Digital Commons Network^™

Diversity On Human Difference: Unanimity On Human Responsibility, Colin A. Chapman, Michael A. Huffman

Animal Sentience

Further commentaries on our original target article add important new points and expand our understanding of the differences between animals, particularly between non-human and human primates. But whether they affirm or deny that humans are unique, all commentators agree that our special abilities mean we should be taking responsibility for the care of nature and the plants and animals it supports. We ask: is humankind doing this?

Risk Factors And Patterns Of Traumatic Dental Injuries Among Indian Adolescents, Ramesh Nagarajappa, Gayathri Ramesh, Roshan Uthappa, Subramania Pillai Karthiga Kannan, Saleem Shaikh

Journal of Dental Sciences

Abstract Background/purpose Dental injuries in children have functional, esthetic, and psychological effects, with consequences for the child, parent, and dentist. This study assessed the pattern of traumatic dental injuries and their relationship with predisposing factors among 12- and 15-year-old school children in Kanpur, India. Materials and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 1100 boys and girls aged 12 or 15 years. Anterior permanent teeth were examined based on the modified Ellis classification. Type of damage, size of incisal overjet, and adequacy of lip coverage were also recorded. Chi-square tests and multiple regression analysis were used for statistical analysis. Results …

Adytrack: A Model For Structural Analysis Of Railroad Trackbed Using Random Finite Element Method, Asif Arshid

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Railroads are playing pivotal role to the economic growth of United States and trackbeds ensure their safe and smooth operations. However, reliable trackbed performance prediction has always been challenging due to many reasons, for instance materials characterization, deteriorations of materials and geometries due to railways operation and environmental changes etc. All these factors exhibit varying levels of intrinsic variabilities and uncertainties. These variations and uncertainties are completely ignored in most of the state-of-the-practice problems due to lack of availability of robust models that can characterize variations in materials, geometries, and/or loadings. In this study, a Random Finite Element based three-dimensional …

“I Love You, But Shut Up And Do Something About It.”: An Appraisal Theory Exploration Of Tough Love, Samantha Jo Severance

Communication

This study aims to better understand tough love as a communication interaction, specifically focusing on defining and understand tough love from a receiver’s perspective. Thirteen respondents between the ages of 18-28 were recruited from a mid-sized Midwestern university. Flexible in-depth interviews were conducted given the exploratory nature of this study. Lazarus’ Appraisal Theory was used as a lens to better understand tough love as a process. Analysis of the data found that emotions in the primary appraisal phase are often negative, with codes such as hurt, angry, and embarrassed arising in the data. The secondary phase demonstrated the intentionality of …

Design Of A Game For Cybersecurity Awareness, Jagjot Bhardwaj

Computer Science

The primary objective of this paper is to use the Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy educational objectives in creating a game called Cyber Air-Strike for learning basic concepts of cybersecurity. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy is used to design the course material as it makes the learning process easy and effective. This taxonomy divides the course material into increasing levels of complexity starting from basic to advanced. A comprehensive literature was reviewed to understand the research domain and identify the gap in previous research. Cyber Air-Strike aims to target amateur computer users. They will acquire knowledge about the basic concepts of cybersecurity, the most …

Chasing The Dragon: The Social Construction Of The U.S. Opioid Epidemic, Jennafer Vondal

Criminal Justice and Political Science

Utilizing a social construction perspective, this study uses a mixed method approach to examine the opioid epidemic. The study begins by identifying the numerous claims-making groups along with conducting a content analysis of the rhetoric and symbols used to legitimize the claims about the opioid epidemic. The data for the content analysis was obtained through a search of the websites, newsrooms, and pressrooms of claims-making groups. Additionally, the study examines and assesses the volume of money that is generated and allocated towards opioid research and prevention in an effort to determine who has more power to influence the policy initiatives. …

Anger From Within: The Role Of Emotions In Disengagement From Violent Extremism, Peter Simi, Steven Windisch, Daniel Harris, Gina Ligon

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

There is growing recognition about the similarities between generic criminality and violent extremism. Using data derived from a unique set of in-depth life history interviews with 40 former U.S. white supremacists, as well as previous studies of criminal desistance, we examine the emotional valence that characterizes actors' descriptions of the disengagement process. More specifically, results suggest that negative emotions (i.e., anger and frustration) directed toward the extremist group and oneself function as a catalyst for disengagement. Negative emotions become a source of motivation in re-evaluating the relative importance of the group as it relates to the individual. Ultimately, the reevaluation …

Reflection: The Las Vegas Strip - Introducing Big Data Into Project Planning For User Informed Design, Evan Lecy

Landscape Architecture Theses

Every world class city has a landmark, in Vegas it is “The Strip." Yet, this important gateway to Las Vegas venues is little more than a 10 lane downtown street controlled by stop lights. Reminiscent of 1970’s streets in downtown Atlanta, LA or Dallas. Many public review platforms such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, we8there, Foursquare, Google places, etc. have collected an increasing amount of feedback in the form of unstructured user reviews. These reviews are self-posted, volunteer created text about user experiences with products and services which differs from surveys asking targeted questions. Studies show that the Hospitality industries adoption of …

Online Blaming And Intimate Partner Violence: A Content Analysis Of Social Media Comments, Jason B. Whiting, Rachael Dansby Olufuwote, Jaclyn D. Cravens-Pickens, Alyssa Banford Witting

Faculty Publications

Social media has become a ubiquitous form of interacting and sharing information. However, comments on social media sites are often aggressive and contemptuous, especially when topics are controversial or politically charged. For example, discussion of intimate partner violence (IPV) tends to provoke strong reactions from outsiders, who make angry or blaming remarks about those involved. Although IPV is common, it has not been widely discussed in popular media until recent years when high-profile cases of abuse have come to light. In 2016, a celebrity accusation of domestic violence led to thousands of comments on social media, with outsiders weighing in …

Addressing Advance Directive In Rural Primary Care North Dakota: Implementing A Tool For Healthcare Providers, Ryan Michael Heisler

Nursing

Advance directives are legal documents developed as a tool to allow patients to express their wishes and allow healthcare providers to educate and converse with their patients on disease prognosis and management. Advance directives promote shared decision making, thus enhancing quality medical decisions, improving quality of care at end-of-life, and under certain circumstances, even decreasing healthcare costs by refusing aggressive treatment (Garrido, Balboni, Maciejewski, Bao, & Prigerson, 2015; Hickman & Pinto, 2014). In the United States, less than 30% of the population have a completed advance directive (De Vleminck et al., 2013; Dunlay, Swetz, Mueller, Roger, 2012). The purpose of …

Perceived Burdensomeness: Exploring Potential Vulnerability Factors, Brandon T. Saxton

Psychology

Suicide affects hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year. Despite many coordinated efforts to address this problem, in multiple domains, these numbers have risen over the last decade. The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide is a relatively recent theory that has received considerable attention and investigation. Perceived burdensomeness is one of the constructs from this theory. The belief that you are a burden on others is a robust predictor of suicidal ideation and, to a less understood extent, suicidal behavior. To my knowledge, few studies have looked at the factors that lead to perceived burdensomeness. This study was …

Assessing The Neural Correlates, Sources And Consequences Of The Attentional Rhythm, Andrea Bocincova

Psychology

Evidence suggests that even when sustained at a single location, spatial attention waxes and wanes over time. These fluctuations are cyclic, lasting about 125-200 ms (i.e., ~4-8 Hz), and are characterized by alternating periods of focused attention to a single location together with exploratory periods during which attention is prone to switching to a new source of stimulation. Despite an increasing interest in this temporal property of spatial attention, multiple aspects of rhythmic attentional sampling remain to be explored. In this dissertation, I introduce and examine three unexplored areas related to this topic. The first area, addressed in Experiment 1, …

Longitudinal Associations Among Personality, Perceived Control, And Health For American And Japanese Aging Adults, Masahiro Toyama

Human Development and Family Science

Perceived control is associated with health throughout adulthood, yet has also been found to decline with age possibly due to age-related experiences of increasing losses and limitations in life circumstances. Perceived control may also be affected by individual personality characteristics, which also predict health through late adulthood. Although previous studies have addressed these associations, research is lacking in examining nuanced associations among personality, perceived control, and health all together as well as age and gender differences in these associations. Moreover, perceived control may be related to individualistic values (e.g., autonomy, agency) that vary cross-culturally and the implications of perceived control …

Peer Crowd Affiliations As Predictors Of Prosocial And Risky Behaviors Among College Students, Vimbayi Sandra Chinopfukutwa

Human Development and Family Science

College students often affiliate with similar peers, forming identity-based peer crowds. Research has shown that affiliations with certain peer crowds is associated with risky behaviors, thus derailing college success. This study examined whether college peer crowd affiliations predicted risky and prosocial behaviors. Participants were 527 students at a public university in the Midwest (aged 18 - 26). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that Counterculture and Athletic/Social affiliations positively predicted risky behaviors. Arts/Ethnic and Scholastic affiliations positively predicted prosocial behaviors and negatively predicted risky behaviors. In addition, hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that gender moderated the relation between peer crowd affiliation …

Supporting Youth Living In Family Homeless Shelters, Kelsy Reynaga

Human Development and Family Science

Supporting youth living in family homeless shelters is important as these families face multiple barriers in their lives. Youth have many strengths that they build upon which can be useful as they bounce from home to home. Youth living in homeless shelters with their family may lack resources to guide them as they navigate life. This paper specifically focuses on the Catholic Charities Emergency Family Homeless Shelter in the city of Des Moines, IA. This is a thirty-day shelter that offers case management for parents but has a lack of programming for youth. This writer reviewed two different family programs …

Automated Speech Recognition In Adult Stroke Survivors: Comparing Human And Computer Transcriptions, Tyson G. Harmon, Adam Jacks, Katarina L. Haley, Gary Bishop

Faculty Publications

Objective: Speech sound errors are common in people with a variety of communication disorders and can result in impaired message transmission to listeners. Valid and reliable metrics exist to quantify this problem, but they are rarely used in clinical settings due to the time-intensive nature of speech transcription by humans. Automated speech recognition (ASR) technologies have advanced substantially in recent years, enabling them to serve as realistic proxies for human listeners. This study aimed to determine how closely transcription scores from human listeners correspond to scores from an ASR system. Patients and Methods: Sentence recordings from 10 stroke survivors with …

Bidirectional Interference Between Simulated Driving And Speaking, Christopher Dromey, Kelsey Simmons

Faculty Publications

Purpose: This study relied on acoustic measures of connected speech and several indices of driving performance to quantify interference between speaking and simulated driving. Method: Three groups of 20 younger (ages 20–30 years), middle-age (ages 40–50 years), and older (ages 60–71 years) adults produced monologues and completed a simulated driving task, which involved maintaining a constant speed and lane position on a freeway. Both tasks were completed separately and concurrently. Results: There were significant divided attention effects, with a reduced speaking time ratio, and increases in vocal intensity, speed variability, and steering wheel adjustments. There was a significant between-subjects age …

Expectations And Challenges Of Non-Native University Writers At The Outset Of Discipline-Specific Study, K. James Hartshorn, Norman W. Evans

Faculty Publications

Little is known about how best to prepare non-native students matriculated at universities in the United States to succeed in discipline-specific writing. Whilesome studies have suggested differences in the types and volumes of writing across disciplines, such studies have compared very few disciplines simultaneously and have not always examined the disciplines most commonly studied by international students. Thus, this study seeks to fill an important gap in the literature by examining the perspectives of university professors regarding their expectations and purposes for student writing as well as their observations about the greatest writing challenges their students face within five of …

Increasing English Learners’ Positive Emotional Response To Learning Through Dance, Grant Eckstein, Elizabeth Hanks

Faculty Publications

This study investigates dance as an English Second Language (ESL) curriculum enhancement. The curriculum utilizes kinesthetic learning, which is a method seldom incorporated in formal academic classrooms (Pourhosein Gilakjani, 2011) despite evidence suggesting that it benefits all students, including those without kinesthetic learning preferences (Schumann, 1997). Supporters believe that the benefits of incorporating movement in the classroom include increased student enjoyment, motivation, and confidence in learning. However, these beliefs are merely anecdotal at present. This study analyzes quantitative questionnaires and qualitative feedback from 26 students who participated in a 4-week long Dance ESL curriculum to determine whether dance-based learning can …

Pain Or Gain? How Business Communication Students Perceive The Outlining Process, Matt Baker

Faculty Publications

This study investigates how students perceive the outlining process. Students in two business communication sections completed a survey regarding outlining perceptions and reasons for outlining or not. Using qualitative content analysis and qualitative coding, the researcher and an independent coder analyzed 34 students’ responses regarding outlining process, use, and reasons for outlining or not. Results indicate that students perceive outlining as more useful if their outlining process includes both organization and content exploration and less useful if it excludes organization or content exploration. Notable reasons for not outlining include concern for outlining time and difficulty generating content for the outline.

Learner Engagement In Blended Learning Environments: A Conceptual Framework, Lisa R. Halverson, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Learner engagement correlates with important educational outcomes, including academic achievement and satisfaction. Although research is already exploring learner engagement in blended contexts, no theoretical framework guides inquiry or practice, and little consistency or specificity exists in engagement definitions and operationalizations. Developing definitions, models, and measures of the factors that indicate learner engagement is important to establishing whether changes in instructional methods (facilitators) result in improved engagement (measured via indicators). This article reviews the existing literature on learner engagement and identifies constructs most relevant to learning in general and blended learning in particular. The authors present a possible conceptual framework for …

Robotic Process Automation In Public Accounting, Lauren A. Cooper, D. Kip Holderness, Trevor L. Sorensen, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

This study investigates the adoption and use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software— often referred to as bots—in the public accounting industry. Accounting firms use RPA software to automate the input, processing, and output of data across computer applications in order to streamline repetitive and mundane business processes. We conducted individual, semi-structured interviews with 14 accounting professionals including at least two RPA leaders at each of the Big 4 accounting firms to gain insights into how RPA software is currently being used. Interviewees note that bots are implemented in all areas of the firm but have gained the most traction …

To Link Or Not To Link? Multiple Team Membership And Unit Performance, Eean R. Crawford, Cody J. Reeves, Greg L. Stewart, Stacy L. Astrove

Faculty Publications

Multiple team membership is common in today’s team-based organizations, but little is known about its relationship with collective effectiveness across teams. We adopted a microfoundations framework utilizing existing individual- and team-level research to develop a higher-level perspective on multiple team membership’s relationship with performance of entire units of teams. We tested our predictions with data collected from 849 primary care units of the Veterans Health Administration serving over 4.2 million patients. In this context, we found multiple team membership is negatively associated with unit performance, and this negative relationship is exacerbated by task complexity.

The Fog Of Warnings: How Non-Essential Notifications Blur With Security Warnings, Anthony Vance, David Eargle, Jeffrey Jenkins, C. Brock Kirwan, Bonnie Brinton Anderson

Faculty Publications

Adherence to security warnings continues to be an important problem in information security. Although users may fail to heed a security warning for a variety of reasons, a major contributor is habituation, which is decreased response to repeated stimulation. However, the scope of this problem may actually be much broader than previously thought because of the neurobiological phenomenon of generalization. Whereas habituation describes a diminished response with repetitions of the same stimulus, generalization occurs when habituation to one stimulus carries over to other novel stimuli that are similar in appearance.

Generalization has important implications for the domains of usable security …

Understanding Unauthorized Access Using Fine-Grained Human-Computer Interaction Data, Michael D. Byrd, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, David Kim, Manasvi Kumar, Andrew W. Schwartz, Joseph S. Valacich, Parker A. Williams, Ryan T. Wright

Faculty Publications

Unauthorized Data Access (UDA) by an internal employee is a major threat to an organization. Regardless of whether the individuals engaged in UDA with malicious intent or not, real-time identification of UDA events and anomalous behaviors is extremely difficult. For example, various artificial intelligence methods for detecting insider threat UDA have become readily available; while useful, such methods rely on post hoc analysis of the past (e.g., unsupervised learning algorithms on access logs). This research-in-progress note reports on if the analysis of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) behaviors, which have been empirically validated in various studies to reveal hidden cognitive state, can …

Theory Of Experiential Career Exploration Technology (Tecet): Increasing Cybersecurity Career Interest Through Playable Case Studies, Justin Scott Giboney, Derek L. Hansen, Tanner Johnson, Desiree Winters, Jason K. Mcdonald, Jonathan Balzotti, Elizabeth Bonsignore

Faculty Publications

There is a large demand to fill cybersecurity jobs. To alleviate this need, it is important to generate interest in cybersecurity as a career. One way to do this is through job shadowing and internships. Using design science principles, we have built and tested a playable case study (PCS) where participants can act out a virtual internship and learn relevant cybersecurity skills. We ran a study with students in introductory university courses where they played through a simulated internship at a penetration testing company called CyberMatics. In the study we showed that a PCS format helps students 1) better understand …

An Empirical Study Of Service Recovery Quality And Customer Retention, Kristen Bell Detienne, Joan Westwood

Faculty Publications

This article proposes and empirically tests an original model of service recovery. Customer loyalty significantly impacts a company’s profitability. Customer satisfaction influences customer loyalty, and perceived recovery quality affects satisfaction. Surveys were mailed to 1,476 customers of a large financial services firm. This study examined how customers’ perceptions of the quality of service recovery efforts differs among customer groups. Customer groups were formed according to differing levels of post-recovery customer loyalty in order to study the impact of perceived service recovery quality on customer loyalty. The results of the study indicate that high- and low-loyalty customer groups differ in their …

“I Must Have Slipped Through The Cracks Somehow”: An Examination Of Coping With Perceived Impostorism And The Role Of Social Support, Richard G. Gardner, Jeffrey S. Bednar, Bryan W. Stewart, James B. Oldroyd, Joseph Moore

Faculty Publications

We use two studies to explore how individuals manage perceptions of impostorism as they train for their future careers. Drawing on interviews with 20 professionals in training, our qualitative analysis uncovered various tactics (both constructive and maladaptive) used by these individuals to cope with perceived impostorism. Among these tactics, seeking social support from individuals outside of their program peer group (e.g., professors, family, friends, and significant others) appeared to be more effective in dampening perceptions of impostorism than seeking support from peers within their program. We use Conservation of Resources Theory (COR) to develop testable hypotheses about this observed relationship …

Factors Influencing Program Impact Evaluation In Cooperative Extension, Jan Ardis Flack

Education

Impact evaluation (IE) has become a major focus of Extension program evaluation during the past three decades, yet Extension professionals continue to struggle to produce well-documented evidence of program impacts (Lamm, 2011; Workman, 2010). This research was primarily a quantitative, non-experimental correlational study of factors associated with Extension educators’ IE behaviors and practices in the North Central Region of the Cooperative Extension service. The study employed a comprehensive, systems approach to explore interrelated individual and organizational factors that affect IE in Extension. A major feature of this research design was the use Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) statistical analysis methodology. The …

Examining The Lived Experiences Of Native American Counselors Working On The Reservation: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Brynn Alexandra Luger

Education

The success of mental health counseling partially depends on the professionals who are providing these services, also on the quality of services they provide. To maximize their efficacy, counselors must achieve and maintain their own personal wellness. However, for counselors who work with people who have experienced trauma, there is an increased chance that these counselors will experience adverse effects from this work. In fact, the impact of trauma on counseling professionals is similar to actually experiencing the traumatic event themselves. Native Americans are more likely than any other racial group in the United States to experience chronic traumatization and …