Digital Commons Network^™

Physiological Politics: Stress And Dominance Responses To Political News, Erin Strauts

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Agent-Based Modeling Of Emergency Building Evacuation, Vi Q. Ha

Master's Theses

Panic during emergency building evacuation can cause crowd stampede, resulting in serious injuries and casualties. Agent-based methods have been successfully employed to investigate the collective human behavior during emergency evacuation in cases where the configurational space is extremely simple - usually one rectangular room - but not in evacuations of multi-room or multi-floor buildings. This implies that the effect of the complexity of building architecture on the collective behavior of the agents during evacuation has not been fully investigated. Here, we employ a system of self-moving particles whose motion is governed by the social-force model to investigate the effect of …

Nonprofit Continuum: Brazilian-Centered Organizations In The Bay Area Of San Francisco, Caroline Rehill

Master's Theses

Brazil has always been a country of immigration. Since the mid 1980s, Brazil has also become a country of emigration. Brazilians have migrated to the United States in large numbers throughout the past decades. In the host country, Brazilians experience the same issues inherent in any immigrant community, such as immigration status, education, health, and socio-economic issues. To address these issues and ease immigrants’ stay in the host country, nonprofit organizations and community groups are created. This thesis project examines, identifies, categorizes, and contextualizes the Brazilian-centered nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Contrary to existing research on …

Oral Health Needs Assessment Of An Inner-City Homeless Population And Follow-Up Of Dental Referrals, Jennifer R. Jaskolka

Master's Theses

Background: The University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Dental Medicine (SODM) routinely recruits dental students and faculty volunteers to conduct no-cost dental health screenings for transient residents at South Park Inn Homeless Shelter in Hartford, CT. Once screened, patients are referred to UConn or another hospital-based dental clinic in the area for treatment. The purpose of this study was to determine the demographics and oral health needs of the homeless population at South Park Inn and referrals to UConn SODM were followed to verify patient presentation at UCONN SODM. Dental students’ attitudes towards working with the underserved were also assessed. …

Examination Of Preseason Hydration Strategy Of Ncaa Division I Men's Soccer Athletes, Lesley Willis

Master's Theses

Context: Dehydration can have negative effects on performance and mood during intense exercise.

Objective: To examine a soccer program to determine the effectiveness of their hydration protocol during preseason training.

Design: 9-day mixed methods study of preseason training sessions (97.3±21.3 min) and scrimmages (123±14.1 min) for men’s soccer athletes on an NCAA division I soccer team with post-hoc interviews of staff members.

Setting: Outdoor soccer field and indoor training facility.

Participants:21 male NCAA division I soccer athletes (age 20±1 years, height 187.5±2 cm).

Main Outcome Measures: Hydration (BML ,U_col­, USG, U_osmo), Mood (thirst, thermal, ESQ, POMS), …

Assessing Help-Seeking Attitudes, Service Utilization, And Provider Preferences Among Undergraduate Students With Self-Reported Sexual Functioning Concerns, Ashley M. Reckert

Master's Theses

Researchers who have studied help-seeking for sexual concerns have consistently documented that individuals, couples, and families underutilize services. Additionally, research has demonstrated that individuals endorse myriad barriers to seeking informal and formal help, especially for sexual functioning concerns. This study examined the types of sexual concerns faced by a sample of 347 of undergraduate students, their provider preferences in the past, present, and future, and their help-seeking behaviors for formal and informal help sources. Despite the occurrence of sexual functioning concerns in the current study, services that address sexual concerns were largely underutilized. However, barriers to seeking help and negative …

Raccoon Acclimation Towards Traps And Its Effect On Surveillance And Monitoring Of Zoonotic Diseases, Lindsay Rollend

Master's Theses

Raccoons (Procyon lotor) serve as a source of infection with various pathogens for people, most notably, rabies. Raccoons are specifically targeted for the control of rabies in the United States, primarily due to the 100% fatality rate in humans and animals. There is no cure or treatment for rabies and vaccines may be administered to people if it is administered promptly. In order to evaluate how successful trapping of raccoons is by using conventional methods, motion sensing cameras were placed on traps in order to captured raccoon behaviors. Pictures were coded based on these behaviors (around the trap but not …

Violence During Pregnancy Among Young Married Women In Nepal, Prakrity Silwal

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Mothers Do Not Drive The Development Of Adult Homesign Systems: Evidence From Comprehension, Emily Carrigan

Master's Theses

Studying the communication systems that arise in spontaneously occurring cases of degraded linguistic input can help clarify human predispositions for language. Some deaf individuals born into hearing families, who do not receive conventional linguistic input, develop gestures, called “homesign,” to communicate. We examined homesign systems used by four deaf Nicaraguan adults (ages 15-27), and evaluated whether homesigners’ hearing mothers are potential sources for these systems. Study One measured mothers’ comprehension of descriptions of events (e.g., “A man taps a woman”) produced in homesign and spoken Spanish. Mothers comprehended spoken Spanish descriptions (produced by one of their hearing children) better than …

Food Security, Food Assistance Program Participation And Diet Quality Among Food Pantry Participants In The North End Of Hartford, Julie L. Menounos

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Predicting Quality Of Life Based On Humor Style, Zachary M. Kasow

Master's Theses

Humor is a multifaceted construct commonly used in daily life. For centuries philosophers, healers, and religious figures have extolled humor as the “best medicine” for both the body and the mind. Recent research has shown humor can be adaptive or maladaptive (i.e., contribute to or subtract from well-being; Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003). Empirical evidence supporting these claims for humor and physical health has been inconsistent; however, new evidence suggests there may indeed be a connection (Martin, 2001; Martin et al., 2003). At the same time, previous research has consistently supported the notion that using humor is related …

Do You See Yourself In The Future Or Past? The Moderating Role Of Cultural Orientation In Explaining Temporal Orientation Of Self-Referencing, Seungae Lee

Master's Theses

A cognitive process where audiences relate incoming information to themselves is self-referencing. Advertising practitioners often assume that the self-referencing strategy is one of the most persuasive advertising strategies. Since the self is one of the most well-developed and frequently used constructs in memory, self-referencing advertisements were expected to be more memorable and persuasive (Meyers-Levy & Peracchio, 1996). Further, this self-referencing strategy can result in different consequences of advertisements evaluation depending on which dimension of the self is activated, because the self is a multi-dimensional construct. The current study investigated different types of self-referencing based on temporal orientation of the self. …

Friend-Zone With Benefits: The Parasocial Advertising Of Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Anette Lueck

Master's Theses

This research focuses on the social media-driven convention of advertising, and seeks to analyze the type of communication that occurs between celebrity endorsers and audiences within social media. Kim Kardashian is used as the most current and successful celebrity endorser. A content analysis, including posts and responses from April and May 2011, is used to analyze the type of advertising messages and celebrity/audience interaction. The goal of the study is to establish whether Parasocial Interaction could improve the effectiveness of advertising. Due to findings that yielded a high amount of endorsements embedded into personal stories, as well as female approval …

Exploring Parenting As A Predictor Of Criminogenic Thinking Among College Students, Rose Angeline Gonzalez

Master's Theses

Antisocial cognitions and attitudes, globally labeled as criminogenic thinking, are shown to perpetuate maladaptive and antisocial behavior in both criminals and non-offenders. In the non-offender population, these thinking patterns may not lead to illegal behavior, but can result in irresponsible or maladaptive behavioral consequences. Theories suggest that early childhood parent-child interactions may be partly responsible for the development of criminogenic thinking. While the relationship between parenting and antisocial behavior is well documented, the connection between parenting and the development of criminogenic thinking styles has not yet been explored. The current study examined the nature of the relationship between exposure to …

The Role Of Family Ties In Mitigating Moral Hazard: Firm-Level Evidence From Tamil Nadu, India, Goldie Chow

Master's Theses

Drawing on firm-level data from the district of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India, this study explores the role of family ties as a means to counteract potential moral hazard concerns. It is shown that firms will be more likely to employ family relations when faced with a higher hidden context for moral hazard. Specifically, the analysis finds that the presence of family members within the firm is higher when the firm provides general training and that firms that are more likely to do external business with family relations when it is believed that the legal system is not effective. Additionally, …

Opportunities Preschool Teachers Use To Offer High Quality Instruction: Investigating Experiences Of Professional Development, Hannah B. Mudrick

Master's Theses

This study identified the professional development opportunities Connecticut pre-kindergarten teachers found helpful for improving their teaching and how this information was related to their personal characteristics and their level of high quality instruction and supports for early literacy. Participants were 16 female teachers from eight different centers across central and eastern Connecticut. High quality instruction and supports for early literacy were assessed observationally, and teachers’ ideas about professional development and their personal characteristics were assessed through semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that although teachers did mention multiple different professional development opportunities, discussion was overwhelmingly identified as the most helpful opportunity. …

Supportive Housing For Families In Child Welfare: Client Characteristics And Risk Factors At Intake, Kellie G. Randall

Master's Theses

Many families involved in the child welfare system also face housing difficulties. Housing problems can disrupt family preservation efforts and delay reunifications from foster care. Supportive housing programs work with families who have dual vulnerabilities in housing and child welfare to integrate services and improve outcomes. Families in these programs might face barriers in addition to their housing and child welfare needs, but little is known about other risk factors in this population. This study uses a sample of 80 clients referred to a supportive housing for families program in order to examine the rate and prevalence of other risk …

Protective Behavioral Strategies And Their Relationship With Negative Alcohol Consequences Among Intercollegiate Athletes, Jeremy James Noble

Master's Theses

Researchers have shown that the college student population is a group with an elevated risk for participating in patterns of heavy episodic alcohol use. Studies have demonstrated that heavy episodic drinking (HED) is related to an increase in a multitude of negative consequences (Wechsler, Lee, Kuo, & Lee, 2002), including approximately 599,000 unintentional injuries and 1,825 deaths among college students each year (Hingson, Edwards, Heeren, & Rosenbloom, 2009). Within the college population, college athletes have exhibited more severe patterns of alcohol consumption as well as more frequent experiences with negative alcohol consequences, making them a population that is at an …

Agency, Structures And Peru: Action And In-Action During 1980-2000, Kimberly A. Protzel

Master's Theses

The Shining Path along with Alberto Fujimori's presidency in Peru (encompassing the years 1980-2000) created a terrifying chaos that was wound up in both state and insurgent terrorism, corruption, and massacres. While this chaos is inextricably linked to Peru's history, I fear is being all too quickly forgotten. My main motivation behind this research has been to take a step towards increasing awareness of these events and the many reasons behind them: the agenic nature of some versus the lack of it in others, structures developed by colonialism, and most terrifyingly of all - willful ignorance. By understanding these reasons, …

The Multi-Scale Dynamics Of Executive Function, Jason Anastas

Master's Theses

Cognitive control is a central issue in developmental psychology. Traditional theories of psychology solve this problem by positing a top-down central executive, which coordinates cognitive resources in pursuit of goals. We propose an alternative explanation: cognitive control arises from physical interactions across many different timescales within the system. College and preschool aged participants were asked to complete a simple executive function task, card sorting. We found that multi-scale physical interactions differed depending on experimental constraints, and that executive function in these cases was driven primarily by flexibility in multi-scale interactions, rather than the dominance of one scale. This suggests that, …

Injury Risk At Work, Safety Motivation, And The Role Of Masculinity: A Moderated Mediation, Timothy J. Bauerle

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

South Sudan & The “Global Land Grab”: Implications For The Future Of Food Security, Sarah Falltrick

Master's Theses

Abstract

More than 870 million people across the world do not have enough to eat, 98 percent of them live in developing countries. While researchers disagree on the causes of hunger, they all agree that it is a pressing concern. South Sudan occupies some of the most fertile land with access to several major water sources -- all the ingredients for a thriving agriculture sector -- and yet, it is a net food importer. Worse, 60 percent of the population does not consume enough food to provide a nutritious diet. Why does a country with all the best natural endowments …

Challenges And Livelihood Strategies Of Darfurian Refugees Living In Kampala, Uganda, Angela F. Lucia

Master's Theses

The phenomenon of urban refugees poses many challenges to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), host governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are providing services to them, thereby posing many challenges to the refugees themselves in having their needs addressed. My research with the Darfurian refugee population in Kampala, Uganda provides evidence on this relatively new Diaspora. Data was collected from June 2011 to August 2011, with the assistance of members of the Darfurian Refugee Association in Uganda (DRAU). Sixty-six respondents participated in the research, through methods including a questionnaire with open-ended questions to fifty-two refugees, fourteen semi-structured …

Automatic Document Classification In Small Environments, Jonathan David Mcelroy

Master's Theses

Document classification is used to sort and label documents. This gives users quicker access to relevant data. Users that work with large inflow of documents spend time filing and categorizing them to allow for easier procurement. The Automatic Classification and Document Filing (ACDF) system proposed here is designed to allow users working with files or documents to rely on the system to classify and store them with little manual attention. By using a system built on Hidden Markov Models, the documents in a smaller desktop environment are categorized with better results than the traditional Naive Bayes implementation of classification.

Nonnatives' Perceptions Of Group Work: A Study Of Their Attitudes And Experiences In The Group Work Setting, Ellen Nogueira Rodrigues

Master's Theses

Problem. Studies on group work in the field of second language learning have pointed out positive outcomes of this classroom instruction for providing output and input opportunities for language production, for negotiations of meaning, and for academic language. Furthermore, social-psychological factors that hinder language development are asserted to be prevented by the use of group work. Even though group work may create an excellent environment for second language acquisition, research has indicated that few opportunities seem to be conceded for second language speakers to take active participation in discussions. In short, it seems that nonnatives’ interactions are hindered due to …

One Sex, One School, Who Wins: How Single-Sex Learning Environments Impact Educational Attainment, Socio-Emotional Health, And Ambitions, Bradley Kirshenbaum

Master's Theses

Research on single-sex schools has covered a variety of matters regarding the effectiveness of their programs. This paper examines research on single-sex schools over the past 30 years in an effort to harmonize the past discourse with present trends. Journal articles and government research were used to synthesize the variety of methods used to ascertain whether single-sex schools have a positive influence on boys, girls, or both parties. Research trends have overwhelmingly supported all-girls schools, while remaining skeptical of any positive influence on boys. Much of the research supporting all-girls schools also suggests that single-sex schools' benefits are applicable to …

Perceived Partner Commitment And Implicit Self-Esteem Predicts Connectedness Accessibility In Response To Relationship Threat, Norma L. Reyes

Master's Theses

The current research examined the impact of perceived partner commitment, implicit self-esteem, and relationship threat on connectedness. The present study predicted that individuals with high (versus low) implicit self-esteem are more likely to access connectedness goals (on an unconscious level) after experiencing a relationship threat, when they perceive their significant others are highly committed to the relationship. This relation between implicit self-esteem and connectedness goal accessibility will not be evident in the control condition. The findings reveal perceived partner commitment moderated the relation between implicit self-esteem and relationship threat on accessing connectedness goals. However, people with high implicit self-esteem were …

Illinois Mental Health Courts: Intra-Group Dynamics In The Courtroom Work Group, Shanti J. Raman

Master's Theses

This study was intended to gain insight into key social psychological constructs in an unexplored work-group context: one premised on true team structure. Exploratory information on intra-group dynamics in Illinois mental health courts addressed levels of trust, communication, coordination, efficacy, and conflict resolution within mental health court teams.

A survey assessed how court group members associate these central variables with their teams. All reported relatively high levels of trust and team efficacy, and solid capacities for communication, coordination, and conflict resolution. No notable differences emerged in these variables relative to length of courts' operation. Team members from multiple disciplines held …

Performance Management And Performance: The Mediating Role Of Engagement, Mina Luong

Master's Theses

Organizations have been using performance management (PM) systems to improve performance and productivity. However, given the ineffectiveness of the PM systems currently in use, it has been suggested that PM systems be redesigned to make employee engagement a key determinant of performance. By adapting Gruman and Saks' (2011) engagement management model, this study examined the relationships among the factors that drive engagement, engagement, and performance. Specifically, engagement was examined as a hypothesized mediator of the relationship between the drivers of engagement (goal setting, job resources, and recognition, feedback, and fairness) and performance among employees in the healthcare industry. Results showed …

Mental Arithmetic Across Three Language Groups, Tianyu Luo

Master's Theses

Mental arithmetic performance was investigated among three language groups (English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals, and Spanish-English bilinguals). Participants solved both small and large numerosity arithmetic problems in addition and multiplication and reported their solution strategies. All groups performed better in small problems than in large ones and better in addition than in multiplication, especially for a large size set. The results revealed all three groups performed equally well in solving problems correctly. Spanish-English bilinguals were equivalent to their English monolingual peers. However, Chinese-English bilinguals outperformed the other two groups in solution speed, especially when problems consisted of large numbers. No group …