Digital Commons Network^™

The Basic Trait Of Antagonism: An Unfortunately Underappreciated Construct, Donald R. Lynam, Joshua D. Miller

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Antagonism, the low pole of Agreeableness, references traits related to immorality, combativeness, grandiosity, callousness, and distrustfulness. It is a robust correlate of externalizing behaviors such as antisocial behavior, aggression, and substance use; in fact, in many cases, it is the strongest trait correlate. It represents the core of many important and impactful psychopathological constructs (e.g., psychopathy, antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders). It is also central to models of general and disordered personality, psychopathology, and interpersonal behavior. As Neuroticism is core to understanding the intense distress and suffering that comes with internalizing disorders, Antagonism is core to understanding the impairment and …

Sexual Abuse And Assault Against Minors: A Spatial Application Of Routine Activity Theory, John Ropp

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in criminological theory have changed the way we approach age-old questions of criminality. Routine activity theory, hotspots analyses, and spatial-statistical models have become popular methods of investigating criminal phenomena. This study tests the applicability of spatial analyses and routine activity theory by examining the relationship between a geographically-measured lack of guardianship composite score and the occurrence of child sexual abuse (CSA) and sexual assault perpetrated against minors (SAAM). Moran’s I, single kernel interpolation, dual kernel interpolation, and spatial lag regression are used as methods of analysis for this study. Strong evidence of spatial clustering is observed and a …

Public Spheres Of Influence And The Effects Of The Alt-Right: A Qualitative Study Of Conservative Counter Spheres Through Representative Media Outlets, Luke Yeates

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary understanding of Habermasian public spheres of influence points to a conglomeration of competing counter-spheres all vying for hegemonic control. The interaction of these spheres creates dynamic and shifting landscapes through which individuals and news media outlets maneuver. One of the larger influential groups in the United States is the establishment conservative counter-sphere, but recent political developments have given rise to a new counter-sphere, one that is increasingly racist and violent. The alt-right has grown in its political influence since the 2016 presidential election and its presence is likely having an effect on larger, more established groupings as it vies …

Police Use Of Force: Examining The Factors Relating To Police Officers Shooting Unarmed Black Males, De Lacy D. Davis

Education Doctoral

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors relating to police officers shooting unarmed Black males and to seek to understand what impact, if any, a police officer’s race, age, years of service, or place of residence has on the decision to shoot an armed or unarmed suspect. The study examined whether or not these factors impacted the decision-making process in shoot/don’t shoot scenarios. Thirty sworn police officers participated in the quantitative study that was conducted using a Ti Lab firearms high-fidelity video simulator and a laser-modified Sig Sauer P380 handgun to engage in four shoot/don’t shoot video …

911 Dispatchers: Investigating Their Knowledge Of Eyewitness Evidence Collection, Samantha A. Kosziollek

Student Theses

911 dispatchers are often the first contact in an emergency, playing a critical role in the investigative process. Presently, a new bill is seeking to nationally reclassify these communications officers, recognizing them as vital first responders, as their initial collection of eyewitness evidence aid in the attainment of crucial information and detailed descriptions of an accident or crime. However, only one study (Kassis, 2017), to date, has examined the training of 911 dispatchers, as well as their self-reported knowledge of the potential influences their language could have on an eyewitness’ memory. While this research highlighted disparities between the perceived role …

Do Psychopathic Traits Influence Distractibility By Empathy-Eliciting Pictures?, Priya M. Reji

Student Theses

Empathy is a crucial component in forming interpersonal connections, and reflects the ability to share and understand the feelings of others. Psychopathy is often associated with a reduced ability to feel and display empathetic concern towards other people. The Response Modulation Hypothesis argues that such individuals have an attentional deficit, which makes it difficult for them to shift focus between stimuli, thus individuals who have high scores on the interpersonal-affective factor of psychopathy have an increased ability to ignore emotional stimuli that are goal-irrelevant. The current study investigated whether psychopathic traits would influence distractibility on an emotional Stroop (eStroop) task. …

Archival Offender Records Analysis: Examining Patient Abuses In Tennessee, Wahtawah Battle

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This quantitative causal-comparative study was designed to examine potential relationships between independent variables (job level, dependency of patient, work environments, sex, and race) related to health care practitioner offenders and the dependent variable (types of abuse) in Tennessee from 2006 to 2015. A total of 227 practitioners who were either licensed, certified, or trained in their perspective professional practice or job level, convicted of abuse, physical/emotional abuse and financial abuse, were examined from criminal and civil dispositions. The Pearson’s Chi-square was used to evaluate the five research questions and test the null hypotheses for potential relationships. Additional testing with the …

The Prisoner As Object: Rhetorical Agency And The Literacy Of Prison Tattooing, Rebecca R. Reyes

Theses and Dissertations

Prison is an environment by which man is no longer a man. In an institution designed to limit the agency of incarcerated individuals, a literacy event has unfolded through the rhetorical practice of prison tattooing that allows individuals to re/gain their agency. Tattoos allow for the incarcerated, who are seen as state property, to break down the dehumanizing assemblage that has been created. The body, now an object, becomes a site for rhetorical communication where an emergent agency develops within the relationship of all intra-acting factors. I analyze and build upon ambient rhetoric, visual rhetoric, Kairos, and counternarratives to …

Minding The Gaps In Lawyers' Rules Of Professional Conduct, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What's Cookin'?: An Analysis Of Food As A Method Of Control In The Penal System, Zoe Livengood

Master's Theses

According to Garland (2001), the U.S. correctional system is a reflection of the culture of control that exists in American society. One way the correctional system exerts control is through food. This concept partnered with Foucault’s ideas about the evolution of punishment and the criminal justice system as an institution creates the theoretical foundation for food as a method of control in the correctional system.

Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study examined food as a method of control in three southern Mississippi jails in order to understand how food is a contested space for control between jail staff and …

From The Coils Of The Anaconda, Restriction Of Constitutional Amendment By Popular Initiative In Montana Association Of Counties V. State, Ryan Douglas

Montana Law Review

This note examines the ways in which Montana Association of Counties concerns Montana law, elections, and history. While it is now nearly futile to suggest any regulation of campaign speech based on the speaker's corporate identity, it is possible to limit the influence of outsiders on the political process and fundamental text of the state. Part II discusses the historical development of the statutory initiative and referendum regime that existed under the 1889 Constitution and tracks its transition to the constitutional amendment by popular initiative process that emerged as part of Montana's 1972 Constitution. Part III describes the factual background, …

Making The Modern American Legal Profession, 1969–Present, Michael Ariens

St. Mary's Law Journal

The American legal profession has changed dramatically over the past half-century greatly due to the solution and problem of “scale.” This was most noticeable after the American Bar Association’s adoption of the Code of Professional Responsibility. The reputation of lawyers and the legal community would continue to evolve in the eyes of the public. As such, the demand for lawyers and large law firms who had the capacity and means to handle such vast and varied issues would present itself. The increasing demand from large law firms over the years led to unprecedented growth and impact to the way in …

Teen Dating Violence In A Sample Of High School Students In The Rio Grande Valley, Gabriela Ontiveros

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the extent of teenage dating violence (TDV) perpetration and victimization among a sample of high school students in the Rio Grande Valley and its relationship with the occurrence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and exposure to interparental violence. Two hundred and twenty participants out of 426 were eligible for analyses. Rates of male and female physical abuse perpetration and victimization were similar although females reported significantly higher perpetration and males higher victimization rates. Regression analyses indicated that females exposed to interparental violence reported higher rates of overall TDV perpetration and physical abuse perpetration.

Females with higher occurrences …

Justice On The Line: Prosecutorial Screening Before Arrest, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Police make more than eleven million arrests every year. Yet prosecutors dismiss about 25% of criminal charges with no conviction being entered. Needless arrests are therefore clogging the criminal justice system and harming criminal defendants. For instance, Freddie Gray was fatally injured in police custody after being arrested for possession of a switchblade knife. Prosecutors later announced, however, that they did not believe the knife was actually illegal. If prosecutors had to approve warrantless arrests before police could take suspects into custody, Freddie Gray would still be alive. Yet prosecutors’ offices almost never dictate who the police should or should …

An Instrument At The Forefront Of Social Change: The Legacy Of Joaquin G. Ávila, Steven W. Bender

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Salt Lake Tribune And Its Reporter, Matthew Piper, Plaintiff And Appellee, V. The Utah State Records Committee, Defendant, And Brigham Young University, Intervenor And Appellant., Utah Supreme Court

Utah Supreme Court Briefs (2000–2020)

Brief of Amici Curiae Of the brechner center for freedom of information, student press law center, KPCW, the Daily Herald, the Standard Examiner, KSTU-Fox 13, the Associated Press, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Society of Professional Journalists in support of Plaintiff-Appellee

Social Anxiety And Sexual Victimization In A Latina Sample: A Moderated Mediation, Andrew E. Dials

Theses and Dissertations

The current study sought to explore the relationships between social anxiety, sexual victimization, acculturation, and alcohol use. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationship between social anxiety and sexual victimization in a 100% Latina sample.

It was seen that social anxiety predicted severity of sexual victimization, but not presence or absence of sexual victimization experience. It was also seen that while alcohol did not predict severity of sexual victimization experience, it did predict presence or absence of sexual victimization experience. Results, clinical implications, and future research directions are discussed.

Defending The Marital Sphere: A Review Of Church, State, And Family, Donald Roth

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Witte draws deeply on history, theology, and philosophy to articulate a robust conception of family that we could benefit from adopting."

Posting about the book Church, State, and Family from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/defending-the-marital-sphere-a-review-of-church-state-and-family/

The Impact Of A Social Emotional Learning Curriculum On The Social-Emotional Competence Of Elementary-Age Students, Michelle Dunn

All Dissertations

This study investigated the impact of a social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum on the social-emotional competence skills of second grade students in the general education classroom. Twelve classrooms across three schools in a school district in the Southeastern United States participated; one school was considered low poverty and two schools were considered high poverty. Results indicated medium to large effect sizes in all dependent measures in the low poverty treatment condition (.83 to 10.69). All but one teacher rating were also medium to large (.53 to 1.49). The student ratings were inconsistent across conditions, with medium and large positive and negative …

We The People: These United Divided States, Catherine Powell

Cardozo Law Review

In the wake of President Trump's announcement that he will withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, then-California Governor Jerry Brown called on the President to fight climate change or to "get out of the way" while the rest of the world works to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy. Similarly, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg-now a United Nations (U.N.) Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change-said, "If Washington won't lead, then mayors and governors will." Indeed, Trump's threat to withdraw has not only been met with widespread criticism and derision abroad …

Black Church Advocacy In The Era Of Mass Incarceration: A Phenomenological Study, Yolande A. Cadore

Education Doctoral

The purpose of this research study was to examine the response of Black church pastors to Alexander’s (2010) observation in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness of a “relative quiet” and “eerie silence” in the civil rights community and to explore factors that influenced Black pastors’ actions to address the mass incarceration problem between 2012 and 2015 subsequent to studying The New Jim Crow. Utilizing the phenomenological approach, participants for this study were purposefully sampled from a national database of Black pastors in the following regions: Northeast, Midwest, and South. Data collected from conducting 11 …

Does The Decriminalization Of Prostitution Reduce Rape And Sexually Transmitted Disease? A Review Of Cunningham And Shah Findings, Lily Lachapelle, Clare Schneider, Melanie Shapiro, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In 2013, research findings by Cunningham and Shah claimed that rape and sexually transmitted diseases were reduced by decriminalized prostitution in Rhode Island. The original unpublished claims have received wide media coverage which have gone unexamined. This review finds errors in their analyses. One error is the date when prostitution was decriminalized in Rhode Island. Cunningham and Shah claim that prostitution was decriminalized in 2003. Our analysis finds the date of decriminalization of prostitution was 1980. The change in the start date of decriminalization significantly alters the analysis and the findings. Another error results from Cunningham and Shah using an …

Pathways To Delinquent And Sex Offending Behavior: The Role Of Childhood Adversity And Environmental Context In A Treatment Sample Of Male Adolescents, Kelcey Puszkiewicz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to more types of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has been associated with a greater likelihood of general and sexual offending behaviors. However, few studies exist that consider both the impact of varied ACE exposures and community correlates on pathways to offending behaviors in adolescents who have engaged in sexually abusive behaviors. The current study examined these pathways using data collected from archival records of male adolescents (N= 285) who had received treatment for sexually abusive behavior at a youth facility. Structural equation modeling revealed a three-factor model for ACEs, which included: nonsexual abuse and neglect; household dysfunction; …

A Brief History And Overview, Elaine M. Lasda

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

Chapter One from the book, The New Metrics: Practical Assessment of Research Impact

Provides an introduction, background information and overview of bibliometrics. Describes the new contexts in which bibliometric indicators are being used in specialized situations, and introduces five case studies where such metrics are being used in new ways.

Algorithmic Discrimination Is An Information Problem, Ignacio N. Cofone

UC Law Journal

While algorithmic decision-making has proven to be a challenge for traditional antidiscrimination law, there is an opportunity to regulate algorithms through the information that they are fed. But blocking information about protected categories will rarely protect these groups effectively because other information will act as proxies. To avoid disparate treatment, the protected category attributes cannot be considered; but to avoid disparate impact, they must be considered. This leads to a paradox in regulating information to prevent algorithmic discrimination. This Article addresses this problem. It suggests that, instead of ineffectively blocking or passively allowing attributes in training data, we should modify …

The Torture Debate And The Toleration Of Torture, Jessica Wolfendale

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Language Access In Early And Late Spanish-English Bilinguals: An Erp Study, Lissete Gimenez-Arce

Student Theses

Research suggests that code-switching between two languages is possible because there is nonselective access to both languages, i.e., both languages are interdependent and stored in a shared lexicon. In this study, we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to measure the neural processes associated with language access, in particular, the ERP components: N200 and N400. Although previous studies have utilized these ERPs to investigate language access using interlingual homographs, i.e., words that look the same in two languages but have different meanings, these have focused on comparisons of monolingual and bilinguals. In contrast, we used a design that looked at Spanish …

"They Think We’Re The Drama-Makers”: Examining Middle-Class African American Girl Perceptions Of School Discipline And Mistreatment, Asha M. Ralph

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Historically in the United States, African Americans have faced much adversity in the fight towards educational equality. Beginning with the complete denial of education during slavery, the struggle to attain an education continued following the Civil War, throughout Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. Their formal education remained segregated from white students and was often severely underfunded. Ultimately, Plessy v. Ferguson’s 1896 “separate but equal” decision was challenged and the Supreme Court justices unanimously voted that racial segregation of children in public-schools was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Although major advances have been seen over …

Predictors Of Zero Tolerance Policy Violations Among High School And Middle School Students, Anthony J. Roberson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study embarked on identifying social and economic variables to predict violations of zero tolerance policies. The objective of this study was to identify a set of variables that may predict circumstance that lead a student to violate zero tolerance policies. This study explored whether a set of five risk factors: (i) grade level, (ii) retention, (iii) suspension, (iv) race, and (v) gender can predict the criterion variable, zero tolerance policies violation. The research design supports the examination of the null hypothesis of no predictive relationship between the predictor variables grade level, suspension, race, and gender and the criterion variable …

Deferred Prosecution Agreements In Singapore: What Is The Appropriate Standard For Judicial Approval, Eunice Chua, Benedict Wei Qi Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Originating from the US, deferred prosecution agreements (“DPAs”) have made their way to the UK through the Crime and Courts Act 2013 and Singapore through the Criminal Justice Reform Act 2018. The Singapore model for approval of DPAs draws heavily from the UK and both require proof to a court that DPAs are in the “interests of justice” and that their terms are “fair, reasonable and proportionate” before DPAs can be approved. This paper considers the theoretical basis for the court’s approval of DPAs, critically examines the application of the tests for approval of DPAs in the UK and considers …