Digital Commons Network^™

Child Abuse And Neglect In Nevada, Denise Tanata, Susan Klein-Rothschild

Social Health of Nevada Reports

Child maltreatment is a critical issue facing our nation and our state. Child abuse and neglect impacts the lives of thousands of children and families every day.

• In 2003, an estimated 906,000 children were determined to be victims of child abuse and neglect in the United States. This equates to a victimization rate of 12.4 per 1,000 children in the population.
• These figures, however, only represent the number of substantiated cases of abuse and neglect. In 2003, approximately 2.9 million referrals concerning the welfare of an estimated 5.5 million children were made to child protective service agencies in 2003.

Marriage And Family Life In Nevada, Stephen M. Wilson, Jeanne Hilton

Social Health of Nevada Reports

For almost twenty years, Nevada has been the fastest growing state in the country. Much of this growth is due to numerous immigrant and retiree families moving in every day, creating unique challenges to the state. On the other hand, Nevada ’s families, like families in the rest of the United States , are changing in predictable ways. Over the last century, families have become smaller and more diverse. Today, families are not only smaller, but they move more often, have more family members living into old age, enjoy better health, and have more education and wealth than has been …

Delinquency And Crime In Nevada, Stephanie Kent, Deborah K. Shaffer

Social Health of Nevada Reports

The United States has always had significantly higher crime rates than other developed nations, and its juvenile crime rates repeat this pattern. Scholars have offered various explanations for this discrepancy, ranging from structural reasons such as a high level of income inequality in the U.S. to the cultural values that encourage Americans to be individualistic, seek autonomy, and engage in violent conduct. Crime issues have received a good deal of attention from American scholars and politicians, with delinquency remaining a major focus of criminological inquiry for more than 50 years. While scholarly literature now includes many studies focused on different …

Teen Sexuality And Pregnancy In Nevada, Marta Meana, Lea Thaler

Social Health of Nevada Reports

The United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the fully industrialized world. While the rates have been declining in the last 15 years, it remains a source of concern that

• 34% of teenage girls in the U.S. are becoming pregnant at least once before the age of 20.
• The teen pregnancy in the U.S. rate is ten times that of Japan, four times those of France and Germany, and nearly twice that of Great Britain.

Disability Rights And Resources In Nevada, Janet S. Belcove-Shalin

Social Health of Nevada Reports

Attitudes toward people with disabilities have changed dramatically over the course of the last hundred years. In the 19th century, individuals with serious physical or mental issues were singled out for pity and urged to accept their afflictions as the will of God. The government offered no assistance to these persons, relying instead on alms giving from religious institutions and philanthropic organizations.

Shifting Gears: A Workshop To Increase Well Being In Older Adults Residing In Congregate Housing, Amanda Haboush

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Many adults who are moving into the later stages of life have difficulties transitioning into a new lifestyle including the move into congregate housing. This lack of a well-adjusted mental transition could lead to mental disorders or health problems, if not addressed. To attend to this concern, the current program was designed to educate older adults residing in congregate housing about basic coping strategies for common stressors; Results of the study indicated that there were no significant changes from pre to post treatment measures. These results may be explained by an insufficient sample size and to overall pre-treatments scores indicating …

Parental Perception Of Pediatric Obesity, Mary Hackie

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Pediatric obesity is a growing problem with potential for lifelong physical, emotional, and social implications. Professional nurses have a moral imperative to be concerned about pediatric obesity. Because nursing theorist Barnard considers parent and child to be an interactive system, it is essential that nurses begin by assessing the parental perception of their child's weight. Only after a parent recognizes their obese child's weight as a problem can nursing successfully intervene and assist the child; The purpose of this replication study was to assess parental perception of their obese 2-5 year old children in Southern Nevada. The sample consisted of …

Transforming The Suburban Realm: A Call For Diversification In The Las Vegas Home-Building Process, Kory W Harris

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

More U.S. residents live within suburban boundaries than they do the central cities and rural regions combined---creating a need for suburban design methods that adequately meet the desires of the suburban population. The design of suburban neighborhoods over the past several decades, however, has not adequately met the needs of its residents. This dilemma has only intensified over the past several years because of an increasingly varied group of potential hornebuyers. Local, state, and federal governments---as well as land developers, planners, and architects---need to raise awareness to the issues facing suburban design. By incorporating strategic design elements into the development …

Inner Experience In Bulimia, Sharon Jones-Forrester

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Inner experience is of crucial importance in bulimia---clearly something experiential leads individuals to binge or purge. We used Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to examine the inner experience of bulimia in 5 participants, replicating Doucette (1992). Our participants' inner experiences were largely consistent with Doucette's but were substantially different from what is assumed by the non-DES literature: our bulimic participants had a consistent fragmentation of attention, hypersensitivity to the sensory aspects of experience, affect that is poorly differentiated and often confused with cognition, and a striking lack of cognition overall. These results suggest that DES can be a powerful tool to …

Perfectionism And The Role Of Self-Esteem, Marcus T Lasota

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Over the past two decades, research interest has peaked in the specific study of perfectionism as a trait and risk factor for psychopathology, namely depression. This current study hypothesized that perfectionism's impact on an individual's mental health is mediated by that individual's feelings of self-esteem. Research by Preusser, Rice, and Ashby (1994) and Rice, Ashby, and Slaney (1998) have noted evidence for this mediational relationship of self-esteem between perfectionism and depression. Using a sample of 189 undergraduate student volunteers (64 men and 125 women), results indicated that self-esteem was a significant mediator in the relationships between maladaptive perfectionism and depression, …

Cognitive And Affective Correlates Of Reproductive Hormones, Chandler Marrs

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Approximately 80% of all women experience considerable mood lability in the days and weeks following parturition. Many researchers have attempted and failed to link postpartal mood changes to reproductive hormones and very little research examines perinatal cognitive ability. The goal of this research was to elucidate the pattern of cognitive and affective behaviors associated with the elevated hormones of pregnancy and the diminished hormones following parturition. The present study compared salivary progesterone, dehydroxyepiandrosterone (DHEAS), estrone, estradiol, estriol and testosterone with the results from a battery of neuropsychiatric assessments administered to thirty-two healthy, primigravid women at 37 weeks of pregnancy and …

Female Gender Themes In Women's Magazines: A Content Analysis Testing And Extending Themes Uncovered By Erving Goffman, Sarah Elizabeth Morton

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study is based on the ideas and studies of Erving Goffman (1922-1982), an influential sociologist and communications scholar (Manning, 1992). Most prior scholars, such as McLaughlin (1999) and Reichert (2003), have chosen to simply repeat and reaffirm Goffman's themes, while largely ignoring that both times and society have changed. Thus, this study proposes not only to repeat Goffman's methods, but also to extend and retest his findings in the modern day. A quantitative content analysis will be employed, using the following women's magazines: Cosmopolitan, In Style, Allure, Glamour, and Marie Claire. The replication of this study is imperative in …

Parental Substance Abuse And Child Neglect: Development Of A Treatment Manual, Valeria I Romero

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The maltreatment of children is a devastating social problem in the United States. Many researchers and child welfare workers believe the recent increase in child neglect is directly correlated to an increase in parental substance abuse. There is a strong relationship between child neglect and parental substance abuse, however there are limited treatments that address both issues simultaneously. The present study developed a Family Behavior Therapy treatment manual and preliminarily evaluated the credibility and client satisfaction of the interventions with a family referred by Clark County Family Services. The manual is based on existing published manuals, one of which is …

Risk As A Compensating Differential In A Hedonic Wage Equation, Cathryn J Santoro

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Risk could be considered both a disagreeable characteristic of employment (i.e. the risk of death, injury) or, as noted previously, a factor in the probability, or more importantly, the improbability of success (i.e. the greater the risk in success, the less stable future earnings and employment). Accordingly, the inclusion of future wage risk in a study of compensating wage differentials is a logical step and, thus, the focus of this study; Drawing a corollary between the theoretical framework of compensating wage differentials and the theory of risk aversion, this paper seeks to measure whether or not wage risk has an …

Lakesha And Kushawn: A Cultural Linguistic Approach To Afro-American Onomastics, Clara J Senif

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is a cultural linguistic study of Afro-American naming patterns from the 1960's through the present. I show that personal name choices are reflective of the cultural-historical influences present at the time that any given name choice is made. In the Afro-American community this influence is reflected in the manifestation of an entirely new pattern of names which are herein labeled as 'constructive'. Constructive names are formed by the use of one or more 'freefixes' and will be shown to be illustrative of the Afro-American desire for ethnic identity collectively and individually.

The Retest Of The Learning Benefits Of An External Focus Of Attention In Golf, Jiang Su

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to replicate the findings of Wulf et al. (1999) and to examine whether external focus advantages would be found relative to a control condition without focus instructions in the learning of a sport skill under field-like conditions. In this experiment, thirty right-handed students with little golf experience were randomly assigned to one of the three groups (internal focus, external focus and control groups). They were required to hit golf ball to a target as accurately as possible. During practice, all participants performed 60 trials (6 blocks of 10 trials). Internal focus group participants …

Verbal And Nonverbal Mitigating Communication On Information Processing And Anger, Rebecca L Thomas

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Frustration, anger, and aggression have been linked in the literature. Studies have shown that participants are capable of using verbal and nonverbal communication to display and interpret emotions. One interesting communication phenomena is mitigating information, this would include an apology or an explanation. The fundamental attribution error posits that people attribute an individual's behavior to dispositional characteristics more often than situational components. In the current study participants were undergraduate psychology students recruited for a study investigating social interaction. Participants engaged in a frustrating interaction and encountered one of four communication conditions. These included verbal or nonverbal communication, with and without …

Strategic Alliance And Loyalty Marketing: Do Partnerships Affect Loyalty Customers?, Myongjee Yoo

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

It becomes essential for hospitality professionals to explore the concepts that underlie in strategic alliances of loyalty programs to assess business strategies as a source of competitive advantage to improve and sustain customer loyalty which will eventually bring growth to a company. Having such a numerous number of selections of hotel brands at the present time, are customers loyal to a hotel because of their preference in a specific brand or are they loyal because of the additional benefits they can receive from partnering companies? In other words, does strategic alliance create value and increase customer satisfaction which leads to …

The Effects Of Local Muscle Fatigue On Shock Attenuation Characteristics During Running, Kaori Teramoto

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine shock attenuation (SA) characteristics as well as stride characteristics before and after a fatigue protocol of the ankle dorsiflexors while running on a treadmill. Thirteen females (25.4 +/- 3.8 yrs; 63.2 +/- 8.9 kg; 164.3 +/- 3.1 cm) ran at the same (preferred) speed prior to and following bilateral local muscle fatigue of the ankle dorsiflexors. The fatigue protocol consisted of five sets of maximal concentric and eccentric contractions with a 15-second rest between the sets. Accelerometers (1004 Hz) were securely mounted on the distal aspect of the tibia and on the …

Examining The Influence And Developmental Impact Of After-School/Out-Of-School Programs On Youths From High Risk Environments, Ranna Jane Daud

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Currently, thousands of youth-based programs exist to promote education, enhance development and instill a sense of belonging and competence in inner-city/urban youth. After-school programs have been found to develop resilience in adolescents (Morrison, Storino, Robertson, Weissgass, & Dondero, 2000) by providing opportunities for growth, increasing academic achievement (Mahoney, Lord, & Carryl, 2005), providing a safe environment (Kahne, Nagoaka, Brown, O'Brien, Quinn, & Thiede, 2001), creating supportive and significant relationships (Hall, Yohalem, Tolman, & Wilson, 2003), and keeping youth out of harms way. Furthermore, after-school programs have been found to increase academic potential, increase attendance rates in school, and promote academic …

Defining Youth Psychopathy, Arva A Bensaheb

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Psychopathy has been considered one of the most dangerous and pervasive of disorders known to date. The construct has been researched extensively in the adult male criminal population but an ongoing debate remains as to whether personality or behavioral criteria should be considered cardinal to this disorder. A preliminary construct for "adolescent psychopathy" has been based on downward extensions of adult criteria such as the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R). This process has been controversial, however, and yielded no conclusive findings. This study adopted a "back to basics" approach to define the construct of adolescent psychopathy using clinicians' judgments.

The Relationship Between Brand Loyalty And Financial Performance: An Empirical Study On The Hotel Industry In Las Vegas, Hye-Soon Park

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The primary objective of this study was to examine the relationship between brand loyalty and financial performance of Las Vegas hotels. This study also investigated the impact of the age of a property and development costs on financial performance. The study used convenience sampling collecting data from a total of 315 visitors who currently stayed at the selected 12 hotels in Las Vegas during the survey period. The data was collected on the Las Vegas Strip through self-administered questionnaire and was analyzed using multiple regression. Results indicate that there was a significant relationship between brand loyalty and financial performance in …

Examining The Stability Of Goal Orientation, Ordene V Edwards

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Two studies were conducted to examine whether students' achievement goal orientations change as tasks change. These studies examined whether goal orientations are stable personality traits; Sixty-six undergraduate students at a large southwestern university enrolled in introductory educational psychology classes participated in these studies. Students self-reported goal orientations using the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scale (PALS; Midgley et al., 2000) were collected five times over the course of a semester: general context and before two assignments and two exams; A 3 (goal orientation subscale) x 4 (time) doubly multivariate repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted. Students' performance scores were …

Design And Optimization Of Joints To Mitigate Shock In Military Vehicles Under Blast And Impact Loading, Umakanth Sakaray

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Shock from a blast loading may risk the lives of the occupants of a military vehicle and damage the sensitive electronic components within it. The objective of this work is to develop an approach to mitigate shocks due to mine blast loading and impact loading by proper design of joint(s) in the military vehicles. Two types of vehicle configurations are studied for this purpose. The first vehicle is studied to examine ways to mitigate shock due to mine blast while the second vehicle is studied to mitigate shock due to projectile impact load. The proposed research includes design of joints …

Perceptions Of Discharge Instructions By The Emergency Department Patient, Darlene Brown

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Patient education is an essential part of the nursing process and is part of every nurse-patient interaction. A better patient outcome is the combination of teaching completeness and patient comprehension. When the nurse-patient interaction takes place in the emergency department (ED), the instruction is taking place in a less than conducive environment; The ED's have become a health care safety net for people with a variety of available resources and literacy levels. An indicator of how well patient education is accomplished by looking at this teaching through the patient's eyes. A sample of 30 adult patients was surveyed one week …

The Long Term Effects Of Divorce On Professional Adult Dancers, Brent Fladmo

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The most dramatic change in family life in contemporary society is the divorce rate (Amato, 2000), with numerous studies analyzing and examining divorce and its implications (Rao, 2002). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50% of marriages are terminated (Bowles, 2005). In addition, Martin, Specter, Martin, and Martin (2003) reported that the United States has the highest remarriage rate in the world, and second marriages account for nearly half of all current marriages (Wallerstein, 2005). Children who experience divorce are subjected to more stressful life changes, such as relocation (Harris, 1995), economic decline (Hetherington, 1989; Nelson, 1993), a decrease …

Estimating The Indirect Gaming Contribution Of Poker Rooms: Is Poker Room Volume A Peripheral Driver Of Slot Revenue?, Bruce Warren Ollstein

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This paper examines the effect of poker room volume on slot revenue. Using data from a destination market casino on The Las Vegas Strip, slot coin-in and poker room rake are compared over a 212 day period. With rake as the independent variable and coin in as the dependent variable, a causal model is established that demonstrates a statistically significant connection between the two. Somewhat surprisingly, poker room volume does serve as a legitimate driver of slot revenue. This study advances the literature by establishing this relationship and determining that poker room volume has an indirect income effect on at …

The Presidential Performance Of George W. Bush As A Visual Construct, Kristen Allen Stetzenbach

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine George W. Bush's performance as President of the United States through mediated visual messages. In this paper performance will be conceptualized using a content analysis method. This paper presents the notion that presidential performance and the job of being president are linked. The study is meant to watch President Bush and document his appearances as seen through mediated images. The New York Times' front pages from George W. Bush's first inauguration in January 2001 up to his re-election and second oath of office in 2005 were analyzed for six categories of visual …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Rumble Strips In Reducing "Ran-Off-Roadway" Vehicle Crashes, Vinay Kumar Vanapalli

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Single vehicle ran-off-roadway crashes are of significant concern in Nevada. The research efforts presented in this report summarize the evaluation of the effectiveness continuous shoulder rumble strips to reduce such crashes in Nevada. The efforts evaluated safety records on roadways in Nevada on which Continuous Shoulder Rumble Strips had been installed. Specifically, crash records involving "Single-Vehicle Ran-off-Roadway" crashes were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Continuous Shoulder Rumble Strips treatment. The roadways studied include Interstate freeways, US Routes, and State Routes: 306 individual segments corresponding to a total of 1,303 centerline miles of roadways. Data for the period from …

The Etiological Role Of Susto In Diabetes Among Hispanics In Southern Nevada, Carin K Wallace

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the association between susto, a Hispanic folk explanation of disease, and type 2 diabetes. This association is explored through a focus group and semi-structured interviews, with participants recruited from a population of 300 diabetes patients under treatment by a local non-profit group. Results show that not only is susto thought to be an important cause of diabetes among Hispanic diabetics and their family members, but that the meaning of susto may be changing; no longer thought of as solely a frightful event, it is a description of the resulting emotions as well. The role of emotions such …