Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of Sports Dropout On Adolescent Functioning, Brittany Skiles Cook

Theses and Dissertations

Sports is the most commonly participated in extracurricular activity during adolescence. Aligned with the Positive Youth Development theoretical framework, previous research has shown that sports participation offers youth a context rich in resources found to promote positive adjustment into adulthood. However, around one third of the youth participating in sports drop out each year, and little research has examined the impact of sports dropout on indicators of youth adjustment. This study examines the relation between sports dropout and academic achievement, self-esteem, depression, perceived school climate, perceived support from adults in school, and alcohol use. The moderating effect of sports engagement …

Where Is The Warfare? The Impact Of Sola Scriptura On Science And Religion Dialogue, William James Richardson

Senior Theses

I have two aims with the publication of this thesis. The first is to contribute to the recent scholarly work that seeks to discredit the popular, yet fallacious, warfare model of science and religion. A nuanced investigation shows that the warfare evident in popular discourse cannot easily be attributed to a conflict between the essence of science and religion. Rather “science” and “religion” are interpreted as something else entirely. The New Atheists equate science with scientism, and religion is often associated with the Biblical inerrantism of many Protestant Christians. Both ideologies are grounded in an empiricist epistemological framework founded by …

Postmodernism And Budhism: A Postmodern Woman In A Modernizing Land, Ruthanne Joy Wenger Hughes

Senior Theses

Religion and postmodernism are two paradigms that guide my experience of life. Although it is not necessarily intuitive, these two paradigms do intersect and inform each other, shaping the way I engage with the world. With this understanding, I spent the Spring 2015 semester in the Kingdom of Bhutan and examined my time through a postmodern lens, writing a travel blog at www.bhutanbricolage.weebly.com that mediates my experiences there and my thoughts about Buddhism and postmodernism.

Adhd And Social Impairment Among Children: Problem Solving Skills As A Potential Mediator, Rebecca Mccord

Senior Theses

This study tested the hypothesis that problem solving skills mediate the relation between ADHD symptoms and social impairment in children. Problem solving skills were evaluated by the Test of Problem Solving 3 – Elementary Version (TOPS), which separated problem solving skills into six different subtypes: making inferences, sequencing, negative questions, problem solving, predicting, and determining causes. ADHD symptoms were assessed through the parent report of the Disruptive Behavior Disorder Scale (DBD). Social impairment was assessed through the parent report of social skills using the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS). Three hundred seventy-two (372) children between the ages of eight and …

Beyond Ideals: Proslavery Reforms On A Nineteenth-Century Cotton Plantation, Kevin R. Fogle

Theses and Dissertations

The last four decades of the antebellum period witnessed the rise of a proslavery plantation reform movement aimed at preserving slavery in the face of increasing abolitionist pressure. Reformers promoted the image of ideal enslaved households operating as part of efficient modern plantations ruled by reason, benevolent management techniques, and scientific agriculture. Where implemented, reforms resulted in numerous changes to plantation life both around the home and in the fields. Slaves who bore the brunt of these changes struggled to resist plantation reforms or grudgingly accepted them depending on the impact upon established daily routines and any potential benefits bondsmen …

Unexpected And Interrupted Transitions Among Newly Licensed Registered Nurses: Perspectives Of Nurse Managers And Preceptors, Sheri S. Webster

Theses and Dissertations

Successful retention of newly licensed registered nurses (NLRNs) into practice is critical to ensure the nursing workforce required to meet current and future health care demands. NLRN turnover rates result in loss of revenue due to high orientation costs and further hinder the development of a stable workforce. For nurse educators and administrators to effectively address early attrition among NLRNs, they must have a clear understanding of the factors that contribute to NLRNs leaving employment. The aim of this qualitative descriptive research was to explore NLRN transition to professional practice from the experiences and perspectives of nurse managers and preceptors …

Investigating The Decision-Making Of Response To Intervention (Rti) Teams Within The School Setting, Scott M. Thur

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to measure decision-making influences within RtI teams. The study examined the factors that influence school personnel involved in three areas of RtI: determining which RtI measures and tools teams select and implement (i.e. Measures and Tools), evaluating the data-driven decisions that are made based on the assessment and intervention data (i.e. Data-Driven Decisions), and analyzing the process and procedures of the decision-making itself (i.e. Process and Procedures). Core RtI team members were asked to indicate which factors they found to be the most influential to both their team and personal decision-making processes, whether the …

Investigating Construct Validity Of The Cyber--Peer Experiences Questionnaire, Kendall Moore

Theses and Dissertations

With electronic technology becoming increasingly important in all aspects of modern life, traditional forms of relating with others have crossed into the cyber realm. Within that context, both positive and negative aspects of relational behavior have advanced in ways still largely underexplored in the research literature. One such area, termed “cyberaggression,” has recently gained momentum as a research focus. Given the numerous mental health sequelae from being involved in cyberaggression, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, there is a clear and compelling need for more research in this area. To date, however, there remains little consensus on the conceptualization …

Exploring Listwise Deletion And Multilevel Multiple Imputation In Linear Two-Level Organizational Models, Whitney Flemming Smiley

Theses and Dissertations

Problems of missing data are pervasive in social science research. Because of this, researchers have begun to use techniques after data collection to deal with missing data, including traditional methods (i.e. listwise deletion, pairwise deletion, and single imputation procedures) and modern procedures (i.e. multiple imputation and full information maximum likelihood). In the past, several organizations and researchers have warned that traditional missing data techniques (MDTs) can introduce bias into parameter estimates, and can result in a loss of statistical power (e.g., Becker & Powers, 2001; Wilkinson & the APA Task Force on Statistical Inference, 1999). However, previous research has shown …

Do Discipline Style And Parenting Self-Efficacy Interact To Predict Observed Child Behavior? Outcomes From A Representative Sample Of Mothers With Young Chilren, Emily Noel Neger

Theses and Dissertations

Both parenting style and parents’ sense of their own parenting self-efficacy (PSE) have been found to predict child behavior outcomes in young children. Parents who engage in lax or overreactive parenting practices or who lack confidence in their parenting abilities are more likely to have children who display disruptive and noncompliant behavior. Until now, very little research has examined whether an interaction exits between these two constructs in predicting child behavior outcomes. The current study looked to fill this gap and assess whether a significant moderation relationship exists between parents’ parenting style and PSE in predicting observed child behavior. A …

Post-Fall Decision Making Among Older Women Living In Continuing Care Retirement Communities: A Mixed Methods Study, Caroline D. Bergeron

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: One in every three adults over the age of 65 experiences a fall every year, with women experiencing more falls than men. Falls can affect how older women perceive themselves and their independence. The purpose of this study was to examine older women's health decision making after experiencing a fall. Methods: I conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 older women living independently in continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) who had experienced a fall within the previous six months and 11 individuals the women identified as being involved in their post-fall decision making. I also conducted an exploratory survey on post-fall …

A Qualitative Study Of The Massage Therapy Foundation's Best Practices Symposium: Clarifying Definitions And Creating A Framework For Practice, Ann Blair Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

Large numbers of individuals seek massage therapy for wellness/disease prevention purposes and research supports consumer reported benefits including physical and psychological improvements. However, challenges within the profession may be hindering the advancement of the field. To better understand the process and outcomes and ultimately develop best practices for massage therapy as well as better inform education, policy and research, it is necessary to investigate how massage and/or massage therapy are defined and operationalized in practice. This study entailed qualitative analysis of cross-sectional data using a grounded theory approach to examine the data gathered from a two-day symposium held in 2010 …

An Integrative Model Of Muslim Students' Religiosity And Travelling Behavior To Gaming Destinations, Dawood Sulaiman Al Jahwari

Theses and Dissertations

Scholars in the tourism industry are continuously looking for new knowledge related to travel behavior, motivations, and the preferences of the main tourist segments. Demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural variables can all influence the demand for travel. Despite numerous studies on most of the demographic and socioeconomic variables, scholars have paid very little attention to religiosity with regard to travel decision-making. Specifically, no researchers have investigated the role of Islamic religiosity in predicting Muslims’ destination choice decisions. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the role of attitudes, subjective norms, travel motivations, Islamic religiosity, self-efficacy, travel constraints, constraints negotiation strategies, …

Redneckaissance: Honey Boo Boo, Tumblr, And The Stereotype Of Poor White Trash, Ashley F. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Tumblr is an understudied social media site with a young, progressive, and queer user base of content creators. This study examines Tumblr posts about Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to understand the nature of Tumblr and the way a convergent culture that includes non-viewers negotiates a television show dependent on stereotypes. Discourses around authenticity, LGBTQ issues, and body acceptance resist the negative white trash connotations of the show, but this resistance is embedded in stereotypes around race, class, gender, sexuality, and geography. The result is a continuum in which users negotiate what the show means in how they use that …

Relationship Between Job Satisfaction Among Frontline Staff And Patient Satisfaction: Evidence From Community Health Centers In South Carolina, Ashley Lynn Barnes

Theses and Dissertations

The role of frontline staff (FLS) is vital to the success of health delivery organizations as they are often the main point of patient contact and the primary source of feedback regarding the patient experience and satisfaction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that FLS have among the highest turnover rates in health delivery organizations, resulting in high recruitment and training costs as well as disruptions in day-to-day operations. However, few studies have examined the role of FLS and the factors affecting job satisfaction among FLS. Researchers have also not examined the impact of FLS satisfaction on patient satisfaction. To address these research …

Experiences Of Lgbtq Students At A Primarily White Institution In The South, Leia Kristin Cain

Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, often Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and/or Questioning (LGBTQ) students are targets of verbal harassment and violence due to their sexual orientation or gender identity and gender expression. Further, 31 states do not offer protection against sexuality- or gender identity-based discrimination (ACLU, 2015). Schools are particularly vexing places, where L, G, B, T, and/or Q-identified students face difficulties due to the privileging of heterosexual students and heternormativity. In universities across the nation, suicide rates continue to climb for LGBTQ populations due to heterosexist policies, procedures, and practices, which lead to negative campus climates (Gortmaker & Brown, …

Media Effect On Resident Attitude Toward Hosting The Olympic Games: A Cross-National Study Between China And The Usa, Qiulin Lu

Theses and Dissertations

News media helped individuals think about and understand the impacts of hosting the Olympic Games, enabling them to clarify or construct their own opinions toward an Olympic bid. The purpose of this study was to explore to what extent the public opinion of hosting the Olympic Games was affected by the newspaper media content to which the public was exposed. Based on social exchange theory, social representation theory, and agenda setting theory, two research questions were proposed: (1) Do different news media contents about the impacts of hosting the Olympic Games lead to different attitudes among the local residents? (2) …

Understanding Generosity At Military Colleges And Universities: Characteristics And Motivations Of Major Donors At The Federal Service Academies And Senior Military Colleges, John Paul Dowd Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics and motivations of major donors at three federal service academies and the six senior military colleges. Although much literature has been published on donor motivation, as well as studies determining what donor characteristics are linked to the decision of alumni to financially contribute back to their alma maters, research specific to the federal service academies and the senior military colleges could not be found. Therefore, this study addressed the void in the literature. The methods used to gather this data were survey instrument and personal interviews. The researcher sent letters …

Framing Risk, Responsibility, And Resolution: A Mixed-Methods Study Exploring Traditional And Social Media Coverage Of The 2014 Elk River Chemical Spill, Tracey Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Background: The 2014 Elk River Chemical Spill raised policy questions concerning chemical safety and revealed an immediate need for improved emergency communication. This two-phase study explored how media presented causes of and longterm solutions to the spill through an examination of media frames. The study also explored how health risks were communicated through traditional and social media. The specific aims of Phase I were to examine media coverage in the days following the spill and compare coverage across media channels. The specific aims of Phase II were to understand how public health stakeholders perceived coverage of the spill and how …

General Strain Theory And Bullying Victimization: Do Parental Support And Control Alleviate The Negative Effects Of Bullying, Jonathon Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

With growing reports of bullying victimization ranging from 8 percent to 46 percent in many countries, bullying victimization has been declared an international problem often affecting youth in or near one’s school with poor parental supervision. While there has been a growing body of research concerning bullying victimization, few studies have examined the collateral consequences of bullying victimization and the mediating role of family processes through the theoretical lens of general strain theory. This thesis attempts to shed light on such a complex social phenomena and contribute to the bullying and stress literature. This study posits that bullying victimization is …

Nurses Utilizing The V.O.I.C.E.S. Hiv Prevention Intervention In The Black Church Community, Jason Richard

Theses and Dissertations

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) epidemic is a significant problem in the United States, especially in the “Bible Belt” Deep South where the epidemic is hitting this region the hardest. The HIV epidemic in the state of South Carolina is very real, significant, and quite alarming. In fact, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) labels South Carolina as an HIV “hot spot.” All racial and ethnic groups are susceptible and impacted by HIV. However, evidence shows that African Americans – especially young adults 18-35, bear the brunt of the burden to the extent that the “new face” of …

Situationism And The Promise Of Virtue Ethics, Richard Barclay Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that it is possible to develop an empirically adequate form of virtue ethics even if one grants that situationism is true. I define situationism as a skeptical thesis about globalism, or the thesis that temporally stable and trans-situationally consistent character and personality traits are widely instantiated. Situationists such as John Doris and Gilbert Harman argue that globalism is an empirically inadequate thesis. While I accept Doris and Harman’s situationist thesis, they also make a further argument which is the subject of this dissertation. They argue that since globalism is empirically inadequate and Aristotelian virtue ethics …

The Relationship Between The Faculty's Perception Of The Principal's Instructional Leadership Behavior And Principal Personality Characteristic, W. Burke Royster Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Significant research has been conducted into the relationship of the school principal to the success of the school program. This success is often measured by metrics that assess the academic accomplishments of the school’s students. The value of quality leadership is effectively summarized by an observation made more than 30 years ago from High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America. The author of that report, Ernest Boyer, concluded that in schools where achievement is high and there exists a feeling of community, it is found without exception that the principal made the difference (Boyer, 1983).

There is a …

A Phenomenological Study Of The Experiences Of Parents Of A Child Or Children Diagnosed With Deafness, David Patrick Leach

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of twelve parents who have a child or children diagnosed with deafness, and the meaning these parents have made of their experiences. The researcher conducted individual, semi-structured interviews and analyzed the data in accordance with the practices of phenomenological research. Thirty-seven themes were identified in the interview data, which were discussed in terms of their implications for efficacious clinical services to this population, as well as for the field of counselor education.

Invective Drag: Talking Dirty In Catullus, Cicero, Horace, And Ovid, Casey Catherine Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Invective Drag: Talking Dirty in Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid, studies the relationship between invective texts and masculine self-fashioning. Using gender theory, rhetorical theory, and philology, I examine how invective speech in these authors operates outside the normative social parameters of Roman masculinity.. I examine the invectives of Catullus, Cicero, Horace, and Ovid to argue that in the speaker’s aggressive articulation of masculinity, he often ends up effeminizing or queering himself as he attempts to make his opponents radically other. I show that the hypermasculine speaker of the invective genre utilizes a strategy I term “invective drag,” the adoption of …

Empirical Connections Between The Construct Of Value, The Quality Of Stability, And The Construct Of Regret, William Samuel Morris Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The term value is a psychological construct frequently used in the social sciences. This research addresses the issue of stability of ratings of perceived value of participants for monetary, tangible, and intangible items that cross contexts. Also elucidated is the relationship of value to regret. Hypothesis one stated that value would be stable across time and different rating conditions. Forty-four participants rated the value of 72 stimulus items at two time points and in different contexts. Paired samples t-tests indicated 28 participants had no statistical difference in scores. Twenty-eight scores out of 44, when applied to a binomial test, indicates …

Framing Death: Politics, Meaning, And The Strategic Communication Of Organ Donation Messages In South Carolina, Jeremy T. Vanderknyff

Theses and Dissertations

This study applies framing theory within a critical-interpretive anthropological context to understand how organ procurement organizations (OPOs) design messages to promote organ donation registration and how cultural factors including notions of embodiment and structural inequalities influence audiences’ processing of those messages. The first part of the study employs content analysis to deductively identify OPO-produced message frames. The second part of the study uses focus groups across South Carolina to explore audience reactions to different message frames. Themes from donors and non-donors alike reflected a mistrust of the medical establishment, a keen awareness of structural inequality, and complex notions of embodiment …

Survival: A Teach For America Memoir, Christopher Neal Schumerth

Theses and Dissertations

“I grab Franklin and pull him upright, standing in between him and the smaller student. I spread my arms in each direction. That second of new life gives the smaller student renewed vigor. His fists shoot around and even into me. Franklin, whose punches actually hurt, gladly obliges in kind. Suddenly, I am the main, albeit incidental, object of both children’s rage. A sharp, stabbing pencil glances off my wrist, drawing blood. I look at the two cafeteria workers, dressed in white and protected by a shield of glass and the food they are distributing. They look the other way.” …

A Comparison Of Three Levels Of Verbal Redundancy In Multimedia Learning And Its Effects On Memory Retention And Transfer In Legal Professionals, Angela Mizell Dooley

Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to examine verbal redundancy in multimedia learning and its effects on memory retention and transfer in legal professionals who were randomly assigned to watch one of three multimedia videos. Tests of ANOVA showed no significant differences in performance, mental load, or combined efficiency scores among the three instructional groups, but participants in the complementary text group rated the video with complementary slides as significantly more helpful than the videos with redundant, overloaded text slides and spoken words only. Factorial ANOVA also revealed that the redundant text group with fewer than five years of experience scored significantly lower …

Community-Level Factors Associated With Health-Related Quality Of Life Among Older Adults, Yu-Hsiu Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and well-being is a new topic area for Healthy People 2020 in the U.S. In a broad-based literature review, more research explored individual level factors of HRQOL, and few focused on older adults. Multilevel analysis was seldom adopted to investigate the relationship between area-level socioeconomic or social environment factors and HRQOL. In lieu of the traditional Chapter 4 (Results) and Chapter 5 (Conclusion), two manuscripts representing the two specific research aims are included. The main aim of first manuscript was to explore the association between area deprivation, area health resources and older adults’ HRQOL. …