Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mapping Access To Fresh Produce, Fish And Shellfish At A Local Level Using A Mixed - Method Community Food Assessment Approach: A Case Study - St. Helena Island, South Carolina, Pedro-Miguel Soto

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This report is a summary of a community food assessment (CFA) conducted over the course of five field survey trips to St. Helena Island, South Carolina, from December 2011 to July 2013. The goal of this CFA was to understand community characteristics related to the distribution and consumption of fresh produce, fish and shellfish. The method used for this CFA is composed of three parts, (1) spatial analysis using Geographic Information System (GIS) data (2) a community food assessment survey focused on where residents obtain their food and (3) ethnographic interviews with local growers, subsistence farmers and consumers. Applying this …

Reemergence Of The 21st Century Massachusetts Gateway City: The Role Of Commuter Rail Connectivity In Improving Employment Opportunity And Access, John A. Rosa

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The South Coast Rail is a proposed transit infrastructure upgrade project that is intended to provide affordable Commuter Rail connectivity from Boston, Massachusetts to the South Coast Region communities of Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton. State and regional policy makers have debated the practicality of this project over the last 25 years while the estimated project cost reached $2.2 billion in 2013. The most fundamental benefit of this proposed project is improved economic stability in the South Coast Region in the form of increased access to employment opportunities, local industrial development, and expanded municipal tax revenue.

Increasingly, public transit …

Preserving Project-Based Section 8 Within Tight Rental Markets In New England, Megan K. Reagon

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

In New England alone, 57, 508 privately owned, affordable housing units, otherwise known as project-based Section 8, are at risk of converting to market rate housing by 2017. Even though community-based organizations and active residents, in conjunction with local governments, are utilizing federal and state preservation tools, these units are still at risk due to market pressures and administrative burdens.

With proper policy intervention, expired Section 8 contracts, and future expiring contracts, may sustain a reasonable level of affordability. This study assesses the on-going affordability of recently expired Section 8 units within New England. With a broader definition of affordability, …

Creative Placemaking: A Case Study Exploration Of How Creative Economy Strategies Can Provide Potential Opportunities For Revitalization In Downtown Chicopee, Ma, Laura Selmani

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Chicopee, a former industrial center in western Massachusetts, is experiencing a stagnant economy, high vacancy and a steady loss of population. City of Chicopee wants to increase downtown visibility and bolster its economy by attracting in the area people constituent of creative class. This research represents an attempt to identify creative strategies to develop the neglected downtown of Chicopee. After more than a century of economic blight, vacancy and declining population, the city wants to research and exploit the potential of arts and culture as means to a physical, social and economic revivification of its downtown.

A key aim of …

Umass Amherst Friends Of The Library Newsletter - Spring/Summer 2014 (No. 47), Jay Schafer

Library News for the Friends of the UMass Amherst Libraries

In this edition of the News for the Friends of the UMass Amherst Libraries, you will notice an unusually large number of new staff and staff promotions. Over the past year, the Libraries have had an accelerated rate of retirements. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the organization. It is always challenging to lose staff that have been with us for many years. Their institutional memory and connection to the campus community is priceless and something that cannot easily be replaced.

UMass Amherst Libraries and all research libraries (as I have mentioned so many times before) are …

An Implementation Study Of A Business Improvement District For Davis Square In Somerville, Massachusetts, Alexander Casey Mello

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

The purpose of this Master's project is to research how a business improvement district (BID) could be implemented in the Davis Square commercial district of Somerville, Massachusetts. An assessment of Davis Square has been conducted through a collaborative effort between planning staff in Somerville's Mayor's Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (OSPCD) and neighborhood stakeholders to identify key issues in the area. This project uses case study examples to understand the types of improvements and services that BIDs in neighborhoods similar to Davis Square provide. Furthermore, case study examples provide information regarding assessment methods and services provided by pertinent …

A Gis Multi-Criteria Evaluation For Identifying Priority Industrial Land In Five Connecticut Cities, Mark Berube

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Rising land values, environmental regulations, lack of investment, and a declining industrial economy greatly threaten the existence of industrial land. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to establish where priority industrial districts are located within five Connecticut cities through the implementation of a GIS weighted multi-criteria evaluation. This tool applies various constraints and factors critical to industrial location and business investment. In addition to identifying suitable industrial districts, a tax base analysis assesses the overall value of industrial land within each community and an employment outlook measures future job growth for Connecticut Workforce Investment Areas. The overall goal of …

Preserving The New England Mill Town: Encouraging Adaptive Re-Use By Identifying Community Factors That Contribute To Success In Mill Revitalization Districts, Sarah A. Spencer

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

Mill Revitalization Districts have the ability to generate new vitality in some of the nation's oldest communities. When efficacious, these districts promote economic development, community beautification, and environmental health. However, when attempts at redevelopment fail they leave ugly scars in the form of decaying buildings and underutilized resources. Monetary investment and intent to improve a community are two factors that by themselves, will not preserve a mill complex or benefit a city. The first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized districts in the early 2000s showed signs of varying success; there was a missing catalyst besides monetary investment. In fact, it …

U.S. Lethal Drone Policy In The Execution Of The Global War On Terrorism: The Case For Reforming The Tactics, Techniques, And Procedures For The Tactical Application Of Lethal Drone Strikes, Gordon E. Adams

School of Public Policy Capstones

Over the past decade-and-a-half of continuous warfare by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Africa, lethal drone strikes have assumed a critical role in the expeditious, time-sensitive environments which U.S. military personnel and private security contactors find themselves operating in. Contentious since their inception, lethal drone strikes, as a tool of war and as a center-piece of U.S. counterinsurgency tactics, require significant policy changes in the form of increasing transparency for legislatures. Equally important, lethal drone strikes also require tactical revision in their application in order to effectively apply the methods of counter insurgency, nation-building, and relationship-development …

Improving Flexibility To Increase Housing Affordability, Russell L. Pandres

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper utilizes Census Bureau and USPS-HUD data sets to examine the relationship between address vacancy and percent of residents who are housing cost burden at the Census Tract level. This research determines there is a statistically significant positive linear relationship for four of the six New England States. Additionally, I examine spatial autocorrelation patterns among the residuals to determine if error term is clustered, dispersed, or random. Finally, I compare my results to how building codes disincentive rehabilitating buildings and incentivize greenfield development. I offer a number of policy suggestions to assist at the local, state, and Federal level …

Environmental Highest Courts’ Decisions: Investigating The Factors That Influence Mining And Oil Cases In Ecuador, Nathalí Costa Unda

School of Public Policy Capstones

The present research is meant to find out some of the factors that influence the Ecuadorian Highest Courts decisions in environmental cases. For answering my research question I analyzed these decisions, from 1998 to 2014, which constitutes the whole population of the decisions in environmental cases. For the Capstone, I focused in oil and mining cases. The research required three steps. First was to collect data from the corps of decisions in the national Court cases. Second, was to design a database: create variables and a codebook to organize them. Third, was to develop an analysis model using this data …

From Battery Cages To Barns: A Cost-Benefit Analysis Of A National Standard For Cage-Free Egg Production, Jonathan Ward

School of Public Policy Capstones

Legislation concerning the well being of farm animals has become a major focus in the animal rights movement, especially as it pertains to intensive confinement systems, such as housing egg-laying hens in battery cages. Informational asymmetries in the market for eggs represent a market failure, as producers have few incentives to inform consumers on modern egg production methods, which they may perceive as cruel. This study uses cost-benefit analysis to examine the effects of a hypothetical U.S. ban on caged egg production to assess whether such a standard would produce use and non-use benefits in excess of producer and consumer …

Through The Camera Lens Of Development: An Exploration Of Ngos' Representations Of Africa, Sebastian Lindstrom

Master's Capstone Projects

The purpose if this qualitative research is to acquire new knowledge in the African visual representational landscape, a digital space carefully filmed and edited by some of the most celebrated and acknowledged, mostly Western, NGOs in the world. The most watched Africa-related video from 50 NGOs were selected, downloaded and analyzed. After continuous re-watching of a 3.5 hour long set of visual data tree themes emerged. One segment relates around the NGOs intervention, another about the term or statement ‘help’, and the last theme is HIV/AIDS. The findings include the realization that the beneficiary was never explaining the intervention of …

Negotiating Invisibility: Addressing Lgbt Prejudice In China, Hong Kong, And Thailand, Hunter Gray

Master's Capstone Projects

This research serves as a consolidation of information regarding the global response to LGBT prejudice, and in particular, the response of organizations situated in China, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Interviews with activists and researchers from organizations that address LGBT prejudice served as the main form of data. Findings and subsequent analysis point to the ways in which organizations respond to the lack of visibility of the LGBT community, and how this invisibility is related to various manifestations of LGBT prejudice. Strategies that organizations have developed to respond to LGBT prejudice reveal how organizations negotiate contextual variables in their attempts to …

Through A Critical Sociocultural Lens: Parents’ Perspectives Of An Early Childhood Program In Guatemala, Yaëlle Stempfelet

Master's Capstone Projects

The present case study is on an Early Childhood program in Guatemala based on participant parents’ feedback. The Early Childhood program is non-formal, focuses on emergent literacy and nutrition, and takes place in a community-run library in a poor, semi-rural town in the mountainous regions of Quiche, Guatemala. The library was set up by a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that works in Guatemala as well as another neighboring country.

Using a critical sociocultural lens, this study assumes that the parents’ perceptions reflect the state of the program and that involving their feedback through this research will ultimately help to bolster the …

Ingos In The Mirror: Critical Reflections Of Practitioners Implementing Psychosocial Support Programs, Stephen M. Richardson

Master's Capstone Projects

The purpose of this qualitative research is to learn from the professional wisdom of practitioners involved in implementing school-based psychosocial support in conflict-affected contexts. Practitioners from four different International Non-governmental Organizations (INGO) working in three different contexts—the Congo Basin region, the South Asia region, and the Sudan region—reflect on the concepts and realities of the psychosocial support models that their organizations use. A common theme emerging from these interviews is that the approach to psychosocial support has the potential to do harm. The practitioners provide real examples of the ways in which harm may occur and their possible causes. These …

Strategic Authenticity And Voice: New Ways Of Seeing And Being Seen As Young Mothers Through Digital Storytelling, Aline C. Gubrium, Elizabeth L. Krause, Kasey Jernigan

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

This paper presents the Ford Foundation-funded Hear Our Stories: Diasporic Youth for Sexual Rights and Justice project, which explores the subjective experience of structural violence and the ways young parenting Latinas embody and respond to these experiences. We prioritize uprooted young parenting Latinas, whose material conditions and cultural worlds have placed them in tenuous positions, both socially constructed and experientially embodied. Existing programs and policies focused on these women fail to use relevant local knowledge and rarely involve them in messaging efforts. This paper offers a practical road map for rendering relevant and modifying notions of voice as a form …

Plus Ça Change: From Postprocessualism To “Big Data”, Elizabeth S. Chilton

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Subjective And Objective Hierarchies And Their Relations To Psychological Well-Being: A U.S./Japan Comparison, Katherine B. Curhan, Cynthia S. Levine, Hazel Rose Markus, Jiyoung Park, Mayumi Karasawa, Gayle D. Love, Christopher L. Coe, Yuri Miyamoto, Carol D. Ryff

Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty Publication Series

Hierarchy can be conceptualized as objective social status (e.g., education level) or subjective social status (i.e., one's own judgment of one's status). Both forms predict well-being. This is the first investigation of the relative strength of these hierarchy-well-being relationships in the U.S. and Japan, cultural contexts with different normative ideas about how social status is understood and conferred. In probability samples of Japanese (N=1027) and U.S. (N=1805) adults, subjective social status more strongly predicted life satisfaction, positive affect, sense of purpose, and self acceptance in the U.S. than in Japan. In contrast, objective social status more strongly predicted life satisfaction, …

Patterns In Trash: Factors That Drive Municipal Solid Waste Recycling, Jared Starr

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Municipal recycling is driven by a variety of factors. Yet how these factors change over time is not well understood. I analyze a suite of contextual and program variable in multiple time periods, spanning 16 years, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Based on the models run, I reach the surprising conclusion that most program variables have an insignificant effect on recycling rates. These findings can inform municipal officials and waste managers as they seek new ways to increase municipal recycling participation.

"You Were Adopted?!": An Exploratory Analysis Of Microaggressions Experienced By Adolescent Adopted Individuals, Karin J. Garber

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Sue et al. (2007, p. 271) define a microaggression as: “Brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative…slights and insults towards [the marginalized group].” Microaggressions have not been used to analyze the experiences of adoptees in a bionormative society. A total of 156 interviews (males=75, females=81) and questionnaires of White adolescent adoptees in same-race families were analyzed using a mixed methods design. Study 1 used thematic analysis to discover 16 themes of microaggressions. Study 2 used the microaggression as the unit of analysis in chi squares to determine if …

Perceived Norms And Classroom Ethnic Composition, Thomas Christopher O'Brien

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Students’ perceptions of normative support for positive intergroup relations from teachers and school staff have been linked to a number of positive intergroup outcomes (Green, Adams, & Turner, 1988; Jugert, Noack, & Rutland, 2011). Additional studies testing the effects of ethnic proportions in classrooms show evidence for positive and negative intergroup outcomes between ethnic majority and ethnic minority students (e.g., Durkin et al., 2011; Vervoort, Scholte, & Scheepers, 2011). Still, research has yet to test simultaneously the effects of ethnic proportions in a classroom in conjunction with students’ subjective perceptions of normative support for positive intergroup relations. With a sample …

The Definite Article System In L1-English L2-Spanish Learners, Diego Ardura

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Previous studies on the acquisition of definite plurals in Child and Second Language Acquisition have found strong evidence on how transfer can affect the L2-acquisition of articles. Nevertheless, these studies presented some limitations. First, they failed to consider other variables that could interfere with transfer in the acquisition of the article system. And second, the methodology used to test the participants’ implicit knowledge of article system was very similar in all studies (Truth-Value Judgment Task). In order to fill these two gaps in the literature, the present study uses a listening comprehension task to test how the mass/count distinction …

Predicting Social Behavior By Sound & Surface Appearance In Infancy, Ashley Lyons

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Our naïve theory of social behavior assumes that the positive and negative actions of others are caused by some underlying social disposition. Furthermore, adults automatically infer such traits in advance based upon whatever observable, even superficial, properties are available (e.g., how someone looks or sounds). The goal of the current study is to explore the developmental origins of this bias. We tested whether 12-month-old infants automatically infer a character’s social disposition (i.e., whether they ‘help’ or ‘hinder’ another character’s goal) based upon the superficial properties they display. Infants were habituated to two characters that possessed surface properties that were rated …

University Libraries Annual Report 2014, Jay Schafer

University Libraries Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Umass Amherst Friends Of The Library Newsletter - Fall/Winter 2014 (No. 48), Jay Schafer

Library News for the Friends of the UMass Amherst Libraries

The Libraries recently celebrated the seventh annual Open Access Week. This global event is an opportunity for the academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of open access – the free, immediate, online access to the peer-reviewed results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results.

This year Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, was the Library’s keynote speaker. Author of the book, Open Access, published by MIT Press in 2012 and now available openly online, Dr. Suber …

A Profile Of Advanced Manufacturing In The Cape And Islands Region: Key Industry And Occupational Trends, Henry C. Renski, Ryan Wallace

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

This report provides a detailed examination of Advanced Manufacturing in the Cape and Islands region. This report is part of an eight-part series, each focusing on different areas of the Commonwealth. It examines recent employment and earnings trends; analyzes key occupations in Advanced Manufacturing’s sub-sectors, looking for common labor needs and comparing wages to similar workers in other industries; identifies the most common and critical skills needed by employers; and offers a detailed demographic profile of Advanced Manufacturing to highlight areas of critical concern for the future health of the industry.

The Advanced Manufacturing sector has an almost negligible presence …

A Profile Of Advanced Manufacturing In The Central Region: Key Industry And Occupational Trends, Henry C. Renski, Ryan Wallace

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

This report provides a detailed examination of Advanced Manufacturing in the Central region. This report is part of an eight-part series, each focusing on different areas of the Commonwealth. It examines recent employment and earnings trends; analyzes key occupations in Advanced Manufacturing’s subsectors, looking for common labor needs and comparing wages to similar workers in other industries; identifies the most common and critical skills needed by employers; and offers a detailed demographic profile of Advanced Manufacturing to highlight areas of critical concern for the future health of the industry.

Advanced Manufacturing is a particularly vital component of the Central region’s …

A Profile Of Advanced Manufacturing In The Northeast Region: Key Industry And Occupational Trends, Henry C. Renski, Ryan Wallace

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

This report provides a detailed examination of Advanced Manufacturing in the Northeast region. This re-port is part of an eight-part series, each focusing on different areas of the Commonwealth. It examines re-cent employment and earnings trends; analyzes key occupations in Advanced Manufacturing’s subsectors, looking for common labor needs and comparing wages to similar workers in other industries; identifies the most common and critical skills needed by employers; and offers a detailed demographic profile of Advanced Manufacturing to highlight areas of critical concern for the future health of the industry.

More people in the Northeast work in Advanced Manufacturing than in …

A Profile Of Advanced Manufacturing In The Boston/Metrowest Region:Key Industry And Occupational Trends, Henry C. Renski, Ryan Wallace

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

This report provides a detailed examination of Advanced Manufacturing in the Boston/MetroWest region. It is part of an eight-part series, each focusing on different areas of the Commonwealth. It examines recent employment and earnings trends; analyzes key occupations in Advanced Manufacturing’s subsectors, looking for common labor needs and comparing wages to similar workers in other industries; identifies the most common and critical skills needed by employers; and offers a detailed demographic profile of Advanced Manufacturing to highlight areas of critical concern for the future health of the industry.

With nearly 50,000 workers and over 1,000 businesses, the Boston/MetroWest region’s Advanced …