Digital Commons Network^™

Challenging Conventional Campaign Wisdom, Bradley Joyner

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The common wisdom in political campaigns is that the most effective way to get people to vote is by sending people out into neighborhoods and going to people’s doors, personally encouraging them to vote. This method, canvassing, is undoubtedly effective in getting people to feel like their vote matters, and then getting them to actually vote. It is also incredibly expensive. While other methods may be less effective by percentage, they maybe more cost-effective and allow campaigns to reach a broader base. Further, the ineffectiveness of these campaign strategies may be mitigated by multiple means of voter outreach, such as …

Iranian Nuclear Proliferation And Sanctions, Bailey Nicole Burlingame

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project will involve the current problem of nuclear development in the nation of Iran. The question involved in the election studies was, “Should we try to stop Iranian Nuclear Development by increasing sanctions, yes or no?” According to the US Department of State website, they are attempting to increase these sanctions against individuals or cooperations who can be proven to have provided aid, information, or mechanical aspects to assist the goal of Iranian nuclear proliferation. The website provides identifying information for the individuals involved. The answer to this question I believe will be determined the amount of news information …

Maximizing Sharability And Persuasiveness On Web 2.0, Yuhua (Jake) Liang, Christina Lopez, Tim Seavey, Shelby Stanton

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Online marketing efforts usually focus on the persuasiveness or sharability of a message. However, research has not established where these two concepts overlap. The current study explores this overlap. Web 2.0 platforms facilitate the delivery of different content and statistics to convey the persuasiveness and the sharability. An original experiment varied message quality (high argument strength, direct message, and emotional message) and web cues (i.e., ratio of views, likes, and shares) to signal self-presentation (favorable and unfavorable). Prospective participants will view mock webpages for internet news and donation collection, followed by measures of the content persuasiveness and sharability.

The Relationship Between The American Government And Society: Congressman John O’Connor And New York’S 16th District During The Great Depression, Kristine Avena

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research focuses on the interaction between a Congressman and his constituents and how this interaction reflects the larger conversation between the American government and its people. By examining the interrelationship between a political representative and New York’s 16th District between 1931 and 1951, I clarify the role and efforts policy makers made in response to urban societies’ concerns. The two decades studied in this dissertation consists of the post-Prohibition phase, Great Depression, and New Deal programming. The collection I analyze is the “John J. O’Connor Collection” from the Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections at Chapman University, which …

I'M Listening With Dabdoop: A Phonological Stimulation App For Arabic Preschoolers, Manal Alyaba

Theses

Recognizing the sounds around us is the first step humans take to develop reading skills. Children who are at risk of dyslexia have a weakness in differentiating between sounds that make up our language. Testing for phonological awareness, a crucial part of reading development, can aid in detecting dyslexia. English speaking children have the luxury of being able to access varied programs designed to promote phonological awareness, knowledge of which, in turn, can assist as an early intervention instrument for dyslexia. In Saudi Arabia there are no programs that exist to detect dyslexia in children at an early age. The …

Food Purchasing Habits Of Participants In The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) Among Shelby County, Tennessee Residents, Michelle Ann Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a government entitlement program that provides monetary assistance for participants to consistently acquire adequate food. Many unanswered questions remain regarding nutrition quality of SNAP purchases. Eighty-four SNAP participants were surveyed at food pantries throughout Shelby County, TN to obtain a descriptive analysis of participant purchasing habits. The majority of households received $150 or less per month in benefits, which were spent most frequently at convenience stores (n=42) and in bakeries/delis (n=44). 77% (n=65) of participants reported experiencing times while utilizing SNAP benefits where there was not enough food to feed his/her family. Meat …

How Do Administrators Of New York City Early Intervention Programs Conceptualize And Implement Family-Centered Care?, Jennifer M. Longley

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Family-centered care, the mandated delivery approach outlined under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part C, is considered best practice in providing services to families with children under three with special needs. It has been shown to benefit children and families through numerous positive outcomes. Yet, family-centered care is not implemented in all programs universally, and significant variation exists in how programs deliver family-centered services, to the detriment of families. Much of that variation can be attributed to programmatic leadership, as administrators establish the philosophy, policies, practices, and organizational climate of an agency.

This project intended to build on the …

District Support Team Model As A Manifestation Of Central Office Transformation: Experiences From Central Office And School Based Staff, Danielle Pfeiffer

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The purpose of this study was to examine the described experiences of 20 participants—central office executives and specialists, principals, and teacher leaders—in the district support team (DST) process, a manifestation of central office transformation as an approach to school improvement. The site of this study was the Puget Sound School District in Washington State. The district was in its third year of central office transformation employing a differentiated support service model to assist its lowest performing schools. This case study utilized qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, document review, and field observations to understand the prevalence of the six elements of …

Effects Of Training Datasets On Both The Extreme Learning Machine And Support Vector Machine For Target Audience Identification On Twitter, Siaw Ling Lo, David Cornforth, Raymond Chiong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The ability to identify or predict a target audience from the increasingly crowded social space will provide a company some competitive advantage over other companies. In this paper, we analyze various training datasets, which include Twitter contents of an account owner and its list of followers, using features generated in different ways for two machine learning approaches - the Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Various configurations of the ELM and SVM have been evaluated. The results indicate that training datasets using features generated from the owner tweets achieve the best performance, relative to other feature sets. …

Typography For Non-Designers, Caitlyn Redden

Theses

Understanding typography is an essential part of visual communication. Typography communicates the message of the design. I plan to create a piece that will inform the non-designer about the basic rules of typography in a quick and engaging motion graphics animation.

With the expansion of the digital world, design has become accessible to anyone with an internet connection through software applications and tutorials. Even with these tools, there is a significant lack of design knowledge available. I will guide the audience through concepts that are most often used inappropriately. The concepts include: alignment, grid structure, hierarchy and typeface choice.

Unfolding Thailand: Tourism Promoted By 3d Motion Graphics, Nonthawan Pisessith

Theses

Unfolding Thailand is a project that aims to bring a new approach in introducing the country as well as promoting the tourism. My specific scope of this project is to create a visual representation of popular destinations from the northern, central, and southern areas through the use of 3D motion graphics. These three of the six regions in Thailand are chosen because they vary in geography, have a very distinctive characteristic and most importantly, they are the most popular vacation destinations for locals and tourists alike.

Informing Systems, Interventions, And Innovations, William Francis Murphy Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to not only explain the informing system discipline, but to explore cases from the perspective of the basic tenants of informing systems. The first essay explains what informing science is, the need for a transdiscipline, the channels of the Informing Science Institute informing system, and describes the clients of the ISI. The first essay ends with an analysis of the authors, institutions, and countries of origin for every ISI paper published between 1998 and 2009, as well as reporting interviews with the Editor-In-Chiefs of each ISI journal. The second essay investigates a case study …

Understanding Sexual Assault Survivors' Willingness To Participate In The Judicial System, Mildred Ann Davis

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation examined the relationship between support services for adult survivors of sexual assault and judicial outcomes. Specifically, this study explored survivors' willingness to participate in the judicial process. Although "victim unwilling to participate" is the primary reason given by the police for cases not progressing to prosecution, we know little about most aspects of survivors' willingness to participate in the judicial process, especially beyond initial reporting of the assault. The steps to prosecution are dependent on one another yet a survivor's willingness to participate in these steps is a fluid process. The primary research question explored was Are there …

Exposure To Movie Reckless Driving In Early Adolescence Predicts Reckless, But Not Inattentive Driving, Evelien Kostermans, Mike Stoolmiller, Rebecca N. H De Leeuw, Rutger C. M. E Engels, James D. Sargent

Dartmouth Scholarship

Objective: We examine the association between exposure to depictions of reckless driving in movies and unsafe driving, modeling inattentive and reckless driving as separate outcomes. Methods: Data were obtained by telephone from 1,630 US adolescents aged 10 to 14 years at baseline who were drivers at a survey 6 years later. Exposure to movie reckless driving was measured based on movies seen from a randomly selected list of 50 movie titles that had been content coded for reckless driving among characters. Associations were tested with inattentive and reckless driving behaviors in the subsequent survey–controlling for baseline age, sex, socioeconomic status, …

Portland State 20/20 Newsletter, Strategic Planning Development Team, Portland State University. Office Of The President

Newsletters

This issue of the newsletter describes current activities related to the strategic planning process, including creation of a new vision statement and revision of PSU's mission statement.

The Current Volume 25 : Issue 15, Nova Southeastern University

Student Newspapers

No abstract provided.

Slis Connecting, Volume 3, Issue 2, Teresa S. Welsh

SLIS Connecting

Entire issue of SLIS Connecting, Volume 3, Issue 2

A Comparison Of Public Versus Private Academic Library Web Sites In Alabama For Accessibility And Web 2.0 Applications, Amy E. Smith

SLIS Connecting

The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare Alabama’s academic library Web sites to determine how accessible they are for persons with disabilities and what kind of useful links such as tutorials and Web 2.0 applications can be found on the home pages. The importance of this study is to determine the accessibility and readability of academic library Web site home pages based off of the current WCAG 2.0 guidelines, as well as the availability of Web 2.0 tools and tutorials on library home pages. By studying the results of the Web site accessibility software, college and university …

Analysis Of Primers In The De Grummond Children’S Literature Collection, Preston R. Salisbury

SLIS Connecting

This study examines the primers collected in the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. “The de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection is one of North America’s leading research centers in the field of children’s literature,” with a main focus on American and British literature both historical and contemporary (lib.usm.edu). Specific characteristics of the primers examined in this study include publication year, publisher, and stories and illustrations used in the content. These data provide a general view of the development of the primer both for educative and socio-political purposes over time.

A Brief Historical Evolution Of The International Tracing Service (Its): The Largest Collection Of Holocaust Related Documents, Kate Brunelle

SLIS Connecting

The International Tracing Service is the largest repository for World War II records, including Holocaust records. However, it was not until recently that the ITS opened its records to researchers and institutions outside of Germany. Previously, survivors and others could write to the ITS and request information about themselves or others, but the response time was long, difficult, and often lacking in tangible results. With the opening of the ITS, people around the world have better access to the records for seemingly endless research. Includes a case study.

Read With Me: My Personal Experience With A Lis 641 Service Learning Project, Mary Ann Griffin

SLIS Connecting

At the University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Library and Information Science, LIS 641: Public Libraries has an emphasis on service learning and community relationships. In an all-online program, service learning can be challenging and part of that challenge was for the students to initiate their own service learning project. This was a prime time to promote the community project, Read with Me.

From The Gas, Congratulations, Publications, And Presentations, Teresa S. Welsh

SLIS Connecting

Meet the new SLIS GAs, and all about what our alum, students, and faculty have been doing.

Student Associations And Upcoming Events, Teresa S. Welsh

SLIS Connecting

Presents updates and news from the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA) and the Southern Miss Student Archivists Association (Southern Miss SAA) along with upcoming and recent events of interest.

Spotlights: Faculty, Alum, And Course, Teresa S. Welsh

SLIS Connecting

Meet Instructor Edmand Pace of The School of Library and Information Science, and SLIS alum, Mantra Henderson, Director of the James Herbert White Library at Mississippi Valley State University. Discover how you can become an expert in Government Publications, Law Libraries, and Health Informatics.

Slis Update, Elizabeth Haynes

SLIS Connecting

Updates and welcome from the Director of the School of Library and Information Science, Dr. Elizabeth Haynes.

An Ethnographic Analysis On The Effects Of The Closure Of Hovensa Oil Refinery On The Commercial Fishing Community On St. Croix, U.S.V.I., Samantha J. Feingold

Open Access Theses

This study is an ethnographic analysis on the effects of the closure of HOVENSA oil refinery on the commercial fishing community on St. Croix, U.S.V.I. It adds to the literature on resilience of fishing communities on how a major corporation can impact a fishery. The study used an ethnographic analysis that included a Rapid Impact and Vulnerability Assessment (RIVA), which evaluated the socio-economic outcomes and consequences of the closure on the fishing community and the fishermen’s livelihood strategies. To assess whether the commercial fishing community will be resilient in the future if the economic decline remains or worsens, social, financial …

The Supernatural’S Role In The Juxtaposition Of The Ideas Of Modernity, Traditionalism And Identity In Zakes Mda’S The Heart Of Redness, Thabo Lucky Mzileni

English 502: Research Methods

The supernatural is an entity found in many African literary texts as it is an important part of the African cultural fabric that informs and shapes the African way of life. In modern times the supernatural still informs these African cultures even though it is oftentimes defined by some unknown entity outside the realm of understanding, beyond reason. This paper explores the ideas presented in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness—a novel sourced from the Xhosa cattle killings of 1856-1857, prompted by Nongqawuse’s prophetic message. Specifically, the paper examines how ideas of modernity, traditionalism and identity are influenced by …

December 9, 2014, University Of Mississippi. Faculty Senate

Meeting Minutes

Minutes for the December 9, 2014 meeting of the University of Mississippi Faculty Senate.

December 9, 2014, University Of Mississippi. Faculty Senate

Meeting Agendas

Agenda for the December 9, 2014 meeting of the University of Mississippi Faculty Senate.

Oregon Wine Board Meeting Minutes December 9, 2014, Oregon Wine Board

Oregon Wine Board Documents

These meeting minutes list individuals in attendance and missing from the December 9, 2014 Oregon Wine Board (OWB) meeting, held at the Aquariva Restaurant in Portland, Oregon. The meeting included reports from the finance, marketing/communications, and education committees, as well as a discussion of Board governance. The Board went into Executive Session for approximately 30 minutes; upon reconvening, the Board reviewed viticulture and enology research. The meeting lasted 3 hours 24 minutes (including the time spent in Executive Session).