Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Central Americans At A Crossroads: Asylum Seekers’ Testimonios Of Mental Health After Detention And Family Separation, Corie E. Schwabenland Garcia

Master's Theses

Though Central American asylum seekers are presently hypervisible in the U.S. consciousness, this population continues to be inadequately understood or cared for. Discussion of this population often presents them as a helpless and damaged population, in need of saving, fixing, or shelter -- beyond their trauma, they cease to exist. This qualitative study utilizes first-person testimonio methodology to understand the psychological experiences of Central American migrants seeking asylum in the United States, the stressors they face, and the mental health support that can and should be provided to them. Their stories speak to a space of sociopolitical precarity in the …

Motives For (In)Effective Giving: Comparing Rural And Urban Groups In South Africa., Luvuyo Bulelani Magwaza

Master's Theses

Different cultures have their own set of norms and values that not only shape people’s motives but also influences their decision making. What may be viewed as logical and ethical in one culture, may be seen as illogical or unethical in another. One area that is consistently affected by cross-cultural differences in motives is charitable giving. Recently, there has been an increase in interest around effective altruism— a social movement and philosophy that argues, people should give to charities that do the most good. Prior research that has found that people do not give based on efficiency; instead, people give …

Finding Balance: A Content Analysis Of How Newspaper Authors Framed Simone Biles Before, During, And After The 2020 Olympic Games, Hadley Howell

Master's Theses

Simone Biles was considered the GOAT, Greatest of All Time, going into the 2020 Olympic Games. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Larry Nassar trial, and the weight of the world on her shoulders, Biles would withdraw from the women’s gymnastics team final competition for mental health reasons. Thus, the following study examines how Biles was framed in the ten most circulated newspapers in the United States before, during, and after the 2020 Olympic Games. Results show that an author’s race and gender, topic of the article, type of article, and if an article contained an image or not ultimately …

Impacts Of The Poultry Industry In Mississippi, Sara Watts

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the impacts of the poultry industry in seven counties in the Piney Woods region of South Mississippi: Wayne, Jones, Forrest, Lamar, Jefferson Davis, Marion, and Pike. Current research indicates that the poultry industry has a significant impact on the cultures and economies of rural towns throughout the United States. There is no current research that examines the effects of the poultry industry on residents of the Piney Woods. This thesis addresses that gap in the research and contributes to current understanding of how the industry molds and impacts the lives of those intimately associated with it.

I …

Message Convergence In Information Seeking And Decision Making Among Adult Children Regarding Their Parent's Diagnosis, Collyn Leggett

Master's Theses

Adult children have a unique role in caregiving and decision-making for a parent diagnosed with a life-threatening illness or condition. In this qualitative study, 15 individuals participated in one-on-one interviews to share their experience seeking information for their parent’s life-threatening diagnosis. This study utilized deductive and inductive coding approaches through axial coding, and two coders analyzed the data through a lens of message convergence framework and uncertainty management. The results show participants engage in information seeking from personal connections to the medical field to retrieve additional information from a more familiar, trusted source. The participants managed uncertainty retrospectively by reassessing …

How A Book Changed A Nation [2022], Teodora Buzea

Master's Theses

“We don’t believe in vampires.”

I didn’t bother to turn away from the TV to look at my parents. On screen, a crew of young men were interviewing an old woman. She spoke only Romanian, and a too-perfect female voice spoke for her in English. I could see the confident fear in her expression as she exclaimed that vampires were indeed real and that she was always scared of them. She wasn’t alone. All of Transylvania were aware of the existence of vampires. Truly, these young men— ghost hunters and cryptologists—were right to come here to this haunted nation. The …

Drinking Motives As Mediators For The Relationships Between Overparenting And Alcohol Outcomes, Tatum Freeman

Master's Theses

The present study investigated the mediating role of drinking motives in the relationship between overparenting and alcohol outcomes using a sample of 207 traditional age college students (i.e., 18-25 years old; M = 19.8, SD = 1.64). Data on participant demographics, drinking motives, the practices of participants’ primary caregiver, typical weekly drinking, hazardous drinking, and alcohol consequences were collected via SONA (an online participant management software that allows researchers to collect data from a university psychology subject pool). Participants were 89.4% female and 54.1% White. Coping and conformity drinking motives partially mediated the relationships between overparenting, alcohol consequences, and hazardous …

Stability Of Universal Screening Over Time: An Examination Of The Student Risk Screening Scale, Rebecca Wagner Lovelace

Master's Theses

Universal screening is a proactive method to identify students that are at risk for social-emotional and behavior (SEB) problems and provide information to schools to support early intervention for at risk children. Current recommendations for practice indicate screening should be conducted at three time points during the school year. Previous studies suggest that this recommendation is not empirically based and fewer screenings per year may be sufficient for identifying students at risk. The current study seeks to extend the literature regarding the stability and consistency of screening scores over time by analyzing ratings from the Student Risk Screening Scale (SRSS) …

Post Pandemic Cyberbiosecurity Threats From Terrorist Groups, Haley D. Dodge

Master's Theses

The research in this thesis explored the research question: Are United States (US) health systems accessible to cyber-bio terrorist attacks post-pandemic, within the context of the emerging discipline of cyberbiosecurity? Key findings of the analysis demonstrated how US health systems are more accessible to cyber-bio terrorist attacks specifically from cyber hacking groups based on the increasing sophistication of their cyber capabilities and the lack of cyber protection for biological systems. The concept of cyberbiosecurity was first introduced in 2018 by researchers exploring the converging threat landscape of the cyber and biology domains. As biology is growing more dependent upon vulnerable …

Examining The Moderating Effects Of Adult Social Support On The Relationship Between Adverse Experiences And Psychosocial Adjustment, Zachary Wilde

Master's Theses

Exposure to adverse experiences during childhood place adolescents at a disproportionately high risk of developing physical and mental health problems later in life (Anthony et al., 2019; Basto-Pereira et al., 2016; Brown & Shillington, 2016; Felitti et al., 1998). Further, at-risk adolescents, conceptualized as children and adolescents who lack resources for upward mobility, are more likely to be exposed to adverse experiences and thus are at greater risk for these negative outcomes when compared to adolescents who are not considered at-risk (Fernandes-Alcantara, 2018). To obtain better specificity of what outcomes adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) predict in a sample of vulnerable …

A Comparative Study Of The Impact Of Regimes In Latin America’S Education Systems: The Cases Of Mercosur, Alba-Tcp, And Pa, Victoria Desimoni

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a comparative study of the regional education policies and programs in three Latin American (LA) regional entities (hereafter ‘regimes’ and ‘regionalisms’): The Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), and Pacific Alliance (PA). Each of these represents different regionalisms coexisting in LA (hegemonic, post-hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic regionalisms), which makes them ideal for comparative analysis. This project aims to compare these very diverse regimes to interrogate the similarities and dissimilarities, as well as discover who (the regional or the global) is shaping education systems in this area …

Bicycling To Level The Field: A Study Of Divvy In Chicago, Bushra Ghaniwala

Master's Theses

With the onset of COVID-19, norms across the world shifted, including the way people moved in major cities. In order to conduct a comparative analysis, understanding transportation habits before COVID-19 hit cities is important. In this paper, I have focused on Divvy bikes in the city of Chicago, which are touted as a means to achieving first- and last-mile transit especially in underserved communities. I am interested in initiating the line of inquiring into who Divvy bikes served during a time when there was major fear around high transmission of COVID-19 on trains and buses due to the close proximity. …

How Chicago Public Schools Engaged African American Parents In The Closing Of Austin Career Academy High School, Shani Blackwell

Master's Theses

The role of African American parents in education reform initiatives in Chicago is not clearly defined. Local School Councils (LSC) allow parents to make school related decisions in Chicago. But LSCs are removed from decisions about whether or not to place school on or off probation, and whether or not to close schools based on performance or building utilization. In 2013, African American and Latinx parents expressed outrage over the decision by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to close 49 schools with protests, including a hunger strike by a group of parents, and pleas to the Chicago Board of Education (BOE). …

Taking It Too Far? Examining Derogation In Sexism Confrontations, Bayleigh Smith

Master's Theses

Sexism continues to be prevalent within today’s society (Bates, 2012; Crandall et al., 2018; World Health Organization, 2021), creating the need for methods to respond to such bias. Confrontation is one method that allows targets of sexism to stand up for themselves (Haslett & Lipman, 1997; Hyers, 2007; Kaiser & Miller, 2004), but often comes with social costs (e.g., being disliked, Czopp & Monteith, 2003; Dodd et al., 2001; Gulker et al., 2013; Kaiser & Miller, 2001). However, researchers have not dissected the factors that affect the social costs associated with confrontation (i.e., being labeled as a “sexist”, humor, or …

Migration Across Institutions Of Race: How Immigrant Women From Latin America Construct Ethnoracial Self-Identities In Sending And Receiving Societies, Juanita Vivas Bastidas

Master's Theses

How does immigration affect perceptions of self? In this study, I explore the processes by which immigrants construct ethnoracial self-identities in sending societies, an individual’s country of origin, and receiving societies, an individual’s country of destination. For my exploration, I conduct eleven life history and cognitive interviews of immigrant women from Spanish-speaking countries located in Latin America. Mainly, I find that the women in my study construct ethnoracial self-identities throughout their lives informed by their socialization into myths of racial democracy present in both locations and contradicting interactions, which take place in local organizations such as families, schools, and workplaces. …

To Be Fair: Colorism And Online Dating Among Young South Asians, Kajal S. Patel

Master's Theses

Online dating is rooted in first impressions through images. Because of this, users of these apps tend to alter their profile pictures to fit a certain criteria that they believe will attract more matches. For people of color, this benchmark is based upon fair skin and European facial features. This has led me to ask, how is colorism reinforced in online dating apps for Indian Americans, and more specifically though, how are the users of these apps portraying themselves in their own profiles as it relates to colorism? Due to various factors Indians with darker skin tend to feel pressure …

Alt-Right Of The_Donald And Authoritarian Communists On Reddit: Internet Memes To Build Community, Joshua Hendricks

Master's Theses

This project infuses Lacanian psychoanalysis further into the rhetorical study by exploring authoritarian discourses on Reddit. I analyze the alt-right community that found a home on the subreddit r/The_Donald and chart their discourse as it shaped from the quarantine to the establishment of an independent forum called TheDonald.win. I selected memes and the comments around them to build the analysis. The second aspect of this thesis examines authoritarian communist discourse on Reddit. The leftist community splintered when r/socialism banned a community member because the person made catgirl art. The ban sent shockwaves through the leftist community on Reddit and generated …

A Bioarchaeological Investigation Of The Courtney-Anderson Cemetery, Lauren Scott

Master's Theses

Located in Perry County, Mississippi, the Anderson Family Cemetery represents an abandoned turn-of-the-century Piney Woods cemetery. The cemetery is located on land once owned by the Courtney and Anderson families, who farmed the area until it was taken under eminent domain by the United States government in 1942. The purpose of this thesis is to present three osteobiographies created from human remains and material culture recovered from three graves excavated from within the cemetery in 2022 to explore the lifeways of rural Piney Woods families of Mississippi at the turn-of-the-century.

Among the graves explored, one did not contain evidence of …

Evolving Deforestation Narratives In Practice: A Study Of The Un-Redd+ Readiness Programme In Nigeria, Stuart Clive Blackwell

Master's Theses

The UN-REDD+ Readiness Programme was conducted between 2009 and 2015. The REDD+ Programme in Nigeria began once the readiness program was completed. This study conducts a document analysis of the program utilizing a political ecology lens to determine the extent to which the program adheres to or strays away from critical narratives surrounding both drivers of deforestation and inclusion and autonomy of federal, state, and local communities. By examining the entirety of the available documentation of the REDD+ Readiness program in Nigeria using a political ecological lens, this study demonstrates both an evolution of the program itself, and an evolution …

Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge Detection In Slash Pine Radial Growth Along The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Coastline, Alyssa C. Crowell

Master's Theses

My thesis examines the ecological impact of tropical cyclone (TCs) storm surge on coastal slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. elliottii Engelm) communities along the Gulf of Mexico in the southern United States (U.S.). Previous research has shown slash pine radial growth trends can be examined to identify long and short-term growth changes associated with TC passage, providing insight into overall stand health and resiliency through time. However, this previous research encompasses just one site in Mississippi. My thesis expands the spatial footprint of TC-surge impact on slash pine radial growth with the addition of three new sites.

I examined …

Evaluating The Effects Of Mindfulness Practice On Attentional Control And Episodic Memory, Jacob M. M. Namias

Master's Theses

Mindfulness refers to a mental state of being that involves nonjudgmental acceptance of current cognitions and emotions with awareness of the present moment. Researchers and clinicians have shown the efficacy of mindfulness as a treatment for psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression and have found reductions in reported stress. Building on clinical benefits, mindfulness practice may also facilitate attentional processes as practitioners are required to inhibit distracting thoughts and re-direct their focus to the present moment. My thesis examined the relationship between mindfulness practice and attentional control and potential spillovers to episodic memory. Experiment 1 gauged the relationship between …

Legislative Language For Success, Sanjana Gundala

Master's Theses

Legislative committee meetings are an integral part of the lawmaking process for local and state bills. The testimony presented during these meetings is a large factor in the outcome of the proposed bill. This research uses Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to analyze testimonies from California Legislative committee meetings from 2015-2016 in order to identify what aspects of a testimony makes it successful. A testimony is considered successful if the alignment of the testimony matches the bill outcome (alignment is "For" and the bill passes or alignment is "Against" and the bill fails). The process of finding what …

Strainer: State Transcript Rating For Informed News Entity Retrieval, Thomas M. Gerrity

Master's Theses

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid decline in public oversight of state and local governments. From 2003 to 2014, the number of journalists assigned to cover the proceedings in state houses has declined by more than 30\%. During the same time period, non-profit projects such as Digital Democracy sought to collect and store legislative bill and hearing information on behalf of the public. More recently, AI4Reporters, an offshoot of Digital Democracy, seeks to actively summarize interesting legislative data.

This thesis presents STRAINER, a parallel project with AI4Reporters, as an active data retrieval and filtering system for …

Measuring Accessibility For Pedestrians, Bicyclists, And Transit Riders To Grocery Stores In The Excelsior/Outer Mission Neighborhoods Of San Francisco, Alexandra Lee-Gardner

Master's Theses

Grocery stores are an important amenity in neighborhoods and access to grocery stores is important for health and well-being. While grocery store accessibility is a popular topic of research, studies measuring access for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders are extremely rare. When a new store opened in the Excelsior/Outer Mission districts of San Francisco on a street lacking basic infrastructure for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders, the importance of this study became apparent. The Excelsior/Outer Mission neighborhood has a shocking number of collisions (over 1,100 between 2015 and 2019), elevated levels of walking, biking, and transit ridership, and minimal safe …

The Modern-Day Effect Of Holc Redlining On Neighborhood Development, Liubov Ivashov

Master's Theses

Racial segregation, which happened more than one hundred years ago in the U.S., is a fundamental cause of economic inequality for people living in historically segregated neighborhoods today. Redlining was one form of federal policy that forced to separate communities by race even more after the Great Depression. The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps are widely used in economic research papers as one of the most comprehensive sources of data available to measure the effect of residential segregation. In this paper, using the Historical Redline Score (HRS) method, the author measured the association between modern-day population distribution, rent prices, …

Examining Revolution Through Breakfast Politics, Zachary Axel Clausen

Master's Theses

Analyzing the Black Panther Party and its activities, this study develops a framework for evaluating revolution through a process-oriented examination of discourse and practices surrounding the Free Breakfast Program’s emergence and operation from around 1968 to 1975. The program began in Oakland and quickly spread to over 36 cities in less than two years. Using a swath of interviews, radio shows, movies, newspapers, magazines, documents, pictures and other forms of media from the time period, I analyze the Breakfast Program to explicate the political terrain of food provision, the unique community-based approach to non-hierarchical resource distribution, and the production of …

Using Machine Learning To Analyze Children’S Drawings As Indicators Of Mental Well-Being, Nicholas R. Lawrie

Master's Theses

Human figure drawings are a well-studied diagnostic tool for emotional distress in children. Cleft lip/palate is one of the most common birth defects in the world, and has been shown to negatively impact emotional well-being in childhood which can have negative economic consequences in adulthood. Utilizing a dataset of human figure drawings from children in India and survey data on mental health, this paper will assess the impact of corrective surgery on mental health outcomes, as well as assess the validity of the drawing emotional indicators themselves. The results indicate that while the emotional indicators may not be valid in …

Does My Skin Tone Really Matter? A Socioeconomic Analysis In Nigeria., Mutiu O. Fakorede

Master's Theses

Abstract: Does my skin tone really matter? If it does, to what extent and direction does skin tone predict socioeconomic outcomes, especially amongst people of color who have experienced colonial rule with its white supremacy agenda? In this research, we examined if skin tone measured in individual typology angle (ITA) does not affect employability, income, partner selection, and political representativeness. With a focus on Nigeria, the most populous black nation, a former British colony, we addressed this broad question through a survey. Using the iterative capability of Qualtrics which randomly picks a set of three pictures with known ITA and …

Impact Of Climate Variability On Child Nutrition In Ethiopia, Juan S. Gomez

Master's Theses

Changes in precipitation and temperature due to climate change have caused a shortage in food productivity leading to an increase in malnutrition outcomes, especially among children in developing countries that are more susceptible to undernutrition outcomes. This study contributes to existing literature studying the impact of climate variability measured by temperature, precipitation, and vegetation index on wasting. Wasting is measured by the weight for height score during the main growing season (Meher) using Demographic and Health Surveys data for five different periods in Ethiopia. Results suggest that lower NDVI outcomes are associated with an increase in the risk of acute …

Mahalaya: Building Community In The Filipinx Diaspora Through Solidarity Journalism, Casey Ticsay

Master's Theses

Unethical approaches to storytelling in professional journalism continue to shape public discourse around the diverse experiences of Asians and Asian Americans. This paper analyzes the origins and impact of ethnic news media, specifically the rise of Filipino and Filipino American press in the United States, and the ways journalists of color continue to challenge traditional practices of professional journalism that perpetuate anti-Blackness and maintain white supremacy. Filipino and Filipino American newspapers in the early twentieth century provide historical insight into the issues, debates, and conversations transpiring at the time and highlight the community’s ongoing response to the misrepresentations of their …