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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Master's Theses (2009 -)

2018

Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Crowdfunding And Non-Profit Charities: Crafting Legitimate Profiles, Ashley Krysik Oct 2018

Crowdfunding And Non-Profit Charities: Crafting Legitimate Profiles, Ashley Krysik

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Crowdfunding has revolutionized non-profit charity fundraising strategies. The development of web-based, crowdfunding platforms has increased direct communication and transparency between non-profit charities and potential donors. The non-profit fundraising marketplace is highly competitive; therefore, organizations must demonstrate their legitimacy in order to raise and maximize fundraising dollars. In order to determine how organizations build legitimacy on crowdfunding platforms, a rhetorical analysis was conducted on 18 donor request profiles from Globalgiving.com, the largest web-based crowdfunding platform for non-profit charities. Non-profit charities soliciting donors through crowdfunding platforms focus their rhetorical strategy on building three legitimacy claims: cause, organization and platform.

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Item Response Theory Analyses Of Barkley’S Adult Adhd Rating Scales, Morgan Nitta Oct 2018

Item Response Theory Analyses Of Barkley’S Adult Adhd Rating Scales, Morgan Nitta

Master's Theses (2009 -)

There are many challenges associated with assessment and diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood. A significant percentage of adult patients may fabricate or exaggerate ADHD symptoms when completing self-report measures in hopes of securing a diagnosis. Further, there are conflicting findings surrounding the similarity between ADHD presentation in adults and children, reflected in rating-scales and symptoms outlined in the diagnostic criteria. This research provides novel information regarding relationships between common adult ADHD self-report form items and corresponding theoretical constructs of inattention (IA) and hyperactivity/impulsivity (H/I). Utilizing the graded response model (GRM) from item response theory (IRT), a comprehensive item-level analysis of …

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How And Where To Respond? Testing The Effectiveness Of The Base Crisis Response In The Different Media Contexts, Erika Jen Schneider Jul 2018

How And Where To Respond? Testing The Effectiveness Of The Base Crisis Response In The Different Media Contexts, Erika Jen Schneider

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Crisis response strategies require preparation. In order to equip organizations with the most effective crisis response strategy, this research aims to understand the most appropriate message and media context to utilize when responding to a crisis. This study applies factors driven from theoretical groundings to evaluate the impact on practical outcomes. Applied to realistic crises in two crisis-prone industries, results capture how crisis response strategies are perceived by stakeholders when an organization becomes the subject of an accidental and preventable crisis. This experimental study found preventable crises causing the most detrimental reputational damage, evaluated with corporate reputation and supportive behavioral …

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Facebook And Wechat: Chinese International Students' Social Media Usage And How It Influences Their Intercultural Adaptation, Yumin Yan Jul 2018

Facebook And Wechat: Chinese International Students' Social Media Usage And How It Influences Their Intercultural Adaptation, Yumin Yan

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This study examines how Chinese international students’ Facebook and WeChat usage patterns influence their process of intercultural adaptation. It shows that Facebook (the host social media) and WeChat (the ethnic social media) usage both have positive impacts on Chinese international students’ successful adaptation (especially their psychological adaptation) to the United States. This study also takes additional variables of interest: host language proficiency, ethnic identity, and the intention to stay in the United States (the host country) into consideration. Consistent with previous studies, host language proficiency has positive influences on Chinese international students’ sociocultural adaptation, and ethnic identity is a critical …

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The Highest Form Of Like: Snapchat, College Students And Hyperpersonal Communication, Timothy L. Cigelske Jul 2018

The Highest Form Of Like: Snapchat, College Students And Hyperpersonal Communication, Timothy L. Cigelske

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The purpose of this study explores how college students engaged with others on Snapchat and how that differed from other Social Networking Sites (SNS). Social Information Process (SIP) Theory was applied as a framework for understanding the effects of time-limited (disappearing) messages and extended conversations that can lead to “hyperpersonal” communication, a form of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) that surpasses the level of affection and emotion of Face to Face (FtF) interaction. In a series of focus groups, college students explained how they used Snapchat and other SNS and the effects it had on interpersonal communication. The participants described emotional …

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Relations Of Discriminatory Experiences And Marianismo Beleifs With Ptsd Symptoms In Latinx Women, Claire Maria Bird Jul 2018

Relations Of Discriminatory Experiences And Marianismo Beleifs With Ptsd Symptoms In Latinx Women, Claire Maria Bird

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Research examining the discriminatory experiences of Latinx women in minimal. The present study examined if various forms of discrimination predicted mental health symptoms in a sample of Latinx women, with the conceptualization of chronic discrimination as a possible form of trauma. There is evidence showing that Latinx individuals are at risk to develop posttraumatic stress disorder at higher rates than their non-Hispanic White counterparts, with many studies pointing to the experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination as a significant contributor (Kaczkurkin, Asnaani, Hall-Clark, Peterson, Yarvis, & Foa, 2016). Given the multiple forms of discrimination that women of color experience, ethnic discrimination, sexism, …

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Broadening The Focus: Women's Voices In The New Journalism, Mary C. Wacker Jul 2018

Broadening The Focus: Women's Voices In The New Journalism, Mary C. Wacker

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The New Journalism Movement chronicled a decade of social turbulence in America by breaking the rules of traditional journalism and embracing narrative elements in the writing and publication of literary nonfiction. The magazine publishing industry was controlled by men, and the history of this transitional time in journalism has been chronicled by men, neglecting to recognize the significant contributions of women working in their midst. This study shines a light on the historical narrative that defines our understanding of the significance and key contributors to the New Journalism Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. To better understand the …

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Towards Predicting Risky Behavior Among Veterans With Ptsd By Analyzing Gesture Patterns, Tanvir Roushan Jul 2018

Towards Predicting Risky Behavior Among Veterans With Ptsd By Analyzing Gesture Patterns, Tanvir Roushan

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Risky behavior including violence and aggression, self-injury, anger outburst, domestic violence along with self-injury, sexual abuse, rule breaking, use of drugs and alcohol, suicide etc. are alarming issues among US military veterans who return from combat zone deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans are exposed to trauma in war zones which affect most of them with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other metal health problems to some degree. Studies have shown that veterans have much higher rates of PTSD than civilians and are more likely to engage in risky behavior. One of the form of displaying and engaging in risky …

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Family Functioning In Latino Families Of Children With Adhd: The Role Of Parental Gender And Acculturation, Anne Malkoff Jul 2018

Family Functioning In Latino Families Of Children With Adhd: The Role Of Parental Gender And Acculturation, Anne Malkoff

Master's Theses (2009 -)

It has been well established that parents of children with ADHD report significantly higher levels of parenting stress (Heath, Curtis, Fan, & McPherson, 2015) and chaos in the home (Wirth et al., 2017) than parents of children without ADHD. Parents of children with ADHD also report feeling less efficacious in their parenting abilities compared to parents of children without ADHD (Primack et al., 2012). To date, a majority of the literature on ADHD has focused on European American children and families, resulting in a paucity of research and clinical practice with ethnic minority families of youth with ADHD, specifically among …

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Willingness To Speak In The Context Of Police Use Of Force, Rachel Italiano Jul 2018

Willingness To Speak In The Context Of Police Use Of Force, Rachel Italiano

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Police use of force has become a common phrase in the current United States society, especially in the context of law enforcement encounters with Black men. However, even with extensive media coverage of protests and incidents between police and Blacks, not much is known about peoples’ willingness to speak out about the topic. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence theory, which states that peoples’ perceptions of others and media exposure is largely responsible for determining an individual’s willingness to speak, is uniquely positioned to examine this topic. This study utilized a Qualtrics panel of 905 participants and a questionnaire to examine …

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Examining The Political Motivations Of Christian Women Following The 2016 Presidential Election, Julie Grace Jul 2018

Examining The Political Motivations Of Christian Women Following The 2016 Presidential Election, Julie Grace

Master's Theses (2009 -)

As research begins and continues to examine the historic nature of the 2016 presidential election, this study aims to understand the political motivations of a specific group of voters – Christian women in two Wisconsin counties that flipped from voting for a Democrat in 2012 to a Republican in 2016. Long-form, qualitative interviews were used to obtain an understanding of the participants’ faith, their view on politics, and their thoughts on the 2016 election and President Trump’s first year in office. Grounded theory was used as a theoretical framework for this study, and the constant comparative method of analysis was …

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Cultivating Change: The Relationship Between Organizational Culture, Leadership Style And Communication Style With Organizational Change, Matt Hansen Apr 2018

Cultivating Change: The Relationship Between Organizational Culture, Leadership Style And Communication Style With Organizational Change, Matt Hansen

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This paper presents a quantitative study on organizational change and how culture, leadership, and communication styles are related to different types of change. The objective was to understand these relationships and to provide insight for future applications centered on enabling organizational change. Respondents (N=411) from multiple organizations participated in evaluating preferences for culture, leadership and communication styles in response to different change scenarios. The study features four control groups, each representing various types of organizational change. Responses were evaluated using the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) to identify individual cultural preferences and seven-point Likert-type questionnaires for leadership and communication style …

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The Famous Names Discrimination Task As A Biomarker Of Alzheimer's Disease Risk: An Erp Study, Elizabeth Rose Paitel Apr 2018

The Famous Names Discrimination Task As A Biomarker Of Alzheimer's Disease Risk: An Erp Study, Elizabeth Rose Paitel

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Current ERP research emphasizes age- and pathology-related declines in neural processing in the form of attenuated amplitudes and prolonged latencies. Notably, there is a gap in the ERP literature regarding neural processing trajectories in the time between healthy young adulthood and clinical MCI/AD samples. fMRI research, however, has demonstrated periods of increased, compensatory activation in healthy, cognitively intact APOE ɛ4 carriers both during resting state and event-related tasks (Bondi, Houston, Eyler, & Brown, 2005; Evans et al., 2014; Filippini et al., 2009; Rao et al., 2015), consistent with compensatory theories of cognitive aging (Cabeza, 2002; Park & Reuter-Lorenz, 2009; Reuter-Lorenz …

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Communicating Augmented Reality Devices Improving Technology Acceptance Among Electric Utility Field Workers, Carly M. Kroll Apr 2018

Communicating Augmented Reality Devices Improving Technology Acceptance Among Electric Utility Field Workers, Carly M. Kroll

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Augmented Reality (AR) is very useful for many different fields and purposes such as entertainment, education, military, navigation, industrial, or electric utility. Electric utilities find use in AR due to the flexibility of location and the real-time information sharing with visuals to keep employees safe and efficient. This exploratory study investigated the use of infographic templates as a way to introduce this new technology to line workers in the electric utility field. Infographics were used as a way to prime workers to be more aware of the technology and its possible uses as well as usefulness. Through the use of …

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The Effects Of Acute Stress On Emotion Recognition Of Bodily Movements, Devi Jayan Apr 2018

The Effects Of Acute Stress On Emotion Recognition Of Bodily Movements, Devi Jayan

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Lack of understanding of the mental state of others may govern poor social interactions and, the etiology and maintenance of several mental health conditions. In everyday situations, verbal and non-verbal affective stimuli are often processed under conditions of acute stress. Acute stress is associated with changes in cognition, affect, behavior and neural functioning; however, previous research has not sufficiently identified the role of acute stress on emotion recognition (ER) from body movements. The current study explored the effects of acute stress and related physiological responses on ER of dynamic body movements. Eighty-Four participants were exposed to an acute stress procedure …

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