Digital Commons Network^™

The Fantasy Of The Unchaste Mentality, Tara N. Summerville, Kevin Bennardo

Faculty Publications

For the past forty years, North Carolina’s rape-shield legislation has served as a laboratory of experimentation. Like the rape-shield legislation of every state, it generally prevents the admission of complaining witnesses’ past sexual history in sexual assault prosecutions. However, North Carolina’s rape-shield rule contains a unique exception not found elsewhere in the country. The exception, which we label the “fantasy exception,” permits the admission of a complaining witness’s past sexual behavior when it is offered as the basis of expert psychological or psychiatric opinion that the complainant fantasized or invented the charged assault.

This Article is the first to rigorously …

Taxing Nudges, Kathleen Delaney Thomas

Faculty Publications

Governments are increasingly turning to behavioral economics to inform policy design in areas like health care, the environment, and financial decision-making. Research shows that small behavioral interventions, referred to as “nudges,” often produce significant responses at a low cost. The theory behind nudges is that, rather than mandating certain behaviors or providing costly economic subsidies, modest initiatives may “nudge” individuals to choose desirable outcomes by appealing to their behavioral preferences. For example, automatically enrolling workers into savings plans as a default, rather than requiring them to actively sign up, has dramatically increased enrollment in such plans. Similarly, allowing individuals to …

Barring Married Same-Sex Couples From Joint Adoption: Comparative Perspectives And The Case Of Taiwan, Holning S. Lau

Faculty Publications

Taiwan is the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, but it forbids married same-sex couples from jointly adopting children. This article examines this restriction through the lens of comparative law, which brings into focus two main insights. First, we see that, out of all countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, Taiwan is one of only two that bar married same-sex couples from joint adoption. As this article will explain, the fact that Taiwan’s policy is so anomalous should spur skepticism of the policy’s appropriateness. Second, judicial opinions from around the world contain persuasive reasoning that further calls into …

The Final Act -- Deportation By Ice Air, Deborah M. Weissman, Angelina Godoy, Havan Clark

Faculty Publications

Deportation is a legal concept about which much has been written. But it is more complicated. For noncitizens, forced expulsion is a lived experience occurring in time and space — an act against the body, mostly black and brown bodies. In this Article, we part ways with the well-established narratives of deportation and the punishment/non-punishment paradigm to conceive of deportation not only as a legal concept, but as a physical act — the final act — that is, the culmination of the immigration enforcement dragnet. The physical removal of persons from the United States requires a complex system comprised of …

Law In The Shadows Of Confederate Monuments, Deborah R. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

Hundreds of Confederate monuments stand across the United States. In recent years, leading historians have come forward to clarify that these statues were erected not just as memorials but to express white supremacist intimidation in times of racially oppressive conduct. As public support for antiracist action grows, many communities are inclined to remove public symbols that cause emotional harm, create constant security risks and dishonor the values of equality and unity. Finding a lawful path to removal is not always clear and easy. The political power brokers who choose whether monuments will stay or go often do not walk daily …

Varieties Of Adventists After 1844: Emerging From “Fanaticism Of Every Kind” Into “The Order Of Heaven”, David J. B. Trim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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

Faculty Publications

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

Responding To The Call: Building A Training Program To Diversify The Academy In Alzheimer’S Disease Research, Lucy Annang Ingram Phd, Marvella E. Ford, Christiana L. Johnson, Brianna Ashford-Carroll, Quentin Mccollum, Daniela B. Friedman, Sue E. Levkoff

Faculty Publications

Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are at the forefront of the United States (US) public health agenda due to their tremendous human and financial burden. Further, disproportionately high ADRD rates among racial/ethnic minorities require incorporating the unique perspectives of racially and ethnically diverse scientists, which will necessitate diversifying the scientific workforce that investigates disparities in aging. The purpose of this paper is to describe the training and mentorship initiatives of the National Institute on Aging (NIA)-funded Carolina Center on Alzheimer's Disease and Minority Research, emphasizing lessons learned from our engagement with underrepresented minority and minoritized (URM) Scientists. We highlight …

Trauma And Memory In The Prosecution Of Sexual Assault, Cynthia V. Ward

Faculty Publications

Part I of this article traces the history of the recovered memory movement in the criminal prosecution of sexual assault, discussing some prominent cases and their consequences for wrongly convicted defendants. Part II asks why the criminal law was so vulnerable to claims of sexual assault, and other violent crimes, that were often wildly improbable on their face. The article concludes that the structure of recovered memory theory had the effect of disabling checks in the criminal process which are designed to prevent unjust convictions. Part III applies that conclusion to the theory of Trauma-informed Investigation (TII) and the "Neurobiology …

Task Adherence: An Agentic Perspective On Task-Focused Dedication In An Interrupting Work Environment, Tanner Skousen, Justin Ames, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Purpose – Knowledge workers live and work in a technology-enabled, push-notification world full of interruptions that create information overload, often requiring these workers to utilize task switching as a mechanism to meet multiple competing tasks’ demands. Previous research has examined both the positive and, more often, negative effects from interruptions and task switching on knowledge workers’ performance. However, this paper aims to examine knowledge workers’ agentic approach to managing interruption signals and consequent task switching to remain dedicated to the task at hand.

Design/methodology/approach – Using an inductive grounded theory approach, we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews with knowledge workers …

The Roles Of Supervisory Support And Involvement In Influencing Scientists’ Job Satisfaction To Ensure The Achievement Of Sdgs In Academic Organizations, Majid Ghasemy, Isabel Maria Rosa-Díaz, James Eric Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Job satisfaction is the focus of this study, given its strategic importance, both to generate differentiation and competitive advantages, and to promote better and more sustainable results in organizations. Guided by the Affective Events Theory (AET), the interest is in analyzing the direct and indirect effects of supervisory support and involvement on job satisfaction and highlighting the implications of the academics’ emotions for sustainability-related policies and practices in academic environments. The context selected is the higher education (HE) sector in Malaysia for science disciplines, due to its socioeconomic relevance and its direct link to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4), as …

What Can Mental Health Teach Us About Social Media Screen Time Misestimation?, Mark Keith, Parker Nokes, Alexandra Spruill

Faculty Publications

Mobile platform providers have provided the ability to measure the time consumers spend on each app. This provides the opportunity to measure a consumer’s misestimation of their screentime which is a concept relevant to several mental health attributes such as depression, anxiety, and addiction. We provide additional evidence about the effect of objective screentime on mental health, but add a unique perspective on how screentime misestimation is determined by various mental health attributes. We collected data from a student sample (n=1005) who are from the demographic who most commonly use social media apps (18-29 yr olds). We measured our model …

Rigor, Relevance, And Practical Significance: A Real-Life Journey To Organizational Value, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins

Faculty Publications

In this essay, we describe a research journey focusing on how to analyze mouse cursor movements, typing fidelity, and data from other human-computer interaction (HCI) devices to better understand the end-user online experience. We begin by defining organizational value and how it relates to other aspects that researchers use to assess academic research quality. We then describe and contrast our research journey by demonstrating key research milestones: from achieving statistical significance to achieving practical significance and, finally, to reaching relevance to practice. We then explain how we crossed the chasm between academic research and technology commercialization (i.e., the last research …

The Evolving Technology-Augmented Courtroom Before, During, And After The Pandemic, Fredric I. Lederer

Faculty Publications

Even before the COVID-19 Pandemic, technology was changing the nature of America’s courtrooms. Access to case management and e-filing data and documents coupled with electronic display of information and evidence at trial, remote appearances, electronic court records, and assistive technology for those with disabilities defined the technology-augmented trial courtroom. With the advent of the Pandemic and the need for social distancing, numerous courts moved to remote appearances, virtual hearings, and even virtual trials. This Article reviews the nature of technology-augmented courtrooms and discusses virtual hearings and trials at length, reviewing legality, technology, human factors, and public acceptance, and concludes that …

Playing By The Rule: How Aba Model Rule 8.4(G) Can Regulate Jury Exclusion, Anna Offit

Faculty Publications

Discrimination during voir dire remains a critical impediment to empaneling juries that reflect the diversity of the United States. While various solutions have been proposed, scholars have largely overlooked ethics rules as an instrument for preventing discriminatory behavior during jury selection. Focusing on American Bar Association Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(g), which regulates professional misconduct, this Article argues that ethics rules may, under certain conditions, deter the exclusionary practices of legal actors. Part I examines the specific history, evolution, and application of revised Model Rule 8.4(g). Part II delves into the ways that ethics rules in general, despite their …

The Evidence Rules That Convict The Innocent, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Over the past decades, DNA testing has uncovered hundreds of examples of the most important type of trial errors: innocent defendants convicted of serious crimes like rape and murder. The resulting Innocence Movement spurred reforms to police practices, forensic science, and criminal procedure. This Article explores the lessons of the Innocence Movement for American evidence law.

Commentators often overlook the connection between the growing body of research on convictions of the innocent and the evidence rules. Of the commonly identified causes of false convictions, only flawed forensic testimony has received sustained attention as a matter of evidence law. But other …

Who Gets ‘To Guru’? Scientist Ted Speakers And The Role Of Collective Identity In Peer Evaluation Of Audience Diversification, Brian P. Reschke, Taeya M. Howell

Faculty Publications

As producers diversify to additional audiences, they invite scrutiny of themselves and the products they provide, both by external evaluators as well as peer producers. We argue that in certain conditions, audience diversification may suggest producers represent their producer group, prompting special scrutiny by peers. In these cases, peer evaluation of diversification depends on the correspondence between the identity of the diversifying producer and the collective identity of the producer group, such that peers sanction non-prototypical producers and support exemplary producers. We develop and test hypotheses in the context of science, examining how appeals to the general public—giving a TED …

The Effect Of Prompt Accent On Elicited Imitation Assessments In English As A Second Language, Jacob G. Barrows, Troy L. Cox

Faculty Publications

Elicited imitation (EI) assessments have been shown to discriminate well between speakers across proficiency levels, but little has been reported on the effect L2 accent has on test-takers’ ability to understand and process the test items they hear. Furthermore, no study has investigated the effect of accent on test-taker perceptions of EI tests. This study examined the relationships among accent, accent familiarity, EI test item difficulty and test scores. To investigate, self-reports of students’ exposure to different varieties of English were obtained from a pre-assessment survey. An EI test (63 items) was then administered in which English language learners (n …

Can User Interface Design Choices Alter Perceptions Of Time Passage?, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

When a task is dull, time seems to unhelpfully dilate. This can have serious impacts on job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover – all of which impact employee well-being and the bottom line. Without changing the task, could a user interface take advantage of psychology-driven, theoretically-supported design decisions to make time seem to contract? If such is the case, we might, without much cost, partially alleviate employee suffering due to task fatigue and disinterest by making simple changes to the user interface. While psychology research and user interface design have intersected abundantly in extant literature, no study has empirically tested whether …

Prevalence And Correlates Of Physical Health Conditions In Jamaica And Guyana, Krim K. Lacey, Karen Powell Sears, Tazhmoye V. Crawford, Letroy O. Cummings, Sasha R. Drummond-Lewis, Rohan D. Jeremiah, James S. Jackson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Physical Intimate Partner Violence, Childhood Physical Abuse And Mental Health Of U.S. Caribbean Women: The Interrelationship Of Social, Contextual, And Migratory Influences, Krims K. Lacey, Regina Parnell, Sasha R. Drummond-Lewis, Maxine Wood, Karen Powell Sears

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Visions Of Childhood, Notions Of Rurality, And Anti-Bias Education: Emerging Educators Strive For Praxis, Emily Nemeth, Heather Hill

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mindfulness, Self-Inquiry, And Artmaking, Mark Graham, Rebecca Lewis

Faculty Publications

This article describes a qualitative study of pre-service art education students that was designed to explore relationships between mindfulness, self-inquiry, and artistic practices. The researchers, who are art educators, were curious about how mindfulness practices might connect, overlap or influence the personal artistic practice of the participants. Although mindfulness is often used as an intervention to counter the stresses of school and teaching, mindfulness can also be thought of as a counter cultural phenomenon that explores possibilities of a critical pedagogy. While mindfulness and self-care practices can have important positive benefits and may lead to deeper personal understanding, these practices …

Making The Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Mindset Indispensable In The Lis Classroom Through Design, Content, Communication, And Assessment, Kim M. Thompson, Clayton A. Copeland

Faculty Publications

When we incorporate diversity and inclusion into Library and Information Science course design and content and build communication and learning frameworks in the classroom on inclusive principles, we build a cohort of students who cannot “unsee” these basic principles as they engage in practice. By designing lecture and activity materials that allow students to read and engage with different perspectives about professional values and content, we create opportunities for awareness building and prepare students to engage with the same practices as they join the profession. This chapter provides insights for and examples of how to create courses that bring diversity, …

Automatic Categorization Of Lgbt User Profiles On Twitter With Machine Learning, Amir Karami, M. Lundy, F. Webb, H. R. Boyajieff, M. Zhu, D. Lee

Faculty Publications

Privacy needs and stigma pose significant barriers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people sharing information related to their identities in traditional settings and research methods such as surveys and interviews. Fortunately, social media facilitates people’s belonging to and exchanging information within online LGBT communities. Compared to heterosexual respondents, LGBT users are also more likely to have accounts on social media websites and access social media daily. However, the current relevant LGBT studies on social media are not efficient or assume that any accounts that utilize LGBT-related words in their profile belong to individuals who identify as LGBT. Our …

A Systematic Literature Review Of Sexual Harassment Studies With Text Mining, Amir Karami, Melek Yildiz Spinel, C. Nicole White, Kayla Ford, Suzanne Swan

Faculty Publications

Sexual harassment has been the topic of thousands of research articles in the 20th and 21st centuries. Several review papers have been developed to synthesize the literature about sexual harassment. While traditional literature review studies provide valuable insights, these studies have some limitations including analyzing a limited number of papers, being time-consuming and labor-intensive, focusing on a few topics, and lacking temporal trend analysis. To address these limitations, this paper employs both computational and qualitative approaches to identify major research topics, explore temporal trends of sexual harassment topics over the past few decades, and point to future possible directions in …

Covid-19 Vaccine And Social Media In The U.S.: Exploring Emotions And Discussions On Twitter, Amir Karami, Michael Zhu, Bailey Goldschmidt, Hannah R. Boyajieff, Mahdi M. Najafabadi

Faculty Publications

The understanding of the public response to COVID-19 vaccines is the key success factor to control the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the public response, there is a need to explore public opinion. Traditional surveys are expensive and time-consuming, address limited health topics, and obtain small-scale data. Twitter can provide a great opportunity to understand public opinion regarding COVID-19 vaccines. The current study proposes an approach using computational and human coding methods to collect and analyze a large number of tweets to provide a wider perspective on the COVID-19 vaccine. This study identifies the sentiment of tweets using a machine learning …

Planning And Evaluating Policy To Address Information Inequalities: An Information Worlds Matrix Approach, Kim M. Thompson

Faculty Publications

One objective of public policy is to solve social problems and often it is through policy that digital inclusion efforts enter our information society. Digital technologies can help accelerate progress in fighting poverty, hunger and ill-health, in improving educational outcomes and in reducing gender and other inequalities. Digital inclusion is a means to empower underserved and marginalized populations. Policy related to digital inclusion often starts with building infrastructure and providing affordable access to information and communication technologies such as through phone connections, broadband, computers in classrooms or a computer (i.e., smartphone) in every pocket. But how can we know whether …

Reimagining Civil Case Management, Paula Hannaford-Agor

Faculty Publications

Court rules are necessary, but insufficient by themselves to address problems of cost and delay. Instead, state courts today are embracing a considerably broader view of civil case management, one that encompasses the total constellation of court rules, business practices, culture and governance, and staffing and technology infrastructure. Effective case management now recognizes the importance of five core components that are necessary to achieve timely, cost-effective, and procedurally fair justice: (1) triage to ensure that cases receive attention proportional to their needs; (2) process simplification to remove procedural barriers that unnecessarily complicate litigation; (3) stakeholder engagement to ensure clear communication …

A Model For Defunding: An Evidence-Based Statute For Behavioral Health Crisis Response, Taleed El-Sabawi, Jennifer J. Carroll

Faculty Publications

Too many Black persons and other persons of color are dying at the hands of law enforcement, leading many to call for the defunding of police. These deaths were directly caused by excessive use of force by police officers, but were also driven by upstream and institutional factors that include structural racism, institutional bias, and a historic culture of racialized violence. Public outcry against racial inequities has increased as the authority of police departments has expanded to include not only the authority to respond to and investigate criminal activity, but also to respond to calls regarding behavioral health issues and …