Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Instagram Influencer Engagement And The World Of Social Media, Miranda Zangara

Senior Honors Projects

Social media has become a driving force in today’s world by connecting people all over the globe in an instant. Instagram is one of the leading platforms in social media with almost one billion users to date. Instagram has evolved exponentially post creation and has become a tool that many individuals utilize when marketing a product, a brand, an organization, or themselves. It is imperative to understand how to use this platform, what variables affect your success, and what strategies can be implimented to reach your goals in creating a presence in the world of social media.

This project uses …

Service Leadership: The First Year Student Experience, Connor Curtis

Senior Honors Projects

Servant leadership, in the words of Robert Greenleaf from the Greenleaf Center of Servant Leadership, is “a servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” This has become one of the guiding theories of leadership within the Center for Student Leadership Development’s (CSLD) Leadership Studies minor at the University of Rhode Island. First-year students in the Leadership Studies minor have the opportunity to learn different leadership models and theories and apply them to their own life. My personal experience and the experiences of others who have participated in service projects locally, nationally, …

Impact Of Facebook On Employability, Ileana Lagrutta

Senior Honors Projects

The rise of social media undoubtedly has led to many benefits for its users: it allows individuals to stay in contact with family members and friends both near and far, it can serve as a medium to promote social change, and it provides users with an easily accessible space in which they can express who they are, among other things. However, despite the positive impact social media has had on society, there is also the potential for social media to negatively impact users, dependent upon how they utilize such sites. One way in which individuals can be impacted negatively by …

Cops Vs. Live Pd, Samuel Moor

Senior Honors Projects

SAMUEL MOOR (Sociology: Criminology & Criminal Justice)

Cops vs. Live PD

Sponsor: Megan Parry (Criminology & Criminal Justice)

Abstract

Since they first began airing in the 1980’s, the public have been fascinated with reality television programs depicting police work. These shows also offer a unique perspective for viewers by inviting them into a world that most do not interact with on a daily basis. They also offer a valuable avenue for researchers to analyze police-citizen interactions, both in the programs themselves as well as how they have evolved over time. This study makes use of content analysis to qualitatively examine …

Evaluating Implicit Self-Compassion In College Students, Emily Kutok

Senior Honors Projects

Typically, research on self-compassion and mental health has used the measurement tool of self-report (explicit) surveys to examine self-compassion. Implicit Association Tests (IAT) can be applied to a number of di erent constructs, some of which include racial biases, gender stereotypes, and suicidal ideation. ey are used to measure the strength of a person’s automatic association between two concepts (in this case, between self and compassion). By measuring implicit self-compassion, a researcher can expect less self-report bias related to self- presentational concerns and the limits of introspection, and they can capture psychological processes that occur without full conscious awareness but …

Polarization And The Supreme Court, Kyla Duffy

Senior Honors Projects

Political polarization has been commonly observed in American politics and has drawn scholarly interest. In recent years, trends of polarization have appeared to increase in Congress, with Democrats and Republicans drifting further and further apart. Americans appear to be deeply split on many social issues which have resulted in culture wars in American politics. According to the legal model of judicial decision making, decisions handed down by the Supreme Court should be unaffected by these trends of polarization. However, recent scholarship, most notably the attitudinal model of judicial decision making, calls into question the legal model of decision making. It …

Speak Up, Reach Out: A Suicide Education And Prevention Plan, Jessica Parker

Senior Honors Projects

Suicide is a caliginous topic that can be found in the headline of a magazine or in a passionate scene in a movie, but rarely is it discussed head-on due to a general discomfort and lack of knowledge. It is not a glamourous act of revenge or a testament of devotion, it is a final decision made by an individual that will, without a shadow of a doubt, intimately impact the lives of those around them as they long for answers to the questions that begin with “what if…”. The idea behind Speak Up, Reach Out is to provide members …

The Social And Interpersonal Impacts Of Sexual Violence, Brenna Sullivan

Senior Honors Projects

My honors project is both a secondary research study and an artistic visual representation of the impacts sexual violence has on an individual’s social behavioral patterns and interpersonal communication capabilities. I entered into this project with an interest in exploring this relationship after witnessing the impacts of such violence in the lives of people around me. I hoped to gain a deeper understanding of why sexual violence affects social behaviors in victims. It has been my intent to utilize the platform of my project to bring to light underrepresented facts about such violence. Furthermore, I hope this project provides a …

Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis Of Gender Inequality In Higher Education, Topaz Szewczok, Bethany Parslow

Senior Honors Projects

This project explores how gender inequality in contemporary society impacts the individual’s experiences in their career path, especially in regards to higher education. We document experiences that gender minorities have in their academic disciplines and gain insight on how individuals overcome or do not overcome being the gender minority. Our data come from in-depth interviews with college professors and survey responses from college students in gender segregated fields such as nursing, STEM, early education, and family studies. For this study, according to information gathered and published by the university, a “gendered field” at URI is determined by two thirds or …

Policing For The Community, Jeffrey Munoz

Senior Honors Projects

As a society, we are currently in a period of time where the community reflects their dissatisfaction with law enforcement by staging protests, organizing groups who demand change and unfortunately at times displaying a degree of violence towards authority. These issues are products of controversial police shootings like those of the killings of Tamir rice, Freddie Gray and Eric Garner in which all demonstrated a reasonable degree of uncertainty. The fact of the matter lies within the officers’ actions as they manifest an inherent racial bias seen one to many times by populations that have been oppressed throughout history. The …

Music As Influence: How Has Society Been Shaped By Musical Genres Throughout History?, Cody Poulin

Senior Honors Projects

Musical genres have been an integral part in all societies, ancient and contemporary. As time has progressed, so too have the styles and methods of making and consuming music. Modern music presents us with an enormous amount of variety, allowing us to choose which genres we prefer based on our own ideologies and preferences. In order to understand how these genres came to be, one must look at the context through which they were formed. The context includes a variety of factors, such as time period, cultural and social factors, familial influence, and the geographical location where the music emerged. …

The Future Of Radio, Samuel Murray

Senior Honors Projects

Since its inception and rise to popularity among major forms of mass media communication, radio has been thought to be the next technology to become obsolete. When television came out people thought radio was going to die out, but alas radio and television coexist to this day. When music videos, and eventually channels like MTV came out, radio was put into jeopardy as music would become more and more visual and the need for the radio would cease. This was not the case. When satellite channels came into being and started getting big name celebrities like Howard Stern to broadcast …

Transgender Identity And Dress Behavior, Lauryn Devine

Senior Honors Projects

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine how transgender individuals experience their bodies (e.g. body dissatisfaction) and how their body experience affects their shopping and clothing experiences. Clothing is often used as a way to define and express oneself. Therefore, if transgender individuals have a negative shopping experience and a negative outlook on clothing, it could make it more difficult to express their true identity. Society places extremely high expectations on individuals regarding appearance, which can be psychologically and emotionally difficult for cisgender individuals, but even more egregious for those individuals who do not fit society’s conventional gender …

Effects Of Environmental Enrichment On Behavior In A Domestic Goat Herd, Stephanie Peramas

Senior Honors Projects

Animal welfare is one of the most important parts of animal management. Apart from other measures of good animal welfare, like being in good health, animal behavior can be indicative of the animal’s internal state and is often one of the first signs of improper welfare. Stereotypies, or stereotypic behavior, are commonly viewed as a symptom of improper animal welfare. Unenriched, or barren, environments associated with farmed livestock have long been associated with inducing stereotypic behavior. The addition of precise enrichment to the animals’ environment is a common remedy for stereotypic behavior. With respect to stereotypic goat behavior, few empirical …

An Analysis Of Time Management As A Collegiate Student-Athlete, Owen Sammarone

Senior Honors Projects

Millions of individuals take the leap after high school to attend a two or four-year university. During the first couple years of college, students are introduced to the challenges and obstacles of balancing their time. This balance may include academics, clubs, sports, social events, and all of the above. Through my project, I focus my lens on the lives of collegiate student-athletes and how they are thrown into a hectic lifestyle, where perfecting your time management skills seems to be the only route to success.

More than 480,000 NCAA student-athletes compete in 24 sports every year (NCAA.org, 2018). Despite their …

Ethnographic Insight Into The Developmentally Diverse Worlds Of Twins: “L & J”, Allison Gallant

Senior Honors Projects

According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (2016), approximately 3 of every 1000 infants are born with a detectable level of hearing loss in one or both ears: with 90% of these infants being born to hearing parents. Immediately following the birth of a deaf child, parents are often bombarded with decisions regarding interventions to “fix” their child’s “disability”. This decision can impact how their child will experience the world and others. The situation is a very different stressor when a hearing child is born to deaf parents. Embracing one’s deaf identity and engaging in “deaf …

Online Fitness Social Networking Communities, Caitlyn Martinez

Senior Honors Projects

The high numbers of adults who do not engage in enough physical activity or who are completely sedentary, are at higher risk than others for health illnesses and complications. However, many individuals are taking initiative and control of their health and well-being as a result of the copious amount of information available on the internet and major technological advancements. Individuals are self-tracking their health with wearable technology such as Fitbit, Nike, Garmin, and Jawbone among many others which can track steps/distance, steps climbed, heart rate, caloric burn, and sleep. In the last decade, these technologies have become very popular and …

Multiple Streams Framework, Advocacy Coalition Framework, And The Passage Of The National Trails Systems Act Of 1968, Harrison Miller

Senior Honors Projects

Early American conservation efforts consisted primarily of the federal government seizing large swaths of land in the largely unpopulated western frontiers, away from more concentrated populations, and placing them under federal protection. While many of these became National Parks, to visit them was still mostly available only to the upper class, and they often seemed more like investments in to-be-cultivated land than sincere efforts at environmental conservation. In the eastern U.S., where the population was dense and industrialization was the new norm, federally protected lands were harder to come by. This pattern of federal conservation continued well into the 20th …

Women In Science: A Course, Krystyna Krupinski

Senior Honors Projects

Ask any student to name five women who have made advancements in scientific fields and most likely they will not be able to name more than two. With a lack of courses highlighting women scientists’ achievements, this lack of knowledge is hardly surprising I am addressing this issue in my work. Through the researching of scientific advancements made by women, I have proposed a method to teach students about these scientists so names like Johnson, Franklin, and Curie become as commonplace as Einstein, Hawking, and Bohr. Frequently in science classes in middle schools and high schools, the focus is only …

Climate Change, Colonialism, And Second-Class Citizenry: A Case Study Of The Impacts Of Hurricane María In Puerto Rico, Aislyne Calianos

Senior Honors Projects

The hurricane season of 2017 was a historic one, with mammoth storms making landfall one after another, in what seemed like an unrelenting assault on our coastal cities and communities. Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston, Irma plowed through Florida, and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, but one of these storms was unlike the others. Why is it that the American citizens of our southern states were able to recover so much more quickly than our citizens in Puerto Rico? In the era of climate change, we will be forced to reckon with the modern legacy of colonialism, as vulnerable communities must face …

Theater As A Civic Practice, Charlie Santos

Senior Honors Projects

Contemporary artists are working within a cultural moment saturated with political fervor. The ideologies of social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter, Queer Rights, and Gun Control weigh heavily on the minds of young artists. More and more, I see actors, writers, and creators struggling to reconcile their identities as artists and identities as political beings. How do artists resolve the internal dissonance between their artistic and political spheres? Is activist art an opportunity to synthesize these two spheres? Or might creating art for political ends pose ethical and/or aesthetic hazards? On the one hand, creating political art …

Young Women In Chilean Politics: Political Participation Among Students At The University Of Viña Del Mar, Julia Ludovici

Senior Honors Projects

Chilean women face inequality in political participation. There is a large gap in gender representation in Chilean politics, despite the election of a woman to the presidency—twice. Feminist theory has long been at play in Chilean academia, and my research builds upon some of the basic propositions of feminist theory: the patriarchy and oppression of women, and the double standards faced by women in their private vs. public lives. Michelle Bachelet’s presidency, along with the recent “quota law,” both provide historical and present-day context to the issues faced by women and their political participation. Based on the data collected by …

Life Experiences Of Refugees: Integration And Mental Health As Intersecting Realities, Grace Berry

Senior Honors Projects

The purpose of this study was to look at the mental health of post resettled refugees and the integration process through past studies. Resettled refugees deal with a multitude of problems prior, during and after resettlement and this is a look at the mental health problems associated with this experience. I looked at past studies that focused on the process of successfully integrating refugees and then some studies on their personal experiences and mental health during the transition. Overall, English language skills and social interactions significantly aided to successful integration. In regards to reports of mental illness, PTSD rates were …

Immigration In Japan: History, Attitudes, And Effects, Jacqueline Witwicki

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Ethics And Effectiveness Of Medical Brigades As A Primary Care Method In Rural And Remote Areas, Emilie Christie

Senior Honors Projects

Medical brigades, also known as mobile health clinics, are temporary primary care stations set up by volunteer students and health professionals to bring basic healthcare to remote areas free of charge. The present review aims to explore the effectiveness and ethics of brigades, concluding in recommendations to improve these aspects of brigades. Literature regarding brigade effectiveness was examined and synthesized, while brigade ethics were analyzed through four main ethical principles of medicine: respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Proposed improvements to brigades include rapid testing and connection to care for chronic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, access to mental health …

To Build A Wall Or Open The Borders: An Analysis Of Immigration Attitudes Among Undergraduate University Students, Kelsey Sprenger

Senior Honors Projects

Recently, the American political spotlight has focused on the phenomena of legal and illegal immigration due to controversy over who should be allowed to enter the country. However, it is still hard to say with certainty what particular groups, such as university students, actually think about these issues, and whether or not it is possible to predict their attitudes based on certain demographic variables. This project seeks to uncover an answer to the latter question by analyzing the effects of political affiliation, religion, and social class on attitudes toward legal and illegal immigration using data from a survey administered to …