Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Enacting “Technology” And Everything Else: Gendered Practices And The System Of Crop Intensification, Natasha Susan Koshy

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is a qualitative examination of the functioning of a rural

development project in a Himalayan region of India, with a special focus on a

particular project activity centred around an agro-ecological method of crop

production, the System of Crop Intensification (SCI). Environmental changes and

disasters along with rapid transformations in the rural economy in Uttarakhand has

engendered a renewed interest in non-mainstream farming practices. However, the

success and/or failure rates of adoption of new agricultural methods and technologies

remains a poorly understood phenomenon. Studies of adoption rates tend to focus on

the aspects of the technology itself, rather …

The Preemptive Paradox: The Rise Of Great Powers & Management Of The International System, Jeffrey Treistman

Dissertations - ALL

Since the beginning of the modern state system only a few select nations have achieved great power status. But what can account for their rise? The presence of existing great powers would suggest that aspiring states should encounter formidable obstacles that would render their success implausible. In some cases extant great powers sought to counter the rise of a new peer, but the historical record also reveals that incumbents sometimes did not contest the rise of potential competitors. Thus, great powers have pursued two divergent strategies: contestation and nonintervention. How then do great powers decide on which policy to implement? …

Father Involvement Among Asian-Indian Immigrants In The United States: Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, Dimple P. Vadgama

Dissertations - ALL

Parenting is codependent and nested within a familial and cultural structure. While parenting research consistently demonstrates more maternal involvement with children, often fathers’ involvement gets little or no attention. One of the major limitations of fathering research is single source data, often comprised of only mothers’ reports of fathers’ involvement. The purpose of this study was to address this gap by examining the nested nature and interdependence of immigrant parents’ marital adjustment, parenting self-efficacy, and beliefs about parental role and, fathers’ involvement. Actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was applied to examine the actor (intrapersonal or spillover) and partner (interpersonal or crossover) …

Collaboration And Conflict In Transnationally-Dispersed Zimbabwean Families, William John Suk

Dissertations - ALL

Approximately one quarter of Zimbabwean adults left their country of birth during the past twenty years. These sojourners are increasingly dispersed as tightening immigration regimes in preferred destinations and fluctuating global opportunities lead them to places with fewer historical links to Zimbabwe. This dispersive process fractures many families between multiple international locations. Nevertheless, the idea of family remains centrally important to diasporans, who work with relatives around the world to care for children and elders, to acquire important documents like passports, and to prepare for an eventual return home. Following from performative and relational theorizations of kinship, this dissertation argues …

Readers’ Perceptions Of Newsworthiness And Bias As Factors In Participation With Digital News Content, Gregory James Munno

Dissertations - ALL

Audience participation with digital news content has become a central feature of news consumption. These participatory news behaviors – commenting on, sharing, and “liking” news stories – have implications for both newsreaders and producers of news. This dissertation tests a structural model of commenting behavior using survey data (N = 335). The model builds on suggestions of a connection between hostile-media effects and commenting. This study adds newsworthiness to the structural equation, hypothesizing that newsworthiness increases readers’ perceptions that an article will influence other readers. These relationships should increase hostile-media effects, and, therefore, a reader’s likelihood of commenting. The model …

The Ageing Of The Archives: Community, Conflict, And Queer Potential At The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Rebekah Orr

Dissertations - ALL

The Lesbian Herstory Archives is the oldest and largest lesbian archives in the

world. This dissertation project examines the role of this community archive in

building, defining, redefining, and sustaining community over time. More

specifically, this dissertation seeks to explore the relationship between queer

archives and community through the following research questions:

1. How does the act of archiving produce community?

2. How does a community archive and project of collective memory, rooted

in a specific identity, respond to a radically shifting socio-political

climate?

3. In what ways does the deployment of community produce boundaries of

inclusion and exclusion?

Drawing …

The Effects Of Gross-Motor Fluency Training On Physical Activity Levels In Young Children, Allison Jayne Womack

Dissertations - ALL

Engaging in regular physical activity is one of the most important factors related to good health. Encouraging and promoting physical activity in young children aids in preventing overweight and obesity, promoting health, preventing disease, and supporting bone and overall growth development. However, physical activity levels in young children are low, and efficient and effective interventions to increase physical activity in young children are unclear. One creative method to increase physical activity in young children is gross-motor fluency training. A multielement single-case experimental design was employed to assess the effects of fluency training in six gross-motor skills on children’s levels of …

Generalization Programming And Performance Feedback: A Writing Intervention With Third-Grade Students, Rigby Dawn Malandrino

Dissertations - ALL

Despite the importance of explicitly programming generalization in the context of intervention studies (Stokes & Osnes, 1989), the research base is limited, especially with respect to academic interventions. Given that writing is a particular area of concern in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012), this is an important area to target. As such, the purpose of this study was to examine the benefit of incorporating explicit generalization programming tactics into a performance feedback intervention that has received support for increasing students’ writing fluency (Hier & Eckert, 2014). Toward this aim, 52 third-grade students were randomly assigned to …

“In Our Own Words”: The Phenomenological Exploration Into The African American Experience Of Relational Therapy With White Therapists, Melody Michele Brown

Dissertations - ALL

The consideration of one’s cultural context is a critical component of systemic therapy. Marriage and family therapy literature underscores this importance with a wealth of information on working with various diverse family systems. The literature has not adequately reflected the voices of the African American client. The purpose of this study was to understand the African American experience in relational therapy with White clinicians. Phenomenological methodology was employed via semi-structured interviews with eleven participants across the United States. The findings revealed three themes (lived experiences of African Americans, lack of culturally responsive clinical practice, and what works in therapy). The …

Limits Of Liberation: Youth And Politics In Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement, Melinda Gurr

Dissertations - ALL

This thesis examines the forces that strengthen and weaken young people’s involvement in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, the MST, during the twilight of the PT years, 2012-2014. The MST responds to displacement, environmental devastation, and capital- intensive development by fighting for land reform and socialist transformation. Although the MST’s politics of redistribution have attracted significant attention from activists and academics worldwide, little ethnographic attention had yet been paid to the experiences and subjectivities of rural youth affiliated with the movement. By attending to structural conditions, dynamics of family, sexuality, and gender, and political socialization in three regions of Brazil, …

The Effects Of Isolation, Encoding Strength And Feature Distinctiveness On Recognition And Categorization, Osung Seo

Theses - ALL

Previous research has shown that in recognition tasks, a distinctive feature can increase hit rates and decrease false alarm rates associated with an isolated item in a similarity space. However, this is inconsistent with the prediction of the global activation models, such as the Generalized Context Model. Since it is generally assumed that recognition and categorization operate under the same similarity-based generalization mechanism, a distinctive feature should also affect categorization judgments in a similar manner. However, the effects of feature distinctiveness on categorization has yet to be explored. For this reason, the present paper investigates the effects of feature distinctiveness …

Coast Guard Public Affairs Middle Management And The Excellence Study, Stephen Bailey Lehmann

Theses - ALL

As is the nature of any organization, the U.S. Coast Guard is constantly seeking to improve its functions, operations, policies and procedures. In terms of communications, the service’s Public Affairs Program has instituted a number of different competencies and qualifications to better prepare candidates as they approach the next rank. This study sought to provide an outline of the middle-management component as it exists within the public affairs element and compare the findings to those published in the Excellence Study to assist the service by providing a basis from which additional policy recommendations could be made.

The study was conducted …

Mammy Representations In The 21st Century, Ayondela Mcdole

Theses - ALL

This thesis examines the signification of the mammy stereotype in the 21st century. The performances of Martin Lawrence, Tyler Perry and Eddie Murphy’s as mammies in drag are the selected texts for the project. By presenting the many mammy representations over the past 150 years, I outline the ways in which the mammy stereotype dehumanizes black women and hinders the Pan African agenda. Through the commodification of the mammy stereotype it has been de-historicized and thus separated from its beginnings as a part of the white supremacist imagination. Discourse analysis is used to analyze its meaning and signification while black …

Concordance And Discordance: Cognitive And Neuropsychological Performance Of Twins With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Elizabeth P. Mckernan

Theses - ALL

This study sought to examine the cognitive and neuropsychological performance of monozygotic twin pairs who vary in concordance for ASD. The study used secondary data collected from a larger pilot study, resulting in a final sample of 28 children, all of whom were monozygotic twins (IQ range: 36 – 109). First, the study sought to determine whether pairwise concordance for ASD among monozygotic twins has changed with the use of new diagnostic criteria. McNemar tests found that pairwise concordance rates were not significantly different across DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, but were significantly greater with the use of either parent …

Pack-Years Of Tobacco Cigarette Smoking As A Predictor Of Spontaneous Pain Reporting And Experimental Pain Reactivity, Martin Joseph De Vita

Theses - ALL

The pack-years formula is a widely used estimate of lifetime tobacco smoking exposure, and greater pack-years have been associated with greater risk of chronic pain development and poorer pain-related outcomes among smokers with chronic pain. The pathophysiology underlying these associations is poorly understood. Regular tobacco smoking exposure may dysregulate homeostatic pain processes, producing an allostatic state of pain facilitation. Maladaptive pain mechanisms, such as central and peripheral sensitization, are chronic pain risk factors. Yet, no published research has involved a determination of the relation between lifetime-smoking exposure and dysregulated pain processing. The current study used hierarchical linear regression analyses to …

Cover, Copy, Compare And Performance Feedback: An Integrative Writing Intervention, Natalie Williams

Theses - ALL

A large proportion of students in the United States are performing below the proficient level in writing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012) and a key component in enhancing writing quality is proficient spelling skills (Berninger, 1999). Unfortunately, explicit and developmentally-appropriate spelling instruction is neglected in elementary school classrooms. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the combination of two empirically-based interventions on third-grade students’ spelling and writing performance. A total of 54 third- grade students were randomly assigned to either (a) Cover, Copy, Compare + performance feedback condition, or (b) performance feedback only condition. Results of the …

Whiteness Interrupted: Examining The Impact Of Racialized Space On White Racial Identity, Marcus Bell

Dissertations - ALL

What does it mean to be white? This fundamental question stands at the heart of the interdisciplinary field of critical whiteness studies. Critical whiteness studies (CWS) epistemologically and theoretically upends traditional approaches to the study of race and racial inequality by averting the critical gaze from racially subordinate groups and focusing it upon the racially dominant group. Although insightful and highly influential, CWS has not sufficiently incorporated racialized space as a theoretically meaningful concept. Far too often, critical whiteness scholars speak of racial categories and racial experiences in board, spatially generalized terms. My dissertation moves beyond the general question of …

Improving The Longitudinal Assessment Of Adhd In Pediatrically And Psychiatrically Referred Samples, Jun He

Dissertations - ALL

The assessment and diagnostic process for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is beset with complications relating to the subjectivity of symptom reporting, the nonspecific and dimensional nature of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity, the high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities, and the shifting expression of symptoms and impairment due to developmental changes from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. Actual diagnostic practices may also differ from recommended best practices. These challenges have led to the proliferation of several clinical guidelines, many of which recommend various diagnostic practices and assessment instruments. Nonetheless, relatively little is presently known about the diagnostic efficiency of these various instruments used …

Contentious Politics In The Arab Middle East: Jordanian Salafism And The Social Appropriation Of Tradition, Massimo Ramaioli

Dissertations - ALL

In which ways do intellectuals affect social and political mobilization? How do they impact the trajectory of contention – the kind of mobilization and its developments - through their ideological work? Prominent intellectuals seem to play a relevant role in contentious politics, yet this role is still undertheorized. In this project, I analyze this question in the context of contemporary Arab Salafism, a particularly literal interpretation of Sunni Islam. I seek to unpack the processes by which prominent Islamist intellectuals impact and shape two Salafi currents originating and operating across Jordan during the 1990s and beyond. The first current is …

African American Parent-Teen Communication Regarding Dating, Sex, And Risk Of Stis, Deborah T. Ellerbe

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if, when and how African American parents discussed health issues and sexual risks with their teenagers. Interviews were conducted with thirty African American families connected to the South Side of Syracuse. The participants had connection to the South Side of Syracuse through either residency, employment, or church membership. I explore the context in which these conversations take place. When it came to teenage sexual relationships, discussions included other influences in the teenagers’ lives, as well as, how the information received outside of the home compared to what they were hearing from …

"I Am Not A Hijra": Transgender Women Claiming Citizenship In South India, Liz Mount

Dissertations - ALL

Through an 18-month ethnographic study conducted with hijras (gender non-conforming people assigned male at birth), newly emerging transwomen, and Dosti, a large NGO in Bangalore, India, this dissertation argues that transgender women claim citizenship by drawing distinct borders between themselves and hijras and positioning hijras as undeserving of the rights of citizenship, thus bolstering their own citizenship claims. This exploration of gender non-conforming people’s citizenship claims in the global South responds to a call for queer studies scholars to consider how citizenship operates among sexual and gender variant people in global South contexts (Richardson 2017). While the identity rubric of …

Knowledge Requirements, Gaps And Learning Responses In Smart Grid Adoption: An Exploratory Study In U.S. Electric Utility Industry, You Zheng

Dissertations - ALL

The U.S. electric utility industry is facing a number of challenges today, including aging infrastructure, growing customer demand, CO2 emissions, and increased vulnerability to overloads and outages. Utilities are under greater regulatory, societal and consumer pressure to provide a more reliable and efficient power supply and reduce its carbon footprint. In response, utilities are investing in smart grid technologies. Despite various definitions of smart grid, it is characterized by employing a set of sophisticated sensing, processing and communicating digital technologies to enable a more observable, controllable, and automated power supply.

Yet, the adoption of smart grid technologies presents significant knowledge …

Interaction Effects Between The Cumulative Genetic Score And Psychosocial Stressor On Drinking Urge And Attentional Bias For Alcohol: A Human Laboratory Study, Jueun Kim

Dissertations - ALL

Stressful life events have been positively associated with alcohol use and misuse in young adults; however, individual differences in the association suggest the presence of moderators. Findings from observational studies suggest that the effects of stressful environments on drinking behavior may differ as a function of diverse single monoamine genes regulating serotonin and dopamine neurotransmission. However, research has not utilized an experimental design to examine whether the monoamine genes collectively are associated with the degree to which exposure to stressors affects alcohol endophenotypes. The current study examined whether the effects of an experimentally manipulated psychosocial stressor on drinking urge and …

The Source Of List Strength Effect Within The Retrieving Effectively From Memory Framework: The Level Of Competition, Yanxiu Chen

Theses - ALL

To study episodic memory in a laboratory, we study interference within a list of stimuli. With list strength paradigm, we study how such interference is affected by how well stimuli are encoded, and the encoding strength of other items in the list. A stimulus can be weak or strong, and it can be in a pure list, composed of all weak or all strong stimuli, or a mixed list, composed of both weak and strong stimuli. A list strength effect (LSE) refers to the interaction between stimulus strength and list type. In free recall, where the cue used at test …

Getting Out Of The Basement: Space, Performance, And The Oscillation Of Diy Punk Publics, Ryan L. Bince

Theses - ALL

This thesis takes the example of two scenes of activity—a punk house in Huntington, West Virginia and a 2016 DIY punk rock festival—to investigate the material-spatial influences that play out across the worldmaking performances of DIY Punk counterpublics as they oscillate across spaces that range from the intimate underground to the public writ large. Drawing on a mass of data including field interviews from punk house residents and fragments gathered from the festival and the internet, I render these scenes as radical activist worldmaking spaces that organize and prepare the international DIY punk community to do instrumental activist work. This …

The Impact Of Social Media On Non-Monosexuals’ Responses To Discrimination: A Co-Cultural Approach, Michele Meyer

Theses - ALL

This research examines how social media consumption habits predict non-monosexuals’ (people who are neither gay nor straight) communication with dominant groups. Using survey methodology (n=716), the study applies co-cultural theory to evaluate how they respond to discrimination. The findings of this study indicate that non-monosexuals are heavy users of social media and that it plays a significant role in their perceptions of their environment. Several variables including their field of experience, ability, and costs and rewards, can predict non-monosexuals’ communication choices and social media moderates those relationships. Overall, the sample preferred an assertive strategy and an outcome of accommodation, indicating …

“The Ripple Perceptions”: The Effects Of Viewing Lgbt-Inclusive Tv On Straight Viewers’ Inference Of Peers’ Attitudes Towards Gays And Lesbians, Yaojun Yan

Theses - ALL

Abstract

This survey study (N=856) applied the Influence of Presumed Influence (IPI) model to explore the trilateral relationships among 1) consumption of recently on-air TV shows where LGBT characters serve as recurring narrative elements, 2) attitudes, and 3) perceived attitudes towards gays and lesbians (ATLG & PATLG) among straight Americans. The results advanced the model in at least three directions: 1) instead of “peer pressure,” self attitudes are better conceptualized in as the “cause” in the pro-social context; 2) consumption of media content and interpersonal contacts, in this case, LGBT-inclusive TV and personal relationships with LGBT individuals, moderate participants’ PATLG …

The Complexities Of Coexisting: Foreign Aid Organizations And East African Governments, Lynsey Cooper

Honors Capstone Projects - All

When initiating projects, foreign aid organizations cannot simply go into another territory and begin their work. On top of the normal procedures of nongovernmental sector organizations and insitutitons, those from outside the domestic borders face additional measures. These measures are typically put in place by governments, typically on a national level. This paper explores the types of tensions and/or partnerships that may exist between foreign aid organizations and governments when crossing paths in this manner.

To narrow the scope of this broad topic, this paper focuses on developmental aid enacted by foreign aid organizations in East Africa through a case …

Saudi Arabia And Iran: Sectarianism, A Quest For Regional Hegemony, And International Alignments, Victoria Chen

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Saudi Arabia and Iran are two of the most influential countries in the Middle East. They have often clashed with each other for a number of reasons. Although Riyadh and Tehran frequently espouse their sectarian differences as an explanation and justification for their regional confrontations, sectarianism is only one variable of the complex relationship between the two countries. Therefore the main question for this research concerns the non-sectarian sources of contention between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the ways in which Saudi and Iranian leaderships frame this confrontation around sectarianism. As the first step, using constructivist framework, this paper analyzes …

Proxy Conflict Turned Civil Crisis: Understanding Syrian Political Movements To United States Foreign Policy, Katherine Barymow

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The Syrian crisis in terms of its crimes against humanity has surpassed most politicians’ wildest expectations: it seems that with every passing news cycle the west is informed of new atrocities commited against innocent Syrian civilians, in addition to violence perpetrated by Syrian Islamists themselves against westerners in ill-advised cries for help. The extent of bloodshed can be both horrifying and mystifying to the average American. How is it possible that the international community allows these crimes to proliferate and self-perpetuate in this modern day-in-age? Hearts sink with every image of a child in dire straights as a result of …