Digital Commons Network^™

Delay Discounting In Adolescent Substance Abuse And Juvenile Delinquency: A Comparison Of Measures Of Impulsive Behavior., Eric S. Grady

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Recent research in the areas of substance use and juvenile delinquency has revealed that impulsivity is a multi-dimensional construct. Additionally, researchers have expressed the need for more objective, behavioral measures of impulsive behavior. This study was conducted to examine how a delay-discounting procedure, continuous performance test and questionnaire-based measures of impulsivity relate to substance use and delinquent behavior. The sample was comprised of 42 adolescents (35 male) residing in an inpatient treatment facility for alcohol and substance use. The hyperbolic discounting function did not provide a good fit to the delay-discounting data. As such, the area under the curve (AUC) …

Achieving The Dream: An Actor's Journey And Creative Process Of Writing And Performing A Solo Performance Based Upon The Life Of Novelist And Civil Rights Activist, James Baldwin., Rodney A. Creech

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This document explores the creative process involved in the development and writing of the one-man performance, focusing on the life and writings of essayist, novelist, playwright, and poet James Baldwin. This documentation will also cover research, journal excerpts, rehearsal, performance and self-evaluation of this thesis project.

Using Social Support And Theoretically Derived Messages To Increase Awareness And Use Of The C&O Canal National Historical Park For Walking: An Intervention Focused On Local Employees., Lydia H. Lawson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

There have been a number of recent studies documenting the various physical, psychological, and social health benefits associated with participation in regular physical activity. In response to compelling evidence of the benefits associated with improving health and in an attempt to promote healthy lifestyles, the Bush Administration proposed the Healthier U.S. Initiative (Executive Order 13266) in 2002. The purpose of this initiative was to promote the use of public lands to improve personal health by encouraging their use for physical activity. Based on the recommendations of the National Park Service Advisory Board Subcommittee on Health & Recreation (2006), the C&O …

The View From The Border: A Study Of Gender And Women's Rights In West Virginia During The Age Of Emancipation., Allison Fredette

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

On June 20, 1863, the Wheeling Intelligencer proclaimed, “This day ushers into being the new State of West Virginia, and adds the thirty fifth star to the constellation of the American Union. To-day is the beginning of a new order of things with us here. The old Government goes out and the new one comes in.”1 With their final break from the eastern Virginia elite, West Virginians accepted a new set of laws to govern the new state and its citizens. These laws reflected West Virginia’s status as a border state, adapting from the Virginia code as well as a …

Empirical Study Of Hate Crimes In The United States: A Systematic Test Of Levin And Mcdevitt's Typology Of Offenders., Rayna E. Momen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to test Levin and McDevitt's Typology of Offenders theory using NIBRS data. Analysis of data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System on hate crime offenders (1995 - 2000) reveals that for thrill-seeking offenders 1) white adults age 18 and older are significantly more likely to commit hate crimes against perceived homosexuals, and 2) that white adults age 18 and older, suspected of using alcohol and/or drugs are significantly more likely to commit hate crimes against perceived homosexuals known to the victim, at the victim's residence/home. For defensive offenders, the following result was found 1) …

Smooth Transitions: The Role Of Athletic Identity And Life Stress In The Freshman Student-Athlete And Non-Athlete Adjustment Process., Samantha J. Monda

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Research in higher education has suggested that adjustment to college is a developmental process in which first year students must attend to certain developmental tasks in order to properly adjust to their new environment (Chickering & Reisser, 1993; Medalie, 1981). However, studentathletes have been noted are a special population within the student body that have unique experiences and needs (Etzel, Ferrante, & Pinkney, 1996). The purpose of this study was to examine the adjustment to college process of first year student-athletes and non-athletes and explore the influence of athletic identity and life stress on student-athlete adjustment to college. Surveys assessing …

Cultural Assimilation, Appropriation And Commercialization: Authenticity In Rap Music, 1997-2004., Jonathan P. Tummons

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis examines the changes in authenticity in rap lyrics between 1997 and 2004. Throughout its American history, Black music has expressed the lived experiences, the psychological realities, of Africans in diaspora and has always functioned to help create, negotiate and maintain cultural identity or “Blackness”. Within the last 20 years, rap music has undergone a tremendous amount of commercialization and appropriation by capitalistic culture industries and their largely white consumer base which has resulted in the widespread assimilation of black cultural expression into popular (white) culture. Rap artists increasingly invoke their authenticity as a way of preserving their cultural …

(Trans)Forming Belief, Transforming Desire: An Analysis Of Conversion And Belief In Contemporary American Fiction., Anthony Zias

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation locates a problem in poststructuralism's approach to the concept of believing. Since poststructuralism establishes itself as an intellectual inquiry that deconstructs not only particular beliefs but also the act of believing, many poststructuralists overlook the fact that their own philosophical premises must be initially believed before their critical interventions gain credence. These critics do not explain how belief, as such, emerges within people or why people adopt one belief system over another. To address this aporia, this dissertation reviews both Jacques Derrida's conceptualization of the decision as a choice divorced from rational calculation of evidence and J.F. Lyotard's …

Design With Benefits : Combining Healthcare Step Programs And Design Tools To Make A Difference In Community Health, Emily E. Frye

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

I am aware that there is increasing emphasis being placed on designers pro actively designing services as opposed to simply creating artifacts. Looking past “selling” and moving toward enabling solutions that are for the greater good, this paper makes use of ethnographic contexts of communities involved to guide design. My thesis project designs a service plan and a program with artifacts. It is aimed at helping rural West Virginia Clinics intervene with unhealthy patients to help them prepare for a pro-active lifestyle. This program, named BeneFIT, was designed with user-centered methods and incorporates the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) developed by James …

The Effects Of Divided Attention On Speech Motor, Verbal Fluency, And Manual Task Performance, Christopher Dromey, Erin Shim

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The goal of this study was to evaluate aspects of the functional distance hypothesis, which predicts that tasks regulated by brain networks in closer anatomic proximity will interfere more with each other than tasks controlled by spatially distant regions. Speech, verbal fluency, and manual motor tasks were examined to ascertain whether right-handed activity would interfere more with speech and language performance, because of the presumed greater demands on the left hemisphere.

Method: Twenty young adults completed a speech task (repeating a sentence), a verbal fluency task (listing words beginning with the same letter), and right- and left-handed motor tasks …

Table Of Contents

Georgia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Plea Bargaining And Procedural Justice, Michael M. O'Hear

Georgia Law Review

Recognizing the increasingly dominant role of plea bargaining in the American criminal justice system, legal scholars \have devoted considerable attention in recent years to problems of accuracy and proportionality in cases resolved by guilty plea. However, an overriding focus on the outcomes of plea bargaining misses the important contributions that process makes to the acceptance of outcomes and the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Drawing on the extensive social psychology research on procedural justice, this Article proposes five process norms that prosecutors ought to observe when making or responding to plea offers. Paying greater attention to procedural justice …

School Bullying: A Freirean Perspective., Linda Fae Rhone

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study addressed the overarching question: Can the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire provide a framework for a better understanding of school bullying in the United States? In order to address the overarching question, the following questions were answered: (1) What is the state of information available on bullying in the United States? (2) How does selected works authored by Paulo Freire provide an understanding of oppressive relationships? (3) What has been written about Paulo Freire's influence on selected educators who teach in America? (4) What were the perspectives on bullying from selected educators whose practices are grounded in …

Authentic Education And The Innate Health Model: An Approach To Optimizing The Education Of The Whole Person., M Deborah Larimer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

To test the premise that optimal learning and development require a constructivist education of the whole person, this research examined outcomes of instruction using an approach called Innate Health which claims that awareness of the dynamics of thought will stimulate healthy, productive behavior (presumably innate). While much has been written about socio-moral education; little research has addressed the role of thought, innate qualities, or attention to the whole person as mediators of learning and development. Two self-report scales (Understanding of Experience Scale, and Lifestyle Assessment Scale) were constructed to measure outcomes of instruction among participants in Innate Health seminars. Data …

A Case Study Of Two Schools' Inclusion Practices In Elementary Physical Education., David G. Lorenzi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This qualitative case study examined the process for including students with disabilities in elementary physical education settings. Specifically, effective teaching skills, environmental factors, and differences between an experienced and a novice elementary physical education teacher as they pertain to inclusion were examined. Data were collected over a two month period via field-based observations and semi-structured interviews. The case study participants included an experienced elementary physical education teacher (29 years teaching experience), a novice elementary physical education teacher (first year teaching physical education full-time), two elementary school principals, a special education teacher, and a director of special education. All participants were …

The Relative Efficacy Of Three Procedures For Reducing Canine Responding., Megan E. Maxwell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Three response reduction procedures commonly employed in applied behavior analysis are extinction, differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior (DRO) schedules, and time-based schedules of event delivery such as the fixed-time (FT) schedule. Each of these three procedures holds promise for the amelioration of canine behavior problems, yet none has been studied systematically, alone or in comparison with other procedures, with domestic dogs. In this research, the buoy-touching responses of eleven dogs were shaped and maintained using edible reinforcers. Responding then was exposed either to extinction, a fixed or an escalating DRO schedule, or an FT schedule. Extinction reduced responding more rapidly than the escalating DRO …

An Examination Of Collectivist And Individualistic Young Adult Women's Future Goals And Their Evaluation., Clare M. Mehta

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

It is important to understand how young adult women select and evaluate goals for the future because in spite of having a variety of available career options, women are still not entering all careers at an equal rate to men (Hakim, 2006), and are primarily engaging in homemaking (Marks & Houston, 2003) or embarking on careers that are considered to be traditionally feminine, such as teaching or nursing (Kmec, 2005; Okamoto & England, 1999). As such, the present study had two primary research objectives, (1) to quantitatively investigate the career- marriage- and child-related goals that young adult women in an …

Is Congruence Dead? An Examination Of The Correlation Between Holland's Congruence And Job Satisfaction Using Improved Methodology., Shannon Marie Bowles

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Job satisfaction is considered to be the most important and frequently examined outcome variable in congruence research. The assumption that congruence results in job satisfaction is fundamental to Holland's theory; however, the empirical evidence predominantly indicates that the congruence - job satisfaction correlation is, at best, equivocal. There is a movement within vocational psychology that the congruence construct is “dead” as a viable theoretical concept and that the field should abandon Holland's theory. This idea does not exist without significant argument, however. It has been recognized widely that congruence has not fared better in the empirical research literature because methodological …

Socially Rational Models For Autonomous Agents, Wynn C. Stirling, James K. Archibald, Matthew S. Nokleby

Faculty Publications

Autonomous multi-agent systems that are to coordinate must be designed according to models that accommodate such complex social behavior as compromise, negotiation, and altruism. In contrast to individually rational models, where each agent seeks to maximize its own welfare without regard for others, socially rational agents have interests beyond themselves. Such models require a new type of utility function a social utility to ensure three desirable properties: (a) conditional preferences agents may adjust their preferences to account for the preferences of others; (b) endogeny group preferences are determined internally by interactions between individual agents; (c) framing invariance reformulations of the …

The Mercury 2008

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

One Night, Alison F. Mccabe

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

Bowls, Cassandra S. Destefano

The Mercury

No abstract provided.

Response Rate Or Number Of Repetitions: Which Aspect Of Drill And Practice Testing Most Contributes To Paired-Associate Learning., Scott Davis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Precision teaching methods began in the 1960s and have grown in utility and popularity over the last four decades (Downer, 2007). The methods are used to teach across multiple contents with an emphasis in achieving fluency as opposed to mere accuracy. Speed drills, frequently used to determine the learner's current level of fluency, were found to have a significant treatment effect on learning (McGreevy, 1978; Scott, Wolking, Stoutimore, & Harris, 1990; White & Haring, 1976). The purpose of this study is to isolate and measure the treatment effect of two key aspects of the speed drill and practice component of …

Evaluating An Insurance -Sponsored Weight Management Mprogram Using The Re-Aim Model., Christiaan G. Abildso

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Determining the public health impact of behavioral obesity treatment programs and industries with whom to ally in disseminating successful programs is critical to our nation's health. In a recent report the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation (2005) recognized the leverage that health plans might have by establishing incentives for member participation in obesity treatment programs (i.e., weight management). The RE-AIM model (reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, maintenance; Glasgow, Vogt, & Boles, 1999) is designed to summarize the public health impact of health promotion programs and assist decision makers in understanding the ability of programs to: (a) reach large …

Does Student Passivity Exist? The Impact Of The Student And Instructor On Involvement In And Outside Of The College Classroom., Robert J. Sidelinger

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The classroom is the center of students' formal educational experience. It is often the one place students have an opportunity to interact with faculty. This dissertation explored the issue of student involvement both inside and outside of the college classroom. First, this study qualitatively examined in-class involvement from the students' perspective. Based on students' descriptions of their perceptions of their involvement/noninvolvement, and their perceptions of other students' involvement/noninvolvement, six themes (e.g., Active Involvement) emerged for in-class involvement and eight themes (e.g., Student Passivity) for in-class noninvolvement. Second, this study quantitatively examined factors (i.e., student characteristics, perceived instructor communication strategies, and …

Madison School "The White Building" Its Beginnings 1916-1939., Judith Ann Stechly

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study is a historical descriptive study of the early days of Madison School from the years 1916-1939. Madison School is located on Wheeling Island, Wheeling, West Virginia and is surrounded by the Ohio River. This study traced the history of Madison School and examined factors that were associated with its resilience in the face of many changes: demographics, Progressivism in education, the Great Depression, and the devastating flood of 1936. The events that tell the story of Madison School were collected from primary and secondary sources. The oral histories collected provided the “eyes” of the research from those who …

An Examination Of Mental Health Factors Related To Risk -Taking Behaviors In Children And Adolescents., Sarah B. Stevens

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Children and adolescents within the child welfare system are at risk for developing significant mental health problems, due in large part to the chaotic environments in which they live. In many cases, these youth are removed from their family of origin and placed in out-of-home or “foster” care. Many times these children and adolescents endured repeated placements and transitions, which make them vulnerable to problems in the future, particularly by engaging in risky behaviors that may increase the likelihood that they return to the system as parents themselves. This study investigated the impact of anxiety and depression on sexual activity …

Rhetorics Of Pain And Desire: The Writings Of The Middle English Mystics., Marisa A. Klages

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation, Rhetorics of Pain and Desire: The Writings of the Middle English Mystics, seeks to explore the connections between desire and pain in the writings of Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton. All four writers develop a rhetoric that allows them to use pain and/or desire as a catalyst through which their writing becomes embodied. This embodied rhetoric serves the purpose of achieving union with God, while instructing others in the art of fusing the body, pain and desire into the ultimate conduit for divine contemplation. In each chapter, the development of each writer's authority …

Instructors And Their Students: The Relationship Between Out -Of -Class Communication, Student Communication Motives, Student Motivation, And Instructor Job Satisfaction And Motivation., Jennifer L. Knapp

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The bulk of instructional communication research is concerned with the impact of instructors on students, leaving very few studies that focus on the affects of students on instructors. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to identify the impact students have on instructor out-of-class communication (OCC), job satisfaction, and motivation. Student relational, functional, participatory, excuse-making and sycophancy motives for communicating, along with perceived student motivation were examined in order to learn more about the influence of students on instructors. Participants (college instructors, N = 268) completed an online questionnaire about their OCC, job satisfaction, and motivation, as well as perceived …

Integrating Community, Education, And Global Sustainability: The Vash Recycling Model., Tracy A. Vash

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Action research engages researchers and communities in iterative, reflective inquiry to address issues and solve problems with the support of data analysis. The study was structured by and analyzed using the prototype Vash Recycling Model (VRM). For three years, January 2005 through December 2007, this study engaged textiles, apparel, and merchandising students at West Virginia University in collaboration with The Mission, a homeless shelter in Clarksburg, in a joint recycling project. The VRM, found to be an effective guide in textiles and apparel recycling, assisted environmental sustainability, and in 2007 eliminated 679,271 pounds of waste from the landfill while generating …