Digital Commons Network^™

The Athletics Behind The Academics: The Academic Advisor’S Role In The Lives Of Student Athletes, Max J.R. Murray

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

College athletics is a mainstay in the United States entertainment market. The public will often recognize the names of high-profile college athletes as they move from college sports to professional sports. However, while they are in college, sports is not the only focus of their attention. Student athletes are in college to get an education. The academic advisor is someone that works with the student to better facilitate the academic aspects of college. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I find out how an academic advisor views their formal and informal roles and responsibilities and how they accomplish them. Among prior research …

The Roles Of Emotional Cues And Purchasing Incentives In Wechat Commerce: A Content Analysis, Xuezhu Hao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years with the development of social media, a variety of business forms have also developed. In the United States, there are advertising and business forms based on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. However, in China, WeChat is the mainstream social media platform with a staggering number of active online users. As a mainstream social media platform, WeChat has extended a new business form, which is the Micro-business. With the changes in purchasing needs and economic forms, more and more people are participating in Micro-business buying and selling transactions. The formation of a new type of …

“I Woke Up To The World”: Politicizing Blackness And Multiracial Identity Through Activism, Angelica Celeste Loblack

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drawing from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 21 Black multiracial students, this project explores the extent to which processes of racial socialization and racialization can differentially inform how Black multiracial students navigate and experience involvement in

Black student and activist organizations. It unpacks the ways that anti-Black racialization and racism, experienced in the college setting, can motivate Black multiracial students’ involvement in student organizations. Moreover, it highlights the ways in which involvement in anti-racist activism and Black student organizations can impact Black multiracial students’ understandings of blackness, multiraciality, and identity more broadly. To operationalize the long term impacts of Black organizational …

Legitimizing Violence: Functional Similarities Of The Religious And The Secular Violence, Tahir Topal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As a consequence of the separation between religion and politics, known as secularism, the discussion about violence has also been divided into two main categories –Religious Violence and Non-Religious Violence– in the modern Western academia. The tendency of the leading scholarly work in the discourse of "religious violence" is that "religion" is inclined to be violent more than secular institutions for several reasons. Therefore, the state's violence, as being secular, steps in to bring peace. And the foundational cause of the theories relies heavily on the essential differences of "religion" and the secular. With counter-arguments, William T. Cavanaugh and Talal …

The Effects Of Socioscientific Issues On Informal Reasoning And The Transference To Controversial Issues In A Social Studies Context, Thomas J. Dolan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if informal reasoning skills associated with socioscientific issues (SSI) transferred to controversial issues in a social studies context. The principal researcher developed three controversial issues derived from social studies education to create social studies context issues (SSCI). This acronym has been termed by the principal researcher, as controversial issues in social studies have not been evaluated beyond the social studies classroom. Twenty-one, fifth grade students participated in this three-month study, which featured three specific SSI units (A Need for Speed? – speed limit reduction, Roller Coaster Ban – preventing injuries to children, …

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis Of Ethics And Care In Toni Morrison’S Song Of Solomon, Alice Walker’S Meridian, And Toni Cade Bambara’S Those Bones Are Not My Child, Kelly Mills

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine post-Reconstruction literature as an intercessor that creates a common memory among readers and activates them as ethical agents who can move through retributive violence rather than enact violence. With the increase of racial violence in the United States, it is essential to find ways to end the cycle of retributive violence and establish a justice system that does not marginalize individuals but forges connections in the midst of oppression. This literary analysis engages three novels—Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Alice Walker’s Meridian, and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child: …

Male And Female Students’ Persistence In Stem Fields In Community Colleges: A Secondary Analysis Of Nces Bps:12/14 Data, Ying Hu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Today, economic growth, technology advancement, and daily life are all driven by science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). American colleges and universities need to produce more STEM graduates in order to meet rapid job growth. The purpose of this study was to determine the significant factors that influence the persistence of STEM students in community colleges. The research described the characteristics of STEM students who persisted and of those who did not in STEM, as well as the different characteristics between male and female students. It also investigated student and institutional factors that influenced STEM students’ persistence. Furthermore, the study …

The Role Of Influencer Endorsement In Consumer Brand Engagement On Sina Weibo, Xiaofan Wei

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The strength and effectiveness of influencer advertising and influencer marketing make them becoming more and more popular on social media. Consumer online brand engagement, including consuming, contributing, and creating brand-related content, is closely related to a brand’s reputation and image. This study aims to determine how the two aspects related to influencer endorsement – influencer-follower parasocial interaction (PSI) and influencer-brand congruence -- affect three levels of consumer online brand-related activities (COBRAs) on Sina Weibo. Another purpose of the current study is to examine the mediation effect of personal identity (PI) and social identity (SI) in the relationship between influencer-follower parasocial …

Dubious Data And Difficult Conversations: Review Of No Bs (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe In Black People Enough Not To Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People, By Ivory A. Toldson., Joel Best

Numeracy

Ivory A. Toldson. 2019. No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear about Black People; (Boston, Brill). Paperback ISBN 978-90-04-39702-6. E-book ISBN 978-90-04-39704-0.

Ivory A. Toldson is a professor of Counseling Psychology at Howard University and the current editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education (founded in 1932), and offers an unapologetic critique of how statistical malpractice has misrepresented the situation of Blacks in the United States. Readers of Numeracy should find his examples and analysis both interesting and thought-provoking.

Avoiding Over-Diagnosis: Exploring The Role Of Gender In Changes Over Time In Statistics Anxiety And Attitudes, Kelly Rhea Macarthur

Numeracy

The importance of quantitative literacy for creating and maintaining a democratic and just society is unequivocal, but undergraduate students often do not acquire these important skills. One barrier to teaching quantitative literacy skills is students’ anxiety. The empirical evidence of the extent of the problem, however, does not seem to match anecdotal accounts of instructors who may be “diagnosing” statistics anxiety as universal among students and across different sources of anxiety. The purpose of this study is to identify the specific aspects of statistics anxiety that present barriers to student success by employing the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS) to …

Effects Of Quantitative Literacy On Healthcare Decision-Making: An Aural Context, Robert G. Root, Sonia Bhala

Numeracy

We propose a relationship between sensory modality, numerical formatting, and performance on a survey simulating healthcare decision-making. We examine the current literature on aural health literacy, and specifically aural literacy coupled with health numeracy. We then create a survey instrument called the Bhala test for this purpose and demonstrate that it is moderately internally consistent and provides results that correlate with the NUMi assessment, a widely accepted measure of health numeracy. The quantitative information provided in the Bhala test has two treatments, percentage and natural frequency formats, in an effort to determine which format is easier for subjects to use …

The Past, Present And Future Of Q-Step – A Programme Creating A Step-Change In Quantitative Social Science Skills, Steve Grundy

Numeracy

This article provides an outline of the conception and implementation to date of Q-Step, a national programme to make high-level quantitative skills an essential element of teaching and learning in social sciences across the UK. Q-Step has supported the development and delivery of specialist undergraduate programmes (including new courses, work placements, and pathways to postgraduate study) in order to increase the number of quantitatively trained social scientists in the UK. There are 17 UK universities currently participating in the programme which has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the former Higher Education …

Crow's Nest, January 13, 2020, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The January 13, 2020, issue of the Crow's Nest.

A Social Network Analysis Of Online Gamers' Friendship Networks: Structural Attributes Of Steam Friendships, And Comparison Of Offline-Online Social Ties Of Mmo Gamers, Juan G. Arroyo-Flores

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study traces the boundaries of online-based social networks and its possible extensions and intersections with offline social networks. It focuses on the Massive Multiplayer Online gaming community. Most online gaming research has only addressed one side of the equation, i.e., the online aspect of social interaction, omitting the offline context. The primary objective is to look at both offline and online social contexts of gamers. The analysis suggests that overall offline ties are slightly more important than online. Still, this does not imply that online ties are not meaningful at all. The length of their online relationships plays a …

Fostering Preservice And In-Service Ela Teachers’ Digital Practices For Addressing Climate Change, Richard Beach, George Boggs, Jill Castek, James Damico, Alexandra Panos, Renee Spellman, Nance Wilson

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

This report presents research on preservice (PST) and in-service teachers acquiring digital practices for addressing climate change related to knowing how to employ digital practices for studying visual representations of climate change and engaging students in critiquing online information about climate change. Study 1 examined PSTs understanding of climate change through participation in visiting a laboratory involving scientific study of ecological systems to interact with scientists, collect digital artifacts, and create a virtual field trip using these artifacts for instructional purposes. Study 2 involved PSTs and in-service teachers responding critically to the NASA Climate Change website, identifying digital literacies their …

A Framework For Quantifying Diasporic Media Markets: Exploring The Cabo Verdean U.S. Diaspora, Luke Daniel Cross

USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

Immigrant populations within the United States are a burgeoning interest for communication studies, but few resources exist for gauging the media resources available to these populations. This study aims to explore the literature on migrant media consumption and expatriate voting in order to develop an analytical model of media markets surrounding diasporic populations. The goal of this study was to identify relevant tools and data, to code them as variables, and to apply them to the Cabo Verdean diaspora within the U.S. in order to test the strengths and weaknesses of existing resources for analyzing diasporic media markets.

Faith In Trump, Moral Foundations, And Social Distancing Defiance During The Coronavirus Pandemic, Amanda Graham, Francis T. Cullen, Justin T. Pickett, Cheryl Lero Jonson, Murat Haner, Melissa M. Sloan

All publications

Purpose: Over the past several months, the coronavirus has infected more than six million Americans and killed nearly 200,000. Governors have issued stay-at-home orders, and prosecutors have filed criminal charges against individuals for defying those orders. And yet many Americans have still refused to keep their distance from their fellow citizens, even if they had symptoms of infection. The authors explore the underlying causes for those who intend to defy these norms.

Methods: Using national-level data from a March 2020 survey of 989 Americans, the authors explore intentions to defy social distancing norms by testing an interactionist theory of foundation-based …

Examining Spatial Accessibility To Covid-19 Testing Sites In Florida, Ran Tao, Joni Downs, Theresa M. Beckie, Yuzhou Chen, Warren Mcnelley

All publications

Massive and rapid testing is crucial for containing the spread of COVID-19. Health and policy planners must ensure that access to and uptake of SARS-CoV-2 testing is adequate and equitable. This study measures the spatial accessibility to testing sites in Florida at the census tract level at the end of May 2020, using the 2-step floating catchment area method that integrates both driving and walking modes. Accessibility scores were found to be heterogeneous across geographic regions and among different groups of people. In particular, many rural areas were in a testing desert. While people in larger cities tended to have …

The Aspet Mentoring Network: Enhancing Diversity And Inclusion Through Career Coaching Groups Within A Scientific Society, Veronica Y. Womack, Bhoomi K. Thakore, Christine V. Wood, David C. Jewett, Remi F. Jones, Susan L. Ingram, Janet A. Clark, Catherine L. Fry, Lynn Wecker, Richard Mcgee

Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences Faculty Publications

Over the past decades, two persisting priorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) training have been: 1) increasing the knowledge of and access to careers beyond academic scientist; and 2) increasing the diversity of the STEM workforce. Previous studies show that a uniquely constructed career coaching group provides strong support and progress for both priorities. This report extends this design into a more sustainable model that is positioned within the professional context of rising young scientists. This new model is based in the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET)—the ASPET Mentoring Network. Groups of PhD students and …

What Is Digital Journalism? Defining The Practice And Role Of The Digital Journalist, Gregory P. Perreault, Patrick Ferrucci

School of Advertising & Mass Communications Faculty Publications

Through the lens of theories of field and normalization process, this research seeks to understand technology’s current role in how self-identifying digital journalists define the field. The definitions of digital journalism/journalists and what constitutes digital journalism practices are essential–they shape a range of crucial activities including how journalists prioritize sources to how journalists shape their content for audience consumption. Built on long-form interviews with 68 U.S.-based self-identifying digital journalists, this article argues that the digital turn in the industry has emboldened new entrants to the field and required dominantly placed legacy media journalists to reconsider their definition of journalism as …

Faith In Trump, Moral Foundations, And Social Distancing Defiance During The Coronavirus Pandemic, Amanda Graham, Justin T. Pickett, Cheryl Lero Jonson, Murat Haner, Melissa M. Sloan

Criminology Faculty Publications

Purpose: Over the past several months, the coronavirus has infected more than six million Americans and killed nearly 200,000. Governors have issued stay-at-home orders, and prosecutors have filed criminal charges against individuals for defying those orders. And yet many Americans have still refused to keep their distance from their fellow citizens, even if they had symptoms of infection. The authors explore the underlying causes for those who intend to defy these norms.

Methods: Using national-level data from a March 2020 survey of 989 Americans, the authors explore intentions to defy social distancing norms by testing an interactionist theory of foundation-based …

Zombie Experts And Anarchy Imaginaries: Fantasies Of 'Crises To Be' In Climate Change Futures, Natalie D. Baker

Journal of Strategic Security

The characterization of human social response in crisis is most often apocalyptic and dystopic, especially when connected to environmental detriments expected from climate change. This article draws on the cases of zombie apocalypse experts and climate-fiction to situate an investigation into how diametric forms of knowledge compete, dominate, and then replicate in mediated popular culture as forms of truth. It builds on extensive work in areas of both lived disaster response and mythologies. The article links certain philosophies to popular culture as a driver in the construction of knowledge and truth. Here, Foucault and his conceptions of power and knowledge …

Scientist Of The Week!, Sarah L. Sheffield, Lisette Melendez, Kristin Houdyshell, Mathew Burgos

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Climate Change On Cultural Security, Dominika Krupocin, Jesse Krupocin

Journal of Strategic Security

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges and most pressing issues faced by humanity in the modern era. Extreme weather events, changes to world ecosystems, species extinction, disruption of animal and human migration, resource shortages, socio-economic concerns, outbreaks and pandemics, as well as domestic and international conflicts represent only a few select potential climate change consequences. Regrettably, when considering the issues pertinent to climate change, one of the oft-overlooked areas is cultural security. Rising sea levels will lead to some of the world’s islands and coastal cities essentially being erased from Earth, resulting in the destruction, and possibly even …

The Never-Ending Sentence: An Examination Of Policies And Programs Targeting Post-Secondary Education Among Currently And Formerly Incarcerated Individuals, Julianne Shumake

USF St. Petersburg campus Honors Program Theses (Undergraduate)

Education serves as potentially the greatest instrument of change and self-improvement within the modern society. With higher education comes a variety of skills and opportunities that foster success within the modern world including lucrative employment, personal growth in relation to skills and knowledge, as well improved mental health, and sense of belonging (Runnel, 2015). Unfortunately, the university system within the United States is designed to exclude a large population of people, those with a felony convictions. As of 2019, the United States has an estimated 24 million individuals with a felony status on their records (Eberstadt, 2019). For these 24 …

Climate Change And Global Security, Nathan Jones, John P. Sullivan

Journal of Strategic Security

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Phenomena Of Power: Authority, Domination, And Violence, Kerri J. Malloy

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Scenarios Of Intractability: Reframing Intractable Conflict And Its Transformation, Kerry Whigham

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

For those working toward long-term conflict transformation and atrocity prevention, cases of so-called “intractable conflict” are an enduring source of frustration, continually resisting what seems to be an otherwise useful toolbox of "lessons learnt" and "best practices." Referring to these cases as intractable, however, only serves to naturalize their intractability, rendering it an essential and immutable quality of the conflicts, and thus foreclosing options for engagement and prevention. Moreover, it obscures interventions that may have already emerged from within these conflicts that are transforming the way they play out. This article suggests, instead, to perceive these cases as scenarios of …

Learning From High Risk Feminism: Emergent Lessons About Women’S Agency In Conflict Contexts, Julia Margaret Zulver

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

While scholars increasingly focus on the gendered elements of genocide, these are not often holistically discussed in the prevention literature. There is a tendency to fall into a gendered binary, whereby prevention is a masculine activity, while peacebuilding is represented as more maternal and feminine. However, women do not always exclusively mobilise for others, nor do they fit neatly within circumscribed categories of victims or peacebuilders. Rather, they have the ability to develop and refine a contextually relevant style of feminist agency that allows them to navigate and make sense of the everyday violences to which they are exposed. This …

Critical Genocide And Atrocity Prevention Studies, Andrew Woolford, Alexander Hinton

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

An introductory essay for the special issue on "Critical Approaches to Genocide and Atrocity Prevention."