Digital Commons Network^™

Relational Red Flags: Detecting Undesirable Qualities In Initial Romantic Encounters, Richard C. White

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation extends the work of Signal Detection Theory (SDT) (Green & Swets, 1966; Swets, 1964) in the social sciences by applying it to romantic relationships, specifically initial romantic encounters (i.e. formal or informal first few dates, or random, chance encounters). The term relational red flag is put forth to describe the detection of signals in initial romantic encounters that may be perceived as any undesirable quality, which can be a characteristic, behavior, state, or trait that a person would not want in a potential romantic partner. These undesirable qualities can be costly to a healthy, stable relationship because they …

Toward An Advanced System Of Accountability For Improved Student Learning Outcomes: A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Test-Based Accountability In Louisiana, Susan Nicole Kahn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The nature of federal and state policies regarding accountability testing narrows the taught curriculum to content tested, thereby changing what is officially valued as student learning. The over-emphasis on standardized test scores has narrowed the curriculum to content that is tested (Amrein & Berliner, 2002; Baker, 2008; Herman, 2008; Koretz & Hamilton, 2003; Linn, 2000). In Louisiana, test-based accountability defines local school quality through a letter grade rating scale that uses an index for school performance scores (SPS), which in turn impacts traditional and nontraditional (e.g. charter) school expansion, closure, and takeover, administration of opportunity scholarships (e.g. voucher) for private …

The Role Of Religious Coping In The Marital Stability Of Strong, African American Couples: A Strengths-Focused Approach., Antonius Delvecco Skipper

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Relatively few studies have examined the strengths of the African American family, while several have highlighted social issues that have affected the African American family such as divorce, single-parent households, and absentee fathers. This focus on deficit and dysfunction contributes to a research-based gap in understanding the African American marital dyad. Given that religion influences the lives of many African American couples, it is important to understand the impact that religious coping can have on marital stability in the African American community. The purpose of this study is to explore the underlying processes of religious coping for those African American …

An Examination Of The Lived Experiences Of United States Military Veterans Who Have Been Diagnosed With Psychological Inflictions Of War Who Have Utilized Equine Assisted Therapy, Thomas Frederick Banner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As the result of multiple psychological conditions that are inflicted by war, the need for veterans’ well-being is ever evident. “PTSD changes the body’s response to stress, often making it difficult for PTSD victims to live their lives as they normally would” (Stokes, 2013, p. 1). It is possible to touch individuals who do not react to traditional therapy with a different type of therapy. It is recommended that veterans besieged with these same symptoms could benefit from therapy with animals. Renson (2010) concluded that animals have delivered numerous benefits to people using therapy. The benefits that animals offer in …

Walter Lippmann's Search For A Sustainable Liberalism, Eric Schmidt

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Walter Lippmann’s intellectual journey represents the journey of American liberalism in the 20th century: an attempted return from infatuation with the progressive ideals of inevitable historical development and scientific progress to the stability of human rights and freedom. America’s path to defining its brand of liberalism finds expression in the philosophical works of Lippmann, who was at the center of this struggle. Lippmann was a defender of the liberal democratic state whose value as a thinker derives from his attempt to understand the problem of political freedom (are people competent to self-rule in a mass democracy?) throughout this critical time …

After Images: Using Augusto Boal's Image Theatre To Balance Artistry, Analysis, And Activism In The Performance Composition Process, Bonny Leah Mcdonald

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I describe several performance experiments in which I applied Brazilian theatre artist Augusto Boal’s Image Theatre method to mobilize a composition process that is artistically exciting, politically relevant, and pedagogically engaging. Over the span of about seven years I used Image Theatre as the bedrock of my artistic practice as a director of social justice themed works for the stage. I show how using Image Theatre as a tool for performance composition can balance artistry (theatrical practice), analysis (cultural studies), and activism (collaborative struggles toward justice). To do so, I review relevant literature on Boal and Image …

Exploring The Relationship Between Long-Term Memory And Attention Through Attentional Templates, Rebecca Rose Goldstein

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

It is assumed that the contents of visual working memory (VWM) guide attention. This notion has been challenged by work which has demonstrated that multiple searches for the same target changes contralateral delay activity (CDA), an event-related potential that is the putative marker of the amount of information maintained in VWM. It has been suggested that the disappearance of the CDA with an invariable target marks the transfer of the attentional template from VWM storage to long-term memory (LTM) storage. Therefore, LTM may guide attention in many situations where it has previously been assumed that VWM guides attention. However, while …

From The Valley To The Mountaintop: A Case Study Of Resilience And Persistence Among First-Generation African American Males Who Have Achieved Doctoral Success, D'Jalon Janeece Jackson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This case study examined the lived experiences of three first-generation, African American men whom have persisted to achieve doctoral success in the form of Ph.D. attainment. Participants were interviewed in order to gather data in their own voices about their educational experiences as first-generation African American Males (AAMs). Participants attributed their success to what can be categorized as sociocultural capital in the form of resilience and persistence factors. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations were made to educational stakeholders on how to transform educational spaces into venues that build cultural capital and promote resilience and persistence within this …

Essays In Economics Of Institutions And Culture, Luiza Valeriyevna Pogorelova

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present two distinct essays in economics of culture and institutions that can be read independently from one another. In Chapter 2, using the European Social Survey data, I investigate the impact of increased educational attainment, induced by compulsory schooling reforms, on religiosity and superstitious beliefs. I find consistently negative effects of education on religiosity, superstitious beliefs, social religious acts (attending religious services) and solitary religious acts (the frequency of praying). In Chapter 3, I examine the impact of “culture of leisure” and tax rates on labor force participation and hours worked of second-generation immigrants residing in …

The Representation Of Disability In The Music Of Alfred Hitchcock Films, John T. Dunn

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Several of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies feature characters with disabilities. Often, these characters are protagonists, and Hitchcock systematically manipulates his audiences to identify with these characters through the editing process, sound effects, and music. This dissertation will analyze the ways music represents various disabilities in three Hitchcock films. Vertigo (1958) addresses obsession and phobia as its main themes, whereas Psycho (1960) investigates obsession and madness. Finally, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) explores muteness, hysteria, and identity in the context of two pieces of diegetic music. Hitchcock made careful notes for the music in his films; songs represent disability through …

Ben Moore's "Dear Theo," For Tenor Voice And Piano: A Performer's Guide, Gregory Michael Gallagher

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

American composer Ben Moore (b. 1960) is a well-regarded painter, pianist, and composer whose compositions have been sung by leading singers of the Metropolitan Opera. This document serves as a performer’s guide to Moore’s song cycle Dear Theo. The song cycle utilizes Moore’s own text adaptations of letters written by Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo. Chapter 1 presents a biographical sketch of Vincent van Gogh and his path to becoming a painter. Chapter 2 provides a brief life history of Ben Moore based on personal interview. Chapter 3 details the process of creating the song cycle Dear Theo. …

Modeling Relationships Among Affective Measures Of Food Choice: Acceptance, Emotions And Satisfaction, Wisdom Wardy

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The importance of ascertaining holistic product and consumer understanding beyond liking in the product development process cannot be overstated. This research investigated the role of attribute performance on satisfaction in explaining the relationship between food-evoked emotions and sensory preferences, and examined factors influencing the sensory-emotion profile of food products. In the first phase of this research, a series of consumer studies were conducted using eggs as a test product. First, the extent to which critical product attributes contribute to the satisfaction of quality requirements and purchase intent was determined using Kano modeling concepts. The emotional profile of the product was …

Adaptive Behavior Deficits In Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder- Cutoff Scores For The Asd-D-A According To Dsm-5 Criteria., Nicole Cassandra Turygin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

With the release of the DSM-5, measures of ASD must be adjusted to take into account the new diagnostic criteria. In the present study, 337 adults with varying levels of intellectual disability who reside in a residential facility were studied. The present study identified potential cutoff scores on an established measure of ASD symptoms in adults, the ASD-A, and compared adaptive behavior levels between groups identified by DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5. The sample was divided into three groups: non-ASD, ASD according to DSM-5 and ASD according to DSM-IV-TR ASD along DSM-IV-TR was determined based on previous diagnoses, while DSM-5 diagnoses were …

Framing The Ebola Outbreak: Systemic Influences On News Coverage, Adaobi Vivian Duru

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT Using a media systems comparative framework, I investigated the relationship between systemic characteristics and news coverage of international events. Leveraging a highly salient event: the Ebola outbreak, I extended the Hallin and Mancini Model to non-western democracies. This dissertation explored differences in media coverage of Ebola across media systems. Findings revealed that characteristics of media systems inform how news about an event is framed by reporters. By investigating news influences, this dissertation broadly sheds light on the latent influences of politics and culture on what audiences receive as news. My results showed that liberal media systems such as those …

The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia In Modernist Narratives Of The First World War, Michael Von Cannon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, entitled The Darkest Nation: American Melancholia in Modernist Narratives of the First World War, re-conceptualizes U.S. modernism by attending to how the historical event of WWI inaugurated melancholia, or sustained grief, as the cornerstone of a new form of nationalism. Scholars have focused either on how consolatory mourning bolstered patriotism or how melancholia led to the demise of such an imagined community and to the growth of cosmopolitanism. I consider, however, an American modernist commitment to the nation of loss expressed, surprisingly enough, in narratives about noncombatants. For a country that entered the military conflict near its end, …

The Impact Of Experimentally Manipulated Post-Event Processing On The Relationship Between Social Anxiety And Cannabis Craving And Use, Anthony Harlan Ecker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cannabis-related problems are major public health concerns. Social anxiety appears to be a unique risk factor that contributes to the development of cannabis-related problems, including cannabis use disorders. Given this risk, identification of cognitive vulnerabilities that may contribute to the onset and maintenance of co-occurring social anxiety and cannabis-related problems remains an important research goal. Socially anxious individuals experience anxiety and negative affect in response to cognitively reviewing past social situations (i.e., post-event processing [PEP]) and are likely to use cannabis to cope with negative affective states, which may occur during PEP. Thus, PEP may be one cognitive vulnerability factor …

Equipment For Dying: A Dramatistic Critique Of Heroism And The Crises Assaulting Returning Soldiers, Jonathan Mark Broussard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a dramatistic critique of the various crises and challenges assaulting United States soldiers and the current U.S. construction of warrior heroism through the theoretical lens of “Equipment for Dying.” Equipment for Dying theorizes that each specific crisis or challenge faced is a contemporary incarnation of an archetypal challenged faced by all soldiers and the societies that send them to war. Therefore, the dramatic form of the myth of the heroic warrior provides models and guidelines for interpreting and responding to the “deaths” of the soldier: physical, psychological, or economic. As a theoretical frame, Equipment for Dying seeks …

A Stirling Education: Education In Antebellum Louisiana, Seth T. Eisworth

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the surviving archival evidence from several 19th century prominent West Feliciana families found in the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections (LLMVC) at the LSU libraries in an effort to understand how Louisianans’ value and support education. The antebellum period was chosen for study because it was arguably the last time period in which the South was not influenced or controlled by the dominant narrative of the Common School Movement, which Wayne Urban (1981) refers to as the “phenomenon of Massachusetts Myopia.” The archival collections containing correspondence from the immediate family of Lewis Stirling, Sr. and their …

Curriculum And Compassion: An Inquiry Into The Relevance Of The Charism Of The Brothers Of The Sacred Heart In A Post-Modern World, Thomas Walter Eldringhoff

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance of a curriculum that embodies the charism of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in a post-modern world. The project will investigate the understanding of the charism both by the researcher and by selected brothers who are in unique positions to articulate and explicate just what the charism entails. A variety of formational and foundational documents will also be subjected to philosophical analysis so a deep picture of the charism is available to the reader. Literature surrounding post-modernist curriculum theory serves as the theoretical framework for this investigation of the …

The Impact Of Weight Bias On Psychological Functioning: The Role Of Weight Discrimination And Internalized Weight Bias, Krystal Marie Waldo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Obesity rates in the United States (U.S.) continue to rise with approximately 34.9% of adults considered obese and an additional 34% that are overweight. With the increased prevalence of obesity, there has also been a rise in weight-based discrimination and weight bias in the U.S. The present study examined the association between body mass index (BMI) and psychological functioning, and whether internalized weight bias and weight-based stigmatizing experiences moderated this relationship. In addition, the present study examined if weight bias internalization mediated the relationship between weight-based stigmatizing experiences and psychological functioning. Non-treatment seeking overweight and obese participants (N = 112) …

Tracing The Development Of Willie Stark And Its Place In American Opera, Betsy Marie Uschkrat

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Highly praised American composer Carlisle Floyd (b. 1925), well known for his musical dramas Susannah (1955) and Of Mice and Men (1970), wrote Willie Stark (1981), commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and later Houston Grand Opera. Floyd’s libretto and musical score was based upon Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel All The King’s Men. Despite the vast amount of publicity it received at the premiere, this opera has only occasionally been performed in the last 35 years. Chapter One discusses Carlisle Floyd’s creation of Willie Stark. Chapter Two discusses the workshop performance of the piece. Chapter …

Developmental Math Education: The Bermuda Triangle Of Student Success--Many Enter, But Few Succeed., Julia Elizabeth Paxton Sullivan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study employed a quantitative design to evaluate the effectiveness of developmental math and the predictors of student success in developmental math for a period of three years. Four of the study’s original eight predictors of student success were statistically significant. However, a model was created using multinomial regression. The model was created using data from the fall 2013 semester and was tested using data from the fall 2014 semester. The effectiveness of developmental math in predicting a student’s success in the first college-level math course was tested using a multinomial regression. Although no statistical significance was found, the study …

Fear No Evil: Making Sense Of Intersectionality And Fear Of Crime Amongst Blacks In High Crime Neighborhoods, Melinda Jackson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The extant literature on fear of crime has relied almost entirely upon quantitative data and was criticized as atheoretical due to its focus on the demographic characteristics associated with vulnerability. Emerging qualitative research on fear of crime has begun to overcome this limitation by drawing upon an intersectional lens, but quantitative assessments have yet to fully incorporate this theoretical development. The current study addresses this limitation by analyzing qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews and quantitative data collected as part of a large-scale survey. The primary goal of this dissertation is to take an intersectional approach to understand the relationships …

The Winter Family, Andrew Wollard

Civil War Book Review

Bringing to Life War’s Brutality

Clifford Jackman’s new novel The Winter Family is a chilling mixture of tension, irony, beauty, terror, and brutality. His work calls to mind the historical fiction of John Williams, Tom Franklin, and Peter Matthiessen. Jackman’s mostly spar....

Exploring Organizational Resilience Asset And Its Antecedents For Effective Internal Crisis Communication, Young Kim

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Nowadays crises are omnipresent with daily news headlines as reminders. The public continues to see or experience many different crises that affect numerous individuals and organizations as well as society in general. Against this backdrop, corporate communication professionals, for effective crisis management, are expected to help the organizations and their leaders make decisions, as well as communicate clearly when crises arise. Considering a fast changing media environment, recent scholars have called for new approaches to crisis communication to enhance theoretical developments. They suggested that researchers should take a broader context beyond the dominant crisis communication research perspectives based on the …

The Social Contagion Of Adolescent Depression: Applying A Differential Susceptibility Model, Win Guan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Recent research investigating social risk factors of depression has found evidence for a social contagion effect. The research comes from a surge in popularity of using social network analyses to examine the spread of various health outcomes such as obesity, smoking, substance use, and sleep. Although the finding of depressive contagion represents a significant contribution to the literature on the social etiology of depression, this is only the first step in providing meaningful research useful for the practical application of curbing the growing rates of depression especially among adolescents. Rather than simply acknowledging the existence of contagion effects, researchers must …

Next-Generation Sequencing Reveals Frequent Opportunities For Exposure To Hepatitis C Virus In Ghana, Joseph C. Forbi, Jennifer E. Layden, Richard O. Phillips, Nallely Mora, Guoliang Xia, David S. Campo, Michael A. Purdy, Zoya E. Dimitrova, Dorcas O. Owusu, Lili T. Punkova, Pavel Skums, Shirley Owusu-Ofori, Fred Stephen Sarfo, Gilberto Vaughan, Hajung Roh, Ohene K. Opare-Sem, Richard S. Cooper, Yury E. Khudyakov

Faculty Publications

Globally, hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infection is responsible for a large proportion of persons with liver disease, including cancer. The infection is highly prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. West Africa was identified as a geographic origin of two HCV genotypes. However, little is known about the genetic composition of HCV populations in many countries of the region. Using conventional and next-generation sequencing (NGS), we identified and genetically characterized 65 HCV strains circulating among HCV-positive blood donors in Kumasi, Ghana. Phylogenetic analysis using consensus sequences derived from 3 genomic regions of the HCV genome, 5'-untranslated region, hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) and NS5B …

Examining Louisiana State University College Of Agriculture Students’ Perceived Motivators And Barriers To Participation In International Experiences, J. C. Bunch, J. Joey Blackburn, Shelli Dan Jean, Kristin E. Stair, Leslie D. Blanchard

Faculty Publications

© 2015, Assoc. Int. Agricultural and Extension Education. All rights reserved. In an effort to internationalize higher education and produce globally competent professionals, many universities have increased the time and financial assets put toward promoting an international experience (IE). Research supports using an IE to supplement international education efforts and help students develop the global perspective and experience needed to succeed in the workplace. The purpose of this study was to determine College of Agriculture (CoA) students’ perceptions of IE participation, and identify factors that CoA students perceived as barriers and motivators to participation in an IE. CoA students were …

Mathematics Library News 14, Aaron Lercher

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Political Identity Of Louisiana’S College Voters An Analysis Of Their Opinions, Habits, And Politics, Milton Joseph Hernandez Iv

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.