Digital Commons Network^™

Perceptions Of Future Community And Individual Well-Being In Rural Nebraska, Amanda L. Kowalewski

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Populations of rural areas continue to decline, yet some communities are more vibrant than ever. While past research has studied current satisfaction or well-being, few have examined future well-being. Using an ordinal logistic regression and combining primary and secondary data sources, this study investigates the predictors of rural Nebraskan’s sense of future well-being, both at the community and individual levels. The model indicates that resilience may be more important in well-being than social capital. Additionally, certain satisfaction indicators are more important than others. Factor analysis was employed to re-index variables, and findings were similar. Social capital, resilience, and quality of …

Power And Agency In Teachers' Digital Writing Feedback: A Virtual Education Environment, Alicia Kelley

All Dissertations

This multiple case study explored how adolescents and their teachers in a virtual education environment navigated the process of teachers’ digital writing feedback and its accompanying power dynamics. The study addressed a need in literacy research to understand how digital writing feedback functions in virtual schools due to concerns related to lower standardized test scores in reading among virtual schools (Fitzpatrick et al., 2020) and large increases in virtual school enrollment in recent years (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2015). This move toward virtual learning was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Farrow et al., 2020). The study’s theoretical framework …

Judicial Application Of Strict Liability Local Ordinances, Guyora Binder, Brenner Fissell

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Practices Between Law Enforcement And Secondary School Administrators Through A Trauma-Informed Lens, Ellen Howe

Education Doctoral

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the level of collaboration and preparation between school administrators and police officers relating to trauma-informed practices with secondary school-aged students, including those students with traumatic histories. This study explored the perspectives of police officers and school administrators when working to address disciplinary situations of secondary school students. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) “Four Rs” of trauma—realization, recognition, response, and resisting retraumatization—were used as a framework to inform the study. Data were collected through individual, semi-structured interviews of secondary school principals and the corresponding police officers affiliated with …

Evaluating The 2019 New York State Bail Reform On Quality Of Life Offenses In New York City, Nodira Pirmukhamedova

Student Theses

Using the NYPD Complaint Data, this study compares the frequency of nine quality of life (QOL) misdemeanor complaints (n = 196,577) in New York City (NYC) before (n = 108,382) and after the 2019 NYS Bail Reform Act (n = 88,195), which eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanor crimes. The results show an overall decrease (18.6%) in nine QOL misdemeanor complaints in NYC after bail reform with a large effect (d = 1.317). The main limitation of this study is that it did not control for the impact of COVID-19 in 2020 on the criminal justice system’s shifting priorities. Another …

Spectrum Sharing And Interference In Smart Homes, Biswajit Kumar Dash

Theses and Dissertations

Internet of Things networks using Zigbee are very popular in smart homes. However, Zigbee networks are vulnerable to the interference of Wi-Fi networks because they share the same 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical radio frequency band. Studies have shown that weaker Zigbee signals might be significantly interfered by stronger Wi-Fi signals. This type of interference may cause severe problems when these types of networks coexist in an indoor environment such as in a smart home. In this thesis, the performance of a Zigbee network with and without the presence of a Wi-Fi network has been evaluated in …

Utilizing Structured Worksheets To Strengthen Resident Teaching On The Ob/Gyn Clerkship, Matthew R Carroll, Charlie C Kilpatrick, Grace Johnson, Neelima Sukhavasi, Bani M Ratan

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

OBJECTIVE: To determine if structured worksheets can aid resident teaching on the obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) clerkship.

DESIGN: We developed structured worksheets to aid residents in teaching medical students. In this pilot study, we measured the impact of the material by conducting end of clerkship focus groups between October 2017 to June 2018 and administering surveys to medical students who had recently completed the clerkship. We performed analyses of the focus group transcriptions for positive and negative themes and analyzed questionnaire data utilizing unpaired t-test and chi-square test to determine whether resident use of structured worksheets influenced student perception of …

Government Expenditure And Economic Dimensions: Determinants Of Fiscal Policy, Jay Pee A. Maalihan

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Government expenditure is a known tool of fiscal policy. For a fiscal policy to fit the economic needs of a country, nuances regarding government expenditure such as economic dimensions must be considered as determinants of fiscal policy. This study assessed an econometric model of the significance of economic dimensions to government expenditure by utilizing data from 50 countries throughout 1999–2019. Hence, statistical tests and econometric methods such as fixed effects regression are executed to determine objectives of interest. This study contributes to the economic undertakings of various countries to plan and implement their strategic economic directions.

Syndemic Of Opioid Crisis And Covid-19 Pandemic: A Call To Invest In Solutions, Manoj Sharma, Kavita Batra

Social and Behavioral Health Faculty Research

Preliminary data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC, 2020] indicated a significant surge in the number of opioid involved deaths amidst COVID-19 pandemic and these trends are concerning, which warrant a collective investment in finding the solutions (Baumgartner & Radley, 2021; Becker & Fiellin, 2020). [...]this editorial aims to reflect on the interaction of the COVID-19 pandemic with the existing opioid crisis and its role in widening the gap of the pre-existing disparities, and discusses implications of practice to protect the health of vulnerable drug-users. Recently, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) allowed take-home …

A Gap Analysis Of Reentry Services For Corrections-Involved Populations In Rural East Tennessee, Alyssa P. Gretak Leal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Returning citizens face a host of barriers when attempting to reintegrate into society; thus, services for these concerns are imperative for successful reintegration. Unfortunately, services are often lacking, particularly in rural communities which tend to be overlooked in reentry research. In order to better determine service need for justice-involved populations in rural communities, the current study completed a gap analysis, both inspired and supplemented, by qualitative information collected from mental health providers (MHPs) in a rural Appalachian region of Tennessee. To complete the gap analysis, an estimation of need was collected via local crime statistics. Using this data, a two-sample …

Level Of Engagement With Social Networking Services And Fear Of Online Victimization: The Role Of Online Victimization Experiences, Yeonjae Park, Lynne M. Vieraitis

International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime

No abstract provided.

The Curious Cases Of Cancel Culture, Loydie Solange Burmah

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Cancel culture is a complex phenomenon that challenges our notions of civic practices, perpetuates surveillance practices amongst individuals who encourage digital public shaming and obscures communal ideas regarding accountability. Hence, it is imperative to complicate and nuance “cancel culture” to understand the different meanings derived from its diverse mechanizations. Other matrices such as power, platform governance, decoloniality, and more bolster ideas about the phenomenon’s extensive sociocultural reach. Using a critical digital ethnographic approach, I exemplify with the analysis two cancel culture cases uncovering themes such as selective cancelations, cancelation effectiveness, performative activism, performative wokeness, hypocrisy, victimization, and empathy. This study …

An Analytic Hierarchy Process And Markov Chain Based Approach For Condition Rating And Dynamic Service Life Prediction Of Retaining Walls, Abdulazeez Lawal

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Retaining walls are typically considered auxiliary assets within the global transportation asset management scheme. However, failure cases to this structure class have attracted more attention to retaining wall assets. The possibility of failure also helps validate Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) requirements that transportation agencies develop asset management plans. Consequently, this thesis represents the development of a framework that combines the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Markov Chain to rate and predict the future condition of retaining walls respectively. Based on the Field Survey of candidate retaining walls, the research uses AHP for hierarchical configuration and …

Transformational Learning In A Washington State Veterans Therapeutic Court: A Holistic, Multiple-Case Design Study, Thomas Lee Williams

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this holistic, multiple-case design case study was to describe the transformative learning journey of justice-involved veterans assigned to one of Washington State’s veterans treatment courts (VTC). Veterans treatment courts are designed to help justice-involved veterans break their criminogenic cycle, but the VTC’s efficacy is still debated. Yet, when applied to other modalities, transformative learning has proven effective in changing counter-societal behavior. The guiding theory for this study is Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning, one of the premiere adult learning theories, and will be used as the rubric to evaluate if veteran transformative learning indeed occurs. The central …

Drone Technology In Agriculture Appraisal, Cj Johnson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this project is to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of implementing a UAV/drone technology within agricultural appraisals. This project is categorized into four categories; introduction, literature review, methodology, and conclusions. The methodology portion of the project is a capital budget analysis measuring the effectiveness of UAVs within the appraisal department. The capital budget will be further developed by conducting a Present Value (NPV) analysis. The NPV analysis consists of a five-year NPV analysis measuring changes in productivity and total revenue caused by UAV technology.

Results were found by using @Risk simulation to simulate data gathered during the project. …

Safety In Numbers: Models Of Pedestrian And Bicycle Crash Frequency And Severity At Signalized Intersections In Utah Using Innovative Measure Of Exposure, Ahadul Islam

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Recent trends indicate a dramatic increase in both the number and share of pedestrian and bicyclist injuries and fatalities nationally and in many states. This study aimed at understanding (geometric, traffic, operational, and other) factors associated with pedestrian and bicycle safety and also to assist in the prioritization and selection of countermeasures to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety at signalized intersections. Several negative binomial models were estimated to investigate factors affecting pedestrian and bicycle crash frequency. The models suggested several characteristics of the road network, land use, built environment, and neighborhood sociodemographics were significantly associated with more (or fewer) pedestrian …

Systematic Review Of Alternative Interventions For Construction Workers To Manage Work-Related Musculoskeletal Pain And Discomfort, Isaac Abraham Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background: The prevalence of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Pain and Discomfort (WRMSPD) among construction workers in 2017 was almost 20,000 injuries. Close to 60% were overexertion, others included lifting and lowering. The most common form of WRMSPD could originate from the upper back to lower back and neck pain. It was reported that the highest prevalence of WRMSPD were in the upper extremities (nearing 60%) because of the physically demanding factor of the job (heavy lifting and repetitive movement). Over 250,000 cases were reported to be WRMSPD in the private sector of the U.S. Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review was …

A Study On The Beliefs Of Juvenile Justice Practitioners On Youth Behavior And Treatment, Chase S. Christenson

Masters Theses

The following study was conducted to determine the beliefs juvenile justice practitioners (police officers, juvenile probation officers, and youth specialists) have about youth behavior through the lens of Wolfe’s (1998) Entitlement Theory. The four beliefs explored between juvenile justice practitioners are: (1) beliefs about why youth act out, (2) what changes youth behavior, (3) an expectation of youth obedience to authority, and (4) attachment relationships influencing youth behavior. The researcher used a 43-item survey measured with a 5-point Likert scale and open-ended questions that were administered to West Michigan’s juvenile justice practitioners through Qualtrics. Responses were analyzed using an ANOVA …

An Assessment Of Hotel Guests’ Perceptions Of Preventive Safety Measures In The Era Of Covid-19, Un Hyeok Ko

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the era of COVID-19, hospitality was one of the industries that was most severely impacted by the virus. Spread of the virus was rapid enough to force hotels to close properties worldwide, and hotels were required to adopt safety measures and protocols in order to re-open or remain open. New types of measures, some never seen before the pandemic, were created and implemented throughout the hotel industry.

The main purpose of this study is to assess guests' perception of preventive safety initiatives and measures in the era of COVID-19 and to determine their level of satisfaction with such measures. …

Risk-Based Freeway Merging And Lane-Changing Decisions For Autonomous Vehicles, Weimin Jin

All Dissertations

The safe freeway merging and lane-changing operation for fully Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) in mixed traffic (i.e., the presence of AVs and non-AVs in the traffic stream) is a challenging task. The AV merging and lane-changing operation could increase crash risks and reduce operational efficiency significantly in mixed traffic.

This dissertation quantifies the freeway merging crash risk and develops a freeway merging decision strategy based on crash risk assessment for an AV attempting to merge in the target lane with non-AVs. The performance of the risk-based merging decision strategy is evaluated in uncongested, near-congested, and congested traffic conditions. The analyses show …

Examining Antecedents To Accuracy- And Defense-Motivated Information Insufficiency In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Timothy K.F. Fung, Po Yan Lai, Robert J. Griffin, Sharon Dunwoody

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Although the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model recognizes that people seek and process risk information in various ways and for various motives, no research, to date, has examined the model beyond accuracy motive. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to advance the model by examining (1) the antecedents that induce individuals’ accuracy- and defense-motivated information insufficiency and (2) the effect of a broader array of the RISP’s perceived hazard characteristics and affective responses. To do so, we used the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study because COVID-19 is a newly emergent infectious disease with highly politicized, controversial …

“My Bruises Are Inward:” A Study Of Mental Trauma In The American Civil War, Cody Turnbaugh

Master's Theses

War is traumatic. Since the American Psychiatric Association first recognized post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 1980, living veterans of combat have been diagnosed at an alarmingly high rate. However, mental trauma related diagnoses have existed for centuries, including several that were identified around the time of the American Civil War. This thesis argues that Civil War soldiers experienced mental trauma related to their military service. It does so through three lenses. Focused on the mental trauma among Northern veterans, this study investigates in particular the relationship between mental trauma and socioeconomic status. It analyzes the experiences of both white and …

Different Class: The Creation Of The Premier League And The Commercialization Of English Football, Colin Damms

Master's Theses

This project examines how English football evolved from a culture of hooliganism and poor upkeep into a popular and enterprising industry across the globe. The Premier League and its stars marketed the English game and its culture worldwide. Since the 1990s England has established itself as the leading club footballing nation. I argue that through football, and the culture and economics behind it, we can see the ways in which England attempted to change its image in the modern world. In the 1980s and 1990s Britain was confronted with its own established culture of violence, bigotry, and nationalist pride, particularly …

How Do You Visit: Identifying Addicts From Large-Scale Transit Records Via Scenario Deep Embedding, Canghong Jin, Dongkai Chen, Zhiwei Lin, Zemin Liu, Minghui Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Identification of individuals based on transit modes is of great importance in user tracking systems. However, identifying users in real-life studies is not trivial owing to the following challenges: 1) activity data containing both temporal and spatial context are high-order and sparse; 2) traditional two-step classifiers depend on trajectory patterns as input features, which limits accuracy especially in the case of scattered and diverse data; 3) in some cases, there are few positive instances and they are difficult to detect. Therefore, approaches involving statistics-based or trajectory-based features do not work effectively. Deep learning methods also suffer from the problem of …

Why Familial Searches Of Civilian Dna Databases Can And Should Survive Carpenter, Jasper Ford-Monroe

UC Law Journal

Over the past few years, a powerful new forensic technique has emerged. By uploading DNA from a crime scene to a civilian DNA database, such as GEDmatch, investigators can discover the genetic relatives of the perpetrator and thereby track down the perpetrator himself. This procedure is known as forensic genetic genealogy searching (FGGS), and in under three years it has cracked numerous decades-old cases once thought to be unsolvable.

Concerned about genetic privacy and discrimination, most legal commentators have thus far confronted FGGS with raised hackles. They either argue FGGS is a Fourth Amendment search under Carpenter, or that it …

Raps Sheet, Summer 2021, Retirement Association Of Portland State

RAPS Sheet: Monthly Newsletter

No abstract provided.

23rd Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act Powerpoint Presentation 07-30-2021, Office Of Attorney General State Of Rhode Island, Peter F. Neronha

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

No Justice...No Peace Without Reform!, Leon Frazier

Miscellaneous Advocacy

Booklet on criminal legal reform by retired police chief Leon Frazier.

Board Of Trustees Agenda, Jul. 30 2021, Indiana State University Board Of Trustees

Board of Trustees

No abstract provided.

Board Of Trustees Minutes, Jul. 30 2021, Indiana State University Board Of Trustees

Board of Trustees

No abstract provided.