Digital Commons Network^™

Rebranding The Battle Against Clinician Burnout, Taylor Albitar

DSW Capstone Projects

The purpose of this capstone project is to take a deep dive into the issue of burnout among marginalized healthcare providers. This paper will dissect key points in history that target wellness and define terms that are relevant to understanding the effects of burnout on a person’s work-life balance. It will be divided into several sections, including an overview of the problem and contributing factors, a thorough review of relevant literature, a conceptual idea that will explore both the problem at hand and theories that can help with its effects, and finally a practice application that will serve as the …

Removing The Masc: Dismantling Gendered Occupations Through Social Work Education, Austin M. Raines

DSW Capstone Projects

The “Masculine mystique” refers to a psychological mask that men wear, enabling them to maintain power and distance themselves from traits associated with femininity” (Kahn, 2009, p. 283). This capstone project seeks to solve the Social Work Grand Challenge of improving the lives that hegemonic masculinity harms and limits. It emphasizes the relationship between the two areas of life (work-home), once thought to exist in different realms but are today more interwoven than ever (Lin & Burgard, 2018; Sok et al., 2014). Men have higher rates of traumatic injuries and exposure to significant physical risks, violence hazards, and stricter normative …

Conceptualizing Asexual Identities, Miranda L. Bejda

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

In current literature, there is little congruence on an inclusive definition of human asexuality. This study explored individuals’ self-identification with asexuality as well as their conceptualization of that identity via thematic analysis. Using a Qualtrics XM survey, 374 individuals (18+ years old) answer questions regarding their experience as a person identifying themselves as asexual. Identity label authenticity, perceived impact of compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity on participants' current identity within the asexual spectrum, and prescribed heteronormative ideals were correlated. Thematic analysis revealed themes such as confusion about identity membership, feeling abnormal, the burden of living in a heteronormative society, and identity …

Gender Representation In Children's Media And Preschool-Aged Girls’ Internalized Beliefs About Gender, Jessica Lindsey Kanne Atkins

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The current study examines patterns of gender representation through three categories (distribution, presentation, and stereotyped behaviors) in children’s media and how these patterns relate to preschool-aged girls’ internalized beliefs about gender. Both historical and presently available children’s media tends to display high levels of stereotypical gender representation. By preschool age, children have already developed distinctions between boys and girls, and hold internalized beliefs regarding gender. The objective of the current study is to examine the relationship between these two factors. To accomplish this, preschool-aged girls were interviewed to assess their internalized beliefs about gender. Their caregivers completed questionnaires related to …

Celebrity, Music, And Public Persona: A Case Study Of Taylor Swift, Elaina K.M. Junes

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Studies have shown that celebrity culture is one of many significant sources of influence that inform the construction of individuals’ identities as well as their outlook on work, life ambitions, and accomplishment. Celebrity also offers a unique window with which to examine both how social structures operate in the mainstream, and how social inequalities are reproduced. This study utilizes qualitative research methodology by way of longitudinal content analysis to examine how Taylor Swift’s public persona has evolved comparatively throughout the early and late stages of her career, specifically in regard to her gender, age, and music. This study identifies ten …

Brrr! It’S Cold In The Fridge: The Treatment Of Women In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Madison Green

Honors Program Theses

Female characters depicted within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) have faced unequal treatment and significant erasure since the origin of the franchise. As the series gained popularity and cultural discussions of representation grew, the MCU has since introduced more female characters. This then prompts concerns regarding the quality of that representation and how those female characters are treated within the franchise, and if that treatment has changed over time. Six films were selected from across the four first phases of the MCU for content analysis and data was compiled into two tables to quantifiably measure the depowerment aspect of fridging, …

Badges And Blush: Gender Expression In Policework, Aubrey Powell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Gender roles are a social construct ingrained in American culture. Stemming from this problem is the femininity versus competency bind. This means that women in the workplace are seen as either feminine or competent, but never both. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the perceived deficit is due to gender expression or biological sex. Additionally, the project examined the masculine of policework and the neutral profession of teaching. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions (feminine woman, masculine woman, feminine man, and masculine man) in which they rated a potential hire for a police precinct or …

The Centrality Of Community In Education About Gender-Based Violence, Catherine Vanner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The Time to Teach about Gender-Based Violence in Canada project asked teacher and student participants how Canadian educators could improve young people’s critical consciousness in relation to gender-based violence. Data collection involved individual interviews with 14 teachers, participatory workshops with three groups of students, and a virtual workshop in which teacher participants validated and expanded upon initial analysis of their interview data and responded to cellphilms produced in the student workshops. Drawing upon feminist and engaged pedagogy and situating gender-based violence as a form of difficult knowledge, analysis identifies community as a central concept for effective teaching about gender-based violence …

Swerf Necropolitics: Three Sites Of Feminist Mistranslation And The Politics Of Feminist Exclusion, Aaron Hammes

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The acronym SWERF, or Sex Work(er) Exclusive Radical Feminism, and its attendant ideologies brings up a number of questions and potential schisms for the enterprise of feminist thought more broadly. This inquiry examines what it means for feminism to exclude, what the excluders believe is gained by protecting certain boundaries around which identities and practices are included, and the ideological foundations and consequences of this thinking. SWERF logics are understood as mistranslations of the radical potentialities of feminism, clustered around three sites: exclusion (against bodily autonomy) , equivocation (between sex work and labor trafficking), and misrepresentation (of the sex worker …

The Basil Technique: Bias Adaptive Statistical Inference Learning Agents For Learning From Human Feedback, Jonathan Indigo Watson

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

We introduce a novel approach for learning behaviors using human-provided feedback that is subject to systematic bias. Our method, known as BASIL, models the feedback signal as a combination of a heuristic evaluation of an action's utility and a probabilistically-drawn bias value, characterized by unknown parameters. We present both the general framework for our technique and specific algorithms for biases drawn from a normal distribution. We evaluate our approach across various environments and tasks, comparing it to interactive and non-interactive machine learning methods, including deep learning techniques, using human trainers and a synthetic oracle with feedback distorted to varying degrees. …

An Introduction To The Special Issue, Megan S. Paceley, Candace Christensen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

No abstract provided.

Examining The Effect Of Witnessing Sexual Harassment On School Engagement: The Moderating Role Of Gender, Emily Sgritta

Psychology Theses

The following study investigated the potential relationships between directly or indirectly witnessing sexual harassment, the witness’ gender, school engagement, and psychological distress. Participants from an undergraduate university (N = 168) responded to a survey in which they answered questions relating to witnessing sexual harassment and their psychological distress, burnout, school engagement, and perceived social support after the event. For purposes of analyses, potential relationships on psychological distress and school engagement were examined further. Participants who directly witnessed sexual harassment reported lower school engagement than participants who didn’t report directly witnessing sexual harassment. Direct witnesses reported lower levels of vigor, dedication, …

Transphobia In Class, Anti-Trans Legislation At The State: A Commentary On Navigating Harm And Hope In A Social Work Education Program, Emera Greenwood, Megan S. Paceley

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

EG (they/them): I was misgendered on day one of my BSW program; isolation and transphobia continued for two years. While I did my best to advocate for myself, I learned that you can't fight institutionally entrenched oppression alone.

MP (they/them): EG joined my class mid-semester after repeated incidents of transphobia. For two years, during an onslaught of anti-trans policies across the U.S., we advocated for changes in our school and social work education.

EG’s experience is not unique. Numerous studies document transphobia experienced by transgender and gender expansive (TGE) social work students and the lack of TGE content, visibility, and …

Sugar And Spice: Sex, Money, And Social Media, Rachel Elizabeth Davis

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Interest in transactional sex, or the provision of a sexual relationship in exchange for gifts and/or money, has increased in recent years among researchers, nongovernmental organizations, and law enforcement officials as increasing numbers of women self-identify as hypergamous, indicating their interest in forming heterosexual partnerships with men of higher status. Hypergamous women may identify as sugar babies, spoiled girlfriends, or high-value women. A sugar baby is a woman providing romantic companionship to an older man, known as a sugar daddy, in exchange for money and/or gifts. A spoiled girlfriend is a woman whose partner provides her with money and/or gifts …

Parenthood, Mental Health, And Intergenerational Adversity: Exploring Gender Role Ideologies, Household Composition And Work-Family Conflict, Ashley Vowels

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

To date, research at the intersections of parenting, stress, gender, and mental health has yielded complicated and inconsistent results. The objective of this dissertation was to deepen our understanding of how parenting stress contributes to the mental health of both parents and their children, especially within the context of balancing work and family responsibilities. A three-study approach was used to assess differences by sex, gender role ideology, and household composition. Additionally, it explored the impact of parents’ characteristics on their children’s well-being in adulthood.

This project utilized secondary data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Multivariate regression analyses …

Information Use And Decision-Making For Evacuation At Fuego Volcano, Guatemala, Beth A. Bartel

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

For populations living with risk to rapid-onset environmental hazards, an effective early warning system (EWS) may be the most viable short- to mid-term solution for risk reduction. At Fuego volcano, Guatemala, more than 60,000 people distributed between more than 30 small communities live within the identified hazard zones for pyroclastic density currents (PDCS), highly lethal hot avalanches and surges of volcanic gases, rock, and ash. Despite ongoing risk reduction efforts by scientific and civil protection authorities, more than 400 people died during a paroxysmal eruption on 3 June 2018 when PDCs reached populated areas. A high-end resort, La Reunión, evacuated …

Black Women And The Weight Of The World: When The Weight Becomes Too Much To Bear, April R. Edmonds

DSW Capstone Projects

ABSTRACT

Black women’s mental health continues to go largely underrepresented. Black women are seen as having many protective factors such as their faith communities, family and friends, and what others see as strength and resilience. A review of the literature depicts Black women as traditionally being caretakers, nurturers, and depicted as strong (Castelin & White, 2022). Because of this perception, terms such as the Strong Black Woman Schema and the Black Superwoman Phenomena are what many equate Black women with. This scholarship instead shows how associations such as these impact Black women negatively and impose additional stigma and hardship. Research …

Revisiting The Rainbow: Culturally Responsive Updates To A Standard Clinical Resource, Angela M. Dietsch, Richard Mocarski, Debra A. Hope, Nathan Woodruff, Miechelle Mckelvey

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose

Cultural responsivity is essential for efficacious and affirming clinical relationships. This may be especially important with historically marginalized clients, such as transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people seeking behaviorally based affirming communication services. We recommend modifications to standard tools for diagnostics and training that otherwise might undermine our efforts to create an inclusive and affirming environment.

Method

Modifications to the Rainbow Passage, a standardized paragraph utilized for eliciting speech samples in clinical settings, focused on nongendered terminology and the elimination of content with religious connotations.

Results

The recommended edits to the Rainbow Passage maintain similar length, cadence, and phonetic balance …

Still, We Thrive: Understanding How Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, And Other Men Who Have Sex With Men (Gbtmsm) Experience Structural Barriers & Facilitators To Wellness, Lucas Gergyek

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Historically and concurrently, structural violence has been a significant force influencing the sexual health and broader health of gay, bisexual, transgender and other men who have sex with men (GBTMSM). Yet to date, the majority of projects exploring the health inequities facing GBTMSM have focused on intrapsychic and behavioural factors as most related to poor health outcomes. As well, these studies are sometimes deficits focused, and fail to evaluate how GBTMSM continue to thrive, and maintain positive health. As a result, the ways in which systems and policies underlie and perpetuate health inequities facing GBTMSM have been somewhat obscured. Connectedly, …

Expanding Medicaid To Reduce Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission In Houston, Texas: Insights From A Modeling Study, Francis Lee, Aditya S Khanna, Camden J Hallmark, Richa Lavingia, Marlene Mcneese, Jing Zhao, Melanie L Mcneese, Salma Khuwaja, Babak M Ardestani, Nicholson Collier, Jonathan Ozik, Anna L Hotton, Nina T Harawa, John A Schneider, Kayo Fujimoto

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

CONTEXT: Medicaid expansion has been nationally shown to improve engagement in the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment and prevention continua, which are vital steps to stopping the HIV epidemic. New HIV infections in the United States are disproportionately concentrated among young Black men who have sex with men (YBMSM). Houston, TX, is the most populous city in the Southern United States with a racially/ethnically diverse population that is located in 1 of 11 US states that have not yet expanded Medicaid coverage as of 2021.

METHODS: An agent-based model that incorporated the sexual networks of YBMSM was used to simulate …

Age And Sex-Specific Stroke Epidemiology In Covid-19, Youngran Kim, Maria A Parekh, Xiaojin Li, Yan Huang, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Bharti Manwani

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has emerged as an independent risk factor for stroke. We aimed to determine age and sex-specific stroke incidence and risk factors with COVID-19 in the US using a large electronic health record (EHR) that included both inpatients and outpatients.

METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using individual-level data from Optum

RESULTS: Of 387,330 COVID-19 patients, 2,752 patients (0.71%, 95% CI 0.68-0.74) developed stroke during the 180-day follow-up, AIS in 0.65% (95% CI 0.62-0.67), and ICH in 0.11% (95% CI 0.10-0.12). Of strokes among COVID-19 patients, 57% occurred within 3 days. Advanced age was associated with a substantially …

Non-Binary Experiences In The Context Of Gender Dichotomization: A Qualitative Systematic Review, Chyna (C.J.) Parker

Theses and Dissertations

Gender diverse persons have historically and presently faced unique challenges, marginalization, and discrimination. The lived experiences of the transgender nonconforming population are still widely unresearched, and most research treats transgender and transgender nonconforming (TGNC) people as a homogeneous group. This neglects the nuanced and diverse experience of the TGNC population. This integrative systematic review of the literature was conducted in order to identify and highlight the experiences of transgender nonconforming persons in the context of a binarily set world. The following questions guided this study: (a) What are the identity-related experiences of non-binary individuals in the context of gender dichotomization?, …

Girls Are Good At Stem: Opening Minds And Providing Evidence Reduce Boys' Stereotyping Of Girls' Stem Ability, Emily N. Cyr, Kathryn M. Kroeper, Hilary B. Bergsieker, Tara C. Dennehy, Christine Logel, Jennifer R. Steele, Rita A. Knasel, W. Tyler Hartwig, Priscilla Shum, Stephanie L. Reeves, Odilia Dys-Steenbergen, Amrit Litt, Christopher Lok, Taylor Ballinger, Haemi Nam, Crystal Tse, Amanda L. Forest, Mark Zanna, Sheryl Staub-French, Mary Wells, Toni Schmader, Stephen C. Wright, Steven J. Spencer

Psychology Faculty Publications

Girls and women face persistent negative stereotyping within STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). This field intervention was designed to improve boys' perceptions of girls' STEM ability. Boys (N = 667; mostly White and East Asian) aged 9-15 years in Canadian STEM summer camps (2017-2019) had an intervention or control conversation with trained camp staff. The intervention was a multi-stage persuasive appeal: a values affirmation, an illustration of girls' ability in STEM, a personalized anecdote, and reflection. Control participants discussed general camp experiences. Boys who received the intervention (vs. control) had more positive perceptions of girls' STEM ability, d = 0.23, …

Trans* Streamers On Twitch.Tv: The Intersections Of Gender And Digital Labor, R. Lawson

Theses and Dissertations

Twitch.tv is a live entertainment platform where individuals live stream events, including playing video games, playing board and tabletop games, creating art, and more. Twitch has a diverse base of streamers, but Twitch has just begun. The most common approach has focused on cisgender, heterosexual white men in the cases where it has been studied. Though these streamers should be studied in sociology, this focus leaves out the experiences of both cis women and Trans* streamers. This research proposal tries to situate the relationship of Trans* streamers with both the platform and their audience, seeing if these relationships affect their …

Interactions Of Sexuality Training, Sexual Awareness, And Comfort With Sexual Discourse In Counselors-In-Training, Katie Adeline Rodenkirch

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Since the initial call to action nearly half a century ago, sexuality training has not been made a core component of counselor education. Despite this, upon graduation counselors are expected to be able to handle diverse client needs, some of which are likely to be sexual in nature. Nevertheless, there is limited research regarding counselor sexuality education or factors influencing counselor-in-training comfort with sexual discourse. The purpose of this research study was to determine the relationship(s) and interaction(s) between counselor-in-training sexuality training experience, sexual awareness, and comfort with sexual discourse. The study also explored group differences based on gender and …

"It Feels Like I Don't Exist": An Intersectional Feminist Analysis Of The Ace Citizen, Maya Wenzel

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Sexual citizenship is often used to enforce gender and sexual norms, to help construct the “Other,” and as a tool for national security. Because of the invisibility and invalidation of asexuality in the U.S., there is a lack of research on sexual citizenship discourses and a need for more research that utilizes intersectional feminism in asexuality studies. This master’s thesis uses an intersectional, transnational feminist, and queer lens to analyze how people who identify on the asexuality spectrum currently living in the U.S. are impacted by the concept of sexual citizenship. This research uses a qualitative survey, which 124 people, …

Between The Noise And Silence: An Autoethnography Challenging Schools Of Social Work To Evolve For Trans Students, Isaac M. Akapnitis, G. Trey Jenkins, Natasha S. Mendoza

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social work programs have been largely silent in the face of legislative at- tacks on transgender/nonbinary (TGNB or “trans”) communities across the U.S., which signals to TGNB students that they may not be supported in their respective programs. Consequently, TGNB students, staff, and faculty shoulder the burden to advocate for change within social work academic institutions and to speak out about violence perpetrated against TGNB communities. Using our voices as two trans doctoral students and a queer cisgender associate professor, we employed collaborative and critical autoethnography to share insights about the impact of this burden on TGNB social work students …

Volume 50, Issue 1 (2023)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

No abstract provided.

Teaching Beyond Trans-Competency: Exploring Trans-Affirming Pedagogy Through Applied Case Studies, Sam Harrell, Sarah Mountz, Hazel (Bobbi) Ali Zaman

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In this paper, we share two applied case studies social work instructors can use to teach trans-affirming, anti-oppressive practice. These cases span two practice arenas, child welfare and low-barrier shelter services, and are derived from practice in the authors’ personal and professional experiences in the Northeastern and Midwestern regions of the United States. For each case, we describe the accompanying class context, share our pedagogical approach, name the underlying assumptions and structures that facilitate harm, explore relevant practice skills, and identify theoretical, philosophical, and ethical commitments essential for trans-affirming practice. Our approach to social work education on transgender and gender …

"We're All We Have": Envisioning The Future Of Mutual Aid From Queer And Trans Perspectives, Brendon T. Holloway, C. Riley Hostetter, Karaya Morris, Jax Kynn, Maximillion Kilby

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Mutual aid has prevailed for as long as humans have existed. However, the concept of mutual aid became popularized in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the racial uprisings in response to the continued police brutality toward Black people, and an increase in global climate crises. Mutual aid spread as a way of survival and collective care when formal systems, such as federal and local governments within the U.S., were failing to meet people's needs. Using a subset of data from semi-structured interviews, the current study relied on a desire-based research framework and foresight lens to capture the …