Digital Commons Network^™

The Influence Of Gain-Loss Framing And Its Interaction With Political Ideology On Social Distancing And Mask Wearing Compliance During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jordan Steffen

Honors Program Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of cases and over half a million deaths in the United States.While health experts urge citizens to adopt preventative measures such as social distancing and wearing a mask, these recommended behaviors are not always followed by the public. To find a way to promote preventative measures, the present study examined the role of gain-loss framing of COVID-19 related messages on social distancing and mask wearing compliance. Moreover, the study also tested potential moderating effects on framing with three individual characteristics: political ideology, subjective numeracy, and risk attitude. A sample of 375 U.S. adult residents …

Exploring Voting Habits And Attitudes Of Lgbtq+ College Students In The United States, Jordan Weber

Honors Program Theses

Citizens of the United States are regularly reminded of the importance of voting in elections. However, data shows the youngest voters turnout at the polls in far fewer numbers than older generations. The same cannot be said for marginalized and minority groups, such as members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community. Past studies have shown that these individuals are more likely to vote than their peers who are not members of this community. While there is information about voting habits of both the youngest voters and LGBTQ citizens, there has been little research done about the …

Reasons For Self-Mutilating Behavior In The 21st Century, Zhiqing Yaw

Honors Program Theses

Self-harm, also known as Self-Mutilating Behavior (SMB) has emerged as a major concern in this era of globalization as the prevalence rate of self-mutilating behavior has increased drastically. The statistic usually depends on self-report as SMB are often done in private. There was a total of one hundred and six participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) and each participant was given $1.00 for their time. The survey was administered via Qualtrics. In the result, 90 participants have reported to be involved in SMB and 67 were males while 28 were females. The age range of the participants were …

On Beauty: Ancient Perceptions Of Beauty From Classical Greece To Imperial Rome, Maya Jess

Honors Program Theses

When trying to describe something that is beautiful to someone, a common first step is to find an image of the beauty one is trying to describe. In the Greco-Roman world, these images were found in the artworks, texts, and other forms of expression from the time, and images of human beauty were found in paintings, frescos, and statuary. Unfortunately, due to the Ravages of Time, statuary is the most common surviving medium and therefore our biggest asset in knowing what the Greeks and Romans saw as beautiful. Much like how society today uses models to represent beauty standards and …

Midwest Memoir: Cole Carolan, Cole James Carolan

Honors Program Theses

A memoir

Promoting A Culture Of Student Self-Advocacy Within Secondary Science Classrooms, Elizabeth Anne Wessels

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study is to determine the greatest source of self-efficacy that exists among 5-12 students in science through a meta-analysis of three previous studies. After analyzing the collected data, teaching strategies that aim to boost the most influential source of self-efficacy for students are recommended and briefly discussed. Gaining a better understanding of the sources self-efficacy, along with how to support these sources will help science educators understand how to support student self-advocacy.

A Critical Examination Of Corporate Ideology In Educational Policy And Practice: The Real Cost, Grace Brady

Honors Program Theses

In this thesis, I provide a historical background and conceptual analysis of how we arrived at our current educational policy landscape. By tracing educational policy and practice through the 20th century, I offer a critical perspective on contemporary educational policy and practice. Specifically, I assess how corporate culture and corporate ideology influenced contemporary educational policy. Additionally, I explore alternatives and possible recommendations for reforming education in both policy and practice through preservice teacher education and funding for public schools.

Autoethnography On Teaching During A Pandemic, Kelsey Ufford

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted and changed teaching strategies in a young adolescent science classroom and how the pandemic changed personal ideas around online learning. Prior research shows how online learning can be implemented successfully in collegiate classrooms, but it is rare to find research that shows how to successfully implement online learning in a young adolescent classroom. This point of view is from a rural, Iowa middle school standpoint and data was collected through the use of personal journals, emails, and a timeline from March 2020 and May 2020. After the …

Multicultural Education And Attitudes Towards Immigrant Groups In The United States, Anika Marie Lillegard-Bouton

Honors Program Theses

Individuals with higher levels of education tend to have more positive attitudes towards immigrant groups as well as immigration in general (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007). This study examined the relationship between one particular type of education and attitudes towards Arab, Chinese, and Mexican immigrant groups in the United States. As a part of a larger, ongoing study on attitudes of college students towards immigrant groups, participants completed measures of their multicultural education experiences. I hypothesized that individuals with higher levels of multicultural education experiences would report more positive attitudes towards Arab, Chinese, and Mexican immigrant groups and that attitudes towards …

Bridging The Gap: A Guide To Help Design Students Become Design Professionals, Sarah Westholm

Honors Program Theses

In talking with many professional designers in the last year, I have noticed how much time they spend talking about their process, research, and planning. All of this comes before the visualization of the actual design. Design is truly becoming more human-centric and is used as a tool to solve problems. This means that many things must be considered beyond color, typography, and composition. Traditional design education gives students the tools they need to know how to create visually successful designs. However, students also need to understand how to use those technical skills and apply them to a design that …

Students' Perceptions Of Different Types Of Banks' Marketing, Jeffrey Reicks

Honors Program Theses

This study investigates what messages are most effective in convincing students to switch the bank they use. The study consists of a survey with eight ad messages and respondents rate how much they are interested in switching to the hypothetical bank considering the ad message. Sixty-six students, aged 18-24, submitted responses. T-test analysis showed there were 5 ad messages that had a significant impact: no minimum balance requirement, offering free e-banking, having your specific needs cared for, the bank giving back to the community, and the bank having experienced employees. Of these, the most significant was the message that the …

Indigenous-Led Grassroots Engagements With Oil Pipelines In The U.S. And Russia: The Nodapl And Komi Movements, Maria S. Tysiachniouk, Leah S. Horowitz, Varvara V. Korkina, Andrey N. Petrov

Faculty Publications

Networks play an important role in the Indigenous rights movement’s strategies and in Indigenous groups’ engagements with industry actors, the State, and NGOs. We seek to extend the concept of Governance Generating Networks (GGN) to incorporate Indigenous grassroots movements, and evaluate multiscale interactions and processes of network-generated governance across scales. We compare the NoDAPL movement led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the U.S. with grassroots Indigenous-environmentalist networks of water defenders in the Komi Republic, Russia. These GGNs emerged to protest oil pipelines within two contrasting sociopolitical systems, yet demonstrate substantial similarities in respect to local grievances and global …

Rethinking Sustainability Monitoring In The Arctic By Linking Resilience And Sustainable Development In Socially-Oriented Observations: A Perspective, Tatiana Vlasova, Andrey N. Petrov, Sergey Volkov

Faculty Publications

Monitoring of social-ecological systems dynamics and sustainability is of high importance in a rapidly changing Arctic. The goal of this essay is to discuss and articulate the principles for designing a suitable Arctic sustainability monitoring framework based on the convergence between resilience thinking and sustainable development paradigms. We propose to integrate sustainability monitoring into the socially-oriented observations (SOO) methodologies in order to design Arctic sus-tainability monitoring as a transdisciplinary participatory activity that results in both co-production of sustainability knowledge and building more sustainable and resilient Arctic social-ecological systems by enabling continuous observation and informed decision-making. Special attention is given to …

Rising Above The Stigma: Developing Young Leaders Through Peer Mentoring, Shawn Miller

Graduate Research Papers

Permanence is ideally the ultimate goal of the child welfare system, however it is unrealistic to believe that every young adult transitioning out of care will not only find a permanent home, but have had the opportunity to build the social capital needed for a successful transition in today’s society (Scannapieco, Smith, Blakeney-Strong, 2015).

Applying The Education Debt To Waterloo, Iowa, Baylee Renae Smith

Honors Program Theses

The Education Debt is largely overlooked in the world of academia. This is despite the fact the Education Debt offers a new lens through which to look at the multiple factors explaining differences in testing scores. While many scholars acknowledge and draw from the Education Debt in their works, it is still often viewed as supplementary to the larger problem of the achievement gap. The purpose of this study is to analyze if Ladson-Billings’ concept is just as applicable and relevant as when she first proposed it. To understand if the Education Debt is still a relevant issue within the …

Effects Of Exercise On Tests Measuring Attention And Executive Function In Younger And Older Adults, Angela N. Burda, Jennifer Baldwin, Johanna Cravatta, Jody Heetland, Kayla Jacobs, Hannah Merfeld, Jaden Rausch, Mallory Rinnels, Regan Zollman

Faculty Publications

Purpose: This study investigated whether or not performance differed between Young and Older Exercisers and between Young and Older Non-exercisers on the Attention Processing Training-Test (APT-Test), Behavioral Assessment of Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS), and Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies (FAVRES). Methods: A total of 119 participants were divided into the following groups: 46 Young Exercisers: (aged 18-40 years), 45 Older Exercisers (aged 60 and older), fourteen Young Non-exercisers, and fourteen Older Non-exercisers. Participants completed the APT-Test, BADS, and FAVRES in a counterbalanced manner. Independent sample t-tests were used to calculate outcomes. Results: Young Exercisers had significantly higher scores …

Balancing Privacy Rights And Surveillance Analytics: A Decision Process Guide, Daniel J. Power, Ciara Heavin, Yvonne O’Connor

Faculty Publications

The right to privacy has been discussed by scholars in multiple disciplines, yet privacy issues are increasing due to technological advances and lower costs for organisations to adopt smart surveillance. Given the potential for misuse, it seems prudent for stakeholders to critically evaluate Surveillance Analytics (SA) innovations. To assist in balancing the issues arising from SA adoption and the implications for privacy, we review key terms and ethical frameworks. Further, we prescribe a two-by-two Surveillance, Privacy, and Ethical Decision (SPED) Process Guide. SPED recommends the use of one or more of three ethical frameworks, Consequence, Duty, and Virtue. The vertical …

Implementation Of Brain Breaks® In The Classroom And Its Effects On Attitudes Towards Physical Activity In A Chinese School Setting, Ke Zhou, Sensen He, Yanli Zhou, Biljana Popeska, Garry Kuan, Li Chen, Ming Kai Chin, Magdalena Mo Ching Mok, Christopher R. Edginton, Ian Culpan, J. Larry Durstine

Faculty Publications

This study aimed to examine the effects of three-months of classroom-based Brain Breaks Physical Activity Solution (Brain Breaks®) on attitudes toward physical activity levels of primary school children in Henan Province, China. The participants were 704 children enrolled in grades 3-5 who were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group. The experimental group participated in Brain Breaks® video intervention for 3-5 min daily, at low-to-moderate intensity for three consecutive months. The control group resumed their normal routine. The children’s attitudes in both groups towards physical activity (PA) were evaluated using the self-reported Attitudes toward Physical Activity Scale …

Reply To “Programming May Matter Most.” Response To “Metabolic Effects Of Two High-Intensity Circuit Training Protocols: Does Sequence Matter?”, Tony P. Nuñez, Fabiano T. Amorim, Nicholas M. Beltz, Christine M. Mermier, Terence A. Moriarty, Roberto C. Nava, Trisha A. Vandusseldorp, Len Kravitz

Faculty Publications

We appreciate the interest that our study elicited and the comments from a reader. We commend the reader of our paper for critically evaluating the protocol and results of the study. Here, we would like to respond to the statement made in the letter. Indeed, the rest intervals were longer and time at VO2max was lower in our study than recommended by Bucheit and Larsen.1 However, because the reader is interested in the practical implications of our study, we ask that they consider the following:

The Corn Parade: Orr Fisher's Wacky Wpa Mural, Roy R. Behrens

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Parentification In Polish Adolescents: A Prevalence Study, Judyta Borchet, Lisa M. Hooper, Sara Tomek, Wei S. Schneider, Maciej Dębski

Faculty Publications

This study investigated the prevalence of parentification in a nationwide cross-sectional study. There were N = 47,984 Polish adolescents aged 12–21 (M = 15.60; SD = 1.98; female 52.7%, male 47.3%). The results indicated that more adolescents experienced emotional parentification (toward parents 35.9%; toward siblings 25.2%) as compared to instrumental parentification (toward parents 7.2%; toward siblings 15.5%), which is noteworthy, since emotional parentification is the most detrimental form of parentification in USA samples. Overall, 15.5% of the participants reported a sense of injustice related to their family caregiving roles and 61.2% reported satisfaction related to their family caregiving roles. The …

Photo Identification Laws And Perceptions Of Electoral Fraud, Kyle Endres, Costas Panagopoulos

Faculty Publications

Photo identification (ID) laws are often passed on the premise that they will prevent voter fraud and/or reduce perceptions of electoral fraud. The impact of ID laws on perceptions of electoral fraud remains unsettled and is complicated by widespread confusion about current voting requirements. In the 2017 Virginia election, we fielded an experiment, with an advocacy organization, evaluating the effects of the organization’s outreach campaign. We randomized which registered voters were mailed one of three informational postcards. After the election, we surveyed subjects about electoral integrity and their knowledge about election laws. We find that providing registrants with information on …

A Descriptive Analysis Of Intuitive Eating On The Uni Campus, Natalee Jeanne Lyons

Honors Program Theses

Over the course of this project, we will send out a cross-sectional survey to undergraduate students living on UNI’s campus. Included in the survey are questions regarding nutritional campus climate, student’s food preferences and eating habits, as well as the complete second edition of the Intuitive Eating Scale (Tylka & Kroon Van Diest, 2013).

This survey will then be analyzed utilizing SPSS software to draw conclusions regarding this target population (IBM Corp, 2016). Upon completion of this data analysis, our research 2 team hopes to address the following questions: What factors influence the eating behaviors of college students living on …

Maternal Mortality In The United States: Focusing On Societal Impacts And Potential Solutions, Grace Petrzelka

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this research thesis in the format of a literature review is to explore in a multifaceted approach the material that is available on the main causes of maternal mortality in the United States; the social, environmental, and cultural determinants that play a role in past and present mortality rates; and finally, how the possible implementation of solutions to the maternal death rate in America could occur.

Examining Individual Differences In Attitudes Toward The Insanity Defense, Dominique M. Kornely

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of the present study was to examine how individual differences in stigma against people who are mentally ill, free will beliefs, just world beliefs, and sentencing goals are associated with attitudes toward the insanity defense. Because there are many misconceptions about what the insanity defense is, and how it is actually used as a sentence, the Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) plea may be underutilized due to public opinions reflecting misunderstanding and/or possible biases (Perlin, 2017). Understanding the relation between individual beliefs and attitudes about the insanity defense would help to better understand potential biases present …

Model Evidence Links (Mels) And The Impact Of Critical Thinking On Open Ended Responses, James Gregory Zabel

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this dissertation, which was conducted in a rural school district that is equidistant from three major urban areas in central Iowa, and employed an action research methodology, was to examine the relationship between graphic organizer use and critical thinking. A multitude of studies have provided evidence that graphic organizers aid in the recall and understanding of basic facts in the lower grade levels; however, little research exists that supports a connection between graphic organizer use and the ability of students to recall information used on open-ended critical thinking assessments or the ability to create what Bickel and …

Exploring The Experiences Of One Team Of Teachers: Well-Being And Navigating The Demands Of The Education Profession, Abby Weiland

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Much is changing in K-12 education contexts, including an emphasis on performativity and accountability (Au, 2016; Connell, 2009). Against this backdrop, teacher burnout and attrition have been the focus of numerous studies, including examination of organizational structures and factors contributing to burnout (Buckley et al., 2005; Konu et al., 2010). Insufficient attention has been given to how teachers are able to navigate the demands of this profession (Matteucci et al., 2017; Wilcox & Lawson, 2018). Efforts to retain teachers should not only emphasize factors associated with burnout or attrition, but also how they are affected by the systems in place, …

Translation Into Spanish, Cultural Adaption And Content Validity Of The Bristol Copd Knowledge Questionnaire, Vilma Gómez

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

COPD is the major cause of respiratory mortality world-wide. The treatment of COPD includes education and self-management to enable patients to control the symptoms, handle the treatment, manage the physical and psychosocial consequences of the disease, and adopt the necessary lifestyle changes for dealing with a chronic condition. Measurement of results of interventions is necessary to demonstrate their effectiveness. Questionnaires help clinicians measure the level of knowledge before and after treatments. However, there are no questionnaires available in Colombian Spanish to measure knowledge of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). This research resulted in the translation into Spanish, cultural adaptation, and …

Communication Theory Of Identity, Identity Gap Theory, And Motherscholaring During Covid-19, Sarah Symonds Leblanc, Elizabeth L. Spradley, Heather K. Olson Beal, Lauren E. Burrow, Chrissy Cross

Iowa Journal of Communication

This article uses an interactive interviewing approach to capture the lived experiences of five MotherScholars during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI) and identity gaps, we aim to understand how COVID-19 impacted our MotherScholar identities. While CTI and identity gap research has advanced a layered perspective of identity across different contexts, the research is just beginning to explore gaps within and between layers to understand how individuals and groups make sense of those gaps. Our use of “collaborative autoethnography” enables us to extend CTI and identity gap research by teasing out identity gaps that we experienced …

Watching The Watchdogs: Online News Commenters' Critiques Of Journalistic Performance During Terrorist Attacks, Ioana A. Coman

Iowa Journal of Communication

This international comparative analysis explores what categories the public uses to evaluate the media performances of American and French journalists and media covering terrorist attacks. Specifically, the study looked at the Boston Marathon bombing (2013), and the Paris (Bataclan) terrorist attacks (2015), and the related online news stories comment sections of The New York Times and Le Figaro. The online comments of each news story were examined through a qualitative content analysis. The study shows that in a time of crisis commenters both appreciate and criticize journalistic performance and make direct demands to the journalists and editors. When applying journalistic …