Digital Commons Network^™

Emerging From The Shadows: Civil War, Human Rights, And Peacebuilding Among Peasants And Indigenous Peoples In Colombia And Peru In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Charles A. Flowerday

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Peacebuilding in Colombia and Peru following their late-20^th and early 21^st century civil wars is a challenging proposition. In this study, it becomes necessary as indigenous peoples and peasants resist domination by extractive industries and governments in their thrall. Whether they protest nonviolently or rebel in arms, they are targeted for human-rights violations, especially murder, disappearance and displacement. The armed actors, state, insurgency, paramilitaries or drug traffickers, destroy civic institutions (local or regional government) and the civil (nonprofit) sector and replace them with their own authoritarian versions. Therefore, peacebuilding has emphasized rebuilding civic institutions, civil society and local …

College Dreams À La Mexicana . . . Agency And Strategy Among American-Mexican Transnational Students, Nolvia A. Cortez Román, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Drawing from in-depth interviews with university-level transnational students in Mexico, we highlight these students’ resistance and agency in the face of US legal and educational policies that have marginalized them and other undocumented students. We also illustrate pitfalls and possibilities that students encounter in a Mexican system that has not anticipated their presence. The interviewed students viewed return migration for higher education in Mexico as a strategy that could allow them to access/develop their imagined identities as college-educated professionals and one day, legalized citizens of the United States. At the time they made their decisions, before Deferred Action for Childhood …

Rankcluster: An R Package For Clustering Multivariate Partial Rankings, Julien Jacques, Quentin Grimonprez, Christophe Biernacki

The R Journal

The Rankcluster package is the first R package proposing both modeling and clustering tools for ranking data, potentially multivariate and partial. Ranking data are modeled by the Insertion Sorting Rank (ISR) model, which is a meaningful model parametrized by a central ranking and a dispersion parameter. A conditional independence assumption allows multivariate rankings to be taken into account, and clustering is performed by means of mixtures of multivariate ISR models. The parameters of the cluster (central rankings and dispersion parameters) help the practitioners to interpret the clustering. Moreover, the Rankcluster package provides an estimate of the missing ranking positions when …

Mrcv: A Package For Analyzing Categorical Variables With Multiple Response Options, Natalie A. Koziol, Christopher R. Bilder

The R Journal

Multiple response categorical variables (MRCVs), also known as “pick any” or “choose all that apply” variables, summarize survey questions for which respondents are allowed to select more than one category response option. Traditional methods for analyzing the association between categorical variables are not appropriate with MRCVs due to the within-subject dependence among responses. We have developed the MRCV package as the first R package available to correctly analyze MRCVdata. Statistical methods offered by our package include counterparts to traditional Pearson chi-square tests for independence and loglinear models, where bootstrap methods and Rao-Scott adjustments are relied on to obtain valid inferences. …

The Effect Of Victimization, Mental Health, And Protective Factors On Crime And Illicit Drug Use Among Homeless Young Adults, Kimberly A. Tyler, Lisa Kort-Butler, Alexis Swendener

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although research has found high rates of child maltreatment, widespread victimization, and other negative outcomes among homeless youth and young adults, resiliency among this population has largely been understudied. Specifically, a gap remains in terms of how protective factors such as self-efficacy, low deviant beliefs, and religiosity operate among homeless youth and young adults. The purpose of the current study is to examine the relationship between various forms of victimization, mental health, and protective factors with property and violent crime and illicit drug use among homeless young adults. Results from regression analyses indicate that running away from home more frequently, …

Review Of Just Queer Folks: Gender And Sexuality In Rural America By Colin R. Johnson, Emily Kazyak

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Colin Johnson’s book Just Queer Folks provides a powerful corrective to the faulty assumption that gender and sexual nonnormativity and rurality are incompatible. As a historian, Johnson focuses on both the discourses about sexuality emerging and the wide array of sexual practices occurring in the first half of the twentieth century in rural America. He analyzes a wide range of sources to make two central points: first, that heterosexuality and heteronormativity are not “indigenous to rural areas,” but were constructed there (p. 18); second, that same-sex sexual behavior and gender nonconformity were commonplace in rural America in early twentieth century. …

Yaya: Philippine Domestic Care Workers, The Children They Care For, And The Children They Leave Behind, Maria Rosario De Guzman

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The domestic and care labor sector is integral to the economic and social fabric of almost every nation. Although there has been increasing attention to the plight and experiences of international migrant workers within this field, less is known about the experiences of rural-to-urban migrants employed in this same sector. This study focuses on “yayas”—domestic workers caring for children in affluent families in the Philippines and draws from fieldwork and interviews conducted in Quezon City. Participants were female “yayas” caring for young children while they themselves were separated from their own offspring, most of whom were left behind in their …

Adolescent Reactions To Maternal Responsiveness And Internalizing Symptomatology: A Daily Diary Investigation, Lisa Jobe-Shields, Gilbert R. Parra, Kelly E. Buckholdt, Rachel N. Tillery

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

A daily diary methodology was employed to gather teens’ perceptions of maternal responsiveness to daily stressful events and teens’ reactions to maternal responsiveness in a diverse sample (792 entries from 104 teens; 81% African American, mean age 13.7 years). Additionally, parents and teens completed baseline reports of internalizing symptoms. Diary findings were congruent with prior studies employing self-report measures of global maternal responses to emotion (e.g., higher probability of Accepting reactions to supportive responses, higher probabilities of Attack, Avoid-Withdraw reactions to non-supportive responses). Elevated baseline internalizing symptoms were related to perception of elevated Punish and Magnify responses during the week, …

Quantifying Differences In Habitat Use Between Anglers And Large Bluegills, Eric J. Weimer, Michael L. Brown, Brian G. Blackwell

The Prairie Naturalist

We compared the habitat use of large (>200 mm) bluegills (Lepomis macrochirus) to the locations of anglers targeting bluegills in a South Dakota glacial lake to determine whether habitat use was similar between anglers and bluegills. Eighty- five bluegills (mean total length = 213 mm) collected in September 2002 and May 2003 were affixed with external radio transmitters and subsequently relocated three to four times per week from October 2002 through October 2003. Bluegill angler locations were recorded during bluegill tracking sessions and roving creel surveys. Habitat variables (water depth, vegetation density and height, and substrate type) were measured …

The Importance Of Motherhood And Fertility Intentions Among U.S. Women, Julia Mcquillan, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Andrew V. Bedrous

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Fertility intentions are associated with achieved fertility; therefore, understanding the factors associated with fertility intentions is important. Considerable research has examined factors associated with fertility intentions, but no one has explored the importance of motherhood to women. Guided by life course and identity theories, we use the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, a data set collected from a random sample of U.S. women aged 25–45 in 2004 through 2007, to assess the relationship between importance of motherhood and fertility intentions. Adding importance of motherhood to a model including other variables associated with fertility intentions increases the variance explained by 6.4 …

A Stress Process Model Of Arrest Among Homeless Women: Exploring Risk And Protective Factors, Kari C. Gentzler

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Objective: Women constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of both the homeless and incarcerated populations. In addition, homeless women tend to have higher rates of victimization, mental illness, substance use, and criminal justice system involvement compared to non-homeless women, although this body of research is becoming dated. The current study situates homeless women’s involvement in the criminal justice system within the stress process model and proposes that these factors—childhood abuse, psychiatric disorders, and homelessness—act as stressors that increase their risk of arrest. In addition, social support and self-efficacy are examined as potential protective factors that may act as buffers against …

Archiving Reproducible Research With R And Dataverse, Thomas J. Leeper

The R Journal

Reproducible research and data archiving are increasingly important issues in research involving statistical analyses of quantitative data. This article introduces the dvn package, which allows R users to publicly archive datasets, analysis files, codebooks, and associated metadata in Dataverse Network online repositories, an open-source data archiving project sponsored by Harvard University. In this article I review the importance of data archiving in the context of reproducible research, introduce the Dataverse Network, explain the implementation of the dvn package, and provide example code for archiving and releasing data using the package

The Stringdist Package For Approximate String Matching, Mark P.J. Van Der Loo

The R Journal

Comparing text strings in terms of distance functions is a common and fundamental task in many statistical text-processing applications. Thus far, string distance functionality has been somewhat scattered around R and its extension packages, leaving users with inconistent interfaces and encoding handling. The stringdist package was designed to offer a low-level interface to several popular string distance algorithms which have been re-implemented in C for this purpose. The package offers distances based on counting q-grams, edit-based distances, and some lesser known heuristic distance functions. Based on this functionality, the package also offers inexact matching equivalents of R’s native exact matching …

Cystic Echinococcoses In Mongolia: Molecular Identification, Serology And Risk Factors, Akira Ito, Temuulen Dorjsuren, Anu Davaasuren, Tetsuya Yanagida, Yasuhito Sako, Kazuhiro Nakaya, Minoru Nakao, Oyun-Erdene Bat-Ochir, Tsendjav Ayushkhuu, Narantuya Bazarragchaa, Nyamkhuu Gonchigsengee, Tiaoying Li, Gurbadam Agvaandaram, Abmed Davaajav, Chinchuluun Boldbaatar, Gantigmaa Chuluunbaatar

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Library Materials

Abstract

Background

Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a globally distributed cestode zoonosis that causes hepatic cysts. Although Echinococcus granulosus sensu stricto (s.s.) is the major causative agent of CE worldwide, recent molecular epidemiological studies have revealed that E. canadensis is common in countries where camels are present. One such country is Mongolia.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Forty-three human hepatic CE cases that were confirmed histopathologically at the National Center of Pathology (NCP) in Ulaanbaatar (UB) were identified by analysis of mitochondrial cox1 gene as being caused by either E. canadensis (n = 31, 72.1%) or E. granulosus s.s. ( …

Cc421 Effect Of Workplace Demands On Individual/Family Spheres Among Small, Rural Business Employees, Herbert G. Lingren, Georgia Stevens, Rachelle Knight

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: Historical Materials

Campaign Circular 421 is about the effect of workplace demands on individual/family spheres among small, rural business employees.

Exploring The Factors That Influence And Motivate Female Students To Enroll And Persist In Collegiate Stem Degree Programs: A Mixed Methods Study, Rosemary L. Edzie

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nationally, the need for an increase in interest, enrollment, and degrees awarded from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degree programs continues to suffer. While students are enrolling in collegiate STEM degree programs, it is not occurring at a rate that meets the workforce demand. In addition to the concern that there is not a sufficient amount of collegiate STEM majors, there is a concern over too few females enrolling and persisting in collegiate STEM degree programs.

This mixed methods sequential exploratory research study considered the factors that influence and motivate undergraduate female students to enroll and persist in collegiate …

Nebraska Libraries - Volume 2, Number 2 (May 2014)

Nebraska Libraries

No abstract provided.

"I Want To Be Brave": A Baseline Study On The Vulnerabilities Of Street-Working Boys In Sihanoukville, Cambodia, Jarrett Davis, Glenn Miles, M’Lop Tapang

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 6th (2014)

Focusing on street-working boys in Sihanoukville, this study partnered with social workers and child protection officers from M’lop Tapang (a key social service provider in Sihanoukville) to identify locations where young boys were known to be working along the beaches and within the town center. In recent years, Sihanoukville has become known as a rapidly developing commercial beach area, which has received increasing attention from foreign tourists, backpackers, and ex-patriots. Within this context, it has become a destination for migrant workers from surrounding provinces who have hopes of generating income through selling, begging, and other various means. The study conducted …

Student And Teacher Experiences With Informal Learning In A School Music Classroom: An Action Research Study, Mark C. Adams

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

Despite the ubiquitous nature of music in the lives of adolescents, school music education rarely offers experiences with the informal music making practices that are used by their favorite vernacular artists. This action research study implemented informal learning practices into the formal learning environment of my current teaching position in a rural Midwestern community, to understand more about student experiences and the educator’s role in such a classroom. The qualitative research approach used in this study borrowed from grounded theory techniques. Data collection included twenty-five total interviews with nine first-year beginning instrumentalists. Interviews were conducted in three waves, where the …

Making Their Own Way: The Experiences Of Gay Male Students In Stem Fields, Adam R. Smith

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis focuses on the experiences of gay male undergraduate students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. These fields are often thought to be very masculine or hyper-genderized, which could conflict with the dominant culture’s perception of a gay student’s identity. It follows, then, that a hypergenderized environment could have negative effects on those who do not identify strongly with the hegemonic masculine identity that may be present in the classroom.

Using phenomenological principles, students were asked to participate in a series of three interviews, which included two reflective exercises designed to explore their experiences in and …

Generational Differences In Work Motivation Of Healthcare Workers, Rose Leavitt

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examined the motivational differences across the major generations and the specific cusps between the Veterans and Baby Boomers, between Baby Boomers and Generation X, and between Generation X and Generation Y.

Data were collected from 1,098 self-selected employees of a large healthcare system in the Midwest. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed to statistically analyze the data. Significant differences in the sources of motivation among the four generations and the cusps of generations for four of the five MSI subscales were identified.

Intrinsic process motivation was found to be significantly higher for Generation Y than Generation …

Black Radicals And Marxist Internationalism: From The Iwma To The Fourth International, 1864–1948, Charles R. Holm

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project investigates historical relationships between Black Radicalism and Marxist internationalism from the mid-nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that contrary to scholarly accounts that emphasize Marxist Euro-centrism, or that theorize the incompatibility of “Black” and “Western” radical projects, Black Radicals helped shape and produce Marxist theory and political movements, developing theoretical and organizational innovations that drew on both Black Radical and Marxist traditions of internationalism. These innovations were produced through experiences of struggle within international political movements ranging from the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century to the early Pan-African movements and struggles …

The Effects Of Alcohol Intoxication And Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies On Lab-Based Partner Aggression, Laura E. Watkins

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Intimate partner aggression (IPA) is a serious national health concern that affects an alarming number of individuals and can lead to substantial psychological and physical suffering. Situational risk factors that arise in the immediate context of IPA reflect state-like influences that trigger aggression. Because these factors are more variable and fluctuate according to the situation, they are potentially promising targets for prevention and intervention efforts (e.g., through cognitive and behavioral interventions). Within this realm, two factors in particular appear to play a prominent role in the etiology of IPA: alcohol intoxication and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. In contrast to prior …

An Examination Of The Role Of Social Support, Coping Strategies, And Individual Characteristics In Students’ Adaptation To College, Arleen Bejerano

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Adaptation, or adjustment, is a psycho-social process that occurs when an individual accepts and integrates into his or her life a transition from one situation to another situation (Schlossberg, 1981). Many individuals struggle with transitions because transitions involve changes in the environment, roles, routines, and/or ways of looking at the world. The present investigation examines the transition from high school to college, and explores the interpersonal and individual ways that students manage the changes accompanying this transition. Using Transition Theory as a framework, students’ social support networks, coping strategies, self-esteem, and depression are posited to influence students’ adaptation to college …

Consent For Nondiagnostic Research Biopsies: A Pilot Study Of Participant Recall And Therapeutic Orientation, Roberto Abadie, Jonathan Kimmelman, Josiane Lafleur, Trudo Lemmens,

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

A growing number of clinical trials incorporate invasive procedures like nondiagnostic tumor biopsies for biomarker or pharmacodynamic analysis.1 Such invasive research procedures are ethically contentious. Tumor biopsies involve pain and complication risk,2 and at least one procedure-related death has been reported.3 However, nondiagnostic tumor biopsies obtained in the research context generally have no value for managing the participant’s medical condition. Some commentators therefore argue that research biopsies “take” from participants without “giving in return.”4 Because such procedures are conducted contrary to research participants’ medical interests, an ethical framework for enrolling patients in studies that include a research biopsy rides heavily …

Always In The Back Of Your Mind: Experiences Of Latina/O U.S. Citizens From Mixed-Immigration Status Households In Higher Education, Alicia Dominguez

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This qualitative research explores the experiences of students who are United States citizens, first-generation students, and members of mixed-status households. The aim of the research is to understand the complex experiences of navigating higher education as a student from a mixed-status household. Through a semi-structured interview protocol interviews were conducted with six Latina/o identifying students who were first-generation students and members of mixed-status households. All participants were enrolled at a Midwestern, predominantly white institution (PWI). Through LatCrit (Bernal, 2002) and Counterstorytelling (Yosso, 2002) these students were given the space and opportunity to tell their stories and experiences as U.S. citizens …

Struggling To Advance Beyond Mid-Level Positions: Mentoring Women Leaders In Student Affairs, Ashley L. S. Tenney

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This qualitative study explores the mentoring relationship of women in senior student affairs officer (SSAO) positions. Five women in SSAO positions were interviewed, sharing their experiences in being mentored throughout their careers in the student affairs profession. The five participants are employed at public higher education institutions in the west and midwest regions of the United States. The literature review discusses women in higher education, the student affairs profession, and mentoring relationships. Kram (1983) detailed the four phases of mentoring relationships; which was utilized in this research to further explore mentoring relationships that women SSAO have experienced throughout their careers …

Experiences Of African American College Graduates, Aundria C. Green

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons that African-American alumni from a historically Black university (HBCU) and a predominantly White university (PWI) chose to attend, remain in, and graduate from college. The central research question was how do African Americans describe their college experiences? The secondary research questions were (a) What led the participants to attend college? (b) What led the participants to persist in college? (c) What led the participants to graduate from college? and (d) How was race described by the participants? Thirty-seven African-American graduates from a historically Black university (HBCU) and a predominantly White …

Exploring The Neighborhood Preferences Of A Segment Of Millennials In Omaha, Nebraska, Aaron Kloke

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

In 2010, Millennials, or those between 18 and 34, surpassed the Baby Boomers in population size. Today, Millennials, also known as Generation Y, make up over 25 percent of the United States’ population. In Omaha, they make up 26.9 percent of the population. The next largest generation in Omaha, the Baby Boomers, make for 19.2 percent of the population. Clearly, this emerging demographic has the ability to change the way we create and design our built environment if it so chooses.

To review how this generation may choose to change the way we design our future neighborhoods, national trends were …

A Portrait Of School Leadership At Senshu University Matsudo Junior And Senior High School, Travis T. Brady

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As an important symbolic figure and embodiment of the traditions and character of the school, the position of principal in Japan is crucial. Yet societal pressures and an undefined job description are serving to increase pressures of the position. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine school administrative leadership at a private high school, Senshu University Matsudo Junior and Senior High School. The central research question was: What is the leadership role of the secondary administrator at Senshu University Matsudo Junior and Senior High School?

The sub-questions were: (a) What were the post-war changes implemented in Japanese secondary …