Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Normative Orientations To Housing Activism And The Uneven Path To Nonprofitization In New York City, 1964–1989, Andrew Wilkes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What are the distinct contributions of normative orientations (including theological and ideological ones) in the public policy process? While the literature on policy formation in the past three decades has embraced at least some idea that ideology matters, little has focused on whether the content of their specific normative orientations leads groups to contribute to, and engage in, a policy process differently. By examining Paul Sabatier’s advocacy coalition framework in conversation with Rev. Dr. Gayraud Wilmore’s tripartite, theoethical framework of liberation, elevation, and survival, this dissertation contends that the normative commitments of advocacy stakeholders within New York City’s tenant movement …

Does Political Advertising Persuade? A Quantitative Assessment Of The Effects Of Campaign Contact In The Context Of Race, Ethnicity, And Immigrant Origin In New York City Council Primary Elections From 2001 Through 2017, Laura M. Tamman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a quantitative analysis of the relationship between New York city council campaigns’ spending and election results between 2001 and 2017, controlling for key factors such as incumbency, I find substantial and statistically significant positive effects for radio advertising on election outcomes. I find small but significant effects for mail, and smaller sized effects for canvassing. My findings underscore the need for further study of the role of ethnic and community media outlets, such as radio, in shaping voter behavior. Moreover, I argue that the fixation of the current persuasion literature on television ads in presidential general elections misses critical …

Fighting The Invisibility Of Domestic Violence, Yesenny Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Analyzing the invisibility of domestic violence in New York City as 32% of women in the city experience intimate partner physical violence. In this project, domestic violence refers to all different kinds of violence that occur in a home between all the members who live there regardless of whether they are intimate partners or not. The data focuses on all the daily calls received by the New York Police Department (NYPD) and NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV) regarding domestic violence related incidents such as physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual violence, or murder. Even though many …

English Learners In Nyc, Raquel Neris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

English Learners in NYC is a Digital Humanities project that intersects Migration Studies and Foreign Language Learning Studies by presenting a podcast series about the learning experience of international students in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs at English schools in New York City. The project aims to provide visibility to the educational migration in this specific context and to promote a discussion on how international students and educators can reimagine their teaching and learning experience. It also aims to reveal ESL schools' challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they incorporated digital technologies during and after this event. …

Immigration Status As A Social Determinant Of Health: Provider Perspectives, Elisabeth Brodbeck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines how immigration is understood as a social determinant of health through the perspective of medical providers and social workers. Through the bridging of immigration studies in sociology and social epidemiology and public health, I demonstrate the need to bring these disciplines together to understand how immigration and legal status are encountered in clinical settings. I conducted a qualitative research study, specifically open-ended interviews with medical providers and social workers, to understand how providers currently screen for complex social determinants of health, and more specifically, how they engage with immigration as a factor influencing health during their patient …

The Impact Of Utilitarian Public Policies On Minority Communities: A Comparison Of New York City And New South Wales, Australia., Nicholas Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to highlight and critique the ways in which utilitarianism manifests itself in comparative public policy. While public policy studies tend to focus on national levels, cities, and states can also be major sites of theoretical and policy formulation that are adopted globally. The moral ethics that are involved in public policy are especially important because these policies have a direct impact on society. Utilitarianism encompasses the logic of utility maximization: the ends justify the means and the idea that the moral ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the …

Diversity Still Matters: School-Level Racial Diversity, Poverty And Performance Of New York City Public Schools, Byunghwa Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the last few decades, schools in New York City (NYC) have experienced great demographic changes due to the massive influx of various ethnic and racial groups. Although the race and ethnicity makeup of NYC is 42% white, 29% Hispanic or Latino, 24% Black or African American and 14% Asian, 74% of Black and Hispanic students attend a school with less than 10 percent white students, while 34% of white students attend a school with more than half white peers. Also, more than 60% of Hispanic and Black students are attending schools where more than 75% of peer students experience …

Fostering Expertise, Confidence, And Passion In Writing Education: How A Common Sense, Nonbinary Education Policy May Serve To Enrich Teachers’ Writing Lives, Shrink The Divide Between Literacy Educators, And Finally Improve Literacy Among New York City Students, Rebecca I. Wallace-Segall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I examine the ongoing youth literacy crisis in New York City and, along with it, two long-standing, opposing education policies—progressive and traditional—that have sought to address it. I argue that resisting dogmatic adherence to one or the other of these approaches, coupled with teacher-centered professional development opportunities that emphasize educators’ reconnection to the personal experience of writing, will improve classroom writing education goals. Over the course of a decade and a half, I co-designed a new educational framework that combines and elaborates upon the strengths of both approaches; over the past year, I co-designed a teacher-centered professional development opportunity for …

Public Policy And The Business Life Cycle, Hugo Barreca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study uses a business life cycle perspective to investigate and compare three different approaches to urban economic development policy, each of which focuses on a particular stage of company development. Well-meaning urban policies might be more effective if they were aligned with all the common stages of the business life cycle. This study compares programs that address specific stages of the business cycle to demonstrate that it is possible to address each stage. While it is not possible with a small number of cases and many dimensions of variation to validate a causal model of which packages of policies …

Disrepair, Displacement And Distress: Finding Housing Stories Through Data Visualizations, Jennifer Cheng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While the COVID-19 pandemic is at its forefront a health crisis, it also triggered an upheaval in the already dire housing situation endured by many New York City renters. Tenant fears of rent increases, deferred maintenance, and displacement certainly worsened during the pandemic. But the housing crisis is, at the same time, part of a perpetual real estate cycle contingent on speculation and the symbiotic relationship of landlords, investors, and lenders in pursuit of profit – to the detriment of tenants.

Following years of lending deregulation, funding cuts, and tax reform, the financialization of housing emerged. Real estate speculation, where …

Blurring The "Bright Line": Examining Age-Related Differences In Jail Incarceration Outcomes Using A Resources-Challenges Model Of Emerging Adulthood, Olive F. Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Jail incarceration represents an early and prevalent point of contact with the criminal legal system. While there is some evidence of age-related differences in jail incarceration outcomes such as rearrest and reconvictions, existing research typically only make comparisons between adults and adolescents. This bifurcation ignores the unique experiences of a third group: emerging adults aged 18 to 25. Evidence from developmental research combined with shifting social and cultural dynamics suggest that 18-25-year-olds, though adults by law, straddle the line between adolescence and adulthood while facing challenges that set them apart.

The current study incorporates a resources-challenges framework of emerging adulthood …

Young People’S Perception Of Opportunities To Participate In Democratic Governance, Jennifer Nga Yu Tang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989) accords all young people the right to be heard and make decisions on matters affecting them. Despite the fact the United States remains the only country in the world not to have ratified this document, a number of American cities have nevertheless begun to engage young people in community decision-making (e.g., in neighborhood associations or community boards). However, as of yet there are few actual opportunities for youth to participate fully in the governance of their cities. This study examined the perspectives of young people …

The Politics Of Hip Hop: A Political Analysis Of Hip Hop’S History And Its Complicated Relationship With Capitalism, Danielle Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emergence of the Hip Hop movement in the 1970s in areas of New York City often referred to more generally as the South Bronx. Focusing mostly on the 1970s and 1980s, this thesis explores the underlying conditions that Hip Hop was born out of. Influenced by both global and national politics, Hip Hop provided a common space for underrepresented individuals and groups to unify, create common identities, and liberate themselves from the oppressive norms and political activity of a rich, mostly white, and dominant American society that tried to erase or silence them. This revolutionary aspect …

School Recess And Changes To Children's Play Opportunities In New York City, Keyonna Hayes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The policy, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 in US public schools was designed to improve how children learn and test in schools, but it has resulted in the decline or removal of recess from most schools. This thesis examines two important issues. The first issue is to assess the play opportunities that public elementary schools offer to children, in terms of both the time available for recess and the quality of the spaces and resources for play during recess. The second issue is to learn, alongside the question of the quality of school recess, how parents’ work …

How Psychotherapists Practice In The Digital Era, Josh Weinstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The digital era, marked by digital devices connected via high speed data networks, has altered human experience in profound ways over the past 40 years. The potential for novel forms of human relating and fulfillment of desire has led to myriad changes in behavior, thought and unconscious activity. While many adapt or thrive in expanded reality, for some, the digital can be context, source and/or location for psychological affliction. When those who suffer seek psychological relief, how psychotherapists listen for, conceptualize and work with the effects of the digital matter a great deal. While theoretical and quantitative research literature exists …

Living In A World Of “Stop, Question And Frisk” And “Trespass Enforcement”: Black And Latinx Youth Engaging In Police Reform In New York City, Jeanene Lee Barrett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although much has been written about youths’ experiences with police encounters in general, little qualitative research has been conducted into the SQF and housing trespass enforcement experiences of Black and Latinx youth in NYC. Additionally, there is little research that uses the voice of Black and Latinx youth to envision interactions with NYPD that could improve police-community relations. The present study, using a purposively sampled sub-set of 20 transcripts from a larger focus group process, examined the lived experience of Black and Latinx youth between the ages of 13 – 25, with a focus on stop-question-frisk (SQF) and housing trespass …

The Life And Death Of Mambo: Culture And Consumption In New York's Salsa Dance Scene, Carmela Muzio Dormani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades salsa dancing has become a global phenomenon, spawning a variety of styles and levels. Although formerly passed from person to person through Latinx family and community networks, salsa dance has long been practiced in a more codified way. Today, salsa is largely reproduced in dance studio classes, congresses, and competitions collectively referred to as “the salsa scene”. In New York City, the salsa scene retains vestiges of Nuyorican and Afro-Caribbean identity, though it is practiced by people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and marketed to a global base. Building on long term participation observation and nearly …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

Mood Choice And Context Availability: A Variationist Approach To The Subjunctive In New York City Spanish, Joanna Birnbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the variable treatment of the Subjunctive in Spanish in New York City. Both Mood choice (Subjunctive versus Indicative) and Linguistic context availability (the presence and absence of Subjunctive-inducing contexts in speech) are studied. Data are from sociolinguistic interviews with 142 informants, stratified with respect to immigrant generation, gender, age, socio-economic status, national origin, etc. Subjunctive rates are analyzed, at the macro-level, in nine linguistic contexts and, at the micro-level, in the four most popular contexts (Modal, Protasis Si, Temporal, and Apodosis Si). Results of bivariate Pearson correlations and Chi-square tests reveal consistent usage patterns of …

The Untapped Potential Of Ethnic Community Networks: Urban Resiliency And The Chinese Commuter Van System In New York City, Alexandra Diane Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Community resiliency begins at the local level. This explores the intersection of urban resiliency with the strength of community transit networks by evaluating the extensive Chinese immigrant inter-borough commuter van system in New York City. How should the city better empower and utilize existing immigrant transit and support networks in its strategic planning in response to disaster relief, recovery, and resiliency? More broadly, how can cities harness the realities of the 21st century - migration and climate change - and realize their potential to improve accessibility and reach in disaster relief? Better understanding the way the van system works within …

Immigration, Small Business And Assimilation: Three Stories Of Small-Time Capitalism On The Lower East Side, Marcus Hillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Small businesses in New York City have often been a catalyst to assimilation for individual immigrants, their families and their communities. For this capstone project, I have recorded conversations with three small-time entrepreneurs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and created a narrative audio piece that explores some of the important and study-worthy characteristics of New York City including economic opportunities in the city, immigration, assimilation and the ways that New Yorkers share space, just to name a few. These themes are threads that ran through all three of the conversations that I had and are crucial elements of …

Morris High School: A Biography, Naomi Sharlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morris High School was conceived and built in the Bronx with a lofty mission: to provide a comprehensive, world-class secondary education to the children of immigrant and working-class families, and in so doing to elevate the American public education system and America itself. Such a weighty mission for an institution would result, one could expect, in painstaking record keeping, the lionization of great leaders, consistent investment in the building, and attention given to problems encountered or created over the years. And yet, the life of Morris High School remains elusive. Key figures in its story are lost to obscurity like …

The Social Construction Of Protest: Print Media Coverage Of The 2004 Republican National Convention And The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Protests In New York City, Kirsten Christiansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Majoritarian democracies are founded on the idea that the governance of society will reflect the needs and desires of the majority of the people and that all citizens are given a voice. Public protest activity is one of the ways in which social movement organizations as claims-makers can reach an audience to attempt to convince a majority to effect social change. The mainstream news media can disseminate information about protest messages and activity beyond the local. However, the mainstream news media filters information in its own way, influenced in part because of traditional news routines but also potentially by the …

Opportunities And Limits For Mayoral–Public Employee Union Collaborations: The Case Of The De Blasio Administration In New York City, 2013–2017, Elizabeth C. Eisenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation sheds light on how the relations between public employees’ unions and the de Blasio administration shape the design and implementation of local policies in areas of particular concern to public workers. It asks how public sector labor-management relations and public sector employee unions’ political influence affect this mayoral administration’s efforts at policy innovation and administrative practice. In particular, how, if at all, do public employee unions shape the administration’s decisions about the balance between providing public services directly versus contracting them out to nongovernmental organizations? How do these relations affect the direction of institutional reform? This project does …

Family–School Partnerships And The Missing Voice Of Parents, Laura R. Stein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Educators, researchers, advocates, and others agree that effective family-school partnership is an important component in best supporting the academic outcomes and future success of students. However, schools and educators struggle in forming constructive partnerships with racially and economically marginalized and oppressed parents and families, particularly low-income Black parents and families. This compromises support for low-income Black students that are already served in underfunded and under-resourced schools compared to their White middleclass counterparts. Further, this phenomenon exacerbates a widely understood academic achievement gap between low-income Black students and White middleclass students. In seeking to unearth and better understand effective strategies and …

Deconstructing City Hall Park: The Development And Archaeology Of The Common, Alyssa Loorya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

City Hall Park in lower Manhattan, once known as The Common, has a long history of public use dating as far back as the Dutch in the seventeenth century. As the site has been continually occupied for almost 400 years, it is an integral part of New York City’s only recognized Archaeological District. Over half a million artifacts, numerous structural features, and human burials have been recovered and documented on archaeological projects since the 1980s.

While archaeological work at City Hall Park has been undertaken multiple times by multiple archaeologists, all have been instigated by construction projects. As a result, …

Who Influences Your Outcomes? The Effect Of Culture And Ethnic Origin, Neighborhood And Peers On Personal Income: A Spatial Econometric Analysis Of New York City, Anna Arakelyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Being a “social animal”, each person is inherently embedded into a complex structure of social relations. He has role models to aspire to, conformity rules to follow, and expectations to meet. This paper explores the different social influences each person experiences in life. Specifically, I consider how a person’s ethnic community, age reference group, occupational and industry group peers, and residential area neighbors affect his total income. I introduce a novel model of multiple social networks and discuss various identification implications. I apply the model empirically to New York City, which naturally is a very favorable environment to test for …

Reflections On The Implementation Of Improved Outcomes For Children And Its Impact On The Capacity Of Child Welfare Workers To Deliver Services, Rita Sanchez-Torres

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The emergence of the New Public Management with its emphasis on performance measurements and managerial strategies such as accountability, efficiency, and cost effectiveness have encouraged nonprofit child welfare agencies in New York City to pursue the practice of the private sector. In the current environment, service delivery has become more entrepreneurial, strategic and outcome minded on the assumption that the market-oriented approach is more effective (Watson-Bishop, 2007). This study examines the relationship between policy and service delivery. Specifically, it investigates the impact of the initiative known as Improved Outcomes for Children on child welfare supervisors in a managerial environment.

The …

“Just Get It Done”: How The New York City High School Admissions Process Is Re-Defining The Work & Identities Of Professionals In Screened High School-Programs, Heather Rippeteau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The implementation of the high school admissions process in the New York City Public schools, has re-defined the work and identities of professionals working the screened high school-programs. This study uses descriptive statistics culled from the Directory of New York City High Schools for 2007 and 2017, and interviews with school personnel from three screened school-programs, to review the impact of the implementation of this process during its first full decade in existence. These data establish the fact that screened school-programs are experiencing the phenomenon of marketization by way of their admissions process. Further, the implementation of this process generates …

Prescription Opioid Misuse: Initiation, Sources Of Supply, And The Role Of Medical Providers, Alexandra Harocopos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past 25 years, opioid analgesic misuse has increased dramatically in the U.S., with concomitant deleterious effects on health. Results from the 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that an estimated 4.3 million people aged 12 or older were current non-medical users of opioid analgesics, representing 1.6 percent of the population (SAMHSA, 2015), and unintentional drug poisoning deaths now surpass motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of injury death (CDC 2014). Opioid analgesics are produced in the U.S. within a system of tight control and any entity or person manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, or dispensing …