Social Work Commons^™

Beyond Punishment: A Critical And Interpretive Phenomenology Of Accountability, Cameron Rasmussen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

State responses to interpersonal violence in the US have long been focused on punishment and prison. While opposition to punitive responses to interpersonal violence has been marginal, there are small but growing efforts to challenge the primacy of punishment and incarceration. In its place, different non-punitive approaches to justice have been practiced and promoted including restorative justice and transformative justice, which see accountability, not punishment, as a primary goal. Accountability has been theorized and researched largely from the perspective of survivors of harm, and there is limited research on the experiences of people who have caused harm and engaged in …

A Blackgirl Artivisionary Mosaic: Art-Based Participatory Refusals To School Punishment, Tyese A. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study participants were co-research partners and engaged in a Project Based Learning six-week summer project in an urban northeastern metropolis community-based non-profit where they received stipends for participation. This dissertation explored how Blackgirls (aged 14 -21) express their experiences with disparate school punishment through community-based participatory artmaking. We called the photos, poems, collages, sculptures, storyboards, digital art, visual art, songs, spoken word, and videos Artivisions (art I vision). In the Jam Sessions, a subset of the partners we called curators discussed the pieces, shared their experiences, and offered insight into Blackgirls’ responses, coping skills, and decision-making regarding school punishment. …

Propensity Score Analysis And Machine Learning: A Comparison And Application To Post-Secondary Education Data, Khudodod Khudododov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Estimation methods to identify the causal relationships between dependent and independent variables are fundamental to social science research. For social workers, these methods provide crucial knowledge about different factors' complex relationships with a particular issue. Such knowledge helps social workers be better micro, mezzo, and macro change agents.

Different causal estimation methods exist, from randomized controlled studies to methods involving observational studies. In observational studies, which is the focus of this dissertation, participants self-select into intervention. This behavior makes causal estimation more challenging. Since participants self-select into intervention or treatment, there are observed and unobserved differences between participants in the …

The Effect Of Race On Housing Stratification Among Latinos, Julia T. Gomez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Housing discrimination has been an ethical, social, and economic blight on the American society. Among the negative outcomes of this practice are higher crime rates, lower educational attainment, and concentrated poverty. Beyond the moral injustice of this practice, housing discrimination adversely affects the socio-economic mobility of those victimized and this extends across generations. The research on the intersection of race and Latino identity demonstrates the complexity of the issue and suggests that an examination such as done in this study can add to the current knowledge. The purpose of this study was to determine what, if any, association race has …