Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Demographic Profile Of Accidental Drug Overdoses In 2020, Jacquelyn Reiss Phd, Amy Donley Phd, Alexandria Mcclarty Ba

Institute for Social and Behavioral Science (ISBS)

This white paper presents a demographic profile of accidental drug overdoses in Orange County, Florida for the year 2020.

Per Capita Gdp’S Potential Effect On The Percentage Of Children In Foster Care, Jenna Mcclain

Honors College Theses

Few studies have been conducted on the presence of a direct connection between per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the percentage of children in foster care in a given region. GDP is a known indicator of economic growth (Powers, 1995; Roshaniza & Selvaratnam, 2015), as is a child’s potential for foster care placement associated with a parent or family’s financial status (Bald et. al, 2022; Barth et. al, 2010). Poverty is the bridge in many of these scenarios – low GDP can be indicative of higher poverty rates, and financial hardship under poverty classification can lead to child maltreatment …

Understanding Factors Influencing Electric Vehicle Adoption: Evidence From Panel Data Analysis, Ryker Brian

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper investigates the factors influencing the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) using panel data from California. The analysis employs a panel data model with within effects to examine the relationship between EV adoption rates and various socio-economic factors. The continued analysis gives out-of-sample forecasted results for the 4 counties with the highest share of electric vehicles registered in 2021. Additionally, the paper explores the influence of supply-side issues and complementary infrastructure on EV adoption. An introduction to Hidden Markov Methods is then given as the next step in the research.

Public-Private Partnership (P3) Success: Critical Success Factors For Local Government Services And Infrastructure Delivery, Antonio M. Lopez, George M. Marakas

Engaged Management ReView

The Public-Private Partnership (P3) approach is a viable option to address the slow growth and burgeoning need to deliver infrastructure projects and services by state and local governments. This study focuses on identifying critical success factors (CSF) that influence the success of P3s for local government service and infrastructure delivery. A framework is presented for integrating relationship and project management CSFs identified from previous literature into P3s. In addition, public agency entrepreneurial orientation is introduced as a potential CSF – a focus that has been absent in previous P3 CSF literature. To empirically assess the influence of these CSFs on …

Examining Migration Flows Across Kentucky's Counties, James Brady Stein

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The state of Kentucky is home to many rural counties which experience high levels of outward migration due to their relatively unfavorable economic conditions. While migration trends nationally have begun to plateau, migration flows from county to county show a much more volatile story. This study will examine the relationship between economic opportunity and migration flow estimates in Kentucky’s counties through a multiple regression approach with the response variable being annual migration flow estimates, with multiple predictor variables showing the economic composition of the county. Variables used in this regression include annual unemployment rates, educational attainment levels, county poverty rates, …

Visualizing Diversity: Spatial Data As A Resource Enabling Extension To Better Engage Communities, Justin Krohn, Jacqueline Davis-Manigaulte, Christopher Fulcher, Jennifer Sarah Tiffany

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

Effective Extension programming relies on engaging people of all races, ethnicities, and cultures. Extension educators sometimes struggle with how best to engage communities that are not “traditional” program audiences. Centering data visualization on the strength of Black, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and other potentially marginalized communities can assist Extension’s work to engage diverse staff, program participants, and advisory board members. For example, using maps to understand what languages people speak at home strengthens the connections between Extension programs and community participants and can inform staff recruitment and advisory board composition. However, maps of aggregated areas like counties can mask socioeconomic …

Ccrpc Bicycle Count Data Analysis And Count Program Design Strategies, Gregory Rowangould, Eliana Fox, Rose O'Brien, Julia Clarke

University of Vermont Transportation Research Center

In 2017, the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission (CCRPC) completed the most recent update of the region’s Active Transportation Plan (ATP) with the goal of creating “a safe, comfortable, and connected regional network of pedestrian and bicycle routes that appeal to all ages and abilities”. Developing a “robust” bicycle count program was one of the key non-infrastructure recommendations in the ATP (CCRPC, 2017). The UVM Transportation Research Center (“TRC”) was contracted to evaluate current bicycle data collection efforts in the region, identify gaps and limitations and make recommendations on how to develop a comprehensive bicycle count program that could better …

Rurality And The Opioid Crisis In U.S. Counties : A Spatiotemporal Investigation, Feinuo Sun

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Previous studies on the opioid crisis in the United States at the subnational level rarely consider temporal and spatial dependency simultaneously. Under the theoretical framework of spatial inequality, this dissertation aims to understand how the uneven development of the opioid crisis across the rural-urban spectrum has been constructed and evolved from 2006 to 2018. Based on a new continuous measure of rurality, a spatiotemporal dataset is assembled based on the Multiple-Cause-of-Deaths File and other federal data sources, such as the U.S. Opioid Dispensing Map and the American Community Survey. The methods include geographical mapping, fixed effects modeling, and spatial panel …

Florida's Rising Tide: Income Inequality Effects By County, Alyson E. Johnson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Income inequality in Florida is higher than in many states and has been getting worse over time. Inequality has been argued as responsible for a wide-ranging array of economic and social problems, including suppression of lower- and middle-income growth, social fragmentation and separatism, urban sprawl, poor health and mental illnesses, violence, and shortened life expectancy. What explains variance in Florida county income inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient? Bivariate and multivariate weighted least square regressions are conducted for the years 2000 and 2016, and for the change between 2000 and 2016. Three variables achieve statistical significance in all three …

Exploring Tribal, County, And Municipal Cooperation In Minnesota, Mitchell Berg

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

The need for tribal, county, and municipal cooperation is ever more important now as political dysfunctionality, partisan gridlock, and federal and state devolution are pushing complex societal problems to be resolved at the local level. However, the desire for tribes and non-tribal local governments to cooperate can be limiting given the past historic indifferences and barriers to cooperation. This need to help tribes and municipalities form better relationships is what prompted Dr. James C. Collard (2006) to create a model for tribal and municipal cooperation. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to examine Dr. Collard’s model, along with the …

Exploring Tribal, County, And Municipal Cooperation In Minnesota, Mitchell Berg

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The need for tribal, county, and municipal cooperation is ever more important now as political dysfunctionality, partisan gridlock, and federal and state devolution are pushing complex societal problems to be resolved at the local level. However, the desire for tribes and non-tribal local governments to cooperate can be limiting given the past historic indifferences and barriers to cooperation. This need to help tribes and municipalities form better relationships is what prompted Dr. James C. Collard (2006) to create a model for tribal and municipal cooperation. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to examine Dr. Collard’s model, along with …

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …

Globalization And Immigration: How A Changing Demographic Landscape Influenced The 2016 Presidential Election, Jacob Rusnock

Honors Theses

The 2016 presidential election results varied significantly from many forecasts. The media proposes that the radically atypical candidacy of Donald Trump motivated pockets of the electorate to support the Republican Party more so than they had in past elections. This paper examines the following questions: Which traditional predictors of the election failed to foresee a Republican victory? If the traditional predictors were unsuccessful, can the results be explained using county level economic and demographic data? Is there evidence to support the media’s proposed explanations of the results? By utilizing the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data, this paper examines some …

The Diffusion Of Veterans Treatment Courts: An Examination Of Political, Social, And Economic Determinants At The County Level, Eric D. Button

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2008, leading U.S. counties adopted innovative treatment courts specializing in the unique needs of veterans with substance abuse and other legal issues. Since then, pro-veteran advocacy has aided in the continued diffusion of additional veterans treatment courts (VTCs), with more than 300 county and state-level VTCs currently operating in 46 states across the country. Though the lens through which veterans are viewed may be positive in the public eye, institutional support for these wayward veterans appears to vary across levels of government; therefore, while some posit the increased social utility of budget-friendly VTCs, others suggest that VTCs offer favorable …

2016 Economic Contribution Of Nonresident Travel Spending In Montana Travel Regions And Counties, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

Money spent by those traveling in Montana has an effect directly on the businesses where spending occurs, and it ripples throughout the state’s economy from there. Statewide, spending by nonresidents (averaged over two years) totaled $3.16 billion. This report details the methods and results of the economic impact analyses for each of Montana’s travel regions, as well as analyses for counties in which nonresident travelers spent approximately $50 million or more.

Geo-Nested Analysis: Mixed-Methods Research With Spatially Dependent Data, Matthew C. Ingram, Imke Harbers

Political Science Faculty Scholarship

Mixed-methods designs, especially those where cases selected for small-N analysis (SNA) are nested within a large-N analysis (LNA), have become increasingly popular. Yet, since the LNA in this approach assumes that units are independently distributed, such designs are unable to account for spatial dependence, and dependence becomes a threat to inference, rather than an issue for empirical or theoretical investigation. This is unfortunate, since research in political science has recently drawn attention to diffusion and interconnectedness more broadly. In this paper we develop a framework for mixed-methods research with spatially dependent data—a framework we label “geo-nested analysis”—where insights gleaned at …

Investigating A Modern Midwestern Crisis: The Economy And Opioid Overdose Death In Ohio, Anna M. Gagliardo

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper examines the effect of local economic factors on the amount of opioid overdose deaths across counties in Ohio. Ohio leads the nation in opioid overdose deaths. The data examined spans all 88 counties of Ohio and compares 2009 and 2013 data, relying predominantly on Ohio Department of Health and US Census American Community Survey data. Using two linear regression models, I demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between insured rates and opioid overdose deaths in 2009 as well as a significant correlation between poverty rates and opioid overdose death rates in Ohio in 2013. Additionally, I show …

2015 Economic Contribution Of Nonresident Travel Spending In Montana Travel Regions And Counties, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

Money spent by those traveling in Montana has an effect directly on the businesses where spending occurs, and it ripples throughout the state’s economy from there. Statewide, spending by nonresidents (averaged over two years) totaled $3.57 billion. This report details the methods and results of the economic impact analyses for each of Montana’s travel regions, as well as analyses for counties in which nonresident travelers spent approximately $50 million or more.

Changes In Floristic Composition In The State Forests In Worcester County (Massachusetts) Over 34 Years, Flor A. Monroe

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

ABSTRACT

CHANGES IN FOREST DIVERSITY OF STATE FOREST IN WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS, OVER 34 YEARS PERIOD

The forest in Massachusetts has changed since the earliest colonial settlement and today the floristic composition is more homogeneous. This study investigates the potential change in the floristic composition over thirty years in Worcester County State Forests. Shannon, richness and evenness indices for two periods were compared, and Jaccard index was used to analyze similarity in composition between the periods. The possible influence of severe weather events was also analyzed.

It was found Changes in the floristic composition, but the magnitude of the changes …

A Cultural Resources Survey Of The Bp-Fletcher No.1 Proposed 4.4-Acre Well Pad, 1.5-Acre Well Pad, And 2.4-Mile Pipeline Project, Within Village Greek State Park, Hardin County, Texas, Jennifer Cochran, Zachary Overfield, Abby Peyton, Allyson Walsh

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Perennial Environmental Services, LLC (Perennial), on behalf of Upstream Exploration, LLC (Upstream) conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of the BP – Fletcher No. 1 well pads and pipeline Project (Project) located east of Lumberton, Texas on the recently acquired Hancock Tract within the Village Creek State Park. The Project will include vegetation clearing, equipment staging as well as construction and installation of an approximately 4.4-acre pad site, 1.5-acre pad site, and a 3.8-kilometer- (km-) (2.4-mile- [mi-]) long 10.2-centimeter- (cm-) 4.0-inch- [in.-]) diameter pipeline. The pipeline portion of the Project will run adjacent to an unnamed road that bisects the …

Intensive Cultural Resources Survey For The Proposed North Silsbee Drainage Improvements Project, Hardin County, Texas, Jeffrey D. Owens

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon), was selected by Future Link Technologies, Inc. (Future Link), on behalf of Hardin County, to conduct a cultural resources inventory survey and assessment for the proposed North Silsbee Drainage Improvements Project in northeastern Hardin County, Texas. The proposed undertaking would involve construction of an approximately 4.2-hectare (10.5-acre) storm water detention pond and channel improvements to 2 existing drainages. “Drainage No. 1” consists of an approximately 556.4-meter- (1,825.0- foot-) long segment of Mill Creek extending from Cravens Camp Road southward along the western boundary of the Quail Hollow residential subdivision to the northern boundary of the …

Intensive Archeological Survey Of The 14.3-Acre Doughtie West Tract And Proposed Farm-To-Market Road 2978 Storm Water Detention Pond No. 4, Montgomery County, Texas, Jeffrey D. Owens

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon) was selected by Toll Brothers, Inc. (Toll Brothers) on behalf of Montgomery County Municipal Utility District No. 137 (MCMUD137) to conduct an intensive archeological inventory survey and assessment of the approximately 5.8- hectare (14.3-acre) Doughtie West tract. The Doughtie West tract is located in a forested area between Farm-to-Market Road (FM) 2978 on the west and Conroe Huffsmith Road on the east, approximately 4.8 kilometers (3.0 miles) southwest of the community of Oklahoma in southwestern Montgomery County, Texas. MCMUD137 is proposing to construct and own an approximately 3.2-hectare (8.0-acre) storm water detention pond within the …

Intensive Cultural Resources Survey For The Proposed Coon Marsh Gully Drainage Improvements Project, Hardin County, Texas, Jeffrey D. Owens

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon) was selected by Future Link Technologies, Inc. (Future Link) on behalf of Hardin County to conduct a cultural resources inventory survey and assessment of the proposed Coon Marsh Gully Drainage Improvements Project in south-central Hardin County, Texas. The proposed undertaking would involve channel improvements along an approximately 2.6-kilometer- (1.6-mile-) long segment of Coon Marsh Gully and an approximately 1.4-kilometer- (0.9-mile-) long artificial diversion channel that wind through the Pinewood Estates residential subdivision between State Highway (SH) 105 on the south and Pine Island Bayou on the north. For purposes of the cultural resources survey, it …

The Effect Of The Great Recession On Local Goverment Policy In Florida, Richard Levey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The length and depth of the Great Recession of 2008 provides an opportunity to examine the policy behavior of local governments unlike any window since the 1930's post Depression era. Utilizing Peterson's (1981) City Limits typology as a framework for local government policy allows for an evaluation of whether or not the economic downturn caused local governments to change their relative expenditures between policy categories. The City Limits typology has been widely used in the literature to explain how expenditures define a local government's role in economic development. The typology has had limited use in a pre-post natural experimental research …

Methods Used In Public Policy Decision Making By County Managers In North Carolina, Jeffrey Bryan Gowen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers have examined ways in which policy makers develop their decisions. The literature has not explored, however, the methodologies used by county managers to arrive at decisions, or whether they consider the medium- and long-term policy implications, or second and third order effects, of those decisions. The purpose of this study was to identify the methodologies and decision-making processes used by county managers in North Carolina. The theoretical framework was Lindblom's theory of incrementalism in decision making. Data for this phenomenological study were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 purposefully selected county managers, and were coded and categorized to identify …

Mississippi Juveniles Adjudicated As Adults And Held In Adult Jails: The Perspective Of The County Sheriff, Susan M. Hilal, Deborah A. Eckberg, Thomas Osowski

Contemporary Issues in Juvenile Justice

No abstract provided.

County Government Structure And Expenditure, Dovlet H. Babajanov

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This research inquired into whether government structure has any influence on expenditure. On the national sample of U.S. county governments several hypotheses were tested. To estimate the influence of structure on expenditure, a linear regression analysis was used. The findings suggest that government structure does have an impact on agencies' expenditure levels. Specifically, findings indicate that traditional Commission structure tends to spend the least, followed by Commission-mayor and the most expensive being Commission-manager.

Environmental Justice In Kentucky: A County-Level Study Of Enforcement Of The Clean Air Act, Katherine Meade

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Not available.

Data And Resources For A Whole Community Approach To Emergency Planning, Meg A. Traci Ph.D., University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

No abstract provided.

Local Government Law Enforcement Services: Relationships Between Performance And Cost In Collective And Non-Collctive Bargaining Workforces, Joseph Casey

Theses and Dissertations

High performance organizations desire to provide services in an effective and efficient manner with positive outcomes; therefore measures of performance and cost can be utilized to gauge such success. Through comparative research and analysis of local governments that have and do not have collective bargaining for law enforcement, findings and results can determine if there is any correlation between employee workforce classification (in collective or non-collective bargaining workplaces), high performance traits, costs and high performance return on costs (HPRC) for law enforcement. A HPRC composite measure was developed and utilized to compare and contrast all of the local governments to …