Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Self-Reported Racism, Transphobia, Their Intersection And Impact On Past-Year Hiv Related Sexual Risk Behaviour, Roxanne M. Longman Marcellin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background: Studies examining HIV prevalence and risk behaviors within trans subgroups have identified them as high risk. Yet few studies have addressed how discrimination impacts this prevalence. Minority stress theory suggests that there is a relationship between minority stress and HIV-related risk behaviour. We hypothesize that multiple minority statuses may result in discriminatory experiences, specifically self-reported transphobia and racism in synchrony with other attributes, that interact to alter past-year HIV-related risk behaviour.

Methods: Data came from the Trans PULSE project, a mixed-methods, community-based research study that used respondent-driven sampling to access 433 trans Ontarians, between May 2009 and …

Interpretation Of The French And Spanish Subjunctive By L1, L2, And L3 Speakers: Contexts Where Mood Can Alternate Without Ungrammaticality, Audrey K. Restorick Elordi

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This thesis looks at how factors such as cross-linguistic transfer affect the degree of attainment of one morphosyntax-pragmatic interface phenomenon in particular: the subjunctive in French and Spanish in contexts where mood can alternate without ungrammaticality.

According to Quer (1998), such contexts present variation amongst native speakers (NSs). In order to identify the external and internal factors that govern this variation, we asked our control groups, 43 NSs of French and 22 NSs of Spanish, to fill out a linguistic profile and a scenario selection task. 36 L1 English speakers completed these same tasks in addition to a linguistic background …

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative …

Emotional Geographies Of Home: Place Identities Among Senior Women Residing In A Long-Term Care Facility, Malgorzata M. Milczarek

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research aimed to document the meanings and identities attached to the concept of ‘home’ among older women residing in long-term care. The study is based upon semi-structured, open-ended interviews with eleven senior women who reside in a long-term care home in The City of London, Ontario. This study contributes towards theoretical and methodological debates by combining critical humanism, feminism and the newly developing body of work called ‘emotional geographies’ in its approach. Along with the interview, the novel method of using the body as an ‘instrument of research’ is utilized (Longhurst, 2008). The methodology allows for ‘emotional spaces’ occupied …

Maiden’S Fashion As Eternal Becomings: Victorian Maidens And Sugar Sweet Cuties Donning Japanese Street Fashion In Japan And North America, An Nguyen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lolita fashion is a youth street style originating from Japan that draws on Victorian-era children’s clothing, Rococo aesthetics, and Western Punk and Gothic subculture. It is worn by teenage girls and women of a wide range of ages, and through the flow of related media and clothing aided by the Internet, Lolita style has become a global phenomenon. Wearers of the style are known as Lolitas, and local, national, and global communities can be found around the world outside Japan from North American to Europe. This study is a cross-cultural comparison of Lolita fashion wearers in Japan and North America, …

Detection And Mapping Of Phragmites Australis Using High Resolution Multispectral And Hyperspectral Satellite Imagery, Nicholas J. Lantz

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Mapping invasive plant species is important to establish an invasion baseline, monitor plant propagation, and to implement an effective plan to deal with the invasion. In this thesis, methods are proposed to map invasive Phragmites australis in a Great Lakes coastal wetland. Chapter 2 presents an object-based Phragmites extraction method using Worldview-2 high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery. For the 4024 ha study area at Walpole Island,Ontario, 94% overall accuracy was achieved.

Chapter 3 uses CHRIS PROBA hyperspectral satellite imagery for mapping the pixel abundance of Phragmites using a spectral mixture analysis method. An evaluation method was developed to assess the accuracy of …

A Comparative Ontogenetic Study Of Biomechanical Adaptations In The Long Bones Of South African Khoisan And Sadlermiut Inuit, Kaye-Lynn Boucher

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This research examines and compares the biomechanical adaptations of juveniles from two different climate-adapted populations: Khoisan foragers from South Africa and Sadlermiut Inuit from Nunavut, Canada. Cortical bone measurements were recorded at three diaphyseal locations on the Sadlermiut and Khoisan humeri, tibiae and femora using biplanar radiographs. Biomechanical strength properties were calculated using the Eccentric Ellipse Method (EEM). EEM calculations were interpreted with consideration to the known behavioural patterns of the two groups. Humeral AP and torsional bending strength were greater in the Sadlermiut compared to the Khoisan – most likely caused by kayak paddling among the Sadlermiut. Few differences …

Somali Children And Youth's Experiences In Educational Spaces In North America: Reconstructing Identities And Negotiating The Past In The Present, Melissa Stachel

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In this dissertation, I examine the experiences of Somali children and youth in both state sponsored and community educational spaces in North America to investigate how these experiences shape their identities and worldviews in the context of displacement, prolonged armed conflict in Somalia, and a post-September 11 environment.

This work is based on two years of preliminary research (2008-2010) and 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Somali youth and their families in Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario and Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota (2010-2011). I draw on life history interviews and focus group sessions of 51 Somali children and youth between the ages …

Social And Human Capital: The Determinants Of Economic Integration Of South Asian Immigrants In Canada, Muhammed M. Raza

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ABSTARCT

The labor market outcomes of immigrants have been a primary focus of the research to comprehend the integration of immigrants inCanada. The focus of the research is largely on human capital approaches for the investigation of the earnings of immigrants. This thesis takes a distinct approach in three ways: first, unlike traditional research that compares the earnings of immigrants with native born of the same ethnic/racial groups or with white native born population, the dissertation compares the earnings of visible minority immigrants with non-visible minority immigrants. Comparing across foreign born populations is important to neutralize the impact of exposure …

Essays On Health Insurer And Provider Interactions, Daniel Montanera

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This thesis consists of three chapters on insurer and provider interactions. Despite widespread reports of defensive medicine in surveys of physicians, empirical investigations have produced conflicting evidence that defensive medicine is practiced on a significant scale. Findings imply that the relationships between malpractice pressure and health care spending and quality are non-monotonic. These predictions provide an explanation for the apparent conflicts and inconsistencies in the existing empirical literature, as well as policy guidance for future empirical investigations in separating observations and populations in different equilibrium types.

The next chapter expands the model by making physicians mobile, and includes a location …

Gender Neutral? An Empirical Test Of Life-Course Theories Of Criminal Behaviour, Jennie M. Thompson

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The current study systematically assesses four mainstream theories – General Theory of Crime, Interactional Theory, Dual Taxonomy, and Age-graded Theory of Informal Social control – of criminal behaviour over the life-course; while examining the role of gender and several measures argued to be important in explaining the criminal behaviour of women. This study also explores both the within- and between-person variance (i.e., the role of population heterogeneity) and lag effects (i.e., the role of state dependence) in explaining the criminal behaviour. Random-Effects Negative Binomial Models were used to predict both serious and non-serious criminal behaviour over the life-course using panel …

Essays On International And Environmental Economics, Jacob Wibe

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This thesis consists of three chapters employing quantitative open economy models to study international trade transmission, the economic impacts of climate change, and remittance transfers.

The first chapter examines the role of production sharing and trade in the transmission of the 2008-2009 recession. In the model, production sharing is represented by a tradable sector that produces a composite good exclusively for the foreign market. The results suggest that trade transmission can account for 67% of the fall in output in Canada, 24% of the fall in output in Mexico, and about two-thirds of the fall in trade for both countries. …

Biopolitics Of Climate Change: Carbon Commodities, Environmental Profanations, And The Lost Innocence Of Use-Value, Emanuele Leonardi

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The analytical core of this study is the historical development of the relationship between nature and the capitalist mode of production. In particular, we aim at shedding light on the process through which the “grammar” of ecological crisis (and consequently of its possible solutions) turned into an exclusively economic one. In addressing this issue we discuss the successive problematisations of the environment that took place since the emergence of biopolitical governmentality (late Eighteenth century). Following Foucault's intuition, and supplementing it with aspects of Marxist analysis, we argue for a profound transformation – based on a crucial leap of abstraction – …

The Cost-Effectiveness Of Combination Treatment Consisting Of Either Cetuximab Or Panitumumab Plus Folfiri Versus Treatment With Bevacizumab Plus Folfiri As First-Line Treatment For Kras Wild-Type Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Patients In Ontario, Emmanuel M.G. Ewara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

I conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis of combination cetuximbab or panitumumab plus FOLFIRI as first-line treatment for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (MCRC) from the perspective of the Ontario healthcare payer. I developed a Markov decision analytical model to simulate the lifetime costs and benefits of each treatment option. The model was parameterized using data collected from administrative databases in the province of Ontario and from published clinical trials. In the base case scenario, treatment consisting of bevacizumab plus FOLFIRI was found to dominate other treatment options. The ICER values were found to be sensitive to the efficacy of first-line treatment, …

Volatility, Duration, And Value-At-Risk, Pujun Liu

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The thesis consists of three essays dealing with the modeling of volatility in financial markets, trade durations, and Value-at-Risk (VaR). The first essay models nonlinearities in the return series to estimate time-varying volatility by incorporating both regime changes and jumps. Two types of regime-switching GARCH-jump models with autoregressive jump intensity are presented. The first model follows the traditional Markov regime-switching model proposed in Hamilton (1989). As the unknown regimes in the Markov model lead to difficulty in forecasting, a threshold GARCH-jump model, in which regimes are known after observing the threshold variable in the previous period, is also proposed. The …

Geography, News Media Discourse, And Water Management: A Case Study Of The Devils Lake Outlet, Daniel J. Bednar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the print news media discourse surrounding the dispute between Manitoba and North Dakota over a flood mitigation plan in Devils Lake North Dakota. In order to do so, critical discourse analysis was applied to news media from a seventeen year period during the dispute. Findings were compared between media sources as well as to pertinent policy documents. The thesis finds that the political arena provided by local newspapers as well as the discourses of scale, confrontation, history, and economics had the largest effect on the dispute’s public face. A total of nine findings within these areas are …

Diatoms In Castor Lake (North-Central Washington, Usa) – Proxies Of Climate And Hydrologic Variation, Kelly D. Hollingshead

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research provides a high temporal resolution (1 sample / 2-3 years) record of hydrologic variation for the last 2,000 years using a lake sediment record from Castor Lake, a closed-basin system in Washington, USA. The core was dated using ¹³⁷Cs, ¹⁴C, and tephrochronology. Approximately 600 diatoms were identified and enumerated in 198 samples from a Castor Lake freeze core and Livingstone-piston core. A diatom-inference model for salinity was applied to reconstruct fossil diatom salinity. Diatom-inferred salinity for the last century tracked Palmer Drought Severity Index, indicating diatom community composition tracks effective moisture and can be used to …

The When (And How) Of Intergroup Competition And Discrimination: Distinguishing The Contributions Of Competitive Perceptions And Motivations, Matthew A. Maxwell-Smith

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A new framework is proposed to examine the effects of intergroup competition on discrimination by assessing the influence of participants’ subjective construal of potentially competitive events. It posits that competitive intergroup perceptions (CIP; the perception that one’s ingroup and another group(s) are attempting to gain a reward or desired outcome at the expense of each other) and competitive intergroup motivations (CIM; the desire for one’s ingroup to acquire more of a reward than the other group(s)) are related but distinct constructs. This distinction implies that CIP and CIM should be strongly related, but not to the point of suggesting they …

City Limits: A Psychoanalysis Of Urbanism And Everyday Life, Mark F. Jull

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This dissertation begins with Lefebvre’s theoretical framework that space is a social product and provides a brief account of the plans and road networks established with John Graves Simcoe’s founding of York (now Toronto). Foucault’s arguments about gridded street systems and early forms of policing are introduced to explain the intentions and desires associated with the gridded street pattern of Toronto. Foucault’s theory of governmentality is argued to be the marking of a limit rather than a strict prohibition, and is a specifically urban practice. Lacan’s graph of desire and Lacanian concepts are then introduced to continue this discussion of …

Ascertaining The Impact Of Relativism On Moral Reasoning, Claire B. Henderson

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This research project is part on an ongoing effort in the social sciences to expand the understanding of those factors that may influence and promote moral development. Based on Lawrence Kohlberg’s developmental theory of moral reasoning, the main focus of the current study concerns the exploration of the relationship between moral reasoning and relativistic attitudes.

B-type moral reasoning is a more mature and developed form of reasoning at each of Kohlberg’s Stages 2 through 5. Hypotheses regarding the positive associations between the frequency of its use and scores on measures of relativism, equity, empathy, and open-mindedness were generated. Of the …

A Taste For Distinction: Food Representations In Popular Canadian Magazines, Rory A. Davis

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This study uses an exploratory approach to analyze the content of seventy-two individual lifestyle magazines, covering the 2010-2011 monthly publication periods for Chatelaine, Canadian Living and Reader’s Digest. Food content therein is approached from two broad, non-mutually exclusive modes of consumption. The broad-spectrum category of distinction is used to classify food content pertaining to identity, conspicuous consumption, and co-optation. Co-optation is used in a narrow sense to identify the usage of terms reflecting ‘localness’, ‘realness’, and ‘artisanry’. The plundering of these terms by mass marketers acts as a foil to the second broad-spectrum category, ethical food consumption. Ethical consumption as …

The Cross-Border Migrant Experience In Lang Son Province, Northern Viet Nam, Donald Hickerson

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The crossing of national borders between nations of the developing world provides opportunities for the poor who seek sources of livelihood, while putting migrants, especially women migrants, at risk of exploitation and abuse. It is against the backdrop of these contradictory effects of migration for poor women that this thesis examines the experiences of a group of daily cross-border migrant women in northern Viet Nam. The study focuses on the role of networks in their lives. Based on 22 in-depth interviews with Vietnamese women migrants who work at the Viet Nam-China border region, I develop an analytical framework that seeks …

Health Implications Of A Delayed Transition Into Adulthood, Lisa K. Zaporzan

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This thesis considers mental and physical health outcomes experienced by young adults who live in their parents’ home during young adulthood. The life course perspective suggests that this “off-time” transition may lead to stigmatization and stress, and subsequently, health problems. This research uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative longitudinal sample of adolescents living in the United States. Wave four was primarily used, during which respondents are between 25-34 years of age (N=2776).

Although living with parents did not significantly increase CES-D or BMI, findings suggest CES-D was affected for those who have physical …

Toward A Dialogical Hermeneutic Of A Hindu-Christian: A Socio-Scientific Study Of Nepali Immigrants In Toronto, Surya Prasad Acharya

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In search of a hermeneutic that is dialogical, transcending one’s own realm of understanding to give enough space to the other, the theory of dialogical self provides a framework which is not only able to engage mutually incompatible traditions but inculcates a whole new insight into considering that the other is not completely external to the self. One of the most significant features of theory of dialogical self is that it is devised in the conviction that insight into the workings of the human self requires cross-fertilization between different fields. The thesis therefore employs social-psychology, religious studies, inter-cultural studies, theology …

A Use-Wear Analysis Of Gravers From Paleo-Indian Archaeological Sites In Southern Ontario, Monica S. Maika

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Well-made gravers or spurred tools are one stone tool characteristic of the Paleo-Indian time period, but although many explanations have been posited as to their purpose (tattooing, hide piercing, engraving, etc), to date few typological or use-wear analyses have been conducted. This thesis analyzes a sample of gravers recovered from Early Paleo-Indian (11,000-10,400 B.P.) sites in southern Ontario. Using graver morphology and low-power microscopic examination of traces of use-wear, and guided by experiments using modern replicas, a typology of EPI gravers is evaluated, and a better understanding of their functions and roles in Paleo-Indian technology obtained. This study provides insights …

"Proving Yourself" In The Canadian Medical Profession: Gender And The Experiences Of Foreign-Trained Doctors In Medical Practices, Vanessa Noelle Dolishny

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In recent years the medical profession has become feminized. Additionally, there has been an increased representation of foreign-trained professionals in the Canadian medical profession; many of which are women. Thus, there is a significant number of female medical practitioners who are foreign-born and foreign-trained. This demographic faces many barriers, which are often characterized as a “double disadvantage”. This paper investigates the experiences of foreign-trained medical professionals once they have gained access to the profession and whether the feminization of medicine has impacted the experiences of these individuals. Immigrant status was found to be highly significant to one’s experiences in the …

Little Liberals: A Child-Centred Approach To The Inculcation Of Values, Alison M. Braley-Rattai

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In a liberal-democracy, the proper role of parents and of the state in forming children’s beliefs involves several separate but interrelated debates: These concern the conceptual space that children occupy within liberal theory, the basis of the ‘control rights’ adults are said to have over children, and the tension between the values of autonomy and diversity, which are foundational values for a liberal-democracy. To clarify these debates, competing paradigms are identified in political theories that address them: A dual-interest view and a child-centred view. The former ‘balances’ the interests that parents and children have in the child-rearing relationship, and the …

The Role Of The Resiliency Process In Skilled Immigrants' Job Search, Kelly Kisinger

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For many skilled immigrants settling in Canada, the obtainment of employment is a difficult and lengthy process. The current study seeks to examine how skilled immigrants deal with the adversity of the job search by applying a process model of resiliency (King & Rothstein, 2010) to the job search of skilled immigrants. The study examined the interplay between individuals’ psychological characteristics, knowledge, and environment and their self-regulatory processes, and how those processes influenced the job search individuals performed and subsequent job search outcomes. Using a cross sectional design, 94 immigrants throughout Canada completed an online survey. The findings showed individuals’ …

Policy Implications Of The Financial Crisis And Recession: Canadian Performance In Comparison, Michael W. Carfagnini

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The Global Financial and Economic Crisis involve complex interaction among diverse causal factors. This article seeks to ascertain the policy implications of countries’ exposure and responses to these twin crises. It does so by comparing five economies – The United States, United Kingdom, Iceland, Greece, and Canada - according to their economic performance through the crises. This comparison aims to discern why Canada’s performance surpassed that of the other four cases. The paper compares countries’ financial regulations and initial exposure to the financial crisis, as well as monetary and fiscal policy responses to mitigate the crisis and recession. It finds …

Narrative Tactics: Windigo Stories And Indigenous Youth Suicide, Gerald P. Mckinley

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This dissertation examines cross-genre and cross-cultural discourse between contemporary Indigenous windigo narratives and medical narratives involving the topic of Indigenous youth suicide. The Indigenous narratives include forms that are Western in their origin, the novel, comic book and film, but contain traditional Indigenous narrative patterns, actors and themes. I draw these narratives from fictions produced by Indigenous public intellectuals. The medical narratives represent a cross-section of fields but focus mainly on Coroners’ reports, social determinants of health research and suicide research based in psychology. The goal of my research is to examine how and where these forms of discourse come …