Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Case Study: Data Management In Biomedical Engineering, Glenn Gaudette, Donna Kafel

Glenn R. Gaudette

In a biomedical engineering lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, co-author Dr. Glenn R. Gaudette and his research team are investigating the effects of stem cell therapy on the regeneration of function in damaged cardiac tissue in laboratory rats. Each instance of stem cell experimentation on a rat yields hundreds of data sets that must be carefully captured, documented and securely stored so that the data will be easily accessed and retrieved for papers, reports, further research, and validation of findings, while meeting NIH guidelines for data sharing. After a brief introduction to the bioengineering field and stem cell research, this …

Thank You For Your Time! Would You Mind Donating To Our Cause? The Effect Of Gratitude On Prosocial Behavior, Matthew L. Hortt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A random assignment experiment examined the effects of three expressions of gratitude on two prosocial behaviors: volunteering and making monetary donations to charitable organizations. The results indicated that two of the expressions of gratitude had a significant opposite effect on the two prosocial behaviors. Both a verbal thank-you speech and a hand written thank-you note, resulted in a significant reduction in the amount of pledged volunteer hours, while resulting in a significant increase in the amount of pledged charitable dollars. The third expression of gratitude, a ten dollar thank-you gift card, produced no significant findings for either prosocial behavior. The …

Use Of Alternative Financial Services Among Low- And Moderate-Income Households: Findings From A Large-Scale National Household Financial Survey, Mathieu R. Despard, Dana C. Perantie, Lingzi Luo, Jane Oliphant, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Use of Alternative Financial Services Among Low- and Moderate-Income Households: Findings From a Large-Scale National Household Financial Survey

The Seed For Oklahoma Kids Child Development Account Experiment: Accounts, Assets, Earnings, And Savings, Sondra G. Beverly, Margaret M. Clancy, Jin Huang, Michael Sherraden

Center for Social Development Research

This brief presents the latest results from SEED for Oklahoma Kids, a pathbreaking randomized experiment to test the effects of automatic, universal, and progressive Child Development Accounts (CDAs) in a statewide sample. Key features of the CDA are automatic opening of a 529 account and an automatic initial $1,000 deposit. The results show that CDAs with automatic deposits invested in a 529 plan may enable children to accumulate meaningful levels of assets over time, even if their families do not contribute to the accounts. As the brief indicates, the new results also have key implications for public policy.

Do Eitc Recipients Use Their Tax Refunds To Get Ahead? Evidence From The Refund To Savings Initiative, Mathieu R. Despard, Dana C. Parantie, Jane Oliphant, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Many U.S. households lack savings for unexpected expenses and financial shocks, but tax refunds and the Earned Income Tax Credit offer opportunities to set aside resources for use in emergencies. Understanding what EITC recipients do with their tax refunds is important for guiding federal policy to promote financial stability. This brief summarizes findings on the use of tax refunds by EITC recipients in the Refund to Savings (R2S) initiative. It also examines the use of financial services for saving refunds and the financial shocks experienced by EITC recipients during the 6 months after tax filing.

The Effectiveness Of Cash Transfers As A Policy Instrument In K-16 Education, Jonathan Norman Mills

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cash transfers, defined as direct transfers of purchasing power from an institution or individual to another individual, are an increasingly popular policy instrument both abroad and in the United States. This dissertation investigates how two educational interventions utilizing cash transfers affect participating students. The first, the Louisiana Scholarship Program, is a statewide program offering publicly financed scholarships for low income students attending poorly performing public schools to attend K-12 private schools. The second program, the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship, is a state financed broad-based merit-aid scholarship for students in college within the state of Arkansas. In general, the results presented …

A Theoretical And Experimental Investigation Of Efficiency, Equity, And Uncertainty In Tournaments, Nicholas Busko

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays centered around labor incentives that arise in relative compensation contracts. Chapter 1 poses the question: if devotion to a core competence were truly optimal, why would firms do otherwise? We argue that the behavior of drifting from the core may be motivated by the competitive incentives faced by managers who seek to rise within a firm. We find competition creates an incentive for a manager to look for less correlated opportunities that pull the firm in a new direction. In a symmetric equilibrium all managers behave this way, leading to lower expected output for …

Multilingual Information Access: Practices And Perceptions Of Bi/Multilingual Academic Users, Peggy I. Nzomo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research reported in this dissertation explored linguistic determinants in online information searching, and examined to what extent bi/multilingual academic users utilize Multilingual Information Access (MLIA) tools and what impact these have on their information searching behavior.

The aim of the study was three-pronged: to provide tangible data that can support recommendations for the effective user-centered design of Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) systems; to provide a user-centered evaluation of existing MLIA tools, and to offer the basis of a framework for Library & Information Science (LIS) professionals in teaching information literacy and library skills for bi/multilingual academic users.

In the …

Opinions On Gun Control: Evidence From An Experimental Web Survey, Mallory Treece

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

While a sizable literature exists on framing, little research extends this to gun control. In this study I analyze how partisan framing influences support for gun control. Using an experimental web survey, individual level data shows that Democrats in particular respond more favorably when gun control is framed as sponsored by fellow Democrats. In contrast, controlling for partisanship, gun owners more negatively react to gun control framed as Democrat-sponsored. These findings suggest the extent of support for gun control and ways in which parties can frame the issue in their favor.

Refund To Savings 2013: Comprehensive Report On A Large-Scale Tax-Time Saving Program, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Dana C. Perantie, Blair D. Russell, Krista Comer, Samuel H. Taylor, Lingzi Luo, Clinton Key, Dan Ariely

Center for Social Development Research

Refund to Savings 2013: Comprehensive Report on a Large-Scale Tax-Time Saving Program

Lights, Camera, Emotion!: An Examination On Film Lighting And Its Impact On Audiences' Emotional Response, Jennifer Lee Poland

ETD Archive

The current study examined the impact of three film lighting styles on participants' emotional responses. The light styles - High Key, Low Key, and Available Light ́⁰₃ were selected based on Film theory. Thus, this study combines Media Effects and Film literature to empirically study the impact of structural elements of film on media audiences. An experiment was conducted manipulating three levels of lighting. The According to film theory, a film presented in high key will cause audiences to feel higher levels of uplifting emotions such as happiness, joy, or humor, a film in low key will cause more feelings …

The Choice Of Technology And Equilibrium Wage Rigidity, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

In this general equilibrium model, firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Capital and labor are the two factors of production. The existence of efficiency wages leads to unemployment. The model is able to explain some interesting observations of the labor market. First, even though there is neither long-term labor contract nor costs of wage adjustment, wage rigidity is an equilibrium phenomenon: an increase in the exogenous job separation rate, the size of the population, the cost of exerting effort, and the probability that shirking is detected will not change the equilibrium wage rate. …

Investigating The Endogeneity Of Risk Attitudes: Experimental Evidence Involving Cooperation And Competition, Erik Solli

Honors Theses

Individual decision making is at the core of microeconomics. Rarely, however, are decisions made in environments without some element of uncertainty or even in isolation. While people may differ in their inherent willingness to take on risk, their preferences could change when new information is learned or a new relationship is fostered. I designed an experiment in which participants were asked to make investment decisions involving different levels of risk. The participants completed task between these gambles which allowed me to introduce competitive and collaborative relationships. I was interested in: (1) understanding the factors that are important to explaining risk …

Status And The Demand For Visible Goods: Experimental Evidence On Conspicuous Consumption, David Clingingsmith, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

Some economists argue that consumption of publicly visible goods is driven by social status. Making a causal inference about this claim is difficult with observational data. We conduct an experiment in which we vary both whether a purchase of a physical product is publicly visible or kept private and whether the income used for purchase is linked to social status or randomly assigned. Making consumption choices visible leads to a large increase in demand when income is linked to status, but not otherwise. We investigate the characteristics that mediate this effect and estimate its impact on welfare.