Digital Commons Network^™

North American Indigenous Adolescent Substance Use, Melissa Walls, Kelley J. Sittner Hartshorn, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Objectives—To investigate growth in problem drinking and monthly marijuana use among North American Indigenous adolescents from the upper Midwest and Canada.

Methods—Panel data from a community-based participatory research project includes responses from 619 adolescents residing on or near 7 different reservations/reserves. All respondents were members of the same Indigenous cultural group.

Results—Rates of problem drinking and monthly marijuana use increased steadily across the adolescent years, with fastest growth occurring in early adolescence (before age 15). In general, female participants reported higher rates of substance use prior to age 15; however, male reports of use surpassed those of females in later …

The Importance Of Social Cues For Discretionary Health Services Utilization: The Case Of Infertility, Arthur L. Greil, Karina M. Shreffler, Katherine M. Johnson, Julia Mcquillan, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Infertility is a discretionary health condition; although it carries with it important life course implications, treatment is rarely necessary for health reasons. Sociological theories of medical help-seeking emphasize demographic factors, perceived need, and enabling conditions in health services utilization, but we find that social cues are also strongly associated with health services utilization for infertility. Adjusted for conventional predictors of medical help-seeking, several social cue indicators have significant associations with utilization, including having friends and family with children, perceiving infertility stigma, and having a partner and/or family member who encourages treatment. Perceived need accounts for the largest portion of the …

From College Student To Change Agent: A Triadic Model Of Self-Efficacy, Attribution, And Appraisal, Joshua M. Garrin

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Beyond their newfound emancipation and opportunities for self-discovery, college students in the young adult stage of development are expected to achieve balance between their autonomous new world and the impending pressures of postgraduation life. The college student must not only reconcile issues related to identity formation, goal pursuits, and career exploration, but is expected to begin the process of identifying and developing the skills required to address salient social themes. How students establish competency beliefs, negotiate controllability over future outcomes, and appraise challenges have deep implications in their capacity to discover their social change “voice.” The following discussion proposes a …

An Innovative Approach To Action Research In Family Violence Prevention, Linnaya M. Graf, Nancy K. Rea, William M. Barkley

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Violence prevention remains a priority in the current public health agenda because of continuing high rates and debilitating effects of violence that exist across the globe (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families [USDHHS-ACF], 2009; World Health Organization [WHO], 2013). This article presents the use of an innovative qualitative study developed from community action research methods in the area of family violence. By applying the combined framework of force field analysis (Lewin, 1958) and the public health model (Centers for Disease Control, 2002; Knox & Aspy, 2011), the current study identified factors that positively …

Do Non-Response Follow-Ups Improve Or Reduce Data Quality?: A Review Of The Existing Literature, Kristen Olson

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The paper systematically reviews existing literature on the relationship between the level of effort to recruit a sampled person and the measurement quality of survey data. Hypotheses proposed for this relationship are reviewed. Empirical findings for the relationship between level of effort as measured by paradata (the number of follow-up attempts, refusal conversion and time in the field) and question-specific item non-response rates, aggregate measures of item non-response rates, response accuracy and various measurement errors on attitudinal questions are examined through a qualitative review.

Paradata For Nonresponse Adjustment, Kristen Olson

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Survey researchers and practitioners use nonresponse adjustment weights to mitigate the effects of survey nonresponse on sample estimates. One challenge in creating these weights is finding useful auxiliary data that predict both the probability of participating in the survey and the survey variables of interest. This article reviews the use of paradata for nonresponse adjustment. Five different types of paradata are considered: neighborhood observations, observations of the sampled housing unit, observations of persons in the sampled housing unit, call records, and observations about the interviewer-householder interaction. Empirical evidence about the predictive value of these paradata for predicting both participation and …

Collecting Paradata For Measurement Error Evaluations, Kristen Olson, Bryan Parkhurst

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Survey researchers and methodologists seek to have new and innovative ways of evaluating the quality of data collected from sample surveys. Paradata, or data collected for free from computerized survey instruments, have increasingly been used in survey methodological work for this purpose (Couper, 1998). One error source that has been studied using paradata is measurement error, or the deviation of a response from a “true” value (Groves, 1989; Biemer and Lyberg, 2003). Although used in psychological literature since the 1980s (see Fazio, 1990, for an early review) and adapted to telephone interviews by Bassili in the early 1990s (Bassili and …

Topological And Historical Considerations For Infectious Disease Transmission Among Injecting Drug Users In Bushwick, Brooklyn (Usa), Kirk Dombrowski, Richard Curtis, Samuel Friedman, Bilal Khan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Recent interest by physicists in social networks and disease transmission factors has prompted debate over the topology of degree distributions in sexual networks. Social network researchers have been critical of “scale-free” Barabasi-Albert approaches, and largely rejected the preferential attachment, “rich-get-richer” assumptions that underlie that model. Instead, research on sexual networks has pointed to the importance of homophily and local sexual norms in dictating degree distributions, and thus disease transmission thresholds. Injecting Drug User (IDU) network topologies may differ from the emerging models of sexual networks, however. Degree distribution analysis of a Brooklyn, NY, IDU network indicates a different topology than …

The Transgenerational Consequences Of Discrimination On African-American Health Outcomes, Bridget J. Goosby, Chelsea Heidbrink

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Disparities in African American health remain pervasive and persist transgenerationally. There is a growing consensus that both structural and interpersonal racial discrimination are key mechanisms affecting African American health. The Biopsychosocial Model of Racism as a Stressor posits that the persistent stress of experiencing discrimination take a physical toll on the health of African Americans and is ultimately manifested in the onset of illness. However, the degree to which the health consequences of racism and discrimination can be passed down from one generation to the next is an important avenue of exploration. In this review, we discuss and link literature …

The Broken Safety Net: A Study Of Earned Income Tax Credit Recipients And A Proposal For Repair, Sara Sternberg Greene

Faculty Scholarship

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest federal antipoverty program in the United States and garners almost universal bipartisan support from politicians, legal scholars, and other commentators. However, assessments of the EITC missed an imperative perspective: that of EITC recipients themselves. Past work relies on largely unconfirmed assumptions about the behaviors and needs of low-income families. This Article provides a novel assessment of the EITC based on original data obtained directly from 194 EITC recipients through in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings are troubling: They show that while the EITC has important advantages over welfare, which it has largely …

Where Should Europe’S Investment Path Lead?: Reflections On August Reinisch, “Quo Vadis Europe?”, Julie A. Maupin

Faculty Scholarship

Relative to the past policies of its Member States, will the European Union’s new comprehensive international investment policy constitute a step forward, a step backward, or a perpetuation of the status quo? Professor Reinisch’s contribution to this volume opens a wide window on the current state of the debate. His cogent analysis suggests that, at present, all three possibilities remain live ones, although some basic contours of a likely trajectory are beginning to take shape. I use his musings as a springboard to investigate two questions which follow naturally from his. That is, in view of Professor Reinisch’s response to …

College Student Pathways To The Stem Disciplines, Mark Engberg, Gregory C. Wolniak

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

Background/Context: As concerns mount about the shortage of students entering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, policy makers throughout the United States are contemplating strategies to maintain and enhance our nation's economic vitality and international competitiveness. Within this policy and program environment, researchers have focused considerable attention on improving STEM education at different stages of the educational pipeline, yet we lack evidence on how resources from one educational setting may influence outcomes in a successive educational setting. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus: The purpose of the study is to examine individual- and school-level factors that influence students' pathways to the STEM fields …

Implementing Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support In High School Settings: Analysis Of Eight High Schools, K. Brigid Flannery, Jennifer L. Frank, Mimi Mcgrath Cato, Bonnie Doren, Pamela Fenning

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

Schoolwide positive behavior support (SWPBS) is a systems-level intervention designed to prevent the occurrence of problem behavior and increase social competence. A growing body of research documents that SWPBS reduces problem behavior and improves academics (e.g., McIntosh, Chard, Boland, & Horner, 2006), yet documentation of the feasibility of implementing SWPBS in high school settings is lacking. The current study examines implementation of universal SWPBS components in eight high schools serving over 15,525 students across a three-year period. Our findings were that improvements in implementation were evident between baseline and the end of year one, yet the implementation of SWPBS practices …

Teacher Role Breadth And Its Relationship To Student-Reported Teacher Support, Kate L. Phillippo, Susan Stone

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study capitalizes on a unique, nested data set comprised of students ("n" = 531) and teachers ("n" = 45) in three high schools that explicitly incorporated student support roles into teachers' job descriptions. Drawing from research on student-teacher relationships, teacher effects on student outcomes, and role theory, this study explored correlates of teachers' role definition. In particular, it considered role breadth, or the degree to which teachers defined their roles to include the provision of various forms of social and emotional support to students. We hypothesized that teachers' role breadth would relate to student perceptions of teacher support and …

Container Shipping Risk Management: A Case Study Of Taiwan Container Shipping Industry, Chia-Hsun Chang

Plymouth Business School Theses

Whilst container shipping has become increasingly important over the past few decades due to its obvious advantages, container shipping companies have faced various risks from different sources in their operations. Systematic academic studies on this topic are few; and in light of this, this study aims to systematically explore and analyse the risks in container shipping operations and to examine the applicable risk mitigation strategies in a logistics perspective, including information flow, physical flow, and payment flow. This thesis uses Taiwan container shipping industry as a case study, and borrows four steps of risk management as the main method, which …

Psychometric Analysis Of The Appreciative Advising Inventory, Nancy J. Crone

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Appreciative Advising Inventory is an instrument created for use in academic advising. The inventory helps the advisor get to know and understand the student, which in turn allows the advisor to better assist the student. This research provides a psychometric analysis of the Appreciative Advising Inventory to measure its validity and reliability and recommends alterations to the inventory based on the results of these analyses.

Self-Expansion And Breakups: Effects On Possessions, Caroline Sandrick

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study strives to understand the influence of breakups on the expanded self and its representation through possessions. The self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1986) states that involving oneself in a romantic relationship alters one's sense of self by taking on the partner's characteristics and qualities and integrating them into the self. The study examined the reported self-expansion in the relationship and the couple representativeness of a possession to see if this affected the outcome of the possessions (kept vs. discarded). Participants were asked to report their three favorite possessions and five possessions they would keep (or kept) and …

The Effect Of Sex And Gender Role Orientation On Attitudes Towards Individuals With Dependent Personality Disorder, Amanda K. Slowik

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research suggests that Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD) is associated with a feminine gender role and the female sex. However, little is known about how men who demonstrate DPD are perceived. Research also suggests that attitudes might be affected by the sex and gender role of the participant, with men and individuals who identify with traditional gender roles making harsher judgments of individuals who exhibit behaviors that are not consistent with traditional gender roles. As the categorical diagnosis of personality disorders has been widely criticized and may soon be replaced, the DSM-5 draft describes the symptoms of DPD using three dimensions …

Have We Lost Focus On Our Students’ Learning?, Michele Scoufis

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Excerpt: As a teacher in organisational psychology for more years than I care to remember (and yes students get younger every year!) and subsequently the Director of several university Learning and Teaching Units, I have come to wonder whether the “L” in SoTL has become lost or hidden from the public view. I believe that the pendulum has swung too far towards focusing on ‘what the teacher does’ instead of ‘what do we know about how and what the student is learning?’

The Facit-Sp: Factor Structure In A Cancer Treatment Population, Anita G. Farrell

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Spirituality has been identified as a unique construct with relationships to quality of life and adjustment to severe illness. Differentiating the characteristics of spirituality from religiousness and identifying the dimensions within spirituality will improve understanding of the relationships with health related outcomes and facilitate targeted interventions. The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-being Scale (FACIT-Sp) is a widely used measure of religiousness and spirituality among cancer patients. Original factor analysis of the FACIT-Sp supported two factors: Faith and Meaning/Peace. A three-factor solution has been identified that divides the Meaning and Peace factor into cognitive and affective components. This study …

Minority Women In Stem: A Valuable Resource In The Global Economy, Ezella Mcpherson, Diane R. Fuselier-Thompson

Journal of the International Association for the Study of the Global Achievement Gap (Archived)

While there is an expected demographic shift of the ethnic minority population in the United States to become the majority population by 2020, few minority women successfully attain baccalaureate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields. To address this gap, this article employs critical race feminism and narrative analysis methods to examine minority women’s challenges while pursuing undergraduate STEM degrees. Findings suggest that limited access to the field, isolation and alienation, and affordability create barriers that result in many minority women leaving STEM majors. Implications for practice include targeted institutional efforts to increase recruitment and retention efforts towards …

The Voices And Choices Of Women In The Academy, Ramona Ortega, Brenda L. H. Marina, Lena Boustani Darwich, Eunju Rho, Isa Rodriquez-Soto, Rajade Berry-James

Journal of the International Association for the Study of the Global Achievement Gap (Archived)

While it is clear that gender inequity still exists, this situation is compounded by race, ethnicity and sexism. The daily experiences of women confirm that racism and sexism is alive and well. This article presents and examines the experiences of Latino, Black, Arab, and Asian professional women and the consequences of their career decisions. Synthesized with literature, conceptual patterns of significance are noted for young girls and women of color aspiring and pursuing professional careers in education. The strategies utilized by these diverse professional women to cope with the trials and tribulations of contemporary educational and professional challenges are reviewed. …

The Asymmetric Impacts Of Good And Bad News On Opinion Divergence: Evidence From Revisions To The S&P 500 Index, Jin Yu, Haigang Zhou

Business Faculty Publications

Motivated by the ambiguity theory of Epstein and Schneider (2003, 2008), we hypothesize that investors' beliefs on the prospects of firms converge upon the arrival of bad news, but do not converge - or even further diverge - on the arrival of good news. We expect firms with high divergence in opinions to experience lower stock returns around the announcements of bad news but not for good news. Using revisions to the S&P 500 index between 1962 and 2008 as information events, we find overwhelming support for the hypothesis. The results are robust to controlling for alternative hypotheses of price …

Strategies For Data Management Engagement, Deborah H. Charbonneau

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

The research landscape is growing dramatically, and librarians are examining new roles, services, and types of collaborations to support data-intensive research. This column describes curricular enhancements at one School of Library and Information Science in the United States. Several key areas of data management in which health sciences librarians may wish to build or enhance their skills are outlined. Possible roles and opportunities for health sciences librarians to strategically engage in data management initiatives are also presented.

Are Libraries Compromising Reader Privacy With Circulation Reminders?, Robert P. Holley

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Registering Relationships, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Despite the dramatic changes in family structure in the past decades — including the unprecedented and skyrocketing number of families who live in non-marital arrangements — marriage and marriage-mimic institutions remain the only legal options for the recognition of relationships. This regulatory regime leaves millions of Americans without the means to establish and protect relationship rights. The article suggests that the legal issues arising from non-marital relationships would be best addressed if more options for legal recognition of such relationships were offered. Accordingly, this article presents the primary principles of a registration-based marriage alternative, founded on contract: “registered contractual relationships.” …

Migrant Smuggling: Canada's Response To A Global Criminal Enterprise, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

Migrant smuggling is a dangerous, sometimes deadly, criminal activity. Failing to respond effectively to migrant smuggling and deter it will risk emboldening those who engage in this illicit enterprise, which generates proceeds for organized crime and criminal networks, funds terrorism and facilitates clandestine terrorist travel, endangers the lives and safety of smuggled migrants, undermines border security, and undermines the integrity and fairness of immigration systems. Introduced in the Canadian House of Commons in June 2011, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act (Bill C-4) includes proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would enhance …

State Ownership And Corporate Governance In China: An Executive Career Approach, Li-Wen Lin

All Faculty Publications

China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) now comprise over 60 percent of the largest 500 companies in China and more than 10 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world. Despite their importance to China’s domestic economy and foreign investment strategy, many governance characteristics of the SOEs remain a black box, one of which is the SOEs’ executive composition and recruitment development. This Article shifts away from the typical focus on how the things function (e.g. ownership structure and board of directors) to who the people in charge are, which is an important approach to understanding corporate governance and economic development …

Embodied Conflict Resolution: Resurrecting Roleplay-Based Curricula Through Dance, Nadja Alexander, Michelle Lebaron

All Faculty Publications

Moving on from the authors’ seminal 2009 critique of the overuse of role-plays in negotiation teaching, "Death of the Role-Play" (chapter 13 in Rethinking Negotiation Teaching), Alexander and LeBaron have taken the rapidly increasing enthusiasm for experiential learning in a new direction: multiple intelligences. Their particular interest is in a use of experiential learning that focuses on kinesthetic intelligence, employing actual physical movement, particularly dance, to unlock creativity in other mental domains, as well as to encourage authentic participation by people whose skills are not primarily verbal or mathematical. Those who may be inclined to be skeptical should note that …

Breathing Life Into The Ashes: Resilience, Arts And Social Transformation - Pwias Inaugural Roundtable Final Report, Michelle Lebaron, Cynthia Cohen

All Faculty Publications

This report summarizes the themes, components, results and projected impacts of the first PWIAS (Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies) international roundtable held in October 2012. The roundtable brought together 20 artists, scholars, and conflict transformation practitioners from around the world to: explore and deepen understandings and experiences of individual and collective resilience; develop an infrastructure to strengthen the resilience and the legitimacy of the Social Transformation via Arts (“STA”) field; and advance understandings of assessment and evaluation in STA. In the report, the authors include a discussion of advance goals and planning, roundtable experiences, and ongoing effects of the …