Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Health Literacy On Treatment Adherence And Health Optimism In Chronic Kidney Disease Patients, Heather Gardiner

Honors Theses

Health literacy is a very critical aspect of a patient's recovery, and low levels of it have been correlated to a large range of negative health outcomes. Health literacy's effects on treatment adherence and health optimism was examined in a sample of 32 Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients who were recruited from a transplant center in the southeastern section of the United States. Participants had a mean age of 47.55, with 45.2% (n=14) of the participants being female and 54.8% (n=17) being Caucasian.The participants completed a survey, which incorporated the tools of Health Literacy Questionnaire, Life Orientation Tool, and the …

"It's Part Of My Responsibility To Help" : Developing A Measure Of Motivations For Extrinsic Emotion Regulation, Sara Cloonan

Honors Theses

Previous research in the field of emotion regulation has largely focused on the ways in which we regulate our own emotions, but not as much work has been done to examine the processes by which we regulate the emotions of others. The current research aims to develop a measure of motivations for engaging in extrinsic emotion regulation (EER), with a focus on why we attempt to down-regulate negative emotional experiences of those around us. Study 1 used narrative responses to formulate and validate a qualitative coding schema for categorizing motives for engaging in EER. The wide variety of EER motivations …

Placing The Stateless Refugee: A Philosophy Of Statelessness, Nationality, And Rights, Ruby J. Gould

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I many related questions regarding the fluctuating relationships between national communities and outsiders, specifically in the case of refugees and stateless peoples. After discussing the meanings of these terms, such as the definition and identities of the refugee and the nation-state, I delve into a philosophical examination of individual rights, particularly rights that are defended by nation-states, and the relationships between national communities and those existing outside of those communities whose lives may depend on their acceptance into a nation-state. I philosophically outline the likely experiences of refugees as they are faced with statelessness, including what forces …

A Comparative Analysis Of Counterhegemonic Environmental-Economic Projects In Latin America And The United States, Dominic Scicchitano

Honors Theses

The objective of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of counterhegemonic environmental-economic projects in the United States and in Latin America. The work builds on research that I conducted throughout my time at Bucknell University concerning a site known as Better Farm, which distinguishes itself as “a 65-acre sustainability campus, artists' colony, animal sanctuary, and organic farm” located in Redwood, New York (www.betterfarm.org). Better Farm functions as a locus for the surrounding community of roughly 700 residents, connecting a variety of persons interested in both formal sustainability education and informal systems whereby community members support each …

Contextualizing Sexual Assault Data Collection On College Campuses: A Socio-Technical Approach, Anushikha Sharma

Honors Theses

Sexual assault is a rampant issue on college campuses in the United States. Colleges and universities use a variety of survey instruments to collect data regarding sexual assault as a means to improve campus culture, policies, and resources. These instruments contain a wealth of associated information in the form of metadata, that is, data about data.

This project takes a human-centered socio-technical approach to understanding the data collection processes associated with sexual assault, specifically, on the campus of Bucknell University. By identifying the underlying metadata within the data collection processes, this research contextualizes and critiques the process of data collection, …

Analyzing The Impact Of Home Locales On Access To Tertiary Education; Trends In Students’ Access To Bucknell University, Emily Tevebaugh

Honors Theses

Access to postsecondary education has been found in previous studies to be correlated with socioeconomic status as well as with various other indicators, such as parents’ education levels and cultural expectations. However, addressing the impact of home locales and geographical proximity to colleges in addition to these individual characteristics is a crucial part of understanding college access. In this honors thesis, the following questions will be examined: how has access to college and the decision to matriculate changed in recent years? How does distance from colleges and differing characteristics of home locales influence acceptance to a university and the decision …

The Diversion Of Diversity: Uncovering The Antiblackness Of Diversity Initiatives, M. Jordan Alexander

Honors Theses

In more recent years, Diversity has been a driving force in universities across the country. As underrepresented groups in the United States have gained more traction in the political and legal realms, they have gained the agency and the ability to advocate for their inclusion in institutions and structures that previously denied their access. This gaining of agency within these public realms is what has fueled higher education institutions across the country to really push for diversity, in both their faculty and student populations. The ideology behind this push is multiculturalism or multiracialism; this idea by its premise, the inclusion …

The Effect Of Religion On Trait Priority In Potential Partners In Short And Long Term Relationships, Sara K. Glass

Honors Theses

This study builds upon previous research that demonstrates how various demographic characteristics, as well as relationship type, affects trait preferences for potential mate partners. This study also explores the potential effects of religious affiliation and religiosity on trait preferences, as no previous research explicitly tests how individuals’ religious affiliation or strength of religiosity influences their rank ordering of potential partner traits. Seven hypotheses were proposed, as well as four points of exploration regarding sexuality, relationship status, religious affiliation, and race were proposed. Hypotheses 1, which predicted that women will rank financial stability higher than men and that men will rank …

Bridging Act-R And Project Malmo, Developing Models Of Behavior In Complex Environments, David M. Schwartz

Honors Theses

Cognitive architectures such as ACT-R provide a system for simulating the mind and human behavior. On their own they model decision making of an isolated agent. However, applying a cognitive architecture to a complex environment yields more interesting results about how people make decisions in more realistic scenarios. Furthermore, cognitive architectures enable researchers to study human behavior in dangerous tasks which cannot be tested because they would harm participants. Nonetheless, these architectures aren’t commonly applied to such environments as they don’t come with one. It is left to the researcher to develop a task environment for their model. The difficulty …

The Effect Of Health Literacy On Chronic Kidney Disease Patient Health Outcomes, Mia Castagnero

Honors Theses

The current study seeks to enhance knowledge of health literacy among patients diagnosed with CKD. Identifying gaps in kidney-specific health literacy may help direct specific interventions to improve patient education and support. The goal of the current study is to investigate the associations between health literacy (general health literacy and kidney-specific health literacy) and patient health outcomes, such as medication adherence and barriers in access to care.

It's Written All Over Your Face : Examining The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status And Empathic Accuracy, Megan Roherbeck Wirtz

Honors Theses

What, exactly, is the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and emotional intelligence? Is it possible that emotional intelligence can explain the well-established positive relationship between SES and wellbeing? The purpose of this study was to investigate a) a potential mediational pathwaybetween SES, emotional intelligence, and wellbeing and b) conflicting research in the relationship between SES and emotional intelligence. This study was conducted using avariety of measures of socioeconomic status and wellbeing, as well as a performance-based measure of empathic accuracy.

When Does The Positivity Effect Emerge? : Age-Related Emotional Biases At Encoding And Retrieval, Hannah Wolfe

Honors Theses

The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) posits that as their future time perspective shrinks, older adults tend to be more motivated by emotionally meaningful goals and therefore experience what is called the “positivity effect” with age (Carstensen, 2006). The positivity effect had been studied in both attention biases (Isaacowitz et al., 2006a) and memory biases (Kensinger, 2008), with older adults dwelling longer on and better remembering the positive stimuli over the negative. Yet, few studies have measured emotional biases at both the encoding and retrieval phases, which is why this study uses eye-tracking to determine whether any biases in gaze patterns …

What Lies Beneath? : Removal Sampling To Test For Biases In Surface Activity Of The Eastern Red-Backed Salamander (Plethodon Cinereus), Amelia Tedesco

Honors Theses

In light of the current global amphibian extinction crisis from threats such as climate change and disease, reliable and repeatable sampling methods carry heavy importance for assessing North American salamander species.

Driving Anxiety In Young People With Autism Spectrum Disorder : A Driving Simulator Pilot Study, Rebecca Pasch

Honors Theses

The goal of this project was to investigate how driving anxiety changes overtime in young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when using a driving simulator technology. Additional exploratory measures were collected on duration of participation,. stopping distance, and reaction time.

“Il Est Bon, Aujourd'hui, Le Boudin” : La Nourriture Esthétique Et Le Goût Dans Le Roman Naturaliste Zolien, Elena Palazzolo

Honors Theses

La lecture de n’importe quel texte dans les Rougon-Macquart rend clair que leur romancier, Emile Zola, était intéressé sinon obsédé par le symbolisme et les motifs alimentaires. La série, écrite entre 1871 et 1893, couvre la vie d’une famille sous le Second Empire et représente les grands problèmes sociaux du jour notamment les inégalités entre la bourgeoisie et la classe ouvrière en illustrant le chômage, l’alcoolisme, la faim chronique et les lieux de travail dangereux. D’un côté, la discussion de la nourriture à l’intérieur de ce discours semble évidemment pratique ou idéologique. Dans les mots de Albert Sonnenfeld, « Zola …

Draw Some Awesome : The Effect Of Art And Awe On Grief And Giving, Jamie Katz

Honors Theses

Prior research has shown that awe can have positive psychological effects on people who experience it. We conducted two experimental trials to test whether awe can be evoked by art and whether this art induced awe can increase people's charitable donations and decrease their grief in the face of losing an important relationship. We concluded that spectacular videos of art production were significant evokers of awe compared to their mundane control counterparts. We also found that the awe videos increased charitable donations through a mediating variable of feeling the "presence of something greater than oneself." Lastly, we found that there …

Re-Imagining Student Achievement : The Egalitarian Failure Of The Carrot-Stick Model In K-12 Public Education, Michael Johnson

Honors Theses

Achievementgaps between low-income and minority students and their counterparts are among the most pressing education policy issues today. Cash incentivization to students has gained momentum as a potential remedy to reduce disparities in studentachievementoutcomes. Grading incentive schemes function identically as objections to cash-incentives positioning both within the broader carrot-stick motivation model. Rather than eliminate the widely used grading scheme, however, I conclude that efforts should be redirected towards reducing the saliency of standardized evaluative benchmarks to which incentives are aimed as opposed to reforming the incentives themselves which I refer to as the Revisionary Proposal.

Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals: A Comparative Analysis Of Access To Education And Healthcare For Immigrants Before Daca, Under Daca, And Under The Dream Act, Levi C. Bevis

Honors Theses

The United States has long been considered a nation of immigrants, welcoming individuals and families of every background to build a better future for themselves and the country. Throughout various periods of its history, however, the U.S. has fluctuated between welcoming and exceptionally restrictive immigration policies, with changes are often generating passionate debate from all ideological standpoints. A significant development in the modern U.S. immigration system is the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program under the Obama Administration. This program allowed certain young undocumented immigrants who met established criteria to qualify for deportation protections. With approximately …

Analysis Of Dunc-13 And Its Role In The Formation Of Ethanol Tolerance In Drosophila Melanogaster, Charles Cook

Honors Theses

Alcoholism is a costly disease that is responsible for a significant portion of the global disease burden, yet there is much is left to know about how this disease develops. Tolerance plays a critical role in predisposing an individual to alcohol abuse. Recently, the active zone of presynaptic neurons has been implicated as an ethanol effector. In this study, we examined the role that a presynaptic active zone protein, Dunc13, plays in the formation of tolerance to alcohol. Dunc13 is an ortholog of mammalian Unc13-1, and through the use of Drosophila as a model system, we show that genetic reduction …

Cannabinoid Conundrum: A Study Of Anti-Epileptic Efficacy And Drug Policy, Kennedy Dickson

Honors Theses

Cannabis is the most commonly used, cultivated, and trafficked drug worldwide. The use and acceptance of marijuana is evolving rapidly, as indicated by the volume of new State cannabis legislation across the U.S. Many of the changes in state laws have occurred without significant input from medical or scientific communities. Additionally, marijuana policy in the US is convoluted with significant inconsistencies between state and federal law. The status of marijuana as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substance Act creates numerous restrictions and issues that impact the industry as a whole. The most promising development has been the 2018 …

The End Times, Gunnar Ohberg

Honors Theses

The End Times is a collection of apocalyptic short stories set within the same universe. The stories employ elements of magical realism and grit lit. It is the author's hope that each story deal with at least one external societal issue (such as digital discourse and sexual aggression) and one internal psychological issue (such as depression, obsession/compulsion, and survivor's guilt). Each story is told in the first-person in an effort to best demonstrate the various psychologies of its protagonist. In these stories, God has decided to punish humanity for their transgressions. The devices of this God are fantastic: limbs disappear, …

The Developmental And Behavioral Effects Of Early Life Stage Cannabinoid Exposure, Mariegene E. Almand

Honors Theses

As of 2019, marijuana legalization and decriminalization is sweeping the globe. Patients are increasingly using cannabis-derived compounds including Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) for treatment of diseases as diverse as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. Furthermore, mothers are claiming that CBD oil decreases uncomfortable pregnancy side effects. While the adverse effects of chronic cannabinoid use and of cannabinoids on pregnancy have been previously investigated, the exact function of the endocannabinoid system, and its primary receptors, cannabinoid receptors 1 and 2, involved in producing these outcomes is still unclear. In this study, two strains of zebrafish embryos, namely fli and cnr2-/- …

Understanding Factors Of Sexual Behaviors In Teenagers In Mississippi, Jackson Colburn

Honors Theses

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the associations between socio-demographic factors and sexual behaviors in teens based on bivariate analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey for 2015. In conducting a comparative analysis of survey data for both the United States and the state of Mississippi, this study aims to depict a picture of the state of teen sexual behaviors both nationally and in Mississippi. A secondary quantitative analysis of the Mississippi survey dataset also sets out to highlight any possible significant relationships between teen sexual behaviors and certain …

Nutritional Content Of Mississippi Child Care Centers Participating In The Child And Adult Care Food Program: 1995 To 2019, Katelyn Marie Inserra

Honors Theses

Childhood obesity rates are increasing in the United States and the condition is more prevalent in the Southeast than in other areas of the country. Children who are obese or overweight during childhood have a much higher chance of remaining overweight throughout their lives, and the best way to combat child obesity is through influencing young children’s nutrition patterns. Many children spend a significant amount of time in childcare outside of their home, which may be responsible for providing adequate nutrition for at least two meals per day. This study evaluated the menus of Mississippi childcare centers participating in the …

Microbial Communities Associated With Dragonfly Nymphs Raised In Varying Concentrations Of Amoxicillin, Michelle Basha

Honors Theses

The bacteria on and within an organism make up that organism’s microbiome. Given interest in the use of antibiotics in agriculture and the effect of microbes on human health, more studies are needed on the microbial community composition of different organisms and how it responds to antibiotic use. This study investigated changes in the amount of antibiotic resistant bacteria present in dragonfly nymphs exposed to differing concentrations of amoxicillin. Next generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used to identify cultures of these antibiotic resistant bacteria. Increasing the concentration of antibiotics the dragonfly nymphs were exposed to resulted in …

Fore Your Information: A Financial Analysis Of The Golf Industry, Emily Trolia

Honors Theses

This paper is an analysis of the leisure industry and more specifically, the golf industry. The paper examines the state of today’s economy through GDP, wages, and unemployment. During these discussions, the paper touches on how these factors affect the leisure and golf industries. The paper examines the performance of the golf industry over the past several years and discusses how the golf industry is working to grow the game despite the recent departure of some businesses and brands from the market. Further, alternative golf trends are discussed, as these trends are rapidly gaining popularity and exposing more people to …

Parents’ Perspectives On Early Intervention For Children With Speech And Language Delays, Alissa Ann Williams

Honors Theses

Parents play an important role in the success of a child’s language development. Further, research on early intervention has documented that parents can successfully learn and implement at-home therapy that results in positive language development of children with developmental disabilities. While the effectiveness of early intervention has been well-documented, there is little research exploring parents’ perspectives on early intervention and their involvement in therapy at home. The purpose of this study is to fill that gap by examining: 1) how informed and involved parents report feeling regarding their child’s therapy, 2) how parents perceive their relationship with their child’s speech-language …

Staff Perceptions Of Healthy Eating Opportunities And Choices On A Southern University Campus, Rebecca Gwendolyn Miller

Honors Theses

Maintaining a healthy workforce can help an employer to save money in the long run, due to factors such as fewer health-related absences and higher employee productivity. Obesity, a disease with many factors, is accompanied by many comorbidities. Food and beverage choices can play a strong role in the development of obesity. The purpose of this study was to explore factors that influence staff eating behavior in a large university in the Southeastern United States, using a qualitative research design. Additionally, staff members provided possible solutions to improve the eating environment on the University’s main campus. Using a structured question …

Descriptive Study Of Reading Comprehension Skills In Individuals With Down Syndrome, Katherine Hubbard

Honors Theses

Problem Statement: Previous research has documented that individuals with Down syndrome are able to read and have identified strengths and weakness demonstrated within the reading domain, but research on their reading comprehension abilities is scarce. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze strengths and weaknesses of reading comprehension in individuals with Down syndrome, including within the word identification and language comprehension subdomains. Methods: Reading comprehension, word identification, phonological decoding, language comprehension, vocabulary, and syntax were the dependent variables in this study. Nine standardized assessments/subtests were used to measure these variables in 11 adolescents and adults with Down syndrome. …

It's Not Just "Skin Deep": Social Anxiety And Anxiety Sensitivity In Adults With Psychodermatological Disorders, Lauren E. Ellison

Honors Theses

Anxiety contributes to dermatological conditions and, due to the visible nature of skin conditions, social anxiety is particularly salient to dermatology patients. Although many dermatology outpatients report clinically significant social anxiety symptoms, there is little understanding of social anxiety among dermatology patients. Anxiety sensitivity (AS), or the fear of the consequences of anxiety, has been implicated in both social anxiety and dermatological symptoms. To this end, this study aimed to further elucidate the relation of social anxiety and AS among skin disease in two separate samples of individuals with psychodermatological conditions. We hypothesized that AS social, but not physical or …