Digital Commons Network^™

Pedestrian Safety South Of Brigham Young University Campus, Emma Mayo, Alisha H. Redelfs

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2025

8,500 crossings happen on 800 North every day. In Provo last year, 57 car crashes involved pedestrians. A pedestrian’s view of the road is obstructed by cars parked on the right hand side of the road causing them to walk in the crosswalk to see if there is a car coming. Sidewalks on connecting streets are uneven and cracked. Multiple blocks on 800 North without a stop sign to slow drivers down. Currently no posted speed limit signs on 800 North. Drivers can’t see pedestrians crossing on 200, 300, 400, or 500 East because of inadequate lighting. Cars obstruct areas …

Socioeconomic Advantage Effects On Family Health Across Three Generations, Brooklyn Richins, Gladys Lopez Mph, Kato Haupeakui Mph, Ali Crandall Ph.D.

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2025

Family health is a resource at the level of the family unit that influences each family member’s health (Weiss-Laxer et al., 2020).

Socioeconomic status (SES) is measured by education, employment, and income; prior research suggests that SES influences quality of life (Baker, 2014).

We examined how parent and grandparent SES affects young adult report of family health.

Practical Faith For The Real World Reading As If, Believing As If, Kylie Turley

BYU Studies

A few years ago, I was talking with some friends about the Book of Mormon. Actually, if you know me much at all, then you know that those last five words are unnecessary. Of course I was talking about the Book of Mormon. My children have been known to complain that the Book of Mormon is all I talk about. But let’s continue the story: One of my friends indicated that we “cannot read the Book of Mormon down to the word level.” She insisted that it was just not possible to read it “as if individual words are meaningful.”

The Silence Of The Sea, Kendalyn Murdock

Inscape

Kendalyn Murdock is (will be graduated as of June 2024) an English major at BYU. She was born and raised in southeast Idaho and has had a love for the written word since she learned the alphabet. She loves time outdoors exploring and time in books, similarly, exploring.

Full Issue

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Come, Follow Me And Life Preparation, Denise Mccubbins

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This paper explores foundational principles for effective gospel teaching in seminary: being Christ-centered, learner-focused, and scripture-based. It highlights the integration of Come, Follow Me and Life Preparation lessons to address students’ spiritual and practical needs. Teachers are encouraged to balance exegesis (understanding scripture’s original intent) and eisegesis (personal application) for meaningful, doctrinally accurate lessons. Through creative and purposeful scripture study, educators can align lesson objectives with students’ lives, fostering deeper conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Finding Peace Amidst Uncertainty, J. Anette Dennis

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This BYU devotional emphasizes the power of faith and trust in Jesus Christ to bring us peace during chaotic times. Through personal anecdotes and testimonies, Sister Dennis illustrates how spiritual preparation and covenant relationships with God can provide protection, strength, and profound peace, even amidst life’s uncertainties and challenges. The address encourages individuals to build a firm spiritual foundation on our Savior, Jesus Christ, and trust in divine guidance to navigate life’s trials with confidence and resilience.

Interview With Byu–Hawaii President John Kauwe Iii, Fred E. Woods

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This interview with President Kauwe traces Kauwe’s path from his time as a student at BYU to his appointment as the eleventh president of BYU–Hawaii. Kauwe shares insights into his Hawaiian heritage, academic and professional accomplishments, and his aspirations for the university. He underscores the vital role of faculty inbuilding students’ confidence, the distinct intercultural setting of BYU–Hawaii, and the centrality of the gospel in education. Reflecting on the rapid progression of his career, Kauwe also speaks about the importance of following divine guidance in our lives. The interview captures his dedication to promoting intercultural harmony and his deep testimony …

Holy Disregard: Christian Nationalists More Likely To Accept Democratic Norm Violations From Fellow Citizens, Hannah Criser

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

How do Christian nationalists react to democratic norm violations from fellow citizens? Previous research on Christian nationalism shows that believers of the ideology prefer right-leaning, conservative politics with a particular affinity for Donald J. Trump, who has shown to support and participate in democratic violations, such as denying election results and advocating for media suppression. However, little is known regarding how Christian nationalists would react to the democratic norm violations committed by fellow peers. In a nationally representative online survey fielded in October 2024, I discover that Christian nationalists are more likely to identify with and support violating democratic norms, …

National Renewal Through Fertility:, Austin Siler

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Japan has been facing fertility decline over the past several decades. Indeed, this decline constitutes a severe demographic crisis due to its birth rates falling to record lows year after year. Low birth rates have been correlated with economic and societal instability. As Akram (163) posits: “The combination of unfavorable demographics and poor economic growth has resulted in a secular decline” which has no current sign of shifting based on current policy. The government has implemented numerous policies to try and tackle this issue, but with little success. Japan’s population as of 2024 is estimated to be 125 million and …

Browsing Within An Academic Library, Holt Zaugg, Jillian Bunderson

Faculty Publications

Purpose – Browsing library resources is a method long used by researchers to expand their understanding of ill-defined projects and to have serendipitous research discoveries. This study sought to understand the browsing activities of students in an academic library. Design/methodology/approach – The study used two methods. First, a link to an online survey was posted on posters throughout the library inviting students to share their browsing experience. Second, library security officers (student employees) were asked to count the number of people browsing within the stacks as they conducted their hourly walk-throughs of the library. Browsing was broadly defined as anyone …

How Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination Benefits The World, Joseph A. Stanley, Lisa Morgan Johnson, Eve Okura Koller, Vashti Wai Yu Lee, Hallie Davidson, Valeria Prieto Hurtado, Sam Keddington, Hazel Mattson, Abigail Mueller, Sydney Jo Pederson, Maryn Perschon, Reese Rugg, Eliza Whiting

Faculty Publications

What is linguistic discrimination?

• Restricting access or opportunities based on speech (e.g., accent, pronunciation, grammatical system, tone or pitch)
• One of the last socially acceptable discriminatory practices in the international community
• A source of injustice that impacts many of God’s children every day

Linguistic discrimination is real! Here’s what it looks like…

In Healthcare:

• More questions about insurance coverage; later appointments (Wisniewski and Walker 2020)
• Lower access to mental health services (Kugelmass 2016)
• More referrals for speech therapy (Charity Hudley et. al. 2018)

In Education:

• Students receiving negative judgments from teachers (Bowie & Bond 1994; Cecil 1988; Wheeler 2019)
• Teachers …

If The Body Keeps The Score, What Happens When You Bring The Body To Work? Exploring The Health Effects Of Trauma On Human Capital, Lisa Jones Christensen, Elizabeth Embry, Arielle Badger Newman, Paul C. Godfrey

Faculty Publications

Data reveal that the physical effects of trauma exposure increasingly surface in business, social, and other settings. Exposure to trauma at any point in life can cause employee health concerns, yet many firms do not acknowledge or address this. Herein, we combine trauma theory with human capital theory to explain how manifestations of trauma exposure—hyperarousal, intrusion, and constriction—impact employee health and performance. This article outlines how each manifestation affects human capital deployment, and thus employee performance. It further demonstrates how these human capital deployment issues have individual- and unit-level performance implications. This article offers a theory linking health effects of …

The Marginal Value Of Public Pension Wealth: Evidence From Border House Prices, Darren Aiello, Asaf Bernstein, Mahyar Kargar, Ryan Lewis, Michael Schwert

Faculty Publications

We study how state pension windfalls affect property prices near state borders, where theory suggests real estate reflects the value of additional public resources. Windfalls, representing a source of state revenue about half the size of total taxes, provide economically significant and plausibly exogenous variation in fiscal conditions. We find that each dollar of pension asset returns increases border house prices by approximately two dollars, suggesting that governments allocate additional funds towards high-value projects or tax abatement rather than wasting incremental resources. Evidence of larger effects in financially constrained municipalities highlights how fiscal resources amplify welfare effects of economic shocks.

Full Issue

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

No abstract provided.

Nurturing Religious Education Using Artificial Intelligence, Matt Gardner

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

This essay focuses on helping teachers, parents, and students understand and become familiar with artificial intelligence (AI)—specifically, its capabilities and how it will affect our homes and classrooms. In doing so, teachers, parents, students, and children will learn to use certain gospel-approved principles to most successfully use and operate these new technologies to bless the lives of God’s children.

Full Issue

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Review: Out Of The Mouths Of Babes: Infant Voices In Medieval French Literature, Alani Hicks-Bartlett

Quidditas

Voicing a stirring call for readers to reconsider the silence and lacunae that are traditionally attributed to infancy, in her latest monograph, Julie Singer situates infancy as both an essential critical framework and an instructive, illuminative methodology through which a gaping archival silence can be rectified-that silence being literary representations of the medieval child, and specifically, the spoken life of the medieval child. As Singer argues, infancy and childhood entwine rather indiscernibly with each other in accordance with the medieval attribution of a longue dureé to infancy (Isidore of Seville, for instance, posited infancy as a stage lasting for about …

Review: Shaping Intellectual Disabilities In Early Modern England, Mardy Philippian

Quidditas

In Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern England, Alice Equestri has assembled an impressive collection of essays by researchers interested in early modern conceptions of intellectual disability. Like Hobgood and Wood's groundbreaking collection Recovering Disability in Early Modern England (2013) and Leslie C. Dunn's edited collection Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama (2020), Equestri's volume will benefit scholars for some time to come. Of use to both early career scholars and those well established in the field of early modern disability studies, Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern England invites readers into twelve individual studies of a diverse …

Medieval Old Age As Discourse: Conflicting Views And Perspectives In Pre-Modern German And European Literature From The Early To The Late Middle Ages, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

This article revisits and reviews the broad and intense discourse on old age in the medieval and to some extent early modern worlds and examines the major scholarly contributions to this extensive topic. The discussion of old age during the Middle Ages found expression in fields such as history, philosophy, medicine, theology, literature, the visual arts, pharmacy, and military studies. It is not that long ago that old age itself finally gained more interest in historical research, but we can by now rely on a number of well-researched monographs and edited volumes dealing with this highly complex topic. Previous scholarship …

Forcing Freedom: An Analysis Of Liberal Intervention From 1945-2017, Will Ford

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

The United States has a unique role on the international stage. Over the course of its history, especially since the Cold War, it has shown a proclivity for intervening in other country’s affairs (Peceny 1999, 1–2; Muravchick 1991, 222). This is no surprise, given that the U.S. has long borne the self-assigned role of the “world’s policeman” (Etzioni 2016, 508). One of the driving factors behind U.S. intervention is the United States' commitment to a grand strategy that uses liberal intervention to create a world friendly to the U.S., its allies, and its interests (Pickering and Peceny 2006, 540). The …

Wealth, Public Goods, And Terror Damage, Annie Ackerman Speers, Kendra Pinegar

Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies

The connection between macroeconomic status and terrorism is disputed; some find links between macroeconomic status and terrorism while others find no link between overall economic status and terrorist occurrence. We theorize that a country’s economic status, defined as overall GDP, is linked to the damage that terror groups do. However, we theorize that this link is contingent on public goods distribution by terror groups. More specifically, we theorize that terror groups provide public goods to compensate for a lack of public goods spending by governments. Using OLS and instrumental modeling, we find a negative link between GDP and terror damage, …

Vernal Awakening, Susan Moss

Inscape

Throughout Susan Moss’s artistic journey, classical training laid the foundation for her creativity. Art has been a source of joy for her since childhood. As she raised her family, the untamed creativity of her children inspired collaborative art sessions. Over time, her fascination with abstraction deepened and grew stronger. Guided by mentors and a diverse artistic community, Susan learned the importance of giving back. Beauty, harmony, and balance drive her work, aiming to inspire viewers. Her art doesn’t follow realism but mirrors life’s imperfections, avoiding perfect lines and precise colors. Instead, it captures the essence of a rich, varied life. …

Bridging History And Policy: A Comparative Study Of Vocational Education And Training (Vet) In The U.S. And Switzerland, Dr. Jackie Vorpe

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Switzerland is globally renowned for its mountains, banks and chocolate, in addition to the quality of its education system, flourishing economy, and low unemployment rate (around 2.5% in 20241). At the heart of this efficient and inclusive economic model is the dual Vocational Education and Training (VET) system, allowing direct entry into the job market. Nearly two-thirds of Swiss youth aged 15 to 18 choose the apprenticeship path, either through dual training in companies or in full-time vocational schools. These apprentices are vital to the Swiss economy and are ubiquitous across various sectors. Beyond Switzerland, this system is celebrated as …

Poor Cancer Prevention And Detection In Zimbabwe, Kenyon Chipman

Ballard Brief

In the wake of the AIDS/HIV epidemic, rates of non-communicable diseases such as cancer have increased. Although AIDS/HIV and other cancer-associated communicable diseases like HPV are on the decline, these diseases have laid the foundation for the rising cancer epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. While infectious diseases remain major contributors to the development of cancer, poor prevention and detection of cancer acts as the central catalyst in the nation’s inflated morbidity and mortality rate. A general lack of knowledge about the basics of cancer for both patients and health professionals, along with the barriers to preventative and detective resources and services, …

Inadequate Healthcare For Women In The United States, Grace Loveless

Ballard Brief

Barriers to adequate healthcare for women stem from a lack of research on their specific health needs, gender-based biases in healthcare, and harmful societal norms. One key aspect highlighting these disparities is the menstrual cycle—a topic unique to women. Menstrual health, defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, illustrates the urgent need for greater focus on reproductive health. Despite its significance, the dialogue and knowledge about reproductive health remain limited, exacerbated by societal attitudes of secrecy and shame. These attitudes create barriers that hinder many women in the United States from accessing adequate healthcare. As a …

Comparing The Sensitivity And Specificity Of Novel Motor Assessments For Traumatic Brain Injury, Paula K. Johnson, Ariana M. Hedges-Muncy, Erin D. Bigler, Lorie Richards, Steven Knight Charles

Faculty Publications

Background: Portable technology that records movements with high accuracy provides potential for sensitive clinical movement tests for individuals who experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Objective: (1)To present impairments assessed using markerless motion capture (MMC) and (2) to compare the sensitivity and specificity of the MMCmediated tests to each other and to common clinical tests. Design: Screening study, using as criterion standard the ability to classify participant with TBI versus control participant. Setting: Research laboratory. Participants: The study included 30 individuals with TBI and 101 control participants. Entry criteria included most recent head injury < 5 years old, no history of movement issues prior to injury, no movement-affecting medications, and sufficient cognitive ability to follow instructions. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Performance on MMC-mediated tests and existing clinical analogs. MMC-mediated tests included finger oscillation, simple reaction time, and visually guided movement tasks. For comparison, participants also completed the following clinical tests: Halstead–Reitan finger tapping, simple reaction time test, and Beery Visuomotor Integration test. Impairments were identified as test scores of participants with TBI that fell outside of the 95% interval of control participants’ test scores. Random forest analysis was used to calculate the sensitivity and specificity of MMC and clinical tests according to their ability to correctly classify participants with TBI and control participants. Results: MMC-mediated tests revealed impairments in more participants with TBI than clinical tests in all three TBI groups (mild, repeated, and moderate to severe). Similarly, MMC-mediated tests revealed a higher percentage of scores as impairments than clinical tests in all three groups with TBI. Furthermore, MMC-mediated tests proved more sensitive and more specific than clinical tests (70% versus 50% and 98% versus 93%, respectively). Conclusion: MMC-mediated tests are sensitive and specific (compared to traditional clinical tests) and have potential to fill a gap in clinical care of TBI.

Price Transparency And Patient Engagement: Social Messaging Matters, Jace B. Garrett, Keaton C. Helquist, Steven D. Smith, William B. Tayler

Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVES: To examine the effects of price transparency and prosocial messaging on price-protected consumers’ health care choices as a potential cost-saving strategy to manage rising US health care expenditures.

STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. Participants were recruited to complete a basic questionnaire via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program. Participants’ selections were subsequently collected and analyzed.

METHODS: Participants (N = 567) selected a sleep study provider from 5 options, with manipulations including financial responsibility, provision of price information, and a prosocial message encouraging high-value options.

RESULTS: Price transparency increased the selection of lower-cost options among participants who were solely responsible for paying for …

The Healer's Call: Helping Clients In A Secular World With Spiritual Problems, Brent Taylor

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.

Issues In Religion And Psychotherapy Volume 42 Number 1

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

No abstract provided.