Sociology Commons^™

Navigating Cultures And Development: An Account Of A Female Peace Corps Volunteer In Morocco, Renee Palecek

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

Little is known of how the “doers” of development may navigate regarding her community’s culture and her job in international development. This lack of knowledge leads to the erasure of experiences, felt both by the volunteer herself, as well as the community members she works with. Through autoethnographic methodology, and analysis, I retell my experiences and entanglements as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco with Moroccan institutions and culture, with my own identities and prior American socialization. I examine three questions: (1) How does the female PCV in Morocco make sense out of and create value from life events, relationships, …

Older Adults Responsible For Total Growth In Drug Arrests, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

After years of decline, adults 25 and older were responsible for increasing drug crime arrests after 2015. In contrast, young adults, teenagers, and children experienced drug arrest drops. This databit looks at the drug violation arrest rates from 2000 to 2018 and trends between various age groups.

Youth Still Leading Violent Crime Drop: 1988-2018, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Violent crime arrest rates fell among all age groups but especially for youth under age 18. This databit looks at violent crime arrests and weapon offense arrests from 1988 to 2018 for various age groups.

Aberrant Epigenomic Modulation Of Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene (Nr3c1) In Early Life Stress And Major Depressive Disorder Correlation: Systematic Review And Quantitative Evidence Synthesis, Laurens Holmes Jr., Emily Shutman, Chinacherem Chinaka, Kerti Deepika, Lavisha Palaez, Kirk W. Dabney

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Early life stress (ELS) induced by psychological trauma, child maltreatment, maternal separation, and domestic violence predisposes to psycho-behavioral pathologies during adulthood, namely major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety, and bipolar affective disorder. While environmental data are available in illustrating this association, data remain to be established on the epigenomic underpinning of the nexus between ELS and MDD predisposition. Specifically, despite the observed aberrant epigenomic modulation of the NR3C1, a glucocorticoid receptor gene, in early social adversity and social threats in animal and human models, reliable scientific data for intervention mapping in reducing social adversity and improving human health is required. We …

Medical Students' Experiences And Outcomes Using A Virtual Human Simulation To Improve Communication Skills: Mixed Methods Study, Timothy Guetterman, Rae Sakakibara, Srikar Baireddy, Frederick W. Kron, Mark W. Scerbo, James F. Cleary, Michael D. Fetters

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background: Attending to the wide range of communication behaviors that convey empathy is an important but often underemphasized concept to reduce errors in care, improve patient satisfaction, and improve cancer patient outcomes. A virtual human (VH)–based simulation, MPathic-VR, was developed to train health care providers in empathic communication with patients and in interprofessional settings and evaluated through a randomized controlled trial.

Objective: This mixed methods study aimed to investigate the differential effects of a VH-based simulation developed to train health care providers in empathic patient-provider and interprofessional communication.

Methods: We employed a mixed methods intervention design, involving a comparison of …

Cafe Erc Nasis Survey Questions 2019 Winter Report, Julia Mcquillan

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

Using NSF ERC Planning Grant funds ($7,500), we added X number of survey items to the 2019 Winter Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS) conducted by the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR). In 2019 NASIS was conducted by mail. BOSR mailed surveys to a random sample of Nebraska households using Address Based Sampling. The CAFE ERC planning team added questions to NASIS along with other researchers at the University of Nebraska who shared the cost of the “core” questions (e.g. level of education, age, race/ethnicity, depression, religion, political orientation, quality-of-life topics, etc). Overall NASIS is a cost-effective way to collect …

Fgm In Egypt Between Socio-Cultural Barriers And Lack Of Political Will, Yasmin Khodary, Nehal Hamdy

Political Science

Purpose – This study aims to detect the main factors impeding the anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) efforts in Egypt post the January 25 revolution, with a special focus on the era of president El-Sisi. The purpose of this paper is to explain the reasons behind the continuation of violence against women in Egypt, namely, FGM, in light of the patriarchal structures and the state willingness to address that challenge. Design/methodology/approach – The study utilizes a qualitative methodology. The study embarks on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 23 participants who experienced FGM and nine key informants from medical, religious, political and civil …

Best Practice Recommendations For Replicating Experiments In Public Administration, Richard M. Walker, Gene A. Brewer, M. Jin Lee, Nicolai Petrovsky, Arjen Van Witteloostuijn

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications

Replication is an important mechanism through which broad lessons for theory and practice can be drawn in the applied interdisciplinary social science field of public administration. We suggest a common replication framework for public administration that is illustrated by experimental work in the field. Drawing on knowledge from other disciplines, together with our experience in replicating several experiments on topics such as decision making, organizational rules, and government–citizen relationships, we provide an overview of the replication process. We then distill this knowledge into seven decision points that offer a clear set of best practices on how to design and implement …

Health And Education: Perspectives On The Role Of Schools In Health Promotion, Miranda Powell

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this study was to understand learners’ perceptions of the role schools play in health promotion. Health promotion encompasses health education and can be highly effective in the school setting. Given the high rates of HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, early sexual debut, and abuse, health education is highly important in South African schools. All learners are required to take Life Orientation classes, which cover many topics including health education. Comparing the views of what learners expect, experience, and the curriculum, my study addressed the gaps in Life Orientation classes with regards to health promotion education.

For this study I …

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (Nasis) 2019 Methodology Report, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

Introduction 3

Mode Selection 3

Design and Item Selection 3

Sampling Design 4

Experimental Design Treatment 4

Data Collection Process 5

Response Rate 5

Data-Entry Training, Supervision, and Quality Control 5

Processing of Completed Surveys 6

Data Cleaning 6

NASIS Sample Weights 6

Design Effects 7

Questions 7

Estimate of Sampling Error 10

Appendices 11

Appendix A: Cover Letters and NASIS 2019 FAQ 11

First Mailing – Version 1 (UNL Logo) 11

FAQ – Version 1 (UNL Logo) 13

FAQ – Version 2 (New UN Logo) 14

Second Mailing – Version 1 (UNL Logo) 15

Second Mailing – Version 2 …

“Okay Okay Okay, Now The Video Is On”: An Analysis Of Young Children’S Orientations To The Video Camera In Recordings Of Family Interactions, Sarah C. Barriage, Darcey K. Searles

Information Science Faculty Publications

This paper explores 3- to 6-year-old children’s orientations to the video camera in video recordings of everyday family interactions. Children’s orientations to the video camera in these recordings were identified and analyzed using the constant comparative method. Types of orientations to the video camera included talking about the camera, engaging in camera-directed talk and/or action, and interacting with the camera. In some cases, these orientations occurred after a parent or sibling first oriented to the video camera; however, in other cases no prior orientation was evident. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Kinship, Fractionalization And Corruption, Mahsa Akbari, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Erik O. Kimbrough

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

We examine the roots of variation in corruption across societies, and we argue that marriage practices and family structure are an important, overlooked determinant of corruption. By shaping patterns of relatedness and interaction, marriage practices influence the relative returns to norms of nepotism/favoritism versus norms of impartial cooperation. In-marriage (e.g. consanguineous marriage) generates fractionalization because it yields relatively closed groups of related individuals and thereby encourages favoritism and corruption. Out-marriage creates a relatively open society with increased interaction between non-relatives and strangers, thereby encouraging impartiality. We report a robust association between in-marriage practices and corruption both across countries and within …

Decomposing Trends In Child Obesity, Ashley Wendell Kranjac, Robert L. Wagmiller

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

We unravel the absolute level and relative prominence of two demographic processes that are relevant for childhood obesity, and that will ultimately determine the long-term course and pace of change in child obesity rates. We leverage data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to decompose change in child obesity from 1971 to 2012. We partition change into that attributable to (1) healthier, more nutritionally and economically advantaged cohorts in the population being replaced by cohorts of children who are less advantaged (between-cohort change), and (2) the health habits, nutrition, and social and economic circumstances of all cohorts of …

Analysis Of Social Unrest Events Using Spatio-Temporal Data Clustering And Agent-Based Modelling, Sudeep Basnet

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Social unrest such as appeals, protests, conflicts, fights and mass violence can result from a wide ranging of diverse factors making the analysis of causal relationships challenging, with high complexity and uncertainty. Unrest events can result in significant changes in a society ranging from new policies and regulations to regime change. Widespread unrest often arises through a process of feedback and cascading of a collection of past events over time, in regions that are close to each other. Understanding the dynamics of these social events and extrapolating their future growth will enable analysts to detect or forecast major societal events. …

Kinship Ties Across The Lifespan In Human Communities, Jeremy Koster, Dieter Lukas, David Nolin, Eleanor Power, Alexandra Alvergne, Ruth Mace, Cody T. Ross, Karen Kramer, Russell Graves, Mark Caudell, Shane Macfarlan, Eric Schniter, Robert Quinlan, Siobhan Mattison, Adam Reynolds, Chun Yi-Sim, Eric Massengill

ESI Publications

A hypothesis for the evolution of long post-reproductive lifespans in the human lineage involves asymmetries in relatedness between young immigrant females and the older females in their new groups. In these circumstances, inter-generational reproductive conflicts between younger and older females are predicted to resolve in favor of the younger females, who realize fewer inclusive fitness benefits from ceding reproduction to others. This conceptual model anticipates that immigrants to a community initially have few kin ties to others in the group, gradually showing greater relatedness to group members as they have descendants who remain with them in the group. We examine …

Creating A Hip In The Library: A High-Impact Practice Case Study, Susan E. Montgomery

Faculty Publications

High-impact practices, HIPs, have been adopted on college campuses to enhance student learning. The academic library provides services and space contributing to learning at its institution. Librarians conduct space research to learn how the library building can better serve its users. Library space assessment is one way for librarians to engage with faculty and students to create a HIP in the library. This article is a case study of a collaboration between a librarian and a sociology professor to design an observational study. It demonstrates how librarians can contribute to HIPs at their institution by involving students in meaningful research.

Cs+Sociology: Global Inequality Lab 2, Elin Waring, Janet Michello

Open Educational Resources

These materials include background for the instructor and a lab that engages student in an analysis of global inequality while learning and using the R language (a programming language for statistics). Students ultimately write a function to access country level data from the CIA World Factbook.

Conservatives In The Classroom: Targeted Or Apathetic?, Emma Nordmeyer

Sociology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

In the 21st Century U.S., college and university classrooms have become a hotbed of political debate. Conservative students decry "liberal indoctrination" in the liberal arts setting. In this paper, I analyze attitudes towards classes across the political spectrum. I found that while liberals have more positive views of class, conservatives have a wider range of attitudes. This study points to divisions within the right wing.

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (Nasis) 2019 Winter Methodology Report, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

Bureau of Sociological Research

2019 Winter NASIS Methodology Report

Contents

Introduction 3

Mode Selection 3

Design and Item Selection 3

Sampling Design 4

Data Collection Process 4

Response Rate 5

Data-Entry Training, Supervision, and Quality Control 5

Processing of Completed Surveys 5

Data Cleaning 5

NASIS Sample Weights 6

Design Effects 6

Questions 6

Estimate of Sampling Error 9

Appendices 10

Appendix A: Cover Letters and 2019 Winter NASIS FAQ 10

First Mailing – Cover Letter 10

First Mailing – FAQ 11

Last Mailing – Cover Letter 12

Appendix B: Survey Instrument (Printed in black & white only) 14

Appendix …

Hábitos Sobre El Autocuidado En Salud Bucodental En La Ciudad Autónoma De Buenos Aires (Caba): Estudio De Caso En Los Alumnos De Una Escuela Primaria Pública En Caballito / Habits About Self-Care In Oral Health In The Autonomous City Of Buenos Aires (Caba): Case Study Of Students In A Public Elementary School In Caballito, Franklin Zhang

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Información contextual: Las enfermedades bucodentales son unas de las enfermedades no transmisibles (ENT) y una de las cargas más grandes del mundo. Según la Organización Mundial de la Salud, entre el 60% y 90% de los escolares de todo el mundo tienen caries dentales, siendo una enfermedad extremadamente prevalente en el nivel primario. Además de visitas al odontólogo para chequeos de rutina, es importante prevenir esta la caries dental con una integración entre salud y educación y desarrollar hábitos saludables. El objetivo del siguiente trabajo es explorar los conocimientos sobre el autocuidado de la salud bucodental en los alumnos de …

3rd Place Contest Entry: Aesthetic Activism: Protest Art In The Delano Grape Strike, Felicia Viano

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Felicia Viano's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won third place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on the use of art as a social movement tactic by the United Farm Workers during the Delano Grape Strike, and her works cited list.

Felicia is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in History and Peace Studies. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Robert Slayton.

Quality Over Quantity: A Comparative Analysis Of The Quality Measures And Performance Between Switzerland And The United States, Lexi Farina

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Even in the best health systems, poor quality of care continues to cause harm to patients and prevent them from receiving the best treatment possible. Thus, it is important to record and report quality of care measures because they can help inform policy changes and improve performance. In this paper, a comparative analysis between the United States and Switzerland is conducted to understand the process for defining and assessing quality indicators in each country as well as compare their quality of care performance results. The methods for this study include a literature review of relevant background information relating to quality …

General Interviewer Techniques: Developing Evidence-Based Practices For Standardized Interviewing, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Jennifer Dykema, Steve M. Coombs, Rob K. Schultz, Lisa Holland, Margaret Hudson

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The practices of standardized interviewing developed at many research sites over many years. The version of standardization that Fowler and Mangione codified in Standardized Survey Interviewing has provided researchers a core resource to use in training and supervising standardized interviewers. In recent decades, however, the accumulation of recordings and transcripts of interviews makes it possible to re-visit the practices of standardization to describe both how respondents actually answer survey questions and how interviewers actually respond.

To update General Interviewer Training (GIT), we brought observations of interaction during interviews together with research about conversational practices from conversation analysis, psychology, and other …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Interviewer Pace: Assessing Interviewer Speaking Pace At The Question Level, Allyson L. Holbrook, Timothy P. Johnson, Evgenia Kapousouz, Young Ik Cho

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The pace at which interviewers read survey questions may vary considerably across interviewers (e.g., Cannell, Miller, & Oksenberg, 1981) and as a function of interviewer experience (Olson and Petchev, 2007). The pace at which interviews are conducted can influence respondent perceptions of the importance of interaction (Fowler, 1966). Interviewer training typically includes instructions to read questions slowly and clearly to respondents is based on the assumption that doing so maximizes data quality (e.g., Fowler and Mangione, 1990). In this research, we examine possible causes and consequences of interviewer pace using data from in person surveys conducted with respondents from four …

Exploring The Impact Of Interviewer Perceptions And Interviewer-Respondent Interactions On The Survey Of Income And Program Participation: Analysis Of Cari Recordings, Erica Yu, Rodney L. Terry, Alina Kline, Holly Fee, Robin Kaplan

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewers play a significant role in telephone and face-to-face interviews, including gaining respondent cooperation and administering survey questions. Increasingly, interviewers’ perceptions of the respondent and interview experience, such as cooperativeness and interest, are also being used to assess measurement error and make adjustments to data (West, 2013; Kirchner et al., 2017). Although interviewer perceptions are typically recorded at the end of the interview, interviewers are likely to begin forming perceptions about the household and respondent based on their first contact attempt (and continue developing them during the interview). We hypothesize that interview context factors, such as interviewer perceptions of the …

Response Times As An Indicator Of Data Quality: Associations With Interviewer, Respondent, And Question Characteristics In A Health Survey Of Diverse Respondents, Dana Garbarski, Jennifer Dykema, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Dorothy Farrar Edwards

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Survey research remains one of the most important ways that researchers learn about key features of populations. Data obtained in the survey interview are a collaborative achievement accomplished through the interplay of the interviewer, respondent, and survey instrument, yet our field is still in the process of comprehensively documenting and examining whether, when, and how characteristics of interviewers, respondents, and questions combine to influence the quality of the data obtained.

Researchers tend to consider longer response times as indicators of potential problems as they indicate longer processing or interaction from the respondent, the interviewer (where applicable), or both. Previous work …

Race-Of-Virtual-Interviewer Effects, Frederick Conrad, Michael Schober, Daniel Nielsen, Heidi Reichert

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

In developing self-administered interviewing systems that go beyond text, survey designers are faced with choices about how to represent the interviewing agent. In speech-dialog systems like ACASI and IVR, designers must decide if the voice that presents the spoken questions is unambiguously male or female, whether the pronunciation is regionally marked, etc. Any visual representation of an interviewer (e.g., a photograph, a video) requires designers to choose features that visually convey demographic features like race, gender, age, etc. Here we investigate whether the representation of animated virtual interviewers (VIs) affects responses in the same way that analogous attributes of human …

How To Conduct Effective Interviewer Training: A Meta-Analysis, Jessica Daikeler

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewer training can improve the performance of interviewers and thus also the quality of survey data. However, the question of how effective interviewer training is for improving data quality and more importantly, which determinates drive its success, remain unanswered. This research uses meta-analytical methods to evaluate both the improvements in data quality due to interviewer training and the effectivity of training modules with respect interviewer performance. We consider various aspects of data quality, namely unit nonresponse, item nonresponse, probing behavior, administration, reading, and recording. Based on more than sixty experimental studies, we find that comprehensive interviewer training improves unit- and …

What Do Interviewers Learn? Changes In Interview Length And Interviewer Behaviors Over The Field Period, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewers systematically speed up over the field period of a survey as they conduct interviews (Olson and Peytchev 2007; Olson and Bilgen 2011; Kirchner and Olson 2017). Competing hypotheses for this increase in speed is that interviewers learn from previous interviews, changing their behaviors accordingly, or that they change behaviors in response to who the respondent is, including both respondent’s fixed characteristics and their response propensity. Previous work (e.g., Kirchner and Olson 2017) has failed to completely explain this learning effect, even after accounting for a wide range of measures of each of these hypotheses. However, prior work has not …

Interviewer Variation In Third Party Presence During Face-To-Face Interviews, Zeina N. Mneimneh, Julie De Jong, Jennifer Kelley

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The presence of a third person in face-to-face interviews constitutes an important contextual factor that affects the interviewee's responses to culturally sensitive questions (Aquilino, 1997; Casterline and Chidambaram, 1984; Mneimneh et al., 2015; Pollner and Adams, 1994). Interviewers play an essential role in requesting, achieving, and reporting on the private setting of the interview. Our recent work has shown that the rate of interview privacy varies significantly across interviewers; while some interviewers report high rates of privacy among their interviews, others report low rates of privacy for the interviews they administered (Mneimneh et al., 2018). Yet, there is a lack …