Digital Commons Network^™

Developing An Evidence-Based Hiv Testing Message For Young African American Women, Melanie P. Moore

Theses and Dissertations

African American women have the highest rates of HIV infection among women of all racial/ethnic groups in the United States, and over 50% of HIV infected young adults are unaware of their infection. HIV testing is a cost-effective mechanism for reducing HIV transmission. Despite this, limited research has been devoted to developing interventions specifically promoting HIV testing. This two-part study proposed to address this gap through developing a culturally tailored HIV testing message aimed at increasing HIV test intentions among young African American women. Study 1 was a quantitative study that examined predictors of HIV testing history and future HIV …

Dark On Campus: A Phenomenological Study Of Being A Dark-Skinned Black College Student, Kiara Lee

Theses and Dissertations

As recent research finally starts to recognize colorism, a form of discrimination where light skin is valued over dark skin within an ethnic group, as a legitimate form of discrimination in the Black community, research on colorism in higher education still wanes. A limited amount of scholarship focuses on the manifestation of colorism in education and even less research examines the implications of complexion on Black college students and their intersectional identities. As empirical studies describe how complexion often denotes institutional degradation for dark-skinned Black students in K-12 and beyond -- from teacher perceptions, to the school-to-prison pipeline, to social …

Critical Race Examination Of Educator Perceptions Of Discipline And School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions And Supports, Michael J. Massey

Theses and Dissertations

School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) is a school disciplinary framework seen as an effective tool to replace school disciplinary practices that contribute to the school to prison pipeline (STPP). While evidence suggests that SWPBIS can help improve school discipline and lower suspension/expulsion rates, it has not been shown to consistently decrease racial disciplinary disparities. This study thematically analyzed semi-structured interviews of educational staff at one high school at the outset of SWPBIS implementation to understand their perceptions of school discipline and the potential for SWPBIS to address root causes of racial disciplinary disproportionality. Using a critical race theory …

To Find A Stairwell, Cait Porter

Theses and Dissertations

To Find a Stairwell is an exploration and written supplement to my painted works and how it relates to loss, depression, and compulsive tendencies. Through examples of my own paintings and the research and influences leading my education is an articulate web chronicling two years of work from a focus in abstract painting to a place where representation and abstraction intersect.

Effect Of A 14-Day Mindfulness Intervention On Daily Desire Experiences And Desire Regulation, Nabila Farhin Jahan

Theses and Dissertations

A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness, a receptive attentiveness to one’s present moment experiences, has the potential to adaptively regulate habitual behaviors. No prior study has tested the effect of mindfulness interventions on people’s daily desire experiences to inform the potential for adaptive desire regulation. The present exploratory randomized controlled trial examined the effect of a 14-day smartphone-based mindfulness intervention (versus a coping control intervention) on the frequency, intensity, duration, and enactment of everyday desires in 19 participants. The desire domains included basic need-based desires (i.e., for food, drink, sleep) and secondary desires (e.g., for sex, media, social …

A Cross-Cultural Examination Of The Relations Among Parkinson’S Disease Impairments, Caregiver Burden And Mental Health, And Family Dynamics In Mexico And The United States, Erin Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a common progressive neurodegenerative disorder that leads to both physical and cognitive impairment over time. Eventually, these impairments may include the loss of autonomy, and the individual may require the assistance of an informal caregiver. Informal caregivers are critical in the care of individuals with PD and spend substantial time providing care, which may be associated with negative caregiver outcomes such as burden, mental health issues, as well as poor family dynamics. Although research in the United States and Europe has generally supported these relations, there is very limited research on PD caregiving in Latin America. …

Behavioral And Immune Implications Of Chronic Predator Exposure In Adolescent Mice, Kimaya R. Council

Theses and Dissertations

Evidence suggests that toxic stressors introduced early in development have prolonged effects on neuronal function due, in part, to the maturation of the hypothalamic- pituitary- adrenal (HPA) axis during adolescence. Early life stress has been implicated as a driver of mood and anxiety disorders, like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder - the extent to which appears to be sex dependent. While it is known that early life stress results in several consequences in adulthood, the mechanisms by which these changes manifest are unclear. Stress-induced changes in mood and behavior are often associated with alterations in inflammatory reactivity in both the …

Feedback And Innovative Work Behavior Among Local Government Employees In Korea: The Roles Of Trust In Supervisor, Affective Commitment, And Risk-Taking Climate, Hyeonuk Bak

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the mechanisms of how feedback from supervisor affects innovative work behavior among local government employees in Korea. Another purpose of this study is to explore the mediating roles of trust in supervisor and affective commitment, and the moderating role of risk-taking climate, using various theories, such as organizational support theory, social exchange theory, intrinsic motivation theory, and psychological climate theory.

The results from a cross-sectional study based on a sample of 1,699 local government employees from 65 local governments find that feedback from supervisor has a significant direct effect on innovative work …

Spillover Effects And Freedom: An Experimental Investigation Of The Indirect Effects Of Managerial Autonomy And Firms’ Rationale For The Implementation Of Internal Controls Across The Organizational Hierarchy, Erin M. Masters

Theses and Dissertations

The creation of excessive budgetary slack can be costly, causing organizations to implement internal controls to motivate employees to report more honestly. Internal control research explores many control-related motivations; however, the behavioral effects of autonomy in expanded organizational hierarchies are not well understood in budgeting contexts. This paper examines managerial autonomy and firms’ rationales for the implementation of internal controls in a setting that extends the common participatory dyad utilized in prior literature to an organizational hierarchy that includes owners, mid-level managers, and employees. This setting is explored through the lens of self-determination theory and psychological reactance theory, which offer …

My Clothing Is Me: Embracing Adhd In Traditional Qatari Apparel, Rabab Abdulla

Theses and Dissertations

Children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) are often secluded from society, as the condition is perceived to be a defect. These children constantly fidget, move, lose track of time, and forget to complete tasks, leading them to struggle within existing social environments. Additionally, in Qatar there is a need to educate society about ADHD. This research explores wearable solutions that alter behaviors through physical interactions and sensory engagements. In response to the challenges faced by ADHD, Qatari traditional attire has been customized to support children with time management, and communication between child, parent, and society. Additionally, these wearables …

Lifetime, Emily E. Kuchenbecker

Theses and Dissertations

Time is my bully. Time marks the start of something, as well as the end. We are all carrying out the inexorable passing of time as it relates to our impending mortalities.

I do not fear death.

The awareness of my body’s impermanence employs me to feel that much more connected to the vessel containing that of which I am.

But what am I? Am I my body- or is it much deeper?

Through the work executed during my graduate research, I have attempted to quantify my existence through the archiving my time and body. This document ushers you through …

Graphic Content Warning; Personal And Political Traumas, Emily K. Wardell

Theses and Dissertations

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of …

Aeg-1 Knockout Sensitizes Hepatocellular Carcinoma (Hcc) Cells To Ionizing Radiation, Maheen Khan

Theses and Dissertations

Liver cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-associated deaths globally, and among primary liver cancers, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) encompasses 75-85% of all cases. HCC is a highly lethal disease due to limited treatment options – only a small subset of patients qualify for surgical resection or transplantation; the remaining patients often display resistance to radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Overexpression of the oncogene astrocyte elevated gene-1 (AEG-1) is associated with poorer survival and increased tumor recurrence in HCC, and numerous studies show its role in initiation of hepatocarcinogenesis. A prior study also demonstrated AEG-1 expression inhibits senescence by diminishing the …

Regenerative Potential Of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Derived Exosomes, Andrew P. Wong

Theses and Dissertations

Bone defects are a pervasive complication arising from many clinical conditions, both mechanical and pathological. Current treatments for large bony defects focus on applying bone grafts or synthetic materials to the defect area. Cell-based—and especially stem-cell—therapies have advanced greatly thanks to increasing attention focused on their ability to generate new tissues in situ with biomechanical properties approaching that of native tissue, but they suffer from their own shortcomings as well. Exosomes have been shown to play critical roles in cell-signaling and tissue regeneration and are therefore potentially ideal therapeutic vehicles for treating bone defects. Exosomes are small microvesicles counted amongst …

Light In Community: A Study In The Adaptive Reuse Of Sacred Space, Abigail Barras

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

MOTIVATION
American life is increasingly fragmented, leading to a sense of restlessness and disconnection. Much of that fragmentation can be traced to our pattern of architectural and sociological development, namely, the rise of the automobile suburbs in the 1950s and 60s and the abandonment of densely populated, human- scaled environments like that of the small town or city center (Oldenberg, 1999).

PROBLEM
Large numbers of architecturally significant buildings have fallen into disrepair over the years following the “white flight” of the 1960s and 70s, during which significant segments of investment dollars left city centers and followed to the suburbs …

In A Building, A Stairwell, A Room Speaks, Tsz Wai Wallis Cheung

Theses and Dissertations

Working toward a personal definition of womanhood while progressing with my research in feminist discourse, I frame biographical events alongside the intricate use of language surrounding feminist theory. Experimenting with material specificities that speak to my personal narratives and cultural significance, my work seeks to address the interlacing operations of subjectivity expanding on the intersection of class, gender and race.

Weaponization Of Space: Subverting The Architecture Of Occupation, Majdulin Nasrallah

Theses and Dissertations

Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and oppression of the Palestinian people has manifested itself in countless ways. The built environment, fueled by spatial theory, has been transformed into an instrument of war that serves a military agenda. In this context, the physical environment is not simply the arena of conflict, but a weapon wielded by occupying forces. This research investigates spatial control through seemingly mundane architecture and military practices, which are deployed deliberately to strangulate Palestinian livelihood and prosperity. Derived from Deleuze and Guittari’s delineation of smooth and striated space, with an emphasis on walls and barriers, this thesis subverts …

Examining Relationships Among Body Image, Sexuality, And Sexual Functioning In Women With Cervical And Endometrial Cancer, Christina Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Over 74,000 US women are diagnosed annually with endometrial or cervical cancers and experience significant treatment-related difficulties with body image, sexuality, and sexuality. The aims of the research were to examine relationships among body image, sexuality, and sexual functioning, and understand women’s views of these concepts. A novel theoretical framework encompassing these three concepts and contextual variables guided the research.

Methods: A non-experimental cross-sectional pilot study was conducted with pre-menopausal women in an academic medical center who had stages I-III cervical or endometrial cancer, were 3-36 months post-treatment, and had no mental health diagnoses. Participants completed the …

The Wheel House - An Intergenerational Space Creating Bonds Between At-Risk Teens And Seniors, Jessica M. Keegan

Theses and Dissertations

MOTIVATION

Two main groups in American society today are floundering: adolescent children of low income families and the elderly.

Between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 p.m., one in five children are unsupervised. Left to their own devices, many become involved in negative behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse, sexual activity or in the worse cases, delinquency (Afterschool Alliance, 2016). It is proven that when children are alone after school, they not only miss out on valuable learning opportunities, but also their parents are affected as well by having to lose as many as eight work days annually to …

Class/Act Embodied Practices For Performative Pedagogy, Chauntee Irving

Theses and Dissertations

Class/Act: Embodied Practices for Performative Pedagogy is a personal and practical exploration of embodiment’s role in higher education acting pedagogy. In my thesis, I propose that embodied acting practices rooted in phenomenology and corporeal dramaturgy surpass conventional acting curricula. Embodied training is often confused with movement curricula and is regularly considered a shallow and/or unintelligent means to approaching acting work. However, I will argue the efficiency and effectiveness of embodied teaching techniques in four parts. Part One: Seeing is a retrospective of how my personal experiences outside of the classroom have drawn me toward embodied aesthetics. Part Two: Knowing unveils …

The Day Is Just Another Surface, Brooks M. Heintzelman

Theses and Dissertations

Within a practice founded on both typographic form and language, I have continued to push myself to make work that is more sensitive to place, more contextual, more (hopefully) generous toward a public audience. These pieces might serve as useful instruments of institutional critique, resources for comprehension, or moments in which to interrogate preconceived modes of seeing. I deploy original texts in public spaces in order that they might force viewers to decide how to personally resolve the content they encounter. Is it language or object? Literal or figurative? Graphic design or art? The further I develop this body of …

Out Of The Margins: Evolving Narrative Representation Of Women In Video Games, Rowan Lucas

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines narrative representation of female characters in video games and how game narratives and representations contribute to socio-cultural discourse. First, this thesis explores and defines the cultural background for female representation in video games. It then defines video games as a type of text and describes the features that are unique to games, such as the use of avatars, and what impacts these features have on game narratives. The thesis attempts to establish evidence of an evolutionary arc of comprehensive female representation in video games by first exploring historical female narrative tropes, and then comparing them to narrative …

Competing Strength-Based Models Of Trauma And Suicidality In A High-Risk Primary Care Sample, Samantha Mladen

Theses and Dissertations

There is limited research on the relationship between trauma exposure, depression, and suicidality, particularly in high-risk primary care samples. The present study aims to: 1) characterize the prevalence of suicidality, depression, and trauma exposure in this sample; 2)develop and test models of the relationships between suicidality, depression, and trauma exposure in this sample; 3) augment the selected model with key protective factors, including social support and religiosity; and 4) further elaborate the nature of religiosity as a potential protective factor using the subscales of the Attitudes toward God scale, Anger toward God and Comfort with God.

Patients (n …

A View Into Reciprocity: Literature Review, Measurement Design, And Experiment, Kelly B. Green

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to discuss reciprocity and the role it plays in helping us understand interactions between parties in accounting settings. The concept of reciprocity states that individuals will reward kind behaviors and punish unkind behaviors. (Fisher et al. 2015; Fehr and Gächter 2000; Fehr and Gächter 1997). When trying to trace the origins of the theory of reciprocity, it is useful to track the initial constructs on which it is built from various literary sources. This process contributes to developing an understanding of how reciprocity is used to explain behaviors in the workplace. The notion of …

Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys

Theses and Dissertations

I am bored. All around me are systems that perpetuate repetitive, reductive, and mundane modes of living. In an attempt to counter a culture obsessed with singular ways of existence and bite-sized perfection, I utilize moving mediums of video and performance to dive head first into a vast array of sloppy sincerity. The crisp, white-washed, analytical, and restrictive is loudly replaced with the empirical, haphazard, and instinctual. My intention is to create and encourage raw, performative-based work that is as multifaceted as unbridled life itself. This alive and physical practice hosts a conglomeration of sweat, memories, heartbreaks, hymn singing, line …

Alcohol Use And Drinking Motives In Bereaved Undergraduates, Laura J. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effect of the experience of a loss on alcohol use and drinking motives in a college sample. Participants for this study were drawn from the “Spit for Science” project (Dick et al., 2014). The sample included 3,013 students (31.8% men, 68.2% women; 44.3% White, 21.1% Black, 19.6% Asian, 6.0% Latinx; mean age = 18.96; 16.2% bereaved) from Virginia Commonwealth University. Data were collected from participants’ freshman spring and sophomore spring time points on the Life Events Checklist, Alcohol Consumption items, and Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised. Participants who were bereaved between the freshman and sophomore timepoint did not …

Lotion In Your Lungs, Raul H. De Lara

Theses and Dissertations

This is a document explaining in detail my artistic practice from childhood to the day I graduated VCU. It will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already felt such ways, or similar ways – words and ghosts are mostly invisible.

Graphic Intimacies: Identity, Humor, And Trauma In Autobiographical Comics By Women Of Color, Francesca Lyn

Theses and Dissertations

Graphic Intimacies: Identity, Humor, and Trauma in Autobiographical Comics by Women of Color examines works of comics art about the lived experience of the comics’ creator. These graphic narratives address racialized difference and the construction of identity while also using humor to negotiate their narrations of traumatic events. I argue that these creators employ the structure of comics to replicate the fragmentary nature of memory. Comics allow for the representation of trauma as being intimately linked to corporeality. The comics medium allows creators to make visible and present fractured versions of the self, a product of traumatic fragmentation. Drawing traumatic …

An Evaluation Of Induced Shear Stress On Endothelial Cellular Adhesion Molecules, Edward B. Crabb

Theses and Dissertations

The pathophysiology of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) is highlighted by vascular dysfunction and low-grade vascular inflammation. Furthermore, the site-specific distribution of atherosclerosis throughout the arterial vasculature is primarily determined by local hemodynamic force. Therefore, this dissertation outlines three experiments designed to investigate the role of acute mental and physical (i.e., aerobic exercise), and vascular wall shear stress (SS) on the inflammatory aspects of atherosclerosis. Chapter 2 examines the effect of acute laboratory-induced mental stress on intracellular pro-inflammatory signaling pathways in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of acute laboratory-induced mental stress and maximal aerobic exercise on the …

The Effect Of Music Characteristics On The Novelty And Usefulness Of Creative Ideas., Kathleen Keeler

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between music and creativity. Prior research has conflicting results with some finding that music does influence creativity and some reporting no relationship and others finding that music is harmful to creativity. All of these studies, however, have largely focused on the presence vs. absence of music without consideration for the characteristics (i.e., musical key, tempo, etc.) that make up the sound we identify as music and their unique effects on us emotionally, physically, and cognitively. This dissertation contends that different characteristics of music influence different components of creativity (i.e., novelty and usefulness) through their effects …