Digital Commons Network^™

Attention-Grabbing Tactics On Social Media, Arjun Kadian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

News posts are popular among social media users. Since news reading is critical for both social media platforms and news providers, the use of attention-grabbing tactics, such as hyperbole and expressed emotional arousal, is commonplace to increase news readership. However, there is scant empirical evidence to explain the impact of attention-grabbing tactics on social media users’ reading intentions and behavior in social media. Therefore, I first explore how and why the use of hyperbolic statements in news headlines influences users’ interest and intention to read the news. Drawing on expectation violation theory, I propose competing hypotheses. I conducted three experiments …

Identifying Contributors To Disproportionality: The Influence Of Perception On Student Social, Emotional, And Academic Behavior Ratings, Chelsea Salvatore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Successful implementation of the MTSS framework involves equitable assessment and decision-making. This calls for researchers to investigate the processes utilized to identify students for early behavioral support, such as multi-informant universal social-emotional behavioral screening. The current study aimed to investigate this by first examining the usability of the Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Subscale (SAEBRS) and the student self-report version (mySAEBRS) across Black and White students in grades seven through nine. After examining these tools for measurement invariance, the trifactor model was employed with race as a predictor variable to examine the mean difference of Black and White students’ scores …

Intimate Conversations: A Mixed-Methods Study Of African American Father-Adolescent Sexual Risk Communication, Shanda A. Vereen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: Approximately 50% of African American (AA) high school students are sexually active and a large proportion of sexually active AA students report engaging in sexual risk behaviors such as not using condoms at last intercourse. Consequently, AA adolescents in the United States experience outcomes of risky sexual behaviors at high rates. Evidence shows parents have an effect on shaping adolescent attitudes, values, and beliefs regarding sex through sexual risk communication (SRC). Although parent-adolescent SRC is associated with reductions in sexual risk behaviors among AA adolescents, research has primarily focused on mothers. While parents acknowledge that SRC is traditionally viewed …

Prepare For, Respond To, Recover, And Learn From Disasters: Using Data-Driven Methods To Model And Understand Disaster Resilience, Jinwen Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community resilience reflects the ability of human communities to prepare for, respond to, recover, and learn from disastrous events. Community resilience carries different meanings in different phases of disaster management (i.e., preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation). With the emergence of new geospatial data sources, human activities now can be captured through social media, mobile signals, and nighttime illuminations, which makes it possible to describe the conditions among various communities before, during, and after disasters. Therefore, this dissertation explored the use of different types of geospatial data sources (social media, nighttime light remote sensing, land-use data, and census survey data) during …

Relationship Between Demographic Characteristics And Internship Participation Of Senior Undergraduate International Students, Timothy W. Gjini

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States higher education institutions’ mission is to support students' academic success and career development goals by preparing them to become globally competent citizens and workforce-ready graduates. With student workforce preparation at the core of their mission, there is concern that colleges and universities are not adequately investing in international students’ engagement in career-preparation practices (e.g., internships). As such, this quantitative, secondary-data study explored the relationship between senior international students’ demographic characteristics, the institutional environment (type and classification), and their internship participation behavior. Key variables were identified from three complementary theoretical strands, including Astin’s Input-Environment-Output (I-E-O) Model (1988, 1993a, …

Transformative Psychedelic Experiences At Music Events: Using Subjective Experience To Explore Chemosocial Assemblages Of Culture, Gabrielle R. Lehigh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clinical interest in psychedelic treatments in the United States started in the 1950s, but anti-drug policy and anti-social sentiments quickly thwarted future research. The last decade has renewed clinical interest in using psychedelics to treat a diversity of mental health ailments. While these studies provide essential protocols, treatments, and therapy models for patients, they are limited in understanding the role of the contextual elements that influence psychedelic experiences and outcomes. This project examines how people use psychedelic substances outside medical settings by studying transformative psychedelic experiences at music events. This inquiry into psychedelic use utilizes an integrated framework of chemoethnography …

The Local Neurologies Of Substance Use Triggers, Breanne I. Casper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Substance use triggers are largely understood to be embedded in drug use contexts and to be a major precipitator of relapse. Yet, the relationship between triggers and future instances of drug use is not quite clear– particularly in understanding the nuances of when triggers are “triggering” and when they are not. Additionally, there is little ethnographic work that explores how individuals interact with triggers in contexts related to substance use, particularly during periods of active use. This project employs ethnographic and survey research methods to interrogate substance use triggers in the harm reduction context. In doing so, it answers the …

Karl Marx On Human Flourishing And Proletarian Ethics, Sam Badger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will show that Marx’s philosophy contains a notion of human “second nature” centered on the activity of labor with a corresponding class-centered theory of flourishing and emancipation. This notion shares important similarities with that of Aristotle but also differs in significant ways. Second nature for Marx is created and habituated through education and social labor. Moreover, human nature is molded into different forms as history progresses and modes and means of production change. In a class society everyone becomes is alienated from their nature in a way that inhibits their flourishing. This contrasts with an emancipated society, where …

Evaluating Foot-Drop Interventions For Multiple Sclerosis Using A Multimodal System, Laura Marie Byrnes-Blanco

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how multimodal walking impacts quantitative and qualitative aspects of gait for persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) experiencing foot-drop. Foot-drop can dramatically impede mobility and clinicians routinely prescribe ankle-foot-orthosis (AFO) and functional electrical stimulation (FES) devices to alleviate its impacts on daily life. However, little is known about how these devices affect pwMS while traversing environments with real-world complexity. To explore this topic, an interventional, parallel assigned study was conducted. A realistic nature pathway containing changes in floor pitch, audiovisual stimulation, and during-trial tasks (for dual-tasking) was generated in an immersive virtual reality system called CAREN: Computer Assisted …

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study Of Cortez, Florida, Karla Ariel Maddox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired …

Self-Determination And The Lived Experience Of Employed Adults With Intellectual Disabilities: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Abdelrahman Mohammad Alzarie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Literature reveals that self-determination is a critical predictor of employment at the post-secondary level for individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ID). However, current research concerning self-determination in the post-secondary work of individuals with ID is scarce and primarily focused on the perspectives of parents or educators or has been driven by evaluating learning models of self-determination. Furthermore, individuals with ID were not adequately represented as participants in the current research, and their voices were not given the opportunity to be heard. Therefore, this qualitative phenomenological study aimed to explore the lived experience of six Saudi employed adults with mild ID who …

The Development Of A Behaviorally Based Mentoring Workplace Scale, Christina N. Falcon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to contribute to the mentoring literature by providing a new tool to measure mentoring behaviors and their effectiveness from the perspective of the protégé. To accomplish this, I used the specific mentoring behaviors outlined by previous research to develop a behaviorally based measure of mentorship. The items for this new behaviorally based mentoring effectiveness scale were developed to measure the same theoretical construct as previous mentoring scales, but with the intention of capturing effective behaviors instead of broader mentoring functions. This scale was developed through three main steps: a pilot study to narrow down …

Music As An Instructional Modality To Increase Attending Behavior Of Elementary Students, Zachary Grossman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Audio and audiovisual cues, when used as teaching tools, result in desirable learning outcomes for young learners when compared to visual cues alone (Havy et al., 2017; Kirkham et al., 2019; Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003). Previous research has demonstrated that music can be an effective delivery method for teaching math in the elementary classrooms (An & Tillman, 2015; An et al., 2014; Azaryahu et al., 2020). However, the effectiveness of music at increasing attending behavior specifically has not been assessed in these studies. This study evaluated the effectiveness of music based instruction on students’ attending behaviors compared to non-music based …

The Ontological Grounds Of Reason: Psychologism, Logicism, And Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Stanford L. Howdyshell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation explains the psychologism debate as it played out in the 19thand early 20th Centuries and then shows how Martin Heidegger radicalized the debate by undermining its key themes and assumptions. First, I explain each side of the psychologism debate, starting with the psychologicists. I explore the philosophies of Jakob Friedrich Fries and John Stuart Mill in order to encapsulate the full spectrum of psychologism in the 19th Century, from Neo-Kantian to British Empiricist. The investigation will show a set of common themes within psychologism, such as the grounding of logic in the constitution of the human subject, …

Environmental Justice From The Ground(Water) Up: Coping With Contamination In Tallevast, Florida, Grey W. Caballero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How do communities living with chronic environmental contamination cope with the social, political, and economic impacts of the contamination? This research employs a community-engaged oral history approach with participant observation and archival research to address this question. We focus on the case of Tallevast, Florida, where the local groundwater has been contaminated with chlorinated solvents for over 60 years and where cleanup is estimated to take another 100 years. In addition to concerns about health and wellness, we find that residents are also concerned about household displacement and the disruption of social networks, failed governance at the local and state …

Who Goes And Who Stays: Predicting Hurricane Evacuation For Local Neighborhoods, Shakhawat Hosen Tanim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To reduce the devastating impacts of hurricanes on people’s lives, communities, and societal infrastructures, disaster management would benefit considerably from a detailed understanding of evacuation, including the socio-demographics of the populations that evacuate, or stay, down to disaggregated geographic levels such as neighborhoods. A detailed household evacuation prediction model for local neighborhoods requires both a robust household evacuation decision model and individual household data for small geographic units. To address the first of these, this dissertation performed a statistical meta-analysis of numerous survey-based hurricane evacuation studies to establish mean effect sizes for predictors impacting the household decision. To address the …

L2 Writer Identity Construction In Academic Written Discourse: A Multi-Case Study, Beibei Ren

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Writer identity has gradually become a focus in writing scholarship in recent years. From a social constructivist lens, writer identity is not optional; it resides in all texts. And it is a construct that does not exist in a vacuum, but is shaped by the sociocultural and academic context, and simultaneously individual writers agentively selected from the socially available repertoire to construct their identities in text. Departing from social constructivism, this study adopted Ivanic’s (1998) conceptualization of writer identity, which consists of autobiographical self, discoursal self, self as author and possibilities for selfhood, and highlighted the role of agency in …

An Evaluation Of Staff Management Strategies To Minimize Reactivity In Treatment Integrity Of Intervention Implementers, Claudia C. Reyes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Treatment integrity is of great importance in applied behavior analysis because of its influence on skill acquisition and behavior reduction. Staff management procedures have been assessed and found to increase levels of treatment integrity. Despite this, implementers exhibit reactivity to the presence of a supervisor with high levels of treatment integrity when supervisors are present and low levels when they are absent (e.g., Pantermuehl & Lechago, 2015). Researchers have tried to account for the effects of reactivity with limited success. The purpose of the current study was to increase treatment integrity in observer absent conditions by delivering feedback to participants …

Understanding And Measuring Family–Teacher Partnerships, Emily L. Baton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has long been acknowledged that there is an important bond between families and schools that enriches the child’s behavior and academic life. The benefits of parent–school partnerships in a child’s education extend beyond the child, benefitting the families and educational staff as well. Terminology, definitions, and practices within the continuum of parent–school partnerships (Goodall & Montgomery, 2014) currently vary. The three most common term of the continuum are (a) family involvement, (b) family engagement, and (c) parent–school partnerships.Firstly, this dissertation sought to build upon the knowledge around the terminology and definition used to explain families and the education system …

Coastal Cities In The Southern Us Floodplains: An Evaluation Of Environmental Equity Of Flood Hazards And Social Vulnerabilities, Lubana Tasnim Mazumder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Floods are recognized as one of the most common and widespread natural hazards in the United States (US). They are responsible for uncompensated losses and damages. Furthermore, evidence suggests flooding inflicts more harm among socially vulnerable groups, incapable of withstanding hazard events, raising environmental equity (EE) and justice (EJ) concerns. Regrettably, with continuing climate change and urbanization, flooding will not subside in the future; instead, the flooding frequency and intensity will increase in many parts of the US, and the trend of disproportionate impacts will continue to rise.

Since Hurricane Katrina, a considerable amount of research has been conducted on …

How Feeling Like A Minority Affects Preferences For Autonomous Digital Interfaces, Ye Seul Kim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the novel aspect of minority perception and how feeling-like-a-minority influences the consumption of digital interfaces in a service context. The focus on the perception of minority consumers is important given greater emphasis on minority-related issues catalyzed by recent social events. Examining the effects on the choice likelihood for digital interfaces such as service robots is also relevant given the increasing widespread use of such technology. The findings across eight studies including six online studies and two field experiments demonstrate that individuals who perceive themselves as a minority in a service setting show defensive behavior by choosing a …

Teaching And Learning Together: Situating Information Literacy In The Library Social Services Landscape Of Practice Through Online Scenario-Game-Based Training, Denise R. Shereff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A scoping literature review and a qualitative case study were conducted in this dissertation research to explore formal information literacy instruction and professional development for librarians and social workers in the context of library social services. This research provides avenues for increasing understanding about how each is prepared to provide mental health and social service information and resources in public libraries.The scoping literature review was conducted on 19 studies published since 2002 focusing on librarians’ roles in information literacy instruction in social worker education. Articles were reviewed according to published Scoping Review guidelines. Trends were described regarding instructional and technological …

Head Movement Behaviors In Various Communication Environments, Angkana Lertpoompunya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a complex environment with only a single-source speech target, modern hearing aids can improve signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) by using directional microphones, and consequently, improve speech intelligibility. However, in many realistic listening situations where there are multiple sound sources, especially in a turn-taking conversation, improving the SNRs in one location may come at a cost of another equally important location. Critically, the hearing aid user is also unlikely to retain a static head orientation to which the hearing aids reference in these complex environments. For this reason, modern premium hearing aids are now equipped with motion sensors (e.g., accelerometers) to …

An Analysis Of The Oil Pollution Act Of 1990: Regulatory Calibration In Anticipation Of 21st Century Environmental Disasters, Jessica S. Thornton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After federal the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) was promulgated in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, it helped restructure the nation’s environmental response capabilities and modernize the commercial shipping industry to effectively decrease environmental shipping disasters. However, in the 33 years since OPA 90’s inception, the oil and gas industry has transformed, especially in the offshore realm, as industry adopts new drilling technologies to gain access to deeper and heretofore untapped maritime environments. Though there have been two catastrophic offshore drilling accidents since the turn of the 21st century, OPA 90 remains categorically unchanged, …

Dreaming To Get Out The “Sunken Place”: Fantasy, Film, And The Inner-White- I(Eye), Jordan Battle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception during the transatlantic slave trade, blackness within the collective unconscious of Western society has been sutured to negative stereotypes, images, and feelings. In modern discourse on race and racism, the unconscious manifestations of anti-black racism adopted from cultural impositions, the impact of enslavement and colonization on the psyche of the subjugated, and the importance of the mind in revolutionary efforts are all too often undertheorized. Through an Afropessimist framework, this thesis uncovers the origination of the black imago in Western society, how and why it is habitually recreated, and how black theorists, artists, political activists, and others …

Planning To Behave Impulsively To Feel Better: An Ema Study Of College Students' Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, Binge Eating, And Exercise Behaviors, Rose H. Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Extensive research has demonstrated associations between impulsivity and maladaptive behaviors such as nonsuicidal self-injury and binge eating. Little attention has been paid to the planning that may occur prior to engagement in these behaviors, or to the role the planning might play in allowing individuals to regulate their emotions when they are not immediately able to engage in their chosen behaviors. Including another behavior that is typically considered to be non-impulsive (i.e., physical exercise) as a comparison, we sought to test the hypothesis that planning may serve an affect regulatory role for individuals who engage in so-called “impulsive” behaviors. We …

Eeg Classifier Validation Methods For Neuroprosthetic Hand Development, Keigo Yamauchi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To date, many challenges have been reported in the development of neuroprosthetic hands using EEG and neural signals. In this study, we report the results of a literature review on Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology, an investigation of estimation methods using applications in MATLAB, and the results of Electroencephalography (EEG) classification to assist in the development of neural prosthetic hands using biological signals such as EEG. Confusion Matrix was created using Motor Imagery (MI) data as the predictive value, and the average accuracy of more than 90% was obtained for the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and decision tree method. The results …

Young Adult Cancer Patients And Survivors’ Adherence To Healthy Eating And Physical Activity Guidelines, Sandra Soca Lozano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many Adolescents and Young Adult (AYA) cancer patients/survivors do not engage in healthy eating and physical activity recommendations. The present study assessed the role of race/ethnicity, health literacy, and home environmental influences and its association with adherence to healthy eating and physical activity. AYA patients/survivors from Moffitt Cancer Center (n = 273) completed an anonymous online survey. Self-reported measures about eating habits, physical activity, health literacy, and social support were used. Black/African Americans reported worse eating habits than White and Hispanic participants. Obese participants showed a similar trend compared to all other Body Mass Index groups. Adherence to physical activity …

Identifying Barriers And Facilitators To Family Communication Regarding Genetic Testing For Hereditary Cancer, Andrea K. Shields

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cascade testing, whereby at-risk family members are tested for known pathogenic or likely pathogenic (P/LP) variants in high risk cancer genes, provides the opportunity for changes in medical management (e.g., increased surveillance to detect cancer early or preventative surgery to reduce cancer risk). However, the rates of cascade testing are low which suggests that one-time communication may be insufficient to prompt action among family, and an increase in understanding of how to promote ongoing communication about genetic testing within families is needed. We surveyed individuals with P/LP variants in inherited cancer genes and conducted multiple linear regression with forward analysis …

Needs Assessment For A Web-Based Support Resource For Patients With A Pathogenic Variant In Lmna, Dylan M. Allen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pathogenic variants (PV) in the gene LMNA cause autosomal dominant inherited “laminopathies” that can affect multiple different organs, most specifically the heart. Current resources for LMNA patients are sparse and disjointed, leaving a need for a comprehensive resource catering to the wants and needs of the patients. A needs assessment of LMNA support resources was completed through reviewing published literature and existing support resources and conducting 11 semi-structured interviews with individuals who have a PV in LMNA. The Social Support Theoretical Model and thematic analysis of interview transcripts were used to identify discrepancies between the support that affected individuals receive …