Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

More Moments With Others Matter For Emotion Regulation And Well-Being: A Study Of First-Year College Students’ Daily Life During Covid-19, Jaymes Paolo Delas Armas Rombaoa

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted emerging adult, first-year college students’ daily lives and well-being. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) recognizes that effective and adaptive emotion regulation can be improved by training skills for managing contextual (ABC) and physiological (PLEASE) factors. An ecological momentary assessment study collected 1,796 data points from 76 first-year students' daily usage of emotion regulation (ER) skills and momentary experiences of well-being (PERMA; Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning, Accomplishment) during COVID-19 in Spring 2020. Research questions explored: (a) Is usage of ER skills associated with elements of momentary PERMA above and beyond trait-level PERMA?; (b) Are lifestyle factors (e.g., …

Divine Democracy: Examining The Intersection Of Religion And Politics In Civil Religion, José Andrés Serrano

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This thesis seeks to build upon and provide a new interpretation of civil religion in the United States. In it, the history of civil religion from the 1960s, starting with Bellah, to the 2010s will be analyzed for any themes still used in the 2020s. Similarly, understanding what a religion is within this time frame will be broken apart and examined to see how it paralleled the evolution of political understanding. Building upon its history, the paper will break into four prominent chapters: Is American Democracy Like a Civil Religion?, Religious Characteristics in the American Government, American Democracy as a …

Optimal Portfolio Construction For Oil-Based Sovereign Wealth Funds, Mohammed Saeed Alshowaikhat

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Chapter 1 of this dissertation delves into the economic challenges faced by oil-exporting countries that rely heavily on a single income source, with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia as a case study. The primary objective is to examine the efforts of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund in diversifying revenue streams and mitigating risks associated with an excessive dependence on oil. To achieve this, the study proposes an adaptation of the subset-optimization algorithm within the mean-variance model, aiming to enhance portfolio construction in sovereign wealth funds. Chapter 2 of the dissertation conducts a comparative analysis between portfolios constructed using the …

The Value Of Mentoring In Living Out Your Calling, Megan Benzing

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way people think about the role that their job plays in their life. There is a greater desire for purposeful work and engaging in a role that positively impacts society, or more simply, to perceive and live a calling. One perceives a calling when they know the occupation that they were destined for or that fits with their values, where their strengths and passions are leveraged, and the job is prosocial in nature. However, perceiving this calling is only a piece of it, as one needs to work in a role where they actively …

The Effect Of Age, Syntax Complexity, And Cognitive Ability On The Rate Of Semantic Illusions, Sara Anne Goring

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Semantic illusions are recognition errors that occur when an individual fails to notice that information contradicts their prior knowledge (Barton & Sanford, 1993; Erickson & Mattson, 1981). For example, after hearing the question, “If a plane crashes while flying over state lines, where should the survivors be buried?” many start to consider the legality or appropriateness of the scenario despite knowing “survivors” should not be buried. Having more knowledge does not necessarily prevent individuals from overlooking illusory information/misinformation. Older adults tend to have greater crystallized intelligence than young adults, yet these age groups appear to detect illusory information at equivalent …

The Scope For Monetary Autonomy In Hong Kong And Singapore, Shan Xue

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The monetary trilemma autonomy has been at the heart of a great deal of international monetary analysis. It implies that countries with fixed exchange rates and no capital controls will lose monetary autonomy. What is often not recognized, however, is that the trilemma need not hold in the short run. If capital mobility is less than perfect, then countries can sterilize reserve flows and maintain a degree of monetary autonomy in the short run. Hong Kong is a natural case to test this possibility since it has a credibly fixed exchange rate against the dollar and no major capital controls. …

What Motivates Transformational Leaders? On The Relationship Between Leaders’ Satisfaction Of Basic Psychological Needs And Transformational Leadership, Haoxiong Li

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The current research addresses the scarcity of studies exploring the motivational antecedents of transformational leadership, which focuses on developing followers for extraordinary performance. Grounded in the Self-Determination Theory, I propose that leaders' psychological needs satisfaction is associated with transformational leadership. Specifically, leaders' autonomous motivation, mindfulness, and positive affect are outcomes of their satisfaction of basic psychological needs and act as motivating factors for exhibiting transformational leadership behaviors. I conducted two studies to test these hypotheses. Study 1, a correlational study, aimed to establish relationships among the constructs. A sample of 238 leaders with at least two subordinates participated in an …

Factors That Enable Or Hinder The Transition Of Some Gulf Cooperation Council (Gcc) Countries To Green Energy, Verkine Keukpanossian

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries continue to play a strategic role in the global energy system. They account for a fifth of the global oil production and enjoy relatively high GDP per Capita, and their economies heavily rely on oil-producing and exporting at a time when the West is pushing towards net-zero, low-carbon emissions by 2050. This study focuses on the energy sector and takes a transdisciplinary look at Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and tries to understand how these rentier monarchies that have built a solid global comparative advantage in producing and exporting oil and …

Certain That I Belong In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math (Stem): Women's Authentic Belonging And Men's Inclusion Actions Through Job Crafting, Cecelia Lee (Dotzler) Corson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

As of 2022, the total number of Nobel Prizes granted in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields was roughly 614 and of those, only 24 have been awarded to women. STEM fields have historically excluded women at all levels with increasing impact at the higher levels of the career ladder (NSF, 2010). To address the stark gender gap in many organizational spaces including STEM, organizations have turned to diversity training with undetermined effectiveness (Devine & Ash, 2022). This dissertation research seeks to understand women’s authentic belonging in STEM fields and to develop an intervention to aid men in including …

A Mixed Methods Inquiry Into The Decision-Making Of California’S Principals During Local Control, Adrienne Ortega-Magallanes

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The 2013 implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula and Local Control Accountability Plan in California granted school districts the opportunity to create their own expense plans based on student needs, with the aim of returning decision-making to those closest to students. Within subsidiarity is the belief that those at the least centralized decision-making level should have the dignity and freedom to decisions that affect the problem at its source, in this case, how to improve student achievement. It is argued here that principals, who have a strong indirect link to student achievement, are the least centralized. To explore the …

The Impact Of Development Aid On Human Development, Lauren Candia Shaffer

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between development aid and human development in recipient countries. The primary function of this research is to determine which types of aid are most effective in improving human development. To accomplish this goal, I use a fixed effects regression analysis to examine the following aid types in individual chapters of the dissertation: Total Aid, Donor-specific aid, Sectoral Aid, Conditional Aid, and aid flowing from Multilateral, Bilateral, and Private sources. This analysis produced mixed results, indicating that some types of aid have a positive and significant impact on human development, some have a negative and significant …

Forms Of Amusement: Rousseau’S Lettre À D’Alembert And Julie, Trevor Mark Shunk

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher who cared about nonphilosophers. He intervened in circumstances where he saw nonphilosophers in danger, such as with the Lettre à d’Alembert , and he wrote enchanting stories for them, such as Julie . His overarching concern in these books was what he perceived as a loss of virtue or virtue undermined by contemporary trends in the theater and in the literary world. His writings were radical in their originality: the Lettre à d’Alembert condemned popular spectacles and Julie departed from the norm for novels. Rousseau denounced other philosophers for irresponsibility among nonphilosophers in relation to …

A Forward-Looking Conceptualization Of Information Privacy, David Kallemeyn

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Privacy is a fluid and ever-evolving concept, studied across multiple fields and with numerous definitions. Privacy research in information systems (IS) is extensive yet has not traveled far beyond the IS realm and fully engaged in the broader conversations being had with regards to privacy. This research seeks to define a larger sense of privacy that integrates the many working definitions across fields, along with related concepts, and to develop an alternative framework that can account for the constant technological and socio-technical changes through which to engage in privacy research. One such framework is developed and tested, grounded in the …

Examining The Effectiveness Of Mental Health And Law Enforcement Partnerships In California, Domonique Hualani Rood

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In California, many law enforcement agencies have partnered with local mental health services to manage situations that involve people with mental illness in crisis; much of the research on these programs has focused on the effectiveness and financial savings of implementing these programs (i.e. reductions in adjudications and hospitalizations). This study examined whether these programs are effectively managed mental health crises across California. This study implemented a sequential mixed methods design that used qualitative data to explain quantitative results to determine effectiveness. Quantitatively, effectiveness was defined as a reduction in injury (both in severity and frequency of injury), arrests, and …

The Structure Of Working Memory: A Review And New View Of Psychometric Models, Kevin Pablo Rosales

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Beginning in the 1970s, a great deal of research in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, psychometrics, and cognitive neuroscience has investigated the structure and function of working memory (WM), defined as the ability to actively maintain and manipulate information in the service of complex cognition (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). It is well established that WM is a limited capacity system and individual differences in WM capacity are strongly associated with important cognitive abilities and outcomes, such as general intelligence (Engle et al., 1999) and academic achievement (Swanson & Berninger, 1996; Ramirez et al., 2013). For this reason, WM is a central …

Culturally Responsive Evaluation Methods In Philanthropy: Striving For Community Inclusion Amidst Power Hoarding Practices, Cristina Elena-Tangonan Whyte

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The importance of culture in the field of evaluation can be observed through the advancements that culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) and culturally responsive equitable evaluation (CREE) scholars have made in this arena over the past few decades. The literature, however, still lacks close examination of how CRE approaches are applied in institutions where cultural bias exists, such as philanthropy. Few researchers have examined the biases present in partnering with funders, white dominant norms, and the extent to which these elements facilitate or inhibit community inclusion in CRE. To address this gap, the present study utilized an exploratory sequential mixed methods …

Targeting Negative Urgency And Expectancies In Persuasive Messaging, Emily Ann Warren

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Evidence indicates targeting outcome expectancies of risky health behaviors via persuasive communication is an effective approach for deterring risky health behaviors. Targeting specific domains of impulsivity (e.g., sensation seeking) via persuasive messaging has also been associated with reduced substance use. However, trait negative urgency, a unique domain of impulsivity involving rash action during negative affect, has yet to be used as a target for prevention efforts. Although scholars have suggested targeting both negative urgency and outcome expectancies in prevention efforts, this has yet to be assessed in an experimental setting. Two experimental studies assessed the value of targeting negative urgency …

Staying Engaged During The Remote Work Revolution: An Integrated Job Crafting Perspective, Christopher Legion Chen

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Hybrid and remote workers now comprise nearly one-third of the working population in the U.S. and Canada (Barrero et al., 2021; StatCan, 2021), while employee engagement has dropped to its lowest point in a decade (Harter, 2023). It is now more crucial than ever to identify valuable strategies for individuals and organizations to increase engagement at work. Job crafting is a bottom-up approach to work design (Chen, 2022a, 2022b; Donaldson et al., 2021; Tims et al., 2012; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001), extensively studied as a proactive employee behavior associated with increased engagement among other positive work outcomes (Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, …

The Impact Of Education On Reducing Poverty In South Asia, Rooppreet Kaur Sohal-Bagri

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between primary, secondary education attainment and poverty in South Asia. The countries of examination include India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, and Maldives. The primary function of this research is to determine if primary and secondary education attainment of peoples has an impact on being associated with reducing poverty. To accomplish and to test this goal, I have used fixed effects regression analysis to examine the following research questions: Does education expansion (primary, secondary) reduce poverty in South Asia? Does education expansion (primary, secondary) reduce poverty for women in South Asia? This first …

True Connections: High-Quality Connections In A Post-Covid-19 Landscape, Alyssa Birnbaum

CGU Theses & Dissertations

As companies loosened in-office requirements as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and employees increasingly started working remotely or in a hybrid fashion, interpersonal dynamics amongst coworkers shifted while burnout skyrocketed. This research integrates relational cultural theory, resource-based theories (e.g., conservation of resources theory; Hobfoll, 1989), transmission-based theories (e.g., crossover model; Westman, 2001) and media theories (e.g., media naturalness theory; Kock, 2004) to highlight the importance of relational interactions and assess whether those interactions can still thrive in a virtual setting. These studies investigate high quality connections (HQCs; Dutton, 2003) – momentary, dyadic, positive interactions – among coworkers to better …

Capital Controls And Banking Crises In Emerging Markets, Xizhen Huang

CGU Theses & Dissertations

There is limited research studying the relationship between capital controls and banking crises and the existing research has mixed results. We argue that the results may depend on the measurement of capital controls. Previous research used a broad index of capital controls, but this may lead to imprecise results due to their inability to account for the possible differences in the effects of different types of capital controls and capital flows. We also argue that the relationship may depend on political and institutional factors, such as institutional quality and other economic policies like macroprudential policies and exchange rate regimes. In …

Utilizing Translational Research To Identify And Develop Effective Strategies For Operationalizing And Implementing A National Board Health And Wellness Coaching (Nbhwc) Certification Program Within The Non-Profit, Living Your Truth Empowered (Lyte), Rielly Keyser

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Introduction: This dissertation presents a comprehensive study that employs a combined formative and translational research design, alongside a mixed methods approach, to identify and develop strategies for operationalizing and implementing a National Board of Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) certification program within the nonprofit organization Living Your Truth Empowered (LYTE). The research involves evidence-based strategies identification, analysis, and strategic planning to enhance the program's launch and effectiveness, with a particular focus on serving the diverse breast cancer community.

Methods: The study begins with an extensive literature review and the examination of 32 similar programs to identify OPR and IMP strategies. …

Marginalization Of Fezzan Region In Libya, Amad Abukhzaam

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The Fezzan region of Libya experiences instability, conflict, and reduced quality of life. This qualitative case study aimed to understand and compare the positionality and marginalization of Fezzan relative to the other Libyan regions of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and how this positionality had shaped Fezzan through the Constitutional Monarchy era (1952 to 1969), Gaddafi era (1969 to 2011), and February Revolution era (2011 to 2021). Data came from elite written interviews with former Libyan government members and secondary data from the academic and professional/international literature about Libya and archival information, such as demographics and budgetary data. The conceptual framework contained …

Is Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance By State And Local Governments Constitutional?, Joseph Lake

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the following question: “Can wide-area persistent surveillance (WAPS) developed by the United States military and employed abroad as a tool in the Global War on Terror be employed domestically as a law enforcement tool without violating the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment?” The most likely and controversial application of WAPS by state and local governments is for law enforcement. Aircraft will loiter over a city persistently taking high-definition photographs to capture locations of unidentified persons with the intent to identify persons and areas of interest for criminal investigations. Based on the Flyover Cases, aerial surveillance has few constitutional …

The Effect Of Bureaucracy On The Inflow Of Foreign Direct Investment: A Comparative Study Of Libya And The United Arab Emirates, Abdurraouf Abdussalam Elakder

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) is a determinant factor for developing national economies, and Libya is no exception. However, the bureaucracy in Libya still needs to be improved to help attract foreign direct investment. Therefore, this comparative case study seeks to analyze the effects of bureaucracy on attracting FDI to Libya and the United Arab Emirates, highlighting the bureaucratic barriers embodied mainly in bureaucratic expansion, bureaucratic corruption, and the obstacles of the FDI laws. I argue in favor of eliminating those bureaucratic barriers and improving bureaucratic quality, enhancing the chances of attracting and keeping FDI. The study's standpoint is that …

Multidisciplinary Approach To Civil Conflict: Political, Economic, And Social Determinants Of Violence, Zhamilia Klycheva

CGU Theses & Dissertations

More abundant and less severe than interstate war, civil conflict has filled the news headlines worldwide, especially with nonviolent domestic instability. To this day, no single theoretical framework can fully explain this complex phenomenon. Scholars have often focused on one domain area as a precursor of violence. While such approaches are valuable, they need to grasp the whole picture, as addressing the problem from a single-domain perspective yields weak findings. This dissertation explores specific political, social, and economic factors that impact the onset, severity, and duration of civil conflict and the frequency of nonviolent conflict. It adopts a unified transdisciplinary …

The Evolution Of Efficiency In The Chinese Stock Market, Qiyun Li

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the weak-form efficiency of the Chinese stock market and provides evidence on how the market efficiency evolved throughout the last three decades. The Shanghai Composite Index (SSEC) and the Shenzhen Component Index (SZSE) are the primary indicators of the Chinese stock market in this study. Both traditional economics and the complex systems’ methods are employed to evaluate market efficiency, with an additional focus on the effect of two parameter inputs (embedded dimension and noise filter) on entropy methods to improve their ability to detect phase transitions in stock market data. The traditional efficiency tests indicate that the …

Essays In Behavioral Economics: Lying And Deception, Shanshan Zhang

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The U.S. economy loses hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues, wages, and investment dollars, as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs each year due to dishonest behavior (Mazar and Ariely, 2006; Griffin et al., 2022). Thus, understanding dishonest behavior and finding mechanism to effectively reduce dishonest behavior are of great relevance to policy makers and the economy in general. This dissertation studies deceptive behavior and the relevant factors using online experiment, observational data, and field experiment in three chapters, respectively. Chapter 1 studies the effect of interaction with a machine (voicebot) on dishonest reporting. We conducted an …

Judgments Of Learning And Retrospective Confidence Judgments: A Qualitative Exploration Of Difference In Processes, David Hengerer

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Many studies of metamemorial confidence have found differences in calibration and resolution between two similar confidence judgments – judgments of learning (JOLs) and retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs). These findings have led to competing theories of the processes involved in JOLs and RCJs, and whether they make use of the same processes or different processes. This study critically tested two such explanations for JOLs and RCJs – the dual process descriptive model of confidence and the target accessibility model of confidence. Participants provided written justifications of their metamemorial confidence judgments for JOLs and RCJs for unrelated word-pairs. Justifications were analyzed using …

Moral Outrage Moderates The Relationships Between System Perception, System Justification, And Intergroup Helping Behavior: A Multigroup Approach, Michael Edward Knapp

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Helping behavior is proposed to be a universal experience where a wide range of behaviors are used to benefit another person or group (Aknin et al., 2013; Nadler, 2002). Often these behaviors are motivated by positive values or emotions (Dovidio et al., 2012). However, when social status is salient, the members of a group may shift their motivation to help others from recipient benefit to retaining power and status for themselves instead (Nadler & Chernyak-Hai, 2014). The intergroup helping as status relations (IHSR) model proposes that higher status group members are motivated to retain their groups’ higher status through specific …