‘remediating,’ keeps producing the same – colonial, oppressive, and tyrannical – result?

This qualitative study used a critical, narrative methodology, interviewing Gladue report writers (n=9) and judges …

“Anything From The Land Is Good”: Understanding How Community Gardening In Kakisa, Northwest Territories, Can Contribute To Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Michelle Malandra

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Rates of food insecurity in Canada’s northern Indigenous communities are at levels that should constitute an emergency. Dominant explanations for these high rates of food insecurity often ignore the ongoing impacts of colonization and over-emphasize individual choices and nutritional guidelines developed by outsiders. The importance of holistic community health is ignored, along with the cultural and social values and practices that support community health and well-being, including traditional food systems. As the acute impact of climate change in the North threatens traditional food access, a shift toward an Indigenous food sovereignty approach in health and food policy is needed. With …

Adding Women To The Conversation On Safe Consumption Sites: A Qualitative Interview Study With Poor And Marginalized Women Who Use Illicit Substances, Kaitlin Waechter

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Women’s erasure from discourses pertaining to substance use and safe consumption sites (SCSs) means harm reduction efforts are developed through the male lens. This research seeks to discover why women do (or do not) access SCSs so as to determine if and how SCSs address the unique gendered needs of women who use illicit substances. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 14 women-identified individuals who use illicit substances. Participants were recruited from a non-profit organization that offers harm reduction, but is not itself a SCS in order to capture a full range of perspectives on the SCS in their community. …

Water Stories: An Exploration Of Human-Water Connectedness In Ontario And The Implications For Water Sustainability, Tracey Ehl

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Abstract

Water is the great connector. Water connects people, health, wellness, culture, spirituality, nature, and the economy. Clean, safe water (potable water) and sanitation were recognized over a decade ago by the United Nations General Assembly (UN) as a basic human right, and more recently the UN has also identified water sustainability and management as one of 17 sustainable development goals for all people in all countries. Water is inextricably connected to humans. Yet, in Ontario, Canada, a place with access to some of the largest freshwater reserves in the world, robust regulatory frameworks, involvement, some investment by all levels …

Navigating Waters: Experiences Of Filipino Canadian Identity Making In The Diaspora, John Felix Tolentino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Research states that while Filipino Canadians are the largest growing migrant population in Canada, they are the least represented and understudied subjects in the academy. The primary purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand the experiences of Filipino Canadians and how they create their identities in the diaspora. Since few studies take on a social work lens to explore these important stories, I attempt to unearth these experiences using these guiding questions: (1) How do Filipino Canadians integrate their cultural identity in the diaspora? (2) What are the sociopolitical and historical conditions that inform these identities? Following Charmaz’s …

Exploring Graduated Court Diversion Clients' Experience Of Psychotherapy In Their Community Reintegration, Daniel Oduro Sem

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Court Diversion Program (CDP) seeks to reduce the criminalization and reoffending among people living with mental illness to ensure their community reintegration (Schneider, 2010). The complex nature of achieving this goal calls for a comprehensive strategy, which requires a collaborative effort of legal, health care, and allied professionals including psychotherapists. However, because most CDP clients frequently receive medication treatment, not much is known about how CDP clients find psychotherapy services even though psychotherapy is effective for addressing mental illnesses and offending behaviors (Feingold & Fox, 2018; Feucht & Holt, 2016), To gain more insight into the issue, this study applied …

Distinctiveness And Similarity: How The Sub-Trait Facets Of The Big Five Self-Organize To Create Personality Types, Jonathan Thiessen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The belief that people can be placed within a personality typology has persisted for millennia. At least as far back as Hippocrates (ca. 460 BCE–370 BCE) people were believed to be of a kind based on the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Since then, there have been many conceptions of personality typologies. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram of Personality are likely the most well-known personality typologies among the general public. Despite their wide public usage, neither typology boasts strong empirical support. However, psychology continues to investigate personality for evidence of a typology of personality. In …

Empathy In Police Officers Undergoing De-Escalation Simulation Training: A Comparison Between Virtual Reality And Live Action Modalities, Jacqueline Kohl

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study compared empathy among police officers undergoing mental health crisis de-escalation training in virtual reality and live action training modalities. The study included police officers across different police services in Ontario (N=63) and evaluated the efficacy of the Mental Health Crisis Response Training (MHCRT, Lavoie et al., 2020) program delivered across virtual reality and live action modalities against a control group that did not receive the training program. After collection of participants’ demographics, empathy scores, and de-escalation competency scores, a series of correlations, ANOVAs and ANCOVAs were conducted. Results showed that participants receiving MHCRT virtual reality and …

The Long-Term Effects Of Cannabis On Attention To Motion, Rachel Mccaig

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of the following study was to investigate the long-term effects of cannabis use on attention to motion.

Methods: Cannabis users, who varied in age of onset of use, were compared to control participants after abstaining from cannabis for at least 24 hours. One-hundred and ninety-seven participants engaged in a cognitive assessment followed by a motion discrimination task and an attention to motion task. The assessment consisted of a series of standard tasks that measured a range of cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and executive functioning. The motion discrimination task assessed the participants’ abilities in discriminating between various …

Best Practices For Social Workers Engaging With Spiritual/Religious Clients, Stewart J. Smith Mr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research examined what Canadian social workers should consider when engaging therapeutically with clients for whom spirituality/religion is of central importance. There are several challenges in examining this issue in Canada (the north section of Turtle Island). One is the oppression of Indigenous peoples’ spirituality by colonizers imposing various Christian denominational spiritual/religious views. There has also been a trend of Christian practice declining in church worship among settler people, although Christianity remains part of the dominant cultural norms. Like many of the helping professions, social work has little to no education/training related to spirituality/religion and clinical work. This move away …

The Contribution Of Phonological Overlap To The Cognate Effect: An Event-Related Potential Study Of Persian-English Bilinguals, Zahra Fotovatnia

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the contribution of phonological overlap to visual word recognition. More specifically, this study aimed at testing the phonological account of the cognate effect (i.e., faster and more accurate mental processing of cognates than noncognates) in visual word recognition in Persian and English, which are languages with different scripts. The phonological account attributes the cognate effect to the phonological similarity of cognates (form and semantically related words) in addition to the conceptual similarity that cognates and noncognates (semantically related words) have and to the degree of phonological similarity between cognates in two languages. …

Examining The Effects Of Noise And Task Dependent Performance In Prosody Perception In Autistic Individuals, Zehranur Sasal

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

ABSTRACT

Objective: It is known that autistic individuals have enhanced abilities in pitch discrimination and tend to excel in low-level tasks requiring lower cognitive processing. On the other hand, noise is a distracting factor in many areas of life, including prosody perception. The studies presented in this thesis aimed to understand prosody perception through different levels of cognitive tasks and under the influence of speech background noise.

Methods: In total, 256 non-autistic and 39 high-functioning autistic adults participated in these studies. In the first study, participants were asked to listen to brief utterances conveying one of six universally accepted emotions …

Adaptive Capacity And Mobility In The Bahamas: Examining The Social Costs Of Displacement In Response To Hurricane Dorian, Kearney Coupland

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In 2021, over 30 million people were displaced by disasters, most of which were weather related and nearly half of which were the result of storms. While research on disaster displacement has provided broad observations of post-hurricane human mobility and the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics that influence displacement, few studies examine the factors that influence household mobility decisions after a disaster. My dissertation uses a primarily qualitative research approach to empirically investigate the relationship between mobility and the capacity of displaced households to cope and adapt to the impacts of hurricanes through a detailed examination of Hurricane Dorian displacement in …

Exploring Intersectional Factors Associated With Mental Health Service Utilization In A Sample Of Lgbt2q+ Canadians, Samson Tse

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The present thesis explores LGBT2Q+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (trans), Two-Spirit, queer/questioning, plus) and racialized mental health service utilization within Canada using intersectionality-informed quantitative methodology, separated into additive and multiplicative stages. Data from the 2020 LGBT2Q+ Health Survey (N = 1542) were analyzed using modified Poisson regression. Additive analyses explored mental healthcare utilization as framed by the Andersen Behavioural Model of Healthcare Utilization categories: predisposing, enabling, and need. Results show that predisposing and need factors are more statistically associated with mental healthcare utilization, and that there are distinct intracategorical (within-group) differences in subgroups, particularly between racialized and Indigenous respondents. …

Using Online Training Modules To Enhance Parents' Early Literacy Training Skills And Understanding, Ayodele Sanni

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Parental involvement is considered a crucial factor in developing children’s early literacy and reading skills, especially for children not yet in school. The present study aims to determine whether an online literacy module can increase early literacy knowledge in parents who may not have the training to promote their child’s learning. Additionally, the study examines parent perspectives of online video training and the practicality of the video’s content. To test the hypothesis that parent knowledge will increase after exposure to the online video, 29 Canadian parents (27 mothers, two fathers) with children aged 3 to 5 were provided with supervised …

Feeling Fat: Theorizing Intergenerational Body Narratives Through Affect, Katie Cook

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study set out to understand the intergenerational movement and impact of obesity epidemic and anti-fat narratives that emerged after the 1950s in North America. Embedded in an Anglo-Western, neoliberal context, the current study sought to understand the impact of weight-based messaging on the embodied experiences of parents and their now-adult children. Working within a critical-transformative paradigm and drawing on post-humanism and new materialism, I conducted 19 narrative interviews with individuals born between 1955 and 1990, six of whom were mother-daughter dyads, as well as a body mapping workshop with five self-selecting participants over the course of three sessions. I …

Political Culture: An Unexplored Factor In Climate Change Diplomacy, Alexander Suen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As climate change continues to ravage the world, mitigation efforts continue to be insufficient to rise to the challenge. Inaction on climate change has been traditionally explained by economic incentives, but some of the variability in climate policies cannot be explained by economics alone. Some variations could be accounted for by the deeply rooted national political culture of Anglo-settler colonies. This political culture may inhibit the willingness of such states to cooperate on climate change. In this dissertation, I describe the political philosophy of the Anglo-settler colony, and the histories of domination of its white settlers over the indigenous peoples …

An Analysis Of Collective Efficacy As A Predictor Of Gun Violence In Toronto, Carly Richards

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

There has been a 42% increase in gun violence in Canada since 2013, largely due to increases in Toronto (Statistics Canada, 2022a). To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, this study evaluated collective efficacy as a predictor of gun violence. Seven correlates of collective efficacy were identified including, low economic status, ethnic diversity, mobility, family disruption, employment rate, low educational attainment, and youth percentage in a population. This study included data from the City of Toronto’s Open Data Portal and the 2016 Canadian Census. The data were pulled from various datasets and then were reorganized into one file, which …

Does Air Pollution Cause Residents Of New Delhi, India To Migrate Internationally?, Snigdha Basu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Delhi, India, and the surrounding cities of Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad consistently rank among the world's most polluted cities. For many parts of the year, air pollution levels are so high as to cause significant harm to human health, economy and the environment. Despite overwhelming evidence of the severity and consequences of air pollution, institutional measures to control it remain insufficient.

There is growing evidence that environmental degradation has the potential to generate migration of people out of affected areas. However, the links between environmental factors and migration are complex, with migration often being a result of interactions between …

Lake Huron Shoreline Analysis, Shubham Satish Nandanwar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Lake Huron is a popular tourist destination and is home to several businesses and residents. Since the shoreline is dynamic and is subject to change over the years due to several factors such as a change in water level, soil type, human encroachment, etc., these locations tend to encounter floods due to increased water levels and wind speed. This causes erosion and loss to the properties along the shoreline.

This study is based on two areas of interest named Pinery Provincial Park and Sauble Beach which are located on the shoreline of Lake Huron where Pinery Provincial Park is a …

Agent-Based Modelling And Big Data: Applications For Maritime Traffic Analysis, Marc Sirizzotti

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Agent based modeling (ABM) is a powerful tool for examining complex systems in many scientific applications, including maritime transport systems. Growing demands for freight transport and increased industry emphasis on reducing environmental impacts have heightened the focus on vessel and port efficiency. This research aimed to create a maritime route planning model to simulate vessel movement in all waterways. The goal of the ship routing model developed in this research was to develop a simulation tool capable of reproducing real world shipping routes useful for navigation planning, with emphasis on port scheduling and potential application for further use and exploration. …

Impact Of Inducing Self-Compassion On The Use Of Safety Behaviours In Social Situations, Kamila Szczyglowski

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Safety behaviours are commonly used in an attempt to decrease anxiety experienced in social settings. These behaviours, however, have been found to maintain anxiety. Self-compassion has shown promise for reducing anxiety and post-event rumination. The aim of the present studies was to examine the impact of a self-compassion induction on safety behaviours. It was hypothesized that inducing self-compassion would lead to lower safety behaviour use compared to control conditions. For the first two studies, participants were randomly assigned to complete self-compassion inductions or control writing prompts in relation to imagining a pre-determined social situation. Study 3 followed a similar procedure …

Thinking About Making A Connection: Exploring The Role Of Metacognition In Recognition Memory For Associative Information, Mario E. Doyle

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In a set of six experiments, the relation between metacognition and associative memory was explored. The purpose was to determine whether the metacognitive behaviors that are used with item memory are also used with associative memory. Different memory systems have separate underlying processes which can cause mnemonic strategies to only be useful for some types of memory. People use metacognition to monitor and control their memory; however, it is uncertain whether metacognitive monitoring and control are the same for different types of memory. The research presented in this dissertation demonstrates the similarities and differences between metacognitive behavior for item and …

Divest Or Disband?: A Social Problems Game Analysis Of Canadian Media Coverage Of 2020'S Defund The Police Movement, Nicholas Fappiano

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Policing in Canada and America has come under the microscope due to several high-profile incidents of police violence against racialized citizens. The murder of George Floyd by officer Derek Chauvin thrust the concept of ‘defund the police’ to the mainstream public dialogue. To date, there are few studies that explore what defund the police means. The present media analysis addresses this research gap by analyzing how Canadian mass media covered the defund police movement. A social constructionist theoretical framework was utilized to analyze 109 newspaper articles on defund the police from The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. The …

The Electrophysiological Correlates Of Text Integration And Direct Vs. Indirect Articles: A Centralized And Lateralized Examination, Deanna C. Hall

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As we read, we develop mental models of the discourse content called situation models. Situation models are integral to how we keep track of information, and to do so in an ongoing event incoming information needs to be integrated into the model or discarded. The type of information being presented, and its relation to prior data, impacts how that new information is processed. The current research examined discourse passages containing concepts that were either previously mentioned (match), mentioned with a general term (general category), unmentioned in lieu of another concept (mismatch), or completely unmentioned previously (indeterminate), and examined how these …

Exploring The Relationship Between Drought And Population Change On The North American Great Plains, 1970-2010, George Heath

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Through the second half of the 20th century, the North American Great Plains saw widespread rural out-migration, a continuation of trends that began with the Dust Bowl crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As part of a wider academic focus on the roles climate and environmental changes have on migration, this research project sought to understand the relationship between drought conditions and rural population decline on the Great Plains. In this explorative research, census population data for Canada and the US from 1970-2010 were analyzed along with temperature, precipitation, and Palmer Drought Severity Index data for the same …

Bee Cities And More-Than-Human Communities: Protecting Pollinators In The Anthropocene, Jennifer Marshman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Grounded in political ecology and the ecological humanities, the aim of this research is to examine the Bee City movement as a conservation engagement strategy at the municipal level. While pollinator research occurs from a variety of perspectives – biology, entomology, phylogeny, ecology, and agricultural sciences - social engagement strategies and the human dimensions of pollinator conservation have yet to be widely investigated. This research questions if these strategies put in place, and contribute to, important political and socio-ecological mechanisms in the local context. Through a collective case study methodology, this research points to the Bee City movement as a …

Agents At Work: Modeling How Space Can Influence People In The Workplace, Jovan Poposki

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

People interact with space in ways that are important to consider when designing an office. Not considering this relationship has led to the dissatisfaction of employees post-occupancy. In this thesis, I present an agent-based model that incorporates several characteristics of agents, such as work ethic and sociability, and explores their behaviours and social interactions in the workplace. The model is first tested on a commercial workspace, varying agent parameters to see how they change the behaviour of the model. I find that agents with extreme personalities are happiest, and show a bimodality in the distribution of time spent in various …

Trans-Forming Resilience Research: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis Of Resilience Research With Transgender And Gender Diverse Populations, Morgan Brooks

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Historically, much of the research pertaining to transgender and gender diverse (trans) health and wellbeing has been conducted in ways that are reductive, pathologizing and exploitative. Trans activists and scholars express concerns about how such research contributes to pervasive negative perceptions, stigma, and cisgenderism, reinforcing stereotypical, binary ideas of trans people as both damaged and dangerous, vulnerable and heroic. Ongoing negative media attention and harmful policy decisions rooted in these views demonstrate the importance of offering alternatives to these reductive, deficit-based narratives associated with trans people. In response, strengths-based research oriented around the construct of resilience is increasing; yet approached …

Paper Gangsters: White Collar And Corporate Crime On Film, Jacob Kavoukis

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Many of us have never been victims of a serious crime and as a result, rely on the media in its various forms to provide us with information that we can rely on as being accurate in order to learn about it. Information on white-collar crime in the media differs from more common street crime in that it receives very little attention. The lack of attention could be because these crimes are considered non-violent and victimless, are committed by those of high social stature and power and are often complex and challenging to understand. Films can play an important role …