Digital Commons Network^™

Conflict And Cooperation As Social Responses To Ecological Change, Nicholas A. Seltzer

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This dissertation examines ways the environment conditions individual incentives to participate in collective action. I hypothesize that as resources become scarce, individuals are more willing to participate in individually-costly collective action, including intragroup cooperation and intergroup hostility. The first and second of three studies establish a unit-of-selection based, game-theoretic foundation for intergroup conflict. The final study explores macro-level implications for the relationship between climate change and violence in Africa. For human beings and other highly social creatures, cooperation is the key adaptation with which we respond to environmental challenges. Faced with resource scarcity, group living becomes increasingly vital for individual …

The Gendered City: The Politics Of Violence Against Women In Mexico City's Public Transportation System, Amy Dunckel

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

According to the World Health Organization as of 2010 more people live in cities than ever before. And yet, also according to them, women are one of the least likely groups to control the wealth and power that is produced in these metropolises. How are women excluded from equal right to the city? Why is gender inequality in cities so persistent and difficult for women to overcome? This research looks at the case of Mexico City -one of the largest cities in the world, hailed as an economic hub for Latin America- to answer these questions. In the last decade …

Understanding Online Fashion Networks, Kota Yamaguchi

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

Emergence of online social networks has transformed how people interact with digital media. Any user is a consumer and a publisher of media content, such as texts, images, or videos, in the online community. In such an environment, it is crucial to develop technology to help people by organizing and utilizing plethora of media content to meet the community demands. To this goal, this dissertation studies and tries to establish computational approaches to understand networked content, using large-scale data from a real-world online fashion network, Chictopia. This study focuses on two major challenges of fashion networks: understanding of visual content, …

University Of Dayton Magazine, Winter 2014-15, University Of Dayton Magazine

University of Dayton Alumni Publications

This issue includes information about work UD students are doing in Africa, stories long told on campus, and the death penalty.

Transfer And The Commodification Of Practice., Kenneth Andrew Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation engages in a close reading of the research in composition on transfer, a concept that refers to how the practices learned in one situation influence what a person can do in a future situation. In the studies that have appeared over the last two decades, the results have indicated that not much transfers between writing courses and future contexts, whether they be disciplinary courses or professional workplaces. Yet, despite the increasing prominence of transfer research, little time has been spent discussing the uses and limitations of the concept. To better understand its growing popularity among researchers, I examine …

Predictors Of Lifestyle Behaviors, Trust Of Health Care Provider, And Utilization Of Health Services Among Adolescents Living In A Rural Area., Heather Karolyne Hardin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Adolescents have elevated morbidity and mortality rates associated with risk-taking behaviors, but utilize health services at low levels. There is little evidence concerning health behavior, trust of health care provider, or utilization of health services among adolescents living in rural areas. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine individual characteristic variables and determine the extent to which these variables influence lifestyle behaviors, trust of health care provider (HCP), and utilization of health services among adolescents attending public high school in rural Indiana. Methods: This study used a cross-sectional, quantitative design. Instruments used in this study were …

A Magical Country : Stories From Appalachia., James Eric Leary 1977-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fairy tales and other forms of fantastic literature have fascinated children and adults for generations. The scholarship on these types of works indicate that many find their folkloric origins in oral storytelling, and those roots may be quite ancient. However, some of the earliest examples of recorded literature capture stories of magic and fantasy. The interplay between the oral and literary form remains a significant area of study and development for folk literature, and new artistic productions, termed variants in the scholarship, continue to appear frequently in contemporary American culture. The criticism and creative work presented here add to the …

A Case Study On The Apple Hill Grower's Association: An Agritourism Area In Camino, Ca, Christine J. Delfino

Master's Theses

The current research is a case study on the Apple Hill Grower’s Association (AHGA). The purpose of this case study was to gain a full understanding of the AHGA with a focus on the economic and social motivations of the original farmers to bring tourism to the farm. A majority of the past research on agritourism involves quantitative studies that are survey based; this study gives qualitative research perspective based on focus groups and personal interviews. In addition, past research is focused on other states (i.e. Michigan, Missouri, Montana) and countries (i.e Italy and Australia). This case study adds research …

“The Personal Has Become Political”: A Secondary Teacher’S Perceptions Of Her Body In The Classroom, Christine A. Mallozzi

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a secondary English teacher considered her body a personal and political matter within her professional settings. Discourse analysis of the participant’s narrative evidences that women teachers are pressured to present certain feminine and heterosexual bodies and present a similar personal life within their pedagogy. The risk in not following suit is being pushed out of the profession, a matter that can be problematic especially when a teacher undergoes personal changes counter to professional expectations. Teacher education responsibility in preparing teacher candidates for a variable professional trajectory is noted.

Listening To Shells And Discovering A Lost World; Epiphanic Experiences At The Museum, Catherine M.C. Closet-Crane

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper aims to entertain the possibilities for analysis, interpretation, and learning offered by evocative autoethnographic texts for LAM and LIS user studies. The focus in this paper is on storytelling as autoethnographic writing. To illustrate facets of a particular cultural experience and start a conversation about the transformative power of museum objects as documents, the story told in this paper recounts a series of events and experiences from the life of two visitors after their museum encounter with an engraved shell artifact from the archeological site of Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma.

The Compliance Case For Social Enterprise, Joseph W. Yockey

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Social enterprises generate revenue to solve social, humanitarian, and ecological problems. Their products are not a means to the end of profits, but rather profits are a means to the end of their production. This dynamic presents many of the same corporate governance issues facing other forprofit firms, including legal compliance. The author contends, however, that traditional strategies for corporate compliance are incongruent to the social enterprise’s unique normative framework. Specifically, traditional compliance theory, with its prioritization of shareholder interests, stands at odds with the social enterprise’s mission-driven purpose. Attention to this distinction is essential for developing effective compliance and …

Does Health Insurance Have Influence On Obesity?, Wenyao Zhou

All Theses

Obesity in the United States has been continuing increasing and cited as a major health issue in recent decades. Many researchers have studied its socio-economic cause, but very few studies center on the potential influence that health insurance has on obesity. In our common sense, health insurance reduces the money that we pay for health care and makes many treatments' cost affordable which we may choose to give up originally due to our financial situation. However, everything has two sides. The benefits from insurance also can lead people to change their choices and behaviors. As an insured, people may take …

Qmethod: A Package To Explore Human Perspectives Using Q Methodology, Aiora Zabala

The R Journal

Q is a methodology to explore the distinct subjective perspectives that exist within a group. It is used increasingly across disciplines. The methodology is semi-qualitative and the data are analysed using data reduction methods to discern the existing patterns of thought. This package is the first to perform Q analysis in R, and it provides many advantages to the existing software: namely, it is fully cross-platform, the algorithms can be transparently examined, it provides results in a clearly structured and tabulated form ready for further exploration and modelling, it produces a graphical summary of the results, and it generates a …

Replication And Knowledge Production In Empirical Software Engineering Research, Jonathan L. Krein

Theses and Dissertations

Although replication is considered an indispensable part of the scientific method in software engineering, few replication studies are published each year. The rate of replication, however, is not surprising given that replication theory in software engineering is immature. Not only are replication taxonomies varied and difficult to reconcile, but opinions on the role of replication contradict. In general, we have no clear sense of how to build knowledge via replication, particularly given the practical realities of our research field. Consequently, most replications in software engineering yield little useful information. In particular, the vast majority of external replications (i.e., replications performed …

Conscience And Context In Eastman Johnson's The Lord Is My Shepherd, Amanda Melanie Slater

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the experiences that motivated the creation of an 1863 painting by American artist Eastman Johnson entitled The Lord is My Shepherd. An examination of the painting—which depicts a black man reading a Bible—reveals multiple artistic, social, political, and spiritual influences. Created in the midst of the American Civil War, the painting's inspiration derived from Johnson's New England childhood, training in Europe, encounters with the Transcendentalist movement, and his abolitionist views. As a result, The Lord is My Shepherd is a culminating work in Johnson's oeuvre that was prompted by years of experience and observations in an age …

The Development Of Christianity In Contemporary China, Chu Yi Lu

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to study the development of Christianity in contemporary China. It adds to the limited literature that explores how Christianity has developed as the fastest growing religion in China post the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The data derive from semi-structured and focus group interviews with Chinese Christians and field observation notes collected at both official and non-official Christian churches in Beijing. I found an ambivalent attitude toward the development of Christianity across different social levels in China. At the state level, the Chinese government expects Christianity to provide a much-needed stabilizing influence in an increasingly self-centered …

The Production Of Heritage Tourism In China: A Case Study Of Three Adjacent Villages, Yi Yu

Theses - ALL

With the massive infusion of external (foreign) capital into the Chinese economy since the 1980s, some historical villages in Huangshan city have been largely transformed for heritage tourism. Preservation restrictions on altering structures are in place to keep intact the architectural and morphological integrity of the sites. Questions arise on the roles played by various governments and private sector enterprises, and their influence on local residents

In the summer of 2013, I conducted field work including interviews, participatory observation and archival research on three adjacent villages in Huangshan city: Hongcun, Chengkan, and Xucun. They were at three different tourism development …

Hollywood On The Tiber And Italian Cinema: Practices Of Transatlantic Stardom 1949-1965, Maria Elena D'Amelio

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

My dissertation aims to contribute to the emergent scholarly conversation on transnational stardom by examining the transatlantic career of the three male stars Amedeo Nazzari, Vittorio Gassman, and Steve Reeves, as case studies to define specific transnational practices of film production, aesthetics, and reception between Italy and the United States. | 205 pages

The Effects Of Gender Mainstreaming On Maternal And Child Health: A Cross-National Analysis Of Sub-Saharan Africa, Lauren Pandolfelli

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

A substantive body of sociological literature has found that women's status is correlated with improved maternal and child health outcomes in developing countries, and accordingly, proposes policy recommendations for ending discrimination against women. Yet, the sociological literature has not engaged adequately with policy models for improving women's status. I address this gap in the literature by conducting the first cross-national quantitative analysis of gender mainstreaming -the global strategy adopted in 1995 by United Nations member countries for fostering gender equality. Specifically, the dissertation uses two-way fixed effects ordinary least squares regression to estimate the effects of gender-mainstreamed bilateral health aid, …

Tier 2 Intervention: Mentoring, Jenna Strawhun, Shir Palmon, Reece L. Peterson

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Conclusion

Although the outcomes of mentoring studies tend to be mixed, mentoring relationships have the potential to be effective, particularly when outcomes are selected and efforts are made to create lasting relationships. Particular considerations for mentoring program developers and practitioners include the length of the mentoring relationship, recruitment and screening of mentors, mentor training, mentee mobility, mentoring activities, and consistent systematic evaluation and modifications of mentoring programs based on data.

There have been no large widespread controlled studies of mentoring, probably due to the wide variation in the variables associated with mentoring programs as discussed earlier, including the goals, populations …

Tiers 1 & 2 Intervention: Peer Mediation, Jenna Strawhun, Ken Parnell, Reece L. Peterson, Shir Palmon

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Conclusion

The benefits of a peer mediation program can be school-wide. These programs can promote a change in attitude toward conflict, as students improve their perspective taking skills, develop leadership skills, learn to tolerate alternative points of view, and realize that they can respond in a more constructive way to frustrating circumstances. The strategies and skills learned become a process that defines values and leads to school-wide growth (Rogers, 1994). Peer mediation programs can provide a school with a positive climate. It is also an alternative to traditional disciplinary practices, but most importantly, students will learn conflict resolution and problem-solving …

The Experiences Of Gay And Lesbian College Athletes, Channell Barbour

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of gay and lesbian college student athletes. Participants of the study were given an opportunity to share their stories about their lived experiences on college campuses as gay or lesbian student athletes. The primary research question explored was, What are the experiences of gay and lesbian college student athletes on college campuses? Other questions that guided this study included, What impact does self-disclosing as gay or lesbian have on student athletes’ sport participation? How does the larger campus environment impact gay and lesbian student athletes’ overall collegiate experiences? Furthermore, this …

Take Course Content, Sauté It With Blogs And Sprinkle It With Information Literacy, Tatiana Pashkova-Balkenhol, Elizabeth Kocevar-Weidinger

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2012

Learn how we collaborated with faculty members for different blogging assignments that targeted general audiences. In one class, the focus was to teach students how to find copyright-friendly multimedia and cite scholarly research, which was to be accessed by a global audience. In the other class, the emphasis was to help students find reliable, free resources and cite them using a blogging citation style. As a number of students, who self-publish, increases, discover how we met the challenge of teaching students how to find, use, and cite information for life-long learning and effective communication in their local and global communities.

A Revamped Menu For Information Literacy Instruction: Catering To Newly Admitted Doctoral Students, Michelle T. Allen

LOEX Conference Proceedings 2012

A review of the library literature has uncovered very little research about effective instruction for newly admitted university doctoral students. Library instruction for these students is mainly focused on workshops for conducting a literature review. This assistance is relevant later in their studies, when they are publishing journal articles and writing a dissertation proposal, but doctoral students also have unique needs their first year, when they are adjusting to the program demands and preparing for comprehensive exams.

Faculty buy-in and enthusiasm were the most important factors for getting approval from my department in the spring of 2011 to develop an …

Cross Cultural Analysis For Training And Facilitating Latin-American Audiences, Jose P. Alcazar

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is to help Creative Problem Solving (CPS) trainers and facilitators to improve the efficacy when working with Hispanic groups and individuals, either in a personal or in organizational environments. This project will guide the facilitators to use a more appropriate tools that will allow the resource group to feel more comfortable during the idea generation, creating an environment more according to the believes and behavioral habits; and the client to feel more confident to converge and make decisions accordingly to the initial goals. When training people in CPS, the project will align the methodology and …

Til Death Do Us Part: Examining Race And Gender Differences In Perceptions Of Divorce, Victoria Caitlyn Jones

XULAneXUS

No abstract provided.

The Santa Clara Strength Of Religious Faith Questionnaire (Scsorf): A Validation Study On Iranian Muslim Patients Undergoing Dialysis, Amir H. Pakpour, Thomas G. Plante, Mohsen Saffari, Bengt Fridlund

Psychology

The Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF) is an often used and validated scale that is uncommonly utilized in culturally diverse populations. The purpose of this research investigation was to adapt the SCSORF for use among Iranian Muslim patients undergoing dialysis and to examine the reliability and validity of the scale among this population. A total of 428 patients (228 females, 200 males, M age = 52.2 years, SD = 10) were selected from five dialysis center in Tehran and Qazvin, Iran. A comprehensive forward–backward translation system was used for cross-cultural translation. Patients completed a baseline questionnaire obtaining …

Esl Composition Ii-Section 1937: Fall 2014, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

SWOSU ESL Composition II Anthology

No abstract provided.

Learning The Intention Embedded In The Natural Language Texts: Focused Studies On Connotation And Deception, Song Feng

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

In natural-language texts, certain information intended by the author, such as connotation, deception, sarcasm, humor, may not be stated explicitly. Recognizing such authorial intention is one of the keys to truly understanding human communications. There are rapidly increasing interests in uncovering the intention that is embedded in the textual content for real-life applications, such as opinion mining, deception detection, news-gathering, text generation, and educational testing. However, identifying the intended information computationally can be very challenging as it usually requires appropriate syntactic and semantic schemes for interpretations or inferences, and sometimes, the factor of the world knowledge. Previous work addressing authorial …

Women's Health And Abortion Culture In China: Policy, Perception And Practice , Naomi Bouchard

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since China’s implementation of the Family Planning Policy in 1973, much research has been dedicated to analyzing the effects of a policy that strictly controls the reproductive lives of a population now comprisedof 1.35 billion people. Analyses focus on the rise of abortions in China, now at an annual rate of at least 13 million, but offer little insight into the perceptions of the population in regard to China’s new abortion culture. This study aims to shed light on current perceptions through a range of in-person, qualitative interviews conducted in Kunming, China. The study is limited to a sample size …