Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating A Chinese Adult Attachment Questionnaire Using A Taiwanese Sample, Hsin-Yao Chiu

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have taken the adult attachment instruments established in the western countries into other cultural settings. Taiwan is one of the many countries to which cross-cultural adult attachment research has been extended to, and where translated attachment survey instruments were applied. The problem with these translated measurements in Taiwan, however, is that the commonly-used instruments were not peer-reviewed, and often no reliability tests were even done, and the cultural appropriateness of these translated measurements was not evaluated. The usage and results of these instruments may therefore be questionable. The purpose of this current study is to present a Mandarin Chinese …

Using A Project-Based Language Learning Approach In The High School Spanish Classroom: Perceived Challenges And Benefits, Lisa D. Collier

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the action research study done to investigate the perceived challenges and benefits of a project-based language learning (PBLL) approach in a high school Spanish classroom. The research involved four high school Spanish 3 classes taught by the same teacher. Two classes formed an experimental group and were taught one thematic unit using a PBLL approach, while the other two classes formed the control group and were taught by the same approach that had been used the rest of the year. Two of the objectives of the study were to see how the PBLL approach affected the achievement …

Three Essays On Likability Factors, Crowdfunding, And Entrepreneurial Performance, Yuanqing Li

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I conduct three empirical studies exploring the relation between likability factors, crowdfunding characteristics and entrepreneurial performance. Together these studies integrate aspects of major entrepreneurial likability factors including liking of the entrepreneur (source attractiveness, credibility, personal traits) and liking of the message (verbal content and expression), and components of nonverbal and verbal cues. I apply computer-mediated communication (CMC) and persuasion theories, political and marketing literature to provide a more fine-grained understanding of likability on crowdfunding success. In the first essay, I study how the non-verbal cues of a crowdfunding video influence the crowdfunding success. By employing social presence …

American Indian Professionals: Educational Decision-Making And Persistence, Colleen M. Burke

Theses and Dissertations

American Indian graduate students are experiencing a higher matriculation rate in higher education today; however, those rates are still lower than other underrepresented minority groups’ rates. The purpose of this study is to conduct exploratory research to investigate the decision-making process of American Indian/Alaskan Native professionals who persisted to graduation from their graduate programs. This study explores the participants’ graduate school experiences relating to education, tribal values, decisions, their social support, and perseverance. The theoretical framework of decisionmaking theory, i.e. Prospect Theory, was used to evaluate the educational decisions of the participants. Decision-making theorists include corporate culture in their discussions; …

Tools For Assessing Relatedness In Understudied Language Varieties: A Survey Of Mixtec Varieties In Western Oaxaca, Mexico, Erin Padgett

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents findings of research conducted on the relatedness of seven Mixtec varieties spoken in indigenous language communities in western Oaxaca, Mexico. Mixtec varieties vary widely from one community to the next, and it is necessary to determine the relatedness of Mixtec varieties in order to best serve the language development needs of communities. Understanding the relatedness of these varieties is also an important step in measuring their intelligibility.

I used three research tools to gather data: a General Wordlist, a Tone Wordlist, and a Sociolinguistic Questionnaire. I present five analyses: percentage of phonologically similar forms, displaying phonological correspondences …

The Impact Of Changing Toefl Cut-Scores On University Admissions, Laura Michelle Decker

Theses and Dissertations

As the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is often used as a determiner for university admissions, this study observes the effect on the international student population at a large private university through the examination of the international student admissions data including TOEFL and first-year GPA from 2005-2015. With the anonymous data of 9,837 students, researchers analyzed the result of a cut-score change at the university. Results indicated that the number of international students decreased at the university. As expected, the TOEFL data revealed a normal distribution for the overall (combined) score and subsection scores, while the GPA …

Adapting Dracula: The Afterlives Of Stoker's Memes In Nosferatu (1922) And Dracula (1979), Ian Duncan Mcarthur

Theses and Dissertations

Dracula is a narrative that has risen above its own origins, having been translated and adapted across mediums it has inundated culture with vampires. However, with each adaptation the narrative and characters adapt into something new. This study is interested in the mechanism behind this evolution and argues that memes and, and their interpretations, are largely responsible for these shifts across adaptations. Three memes, in particular, tend to be adapted in films of Dracula. They include Dracula's appearance, Mina's empowerment, and the nature of the bite that they share. This analysis covers how these memes functioned in Stoker's original …

Comparing The Awl And Avl In Textbooks From An Intensive English Program, Michelle Morgan Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Academic vocabulary is an important determiner of academic success for both native and non-native speakers of English (Corson, 1997; Gardner, 2013; Hsueh-chao & Nation, 2000). In an attempt to address this need, Coxhead (2000) developed the Academic Word List (AWL)—a list of words common across a range of academic disciplines; however, Gardner & Davies (2014) identified potential limitations in the AWL and have more recently produced their own list of core academic vocabulary—the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL). This study compares the occurrences of the AWL and AVL word families in an intensive English program (IEP) corpus of 50 texts to …

Special Education Teachers' Resiliency To Remain In The Field Of Special Education, India Bruton Eubanks

Theses and Dissertations

The field of education has endured a significant shortage of qualified teachers for several decades (Prather-Jones, 2011). Over the past 20 years, across the U.S, a shortage in special education teachers has existed (Major, 2012; Prather-Jones, 2011). Special education teachers left the field of education at a greater rate than regular education teachers (Major, 2012). In order to ensure students with disabilities received appropriate educational instruction, it was important to retain special education teachers who were knowledgeable educators in the field of special education. This research focused on gaining a better understanding of special education teacher resiliency of special education …

A Latent Class Analysis Of American English Dialects, Stephanie Nicole Hedges

Theses and Dissertations

Research on the dialects of English spoken within the United States shows variation regarding lexical, morphological, syntactic, and phonological features. Previous research has tended to focus on one linguistic variable at a time with variation. To incorporate multiple variables in the same analysis, this thesis uses a latent class analysis to perform a cluster analysis on results from the Harvard Dialect Survey (2003) in order to investigate what phonetic variables from the Harvard Dialect Survey are most closely associated with each dialect. This thesis also looks at how closely the latent class analysis results correspond to the Atlas of North …

Relationship Between Using Korean Folktales In Foreign Language Class And Learners' Reading Comprehension And Cultural Understanding, Eunsun You

Theses and Dissertations

Language is a reflection of society, so knowing about a language also means knowing about a culture. Therefore, many types of literature have been used as a language education tool representing culture. This thesis proposed folktales as an effective material of not only introducing culture but also learning language. Since folktales are old stories that have passed from generation to generation for a long time, values and morals of a culture are naturally presented in the context of the stories. Furthermore, folktales could enhance students' reading comprehension because the story lines, phrases, and words in a story are used repeatedly. …

Current Patterns Of Ownership And Usage Of Mobile Technology In Older Adults, Karen E. Cottle

Theses and Dissertations

The older generation is growing at a rate surpassed only by the speed at which mobile technology is advancing. Technology has become so ubiquitous in daily life, that most older people have done their best to adopt it. The purpose of this study was to explore the older adult (>50 yrs.) learner's everyday approach to and regard for mobile technology. Paper surveys were distributed by hand to four geographically diverse audiences. Each audience was composed of a minimum of 20 adult learners of each gender across three age groups, accounting for 160 individual older adults in all. Returned survey …

The Effect Of Implementation Of The Developmental Designs For Middle School (Ddms) Program On The Social Skills Of 7th Grade Students, Emmalene Hall Probst

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of implementing the Developmental Designs for Middle School (DDMS) program on the school connectedness of students with and without special needs in a seventh grade inclusion class in a middle school in a suburban community in southern New Jersey. Of the 23 participants in the study, 10 were students with special needs who were eligible for special education services and had individual education plans (IEPs). Of those 10 students, four qualified for IEPs under Other Health Impaired, four qualified under Multiply Disabled, and two qualified under Specific Learning Disability. The other thirteen students were general …

Exploring The Biogeography Of South American Rainforest Understory Birds Using Morphological Variation In The Wedge-Billed Woodcreeper ( Glyphorynchus Spirurus ), Gregory Tito

Theses and Dissertations

Tropical rainforests in the Amazon Basin show an extraordinarily high degree of biodiversity, the reasons for which are poorly understood. A number of biogeographical models have been proposed to account for the variation present within and among species, including birds. This study tests the predictive ability of six major historical vicariant biogeographical models (Andean uplift, marine incursion, Amazonian lake, river barrier, refuge, and river refuge) using a large data set of morphological characters in the Wedge-billed Woodcreeper (Glyphorynchus spirurus), a small understory songbird found mostly in terra firme tropical rain forest. It also characterizes variation in key morphological characters and …

Violence, Transcendence And Spectacle In The Age Of Social Media: #Jesuischarlie Demonstrations And Hollande's Speech After The 2015 Terrorist Attacks, Barbara Luisa Desoto

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the reactions — both in real life and on social media — to two terrorist attacks in Paris: satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the Bataclan shooting in November 2015. Using Richard Sennett's Fall of Public Man and Antonin Artaud's Le théâtre et son double to explore these reactions as theater, this approach reveals the religious nature of supposedly secular reactions to religious extremism.

Perceptions Of Egyptian Esl Teachers Of Teaching Aspects Of The Target Culture: The Case Of Culturally-Oriented Speech Acts In Textbooks, Fatma Elzahraa Abdelrahman Mohamed Abdelrahman

Theses and Dissertations

The study explores issues related to the place of the target culture in the context of teaching English as a foreign/second language in Egypt. There are two research questions in this study. The first one is concerned with identifying the speech acts taught in the Hello! textbook studied by Egyptian students in all governmental and private schools of the third year of General Secondary Education. The second research question investigated the perceptions of governmental and private school teachers on teaching aspects of the target culture in their English classes in Egyptian schools. The research is of a quantitative/qualitative nature. A …

Discourses Around Nubians: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Egyptian Social Studies And History Textbooks, Nesma Assem Mansour

Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to understand the Egyptian state's approach in handling diversity and inclusion in education and offer insights on possible improvements of the current social studies and history textbooks, the study explores the said and the unsaid about Nubian histories, culture, and struggles. The study deals with the representation of Nubians in two periods, the ancient dynastic period and the contemporary period. In the study, I started by a review of literature that helps in situating the analysis into historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts that are an integral part of conducting a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). I followed this …

Legitimation Strategies In Egyptian Political Discourse: The Case Of Presidential Speeches, Hala Mohammed Said

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis was to explore the use of language in one of the ways in which it manifests symbolic power (Bourdieu, 2001) in discourse and society. This study investigated the semantic-functional (van Leeuwen, 1995, 2007, 2008; van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999) strategies used by Egyptian political actors to legitimize controversial events within their public discourse. By adopting a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective and utilizing van Leeuwen's legitimation framework (van Leeuwen, 2007, 2008), the analysis was performed on two Egyptian political speeches delivered by President Al Sisi. The first speech addressed the Egyptian government's decision to sign …

Dealing With Slums In Egypt: Learning From The Success Factors Of International Experiences, Sylvia Maher

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to compile, analyze and present information on the current Egyptian government’s approaches for dealing with slums to enable the assessment of their success and sustainability. Those approaches are basically eviction, demolition and relocation (80% of the interventions), in situ development (20% of the interventions) and community participation. In addition, the thesis researches international experiences from the developing world, tackling in situ and relocation approaches. The cases were selected in order to come up with their success factors and shed light on their applicability to the Egyptian context. A case study using qualitative analysis demonstrates …

Redeploying Semiology: Contrapuntalism In Coetzee, Friel, And Darwish, Sarah Mahmoud Esmael

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to approach the role of the self as it emerges in three texts that are differently impacted by the end of colonialism. This is done by redeploying Roland Barthes' theory of semiology as a way of looking at the spaces between signs as the clue to what the text suggests as a historical document. The spaces between signs will open up the contrapuntal readings of texts that are sometimes called postcolonial. This thesis examines how identity is unmade in Coetzee's Foe, Brian Friel's Translations, and Mahmoud Darwish's Tibaq (A Contrapuntal Reading: On Edward Said). …

Context Aware Advertising, Youssef Youssef

Theses and Dissertations

IP Television (IPTV) has created a new arena for digital advertising that has not been explored to its full potential yet. IPTV allows users to retrieve on demand content and recommended content; however, very limited research has been applied in the domain of advertising in IPTV systems. The diversity of the field led to a lot of mature efforts in the fields of content recommendation and mobile advertising. The introduction of IPTV and smart devices led to the ability to gather more context information that was not subject of study before. This research attempts at studying the different contextual parameters, …

The Double-Edged Sword: Globalization And International Islamic Terrorism, Yara Toutounji

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates the relationship between globalization and international Islamic terrorism in the modern age of the twenty-first century. It argues that globalization acts as a double-edged sword by both empowering terrorism and, at the same time, international Islamic terrorism is a defensive reaction to the very process of globalization itself. Also, it argues against the dominant Western discourse, which labels Islam as the main cause of international Islamic terrorism by applying a critical discourse analysis that aims at reconstructing the dominant discourse. Along these lines, this work advances that three main underlying sets of popularly held international grievances involving …

The Shrine System: Votive Culture And Cult Sculpture, Enshrining Space In 11th To 13th Century France, Kristen N. Racaniello

Theses and Dissertations

Possible relationships between northern and southern French shrines are examined in this paper through case studies of the shrines at Chartres and Conques. The materiality of cult statues and votive objects, the body as performative tool, and institutional motivations are considered for their bearing on the shrine as a system.

Evaluating Relationships Between Rock Strength And Longitudinal Stream Profile Morphometry In The Southern Guadalupe Mountains, Texas, Samuel T. Schoenmann

Theses and Dissertations

Landscapes record information about the tectonic, climatic, and lithologic environments in which they form (Yang et al., 2015). When one or more of these environmental conditions change spatially or temporally, the landscape responds through erosion and thus, develops representative geomorphic features (Ritter et al., 2011). Since the nineteenth century, it has been clear that bedrock strength and erodibility play an important role in landscape evolution and geomorphology (Lifton et al., 2009). However, the nuances of variable erodibility remain poorly understood. The implications of this limited understanding lies within landscape evolution models. While these models show strong qualitative relationships between longitudinal …

Theory For A Starving Obese, Ishai Shapira Kalter

Theses and Dissertations

Theory for a Starving Obese (2017) is both a book and an installation. During the years 2015-2017 I began writing Theory for a Starving Obese; a collection of essays and art criticism about exhibitions that took place in white cubes in New York. I was following my dissatisfaction, and hoped to delve deeper into the question “What is Contemporary Art?” At the end of a process, I sent seventeen envelopes to artists who exhibited solo shows in New York and whose works I have criticized. Each envelope consists of one digital drawing (שרבוט, pronounced Shirbut), DVD with the …

Horizon Of Possibilities: Artists And The City In Postwar Beirut, Tatiana Mouarbes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis narrates a history of postwar cultural production framed by urban redevelopment in Beirut, Lebanon (1989-Present). Focusing on artists engagements with the city, this thesis demonstrates how artists thought through the legacies of war inflicted upon the beleaguered city of Beirut in order to construct livable futures.

"Hippie Acid Freak Drag Queens:" Situating The Cockettes Within An Art Historical Context, Scott Dow

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis situates the Cockettes – a performance group rarely referenced in art historical discourse - within Bay Area performance art, second-wave feminist art, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Contextualizing the Cockettes within their contemporary art movements provides a new understanding of the group and emphasizes their significance to art history.

Out Of The Shadows: Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, And The Will To Persist, Juella Baltonado

Theses and Dissertations

Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn are known most commonly for their associations with their male counterparts, and often have their identities and accomplishments overshadowed by these men. This thesis shines a light on these women, uncovering the struggles with gender, agency, and societal expectations.

The Breath Seekers: Race, Riots, And Public Space In Harlem, 1900-1935, Allyson Compton

Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to explore the historical intersection of public space and equality by examining Harlem, New York, between 1900 and 1935.

Analysis Of The Role Of The Jackson Prairie In Prehistoric/Protohistoric Settlement Patterns Using Survey Data From The Bienville National Forest, Jennifer Ivy Ryan

Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological surveys using the subsurface testing method known as “shovel-testing” have been performed sporadically across the Bienville National Forest in central Mississippi. However; no research-oriented analysis has ever been performed for this area. The Bienville National Forest is located primarily in two physiographic regions: the Jackson Prairie and the Southern Pine Hills. These two regions are distinctly different in topography, soils, and vegetation. No settlement pattern study has been performed in the Jackson Prairie and it has been viewed as an area of low probability. Soils in this region are often heavy clays with high shrink/swell capabilities and poor drainage. …