Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Art Of The Spearthrower: Understanding The Andean Estólica Through Iconography, Zachary R. Critchley

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Spearthrower devices held a role around the world as a primary weapon and tool before slowly falling out of favor in certain areas for other projectile weapons. While it is widely accepted that spearthrowers were used by the people of the ancient central Andes, comparatively little research has gone into the role that they had as weapons of war, hunting tools, and objects of ceremonial reverence. In addition, the Andes developed a unique style of spearthrower and have produced many examples of spearthrowers with exceptional craftsmanship, leading me to believe that these tools were given special reverence.

This thesis compiles …

Dangerous Delegation: Explaining The Rationales And Outcomes Of State Sponsorship Of Terrorism Through The Principal-Agent Framework, Jeremy M. Berkowitz

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

State sponsorship of terrorism, where a government deliberately provides resources and material support to a terrorist organization, is common in the international system. By conceptualizing state sponsorship as a relationship between a principal and agent, I develop a consistent theoretical model that explains why states pursue this foreign policy strategy, as well as how they rationally attempt to minimize the inherent risks of delegating to violent non-state actors. I test my model by using a novel dataset on sponsorship behaviors that improves on the range, detail, and temporality of previously used measurements. My dissertation is organized into three distinct papers, …

Indigenous Pottery From Sonora, Mexico: Examining Typologies And Spatial Distribution, Hunter M. Claypatch

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

A wealth of archaeological surveys and excavations has been conducted in Sonora, Mexico within the past century. Despite the establishment of Centro INAH Sonora, and numerous binational projects, little attempt has been made to synthesize the state’s growing literature. This thesis provides the first detailed study of indigenous ceramics from Sonora, Mexico. Archaeological projects within Sonora have been bifurcated by nation-state boundaries and divergent academic schooling—both possessing their own distinct research goals and methodologies. On a pragmatic level, a synthesis of prehistoric and protohistoric Sonoran pottery is necessary to establish a methodological consensus for classifications and typologies. On a broader …

Utilitarian And Community Values In Mainstream And Alternative Health Care On Martha's Vineyard, Sandra D. Polleys-Bunch

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Problems endemic to Martha’s Vineyard’s health care system and community efforts to resolve them led to the this community study on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Such problems included Martha’s Vineyard’s sole hospital and nursing home’s declarations of bankruptcy in 1996, the fluctuation of quality of Vineyard health care organization relations with the community overall, the rate of uninsured that was two times that of Massachusetts overall, the Island’s isolation from mainland medical services, and its health care service scarcities. This ethnography focuses on utilitarian values to explain difficulties that Vineyarders experienced during their efforts to obtain health care and to improve …

Psychometric Properties Of A Modified Moral Injury Questionnaire In A Military Population, Abby L. Braitman, Allison R. Battles, Michelle L. Kelley, Hannah C. Hamrick, Robert J. Cramer, Sarah Ehlke, Adrian J. Bravo

Psychology Faculty Publications

Moral injury (MI) results from perpetration of or exposure to distressing events, known as morally injurious events (MIEs), that challenge moral beliefs and values. Due to the type of involvement in recent military conflicts, many veterans report MIEs that may cause dissonance and, in turn, MI. Although 2 existing measures assess MIEs, neither currently assesses the defining characteristics of MI (i.e., guilt, shame, difficulty forgiving self and others, and withdrawal). The present study reports the initial psychometric test of a modified version (Robbins, Kelley, Hamrick, Bravo, & White, 2017) of the Moral Injury Questionnaire—Military version (MIQ-M; Currier, Holland, Drescher, & …

The Shape Of Diversity: A Morphometric Analysis Of Late Archaic Bifaces From Lamoka Lake, Samuel M. Bourcy

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The general assumption of Late Archaic peoples in the Northeast is that they were one homogeneous culture group, but through the study of Lamoka Lake bifaces found at the Lamoka Lake Site, as well as applying the concepts of community of practice, I have shown that tool shape variation could indicate distinct social groups. Using computer software to digitally outline bifaces I compared the shape of over 400 bifaces from Lamoka Lake and statistically analyzed their morphologies in order to provide material correlates of social diversity. Whether this morphological variation is representative of the conscious or unconscious design choices made …

Observed Quality And Consistency Of Fifth Graders’ Teacher–Student Interactions: Associations With Feelings, Engagement, And Performance In School, Jennifer Locasale-Crouch, Faiza Jamil, Robert C. Pianta, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Jamie Decoster

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

This study examined how overall quality and within-day consistency in fifth graders’ teacher-student interactions related to feelings about, engagement, and academic performance in school. Participants were 956 children in a national study. Students who experienced higher quality interactions reported more positive feelings about school, were more engaged, performed better in math and reading, and had more closeness and less conflict with teachers. Independent of overall interaction quality, students who experienced less consistency in their interactions with teachers, whether it was with the same teacher or across teachers, were less engaged and had more teacher-reported conflict. Findings emphasize the separate contributions …

The Smuggler Journals: Transgressing And Policing The Border In The Rio Grande Valley, Lupe Alberto Flores

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis summarizes recent human smuggling scholarship and provides ethnographic insights into migrant smuggling in a border zone that is my home. Through exploring my own experiences and observations of smuggling and militarized border policing, and those of other interlocutors in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, I advance nuanced understandings of the symbiotic processes of irregular migration and of the people who brokerage a great deal of these journeys across militarized borders. I analyze fieldnotes that highlight the quotidian realms in which gender and power play out when irregular migration takes place and argue that acts of border …

Does A Criminal Justice Degree Produce Law Enforcement Officers?, Bryan Keith Murray

Theses and Dissertations

Police departments are being asked to diversify their ranks in a job field dominated by White males. Hispanics are predicted to be the majority-minority by 2043, few studies were conducted to explore whether Hispanic students majoring in criminal justice will pursue a career in law enforcement agencies upon graduation. Therefore, it is necessary and important to investigate the willingness of Hispanic students perusing a career in law enforcement agencies and what kind of factors behind this pursuit. This research anonymously surveyed 203 students currently enrolled in a four-year Hispanic university. Gender and the liberalizing effect served as the independent variables. …

The Lived Experiences Of Counseling Graduate Students And The Impact Of Their Studies In Their Marital Satisfaction, Vania S. Palacios

Theses and Dissertations

Due to high levels of stress that students find throughout graduate programs, professional and personal lives are at times not prioritized. The heuristic study focused on analyzing common themes among counseling graduate students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, the coping mechanisms students have used to improve their marital/relational satisfaction, and common stressors in their marriage as a reflection of the counseling graduate program. The researcher provided a personal narrative for the study and analyzed transcriptions of the interviews of four counseling graduate students at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Understanding The Effects Of Regulatory Focus On Proactive Behavior, Brian P. Waterwall

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decade, motivation research has focused on what motivates employees to engage in behaviors that fall outside of ones' job/task requirements and bring about meaningful change in the organization's environment, proactive behaviors (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000). Recently, regulatory focus theory has received considerable research attention because of its potential to explain additional variance in behavior beyond other motivational constructs. Regulatory focus theory suggests that during goal striving, people will display behaviors associated with their current motivational state. Drawing from prior research examining motivation and behavior, I propose and test a model that examines the effects of …

Questions Of Ethical Responsibility In The Research Of Unaccompanied Minors, Oonagh Charleton, Dr. Celesta Mccann James

The ITB Journal

This paper presents a general discussion on ethical considerations in qualitative research in the applied social sciences. It reflects on the ethical dilemmas posed to this researcher prior to initiating a field-work process and during the methodological structuring process. The intention is to promote discussion on issues of ethics when researching new types of service user groups with attention to the value of ethics committees.

Phoenix Ink: Psychodynamic Motivations For Tattoo Attainment By Survivors Of Trauma, December Renee Maxwell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tattoos adorn people from all over the world and date back as far as the Stone Age. Tattoos adorn people from all over the world and motivations for tattoo attainment have been studied recently. Still, there remains limited research on the potential therapeutic properties of tattoo attainment, particularly for survivors of sexual trauma. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experience of the tattoo process for survivors of sexual trauma and their motivations for tattoo attainment. This qualitative exploratory study interviewed both survivors of sexual trauma (N=10) and tattoo artists (N=7) to gain a wider perspective on the …

White Power In Context: The Structural Correlates Of White Power Support Events In The United States, 2012-2015, Drew Cormac Medaris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Much of the prior research on white power groups focuses on very rare outcomes – criminal events, especially violent ones – without as much attention devoted to the more common or fundamental activities that often work to start the mobilization process for ethnocentric groups and the individuals associated with them. Broadly, the goal of the current study is to fill this gap in knowledge by integrating prominent criminological theories and themes drawn from the Social movement literature in order to explore the geographic distribution and macro-level correlates of ideologically-motivated white power movement activities. Specifically, I implement content analysis techniques of …

Remote Sensing Insights Into Storage Capacities Among Plains Village Horticulturalists, Adam Wiewel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maize was a fundamental component of the diet and economy of Middle Missouri Plains Village groups, sedentary farmers with settlements along the Missouri River during the last millennia. More than a century of study has contributed to our understanding of agricultural production among these peoples, but little effort has been made to consider temporal variation in production. Such an understanding is crucial to examining changes that occurred before and after the arrival of colonists and their trade goods in the seventeenth century. Plains archaeologists have suggested that the storage capacity of Middle Missouri villages increased during the sixteenth through the …

Exploring Winery Operation As A Diversification Option For Native American Tribal Enterprises, Randi M. Combs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine the perceptions of tribal members regarding the strengths, challenges, and opportunities presented by tribal winery operation. Specifically, issues of business diversification, marketing, perceived barriers to success, potential benefits to the tribe, and the role of agriculture in the preservation of tribal heritage were considered. A modified mixed-methods exploratory sequential research model was used to collect and organize data in two phases. Phase 1 quantitative data was used to inform the development of a Phase 2 qualitative interview protocol. Phase 1 found a significant relationship between a higher income level and a lower …

Rock Art Management And Landscape Change: Mixed Field Assessment Techniques For Cultural Stone Decay, Kaelin M. Groom

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As tourism continues to grow as one of the world’s most ubiquitous markets, the development and promotion of non-invasive techniques for cultural stone decay analysis and landscape change are vital to establishing conditional base-lines to best aid cultural heritage management (CRM) efficacy. Using rock art as a medium, this dissertation presents three independent case studies employing the Rock Art Stability Index (RASI) and repeat photography to explore the merits of mixed rapid field assessment techniques in relation to CRM and heritage tourism. While rock art is only one example of irreplaceable world heritage resources, examining how they decay and what …

Exploring Individual’S Explanations Of Economic Mobility Through The Gaze Of Intersectionality, Adam Alexander Broyles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at whether or not adopting intersectionality as a theoretical framework allows for a better understanding of individual’s explanations of economic mobility, rather than examining variables such as race, gender, and class as mutually exclusive from one another. The reason for this follows from the understanding that race, gender, and class can intersect to create unique views and opinions of the world and how it operates. Using the 2009 PEW Economic Mobility Survey as a secondary data source, I ran statistical regressions and interpreted the results.

Analyzing The Effects Of Preprimary Broadcast Media On Presidential Nominations From 1980-2016, Jarred Ralston Cuellar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to discover if broadcast media released during the preprimary period has an effect on the Presidential nomination process, and if so in what way? Several OLS regression models, based on Randall Adkins and Andrew Dowdle’s Presidential nomination forecasting models, were created as an attempt to not only find a statistically significant effect between broadcast media and aggregate vote percentage, but also in an effort to create more effective forecasts. I have drawn my sample from every open nomination race dating back to 1980, and used both cable and network broadcasting sources. I have covered not only the …

Risks, Protections, And Weight Status Among Springdale High School Students, Leanna Christine Gavin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the role of sociodemographic characteristics and various Social factors in determining BMI among adolescent high school students. In a sample of 1,493 students at a public high school in Springdale, Arkansas, disparities in body mass index across race/ethnicity, gender, and Social class were assessed. This project also examined risk and protective factors in the individual, peer, and family domains as they contributed to weight status outcomes and disparities. Using a quantitative approach, BMI outcomes were examined in a four-step multiple regression model, considering both main effects and interactions of race/ethnicity, class, and gender, as well as risk …

Isis In America: A Sociohistorical Analysis, Kathryn Joanne Ratcliff

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the summer of 2014, the terrorist organization Islamic State (commonly referred to as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS) garnered international attention after its unprecedented territorial acquisitions and violence in the Middle East. Today, ISIS vies with al-Qaeda for leadership of the global Islamic Extremist movement and has extended its violence all over the world, including the United States. U.S. based supporters generally choose to engage with the ideology in one of three categories: as a foreign fighter, domestic plotter, or domestic non-plotter. Despite this threat, there is very little quantitative research concerning U.S. ISIS supporters and …

The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generally thought of as a yearning for recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia is seen as a sentiment that impairs living in the present. And in case of immigrants, nostalgia is thought of as a debilitating form of escapism and an inability to adapt to change and mobility. In this dissertation, contesting against the prevalent concept, I argue that immigrant nostalgia is neither a colored memory (Dyson 117) nor a romance with one’s own fantasy (Boym xiii); rather, immigrant nostalgia has a socio-economic and political underpinning. By exploring the various nuances of immigrant experience delineated in the literary works of South …

Employees Communicating Within Transportation And Logistics Organizations: What Studying Stress And Acts Of Incivility In The Workplace Reveals About The Industry, Elizabeth Munyak Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project investigates the relationship of workplace stress and workplace incivility in the context of transportation and logistics organizations. Informal, one-on-one interviews with transportation and logistics operations office employees are conducted to answer this study’s research questions that examine the commonality, perceived norms, and perceived emotional and physical effects of workplace incivility in response to stress within the transportation and logistics workplace. Using grounded theory analysis, it is revealed that acts of incivility amongst transportation and logistics operations office employees communicate the conflict occurring at the industry, organization, and workplace levels of the transportation and logistics industry. The ultimate …

An Analysis Of Material Support Of Terrorism And Violent Plots: Scale And Success, Ian David Brecht

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, material support of terrorism charges have served as a cornerstone in the U.S. Government’s fight against terrorism. However, empirical research looking at the usage of material support charges is lacking. The primary focus of this study is to determine if material support charges are related to increases in terrorist attack success and scale. Using the American Terrorism Study (ATS), 177 post-9/11 Islamic Extremist-linked court cases including material support charges and 140 terrorist incidents were coded and analyzed using chi-square, logistical regression, and linear regression models. Results revealed that material support charges are related …

Modern Palestinian Filmmaking In A Global World, Sarah Frances Hudson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a comprehensive approach to analyze the cinematic accent of feature length, fictional Palestinian cinema and offers concrete criteria to define the genre of Palestinian fictional film that go beyond traditional, nation-centered approaches to defining films. Employing Arjun Appardurai’s concepts of financescapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, ethnoscapes, and ideoscapes, I analyze the filmic accent of six Palestinian filmmakers: Michel Khleifi, Rashid Masharawi, Ali Nassar, Elia Suleiman, Hany Abu Assad, and Annemarie Jacir. After a detailed examination of each filmmaker’s body of work, I examine the trends that occur across the genre that have the greatest impact on the Palestinian filmic …

A Study Of Innovation In Model Project Design: Addressing Mental Health Symptoms Among Co-Occurring Substance Use And Mentally Ill Clients Who Are Homeless In A Local Community Clinic Setting, Isis Dian Martel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Homeless persons with co-occurring substance use combined with mental illness constitute a particularly vulnerable subgroup with complex service needs. Unfortunately, the capacity to deliver critical treatment services has been extremely limited causing many from this population to remain untreated. Untreated co-occurring disorders can lead to a host of difficulties for both the individual and the community (Bouchery, Harwood, Sacks, Simon, & Brewer, 2011). Developing community based intervention services in Arkansas is a key activity necessary in strategically addressing this problem (Barbee, Gonzales, & Shelor, 2016). In partnership with the Arkansas Division of Behavioral Health Services, a local community treatment provider …

The Hispanic Female Scholars: Experiences Of An Underrepresented Minority. A Study Of The University Of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Cecile Caddel

Theses and Dissertations

The study intends to illustrate how certain challenges influence the disparity of Latinas/Hispanic women pursuing a career in academia, in the Rio Grande Valley. Aside from the aspects, which drive these women to success, I also hope to uncover those, which restrict Hispanic women from achieving tenure within the university system. Conclusively, I intend to understand how the issues and circumstances of Latinas in pursuit of the professoriate, compares/differs from other marginalized groups.

The qualitative research process allows for individual interviews, in order to construct authentic interpretations of the challenges and conditions, which often affect the Hispanic woman in the …

Social Scrutiny: How Viewers' Comments Affect Female Tv Journalists' Appearance, Heather Reena Arevalo-Flores

Theses and Dissertations

Television news anchors are often rated based on their appearance. News directors and consultants believe viewers want to see young and attractive women. While the media managers focus on high ratings, there are few studies that specifies how female journalist feel about being judged based on their appearance. There is no research that focuses on the comments female journalist receive on social media. The present research will investigate if viewers’ comments affect a female journalists’ appearance and how it affects her credibility. This qualitative study asks female journalist about comments they have received from viewers on their appearance through social …

Rice Value Chain Development And Policy Sequencing In Southern Africa, Sandratra M. Razafinjoelina

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of the 2008 food crisis, net food importing countries questioned the reliance on the volatile world market to meet their food demand. Consequently, the necessity to be selfsufficient returned to the forefront of national priorities. In Africa, the Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) initiative was initiated and aimed to double rice production in the continent by 2018, with the eventual goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production. To attain this goal, each of the 23 CARD member countries drafted a comprehensive value chain upgrading strategy called the National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS). This study intends to …

Where We Get Our News: A Multilevel Analysis Of The Media Framing Of Immigration And Crime, Cody Robert Tuttle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite an abundance of literature demonstrating that immigration and crime are unassociated, public opinion often reflects the contrary. I examine a source that could contribute to this disconnect between research and public opinion – media framing – particularly, how the specific way that news outlets talk about immigration and crime, along with where they are located geographically, influence how prominently these stories are covered. I employ content analysis of newspaper articles from 2008-2012, which I geo-locate and pair with structural covariates gathered from several other data sources. I use multilevel models to analyze the effect of article-level framing and county-level …