Digital Commons Network^™

Health Communication: Toward A Phenomenological Perspective, Bonnie Reese

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines implications for health communication as a rhetorical and philosophical practice by focusing on the various topics in the health communication field today, identifying areas that have been examined qualitatively and/or phenomenologically and hermeneutically. Currently, health communication scholarship tends toward qualitative and quantitative research from the methodological perspective of social science. Bringing these approaches into conversation with current phenomenological studies in the health care field, particularly those in the area of nursing, offers the potential to transform health communication scholarship, giving birth to a rhetorically and philosophically grounded praxis in this field.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Engaging Communicative Praxis In An Era Of Neoclassical Economics, Kenneth Bohl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is grounded in the belief that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is good for society. However, current indicators stemming from the marketplace raise concerns as to CSR's long term viability. In this dissertation, I argue that corporate social responsibility has reached a tipping point from which it may move to become a fully informed and dominant practice or recede into the status of a passing fad. This project is driven by the question,"What might be done to better ensure a fuller adoption of CSR as a standard business practice?" I am particularly interested in (1) why society needs CSR …

The Reliability And Validity Of The Triage Assessment Scale For Students In Learning Environments; Middle Schools, Jamie Brownfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study determined the reliability and validity of the Triage Assessment Scale for Students in Learning Environments (TASSLE) used in a Middle School setting. Participants included faculty/staff from a local middle school, masters students enrolled in a counseling program at a local private university in Pennsylvania, and experts with experience in crisis and the use of the TASSLE form. Following the viewing of three scenarios (mild, moderate, and severe), participants rated their perception of the level of reaction to the crisis using the TASSLE form. A quantitative correlational, within and between-subjects design was used to determine the reliability and validity …

Black Men's Responsible Fatherhood Narratives: Fatherhood, Responsibility, Race, And Gender, Shane Chaplin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the last few decades increasing rates of single mother households in the United States have triggered a national alarm over the effects of father absence on society. Father absence has been linked specifically to many of the problems plaguing black communities in the United States (e.g. poverty, low educational attainment, etc.) and as a result community and political leaders alike have consistently promoted responsible fatherhood practices as a way to address them. Although responsible fatherhood has received, in this context, a considerable amount of social attention, this attention has come intertwined with considerable political and moral rhetoric at all …

Interpreting The Culture Of Ubuntu: The Contribution Of A Representative Indigenous African Ethics To Global Bioethics, Leonard T. Chuwa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ubuntu is a worldview and a way of life shared by most Africans south of Sahara. Basically Ubuntu underlines the often unrecognized role of relatedness and dependence of human individuality to other humans and the cosmos. The importance of relatedness to humanity is summarized by the two maxims of Ubuntu. The first is: a human being is human because of other human beings. The second maxim is an elaboration of the first. It goes; a human being is human because of the otherness of other human beings. John Mbiti combines those two maxims into, "I am because we are, and …

Democratically Engaged Community-University Partnerships: Reciprocal Determinants Of Democratically Oriented Roles And Processes, Lina Dee Dostilio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite calls for concerted, two-way engagement and for the development of reciprocal partnerships between institutions of higher education (IHE's) and their communities, IHE's continue to implement a disparate menu of activities that prove largely ineffective at addressing society's most challenging social and environmental problems. A relatively new conception of engagement lays out a framework by which IHE's engage with communities in democratic ways. Democratic engagement values inclusive, reciprocal problem-oriented work that brings together university and community stakeholders as co-generators of knowledge and solutions. The resulting democratically engaged partnerships position diverse members to take on roles as collaborators and problem solvers. …

Hazel Brannon Smith: An Examination Of Her Editorials On Three Pivotal Civil Rights Events, Lauren Nicole Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hazel Brannon Smith was born in Alabama but moved to Mississippi in 1936 when she acquired the Durant Times in Durant, Mississippi. Seven years later she added the Lexington Advertiser to her growing collection of newspapers and it is at the Advertiser that Smith made her greatest journalist impact. This study did a small content analysis to exam Smith's opinion on three pivotal civil rights events: the Freedom Riders of 1961, James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962, and Medgar Evers' assassination in 1963. Results indicate that Smith was unwavering in her opinions on all three events. …

Language As Microaggression: The New Lexicon Of American Racism, Juan Thurmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are countless occasions where marginalized groups bear witness to language-based discriminatory practices. Language, as defined here, is a species of symbolism. After reviewing the sociological literature, the term "microaggressions" appears to best describe the phenomena in its everyday occurrences. Microaggressions are "the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group" (Sue, Capodilupo, et al., 2007; Sue, 2010). Sue classifies microaggressions into three forms: microassaults, microinsults, microinvalidations. The purpose of the project was tri-fold. By …

We're Paid To Take Care Of The Movement. The Movement Ain't Paid To Take Care Of Us: The Promise And Challenges Of Workplace Strategies Of Black Feminist Organizations, Jazmine Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reproductive justice is a social justice movement based on black feminist principles that is also a direct response to women of color's invisibility within white mainstream feminist organizations and workplaces. This ethnographic case study of WomenUnited, a woman of color reproductive justice organization, demonstrates that a key difference between black feminist and white feminist workplace cultures is black workplace's centralization of and emphasis on their intersectional identities in their definitions of work and the ways they enact emotional labor. I find that identity within black feminist workplaces is managed differently as the organizations: (1) embrace alternative standards of beauty through …

Paths To Democracy, The Post-Cold War And 21st Century New Standard Of Civilization, The New Wave Expansion Of International Society: China, South Korea And Iraq, Jaewon Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, I examine two main research questions: 1. Can we regard democracy as the new standard of civilization and the new wave expansion of international society in the post-Cold War era and in the 21st century? and 2. Should we think that each path toward democracy is relatively different based on the characteristics of each international society and the internal and external variables of each state? In my dissertation, I use typology to demonstrate that each country has taken its own unique path toward democracy, and that democracy has become the post-Cold War and 21st century new standard …

Effects Of Off-Label Prescribing On Patient Decision Making, Douglas Paul

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objectives: Despite the comuse of off-label prescribing in the US, no research has been conducted to understand the impact of off-label prescribing on patient decision making. This study sought to measure the impact on trust in physicians, intentions of involvement in the decision making, beliefs about the drug, and initial compliance intentions in elderly and nonelderly populations. Methods. This study was designed to assess the effects of off-label prescribing using a 2 × 2 × 2 design. Using an online panel, 830 consumers were surveyed, 409 elderly and 421 nonelderly, using 8 different scenarios based on disease criticality, off-label use …

Mais Bonito Da Região: The Cacao-Producing Region Of Cachoeira Alta, Bahia, And The Transition From Wage Labor To Small Farming, Rodney D. Parker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The support needed for upward social mobility within the field of agriculture, from a laborer to a self-sufficient, small farmer, requires an agricultural and market-based knowledge to which few wage laborers are privy. Small-scale farmers suffer shortcomings within regional and global markets because of their inability to respond to increased demand due to a lack of access to assets and capital. Despite such difficulties, in some agricultural sectors wage laborers have successfully made the transition to small landholders. In this thesis I seek to answer what factors led to the emergence of a smallholding cacao-producing population from a wage-laboring class …

Nonviolent Bodies And The Experience Of Breakdown In The American Movement For Civil Rights, Danielle Andersen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the experience of personal breakdown in the American Civil Rights Movement. It proposes that breakdown was triggered in individuals by the practice of nonviolence and contends that breakdown precipitated the Movement's shift away from nonviolence toward the more self-protective tactic of black power.

Clamor: Malefica, Protest, And The Occult Economy In Early Modern England, Charles Mock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to figure witchcraft practices within a larger economic context whereby cursing and maleficent acts in general might be read as a means of political protest against the political and economic destabilization of comrights. By reading cursing and prophecy as epistemological weaponry, the thesis establishes a theory of early modern terror that corresponds to the effects of these tactics on local and national levels. Readings of traditional witchcraft literature and Shakespeare's Macbeth will hopefully allow for an understanding of witchcraft that is heavily concerned over the nature of agency within the period, particularly with regard to the ways …

The Public Secondary School And Teacher In American Films Of The 1990s, Arleen Belinda Dowd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how public secondary schools and educators were portrayed in American films of the 1990s. Thirty films were selected for study that were produced and released in the decade of the 1990s. Content analysis and a "Film Analysis Form" produced answers to eight questions regarding the learning environments, portrayal of educators and students, the academic and life lessons taught, and positive or negative statements about education in the films of this decade. The results shoa series of complex environments, educators, students, and academic and life lessons delivered. An assessment of the positive and negative portrayal provided more negative …

Fighting Extremism: Strategies Used To Combat Extremism And Radicalization, Scott Michel Caldwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has been awakened to the threat that extremist organizations pose to our national security. The greatest transnational terrorist threat to the United States right now comes primarily from extremist groups such as Al-Queda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. These extremist groups are fueled by the desire to influence political, religious, and/or ideological causes. The political "end-state" or objective of the extremist is to overthrow "heretic" governments which currently exist and replace them with Islamic governments based on the rule of the Shariah (the first book of the Quran which strongly …

Between God And Man: Community's Place In Virtue, Practical Reason, And Transcendent Good, Jordan Herz Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Talbot Brewer's Retrieval of Ethics and Robert Adams's Finite and Infinite Goods present distinct theories in ethics and metaethics. Brewer begins with the fundamental ethical perspective of the practical deliberator who experiences his practical deliberations as a continuous, unified, and constantly revised activity which begins with inchoate intimations of goodness and proceeds better or worse to understand and pursue the goodness which pervades his evaluative outlook. From this Brewer aims to account for how we achieve excellence in practical deliberation and arrive at a more tenable and self-consistent evaluative outlook which informs our ethical deliberations. Alternately, Adams begins in the …

The Art Of Going Beyond In Hossana, Ethiopia, Megan Elizabeth Flowers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine what education as development means for the men and women who live in Hossana town, Ethiopia. The ethnographic focus of this study is on understanding how education as development evokes different meanings for socio-political participation by rural students at a teacher training college and townspeople respectively. I discuss these conceptual differentiations in relation to the changes in beliefs and strategies that have occurred in Hossana and greater Ethiopia elsewhere over the course of several decades of local and global changes in the social order. I use the emic category of yilhunnta, as the social recognition …

Two Trains Running: Capture And Escape In The Racialized Train Cars Of The Jim Crow South, 1893-1930, Raleigh Mixon Robinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The role of the railroad in the modern American experience—and its role in making that experience modern—cannot be overstated. This thesis proposes to tell one of many possible railroad stories. By focusing on the historical and cultural relevance of a series of bodies in transit, I examine the implementation of railroad segregation law and the response by African-American performers. The thesis begins at the end of the nineteenth century with the Homer Plessy test case and continues across three decades, meeting along the way novelists Charles Chesnutt and James Weldon Johnson and musicians W. C. Handy, Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, …

Neuropsychological Predictors Of Math Calculation And Reasoning In School-Aged Children, Dana Schneider

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After multiple reviews of the literature, which documented that multiple cognitive processes may be involved in mathematics ability and disability, Geary (1993) proposed a model that included three subtypes of math disability: Semantic, Procedural, and Visuospatial. A review of the extant literature produced three studies that examined Geary's three subtypes, which provided some support for Geary's model. Given the paucity of research examining Geary's subtypes of math disability, this study aimed to add to the literature by exploring the presence of these three subtypes in a sample of school-aged children. The sample consisted of 60 participants (30 males, 30 females) …

Cyberbullying And Suicide Among A Sample Of Lgbtq Young Adults, Heather Schwickrath

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After an extensive literature review, results indicated research has been conducted examining the links between traditional bullying and suicide, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (LGBTQ) identification and cyberbullying, as well as LGBTQ identification and suicide. However, it appears as though there is a dearth of studies examining the link between young adults identifying as LGBTQ who have experienced cyberbullying and the subsequent suicidal behaviors. The following research study attempts to answer the question of whether cyberbullying mediates the relationship between cyberbullying and suicidal behaviors.

The Rhetoric And Philosophy Of Education: Finding Whole Learning In An Age Of Mechanistic Pedagogy, Georgia Bedford

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the communicative structure of the contemporary rhetoric of crisis and reform narrative dominating public conversation about education, as a post-industrial body of discourse deeply embedded in historical ideals for a mass system of public education. In challenging the crisis-centered narrative, this work seeks to identify historical discourse strands that have shaped thinking and action in the construction of educational policy, legislation, administration and pedagogy. This work evaluates the misalignment in the assumptions which guide the perception that an academic relationship exists between higher education and secondary school which is in contrast to the original purpose for a …

Nimby Effects On Low-Income Housing Policy: A Case Of Two Cities, Russell Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I researched the strategies that city officials and housing developers used to address NIMBY concerns about low income housing developments. I conducted interview research with planning commission members, their staffs, and housing developers from two cities. I wanted to understand what strategies the interviewees employed to address NIMBY concerns, if best practices were used during the planning process, how well those practices were followed, how effective those approaches used were in a real world setting, and inquire about alternative methods. The findings indicated that population density and median income were the relevant factors regarding NIMBY related issues. Also, traffic concerns, …

Crisis Management By Social Movements: Learning From Indian Microfinance, Andrew Pickup

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In October 2010, the state government of Andhra Pradesh issued an ordinance prohibiting microfinance institutions from distributing and collecting loans following allegations that over-indebtedness and coercive loan recovery tactics were causing borrower suicides. While no evidence substantiating a link between microfinance and borrower suicide has been provided, an anti-microfinance movement across India developed with clients reneging on their loans. Indian microfinance risked insolvency and the once lauded poverty alleviating movement was perceived as a villain by the international community. Microfinance was in crisis.

How a social movement such as microfinance responds to a crisis is an understudied topic in social …

Rituals Of Resistance: The Life, Lynching, And Legacy Of L.Q. Ivy, Hannah Maureen Mcmahan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Jim Crow South was a land saturated in religiosity. Emerging from the defeat of the Civil War and the utter oppression of slavery, southerners used religion to make sense of their painful world. This was a time marked by extreme religious conviction that gave way to racial violence. In this study, I will examine the southern lynching culture in the context of southern religion. Specifically I will explore the life, lynching, and legacy of L.Q. Ivy, a young man who was lynched in 1925 in Etta, Mississippi. Ironically in Ivy's case, as well as cases all across the nation, …

Y'All Eat: Foodways, Performative Regional Identity, And The South In The Twenty-First Century, Kirsten Schofield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Y'all Eat: Foodways, Performative Regional Identity, and the South in the Twenty-first Century" examines the ways in which iconic Southerners--Jim Beam and his ilk, Colonel Harland Sanders, and Paula Deen--create and sustain the hypercontemporary South. Because of their media exposure and place in the popular imagination, these characters force a specific kind of performance in both an intergroup and intragroup context. Close readings of individual appearances and selected portions of these characters' output help to shed light on how these identities are formed, upon what they rely for structure and support, and what this means for modern consumers around the …

Disciplining The Body: Societal Controls Of Gender, Race And Sexuality, Michelle Renae Bright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Estimating The Effects Of Condemned Inmates' Last Statements On Public Opinion About The Death Penalty: A Factorial Survey Approach, Timothy P. Colyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There has been an increase in writings that address the last statements of condemned offenders. Many of these writings suggest that exposure to the humanity sometimes exhibited in these last statements may steer public opinion against the death penalty. This dissertation tests this suggestion by exposing 400 participants to randomly generated vignettes containing various capital crimes, demographic characteristics, and last statements. The survey data are analyzed utilizing multilevel modeling. Study results include the effects of varying levels of demonstrated humanity in the last statements of condemned offenders on public opinion, and whether specific demographic characteristics appear to influence study participant …

Issues Of Crime And School Safety: Zero Tolerance Policies And Children With Disabilities, Melissa Henson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the aftermath of school shootings, safety in educational institutions became a national concern. The Zero Tolerance policy was designed to remove students who posed serious and or imminent threat to the school environment. It was hoped that the institution of this policy would allow schools to better police student behaviors through the use of tough disciplinary actions, and to ensure a safer learning environment for all. However, one of the latent consequences of establishing a broad set of directives was to result in the differential treatment of some minority groups such as special education students. To date, there exists …

The Rise Of The Smooth Jazz Format: An Exploratory Study Of Kenny G And His Gang Of Smooth Operators, William Arden Mader

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the development and rise of the smooth jazz radio format. It is an exploratory study which aims to illustrate the confluence of forces that contributed to the immense success of the smooth jazz genre through the 1980s and well into the 1990s. Artists, such as the saxophonist Kenny G, popularized this style of music that is often described as instrumental-pop music, happy-jazz, or easy listening. Others might draw comparisons to the music we often hear inside of elevators and shopping centers. This is a process that is not unique to the genre …