Digital Commons Network^™

Impact Of Corporate Governance On Financial Reporting And Profitability Of Banking, Susan Ortega

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractA lack of corporate governance and financial reporting may lead to a decrease in profitability and bank closures due to poor management, lack of capital, and liquidity. Based on agency theory, the purpose of this correlational study was to investigate the relationship between corporate governance, financial reporting, and three measures of profitability; return on assets, return on equity, and net interest margin, in 80 banks within the Midwest from 2015–2018. The data were collected from the banks' websites and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The results of the three regression analyses were not significant; however, financial reporting was a …

The Impact Of Gsas, School Size, And Geographic Location On School Climate In South Texas, Heraclio Flores, Israel Aguilar, Jonathan Mcphetres, Frank Hernandez

Organization and School Leadership Faculty Publications

While gay-straight alliances (GSAs) play a role in improving the well-being and sense of safety for LGBTQ students, additional factors such as school size, geographical location, and the community climate at large may have more controlling implications for school diversity and acceptance. This survey research type, quantitative study, investigates the retrospective responses of subjects from two Hispanic-Serving Institutions to examine the impact of GSAs, school size, and geographic location on school climates in rural South Texas high schools. Results suggest that the effect of GSAs on school diversity and acceptance may be diminished in a conservative, rural setting. Other factors …

Effects Of Intervention And Prevention Programs On Youth Risk-Taking Behavior In Monroe County, Audrey D. Davis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Crime committed by adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 is a recurring issue in the United States. Research showed a number of contributing factors associated with youth risk-taking behaviors and juvenile delinquency. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to improve the understanding of the relationship between intervention and prevention programs and curbing risk-taking and delinquency among adolescents between the ages of 13 and 16 in Monroe County, New York. This study addressed the connection between modern theories of deviance and programs of juvenile delinquency intervention as conceptualized by Chapman as the theoretical framework. Using intrinsic case …

From Social Alienation To Physical Health Concerns: Depression And Alcohol Proneness As Disconnection Pathways, Benjamin F. Shepherd, Paula M. Brochu

Archives of Assessment Psychology

It is well established that social isolation is a robust predictor of poor health outcomes, both mental and physical, yet little is known about whether and how personality characteristics related to social isolation (e.g., social alienation) affect health. Grounded in relational-cultural theory, the present study examined depression and alcohol proneness as parallel mechanisms underlying the association between social alienation and physical health concerns. As hypothesized, social alienation was positively associated with depression and alcohol proneness, and depression and alcohol proneness were both positively associated with health concerns. Notably, social alienation was indirectly associated with health concerns through depression for both …

Removing God From Public Schools-Beneficial Or Not, Angela Kay Constantine

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Despite the Constitution allowing for the removal of religious conceptions from public schools, the perspectives of most United States middle school-age kids show that the cultural shift towards scientific naturalism as the de facto worldview has impacted worship music in the Church. The worldview is one of worship that presents more as a concert than that of praise. The data, such as suicide statistics, show that there is a correlation between a negatively shifted moral valuation and the aversion, or inability, for the subject of God to be approached in the school setting (i.e., the science classroom) - even where …

Operationalizing Resilience: Co-Creating A Framework To Monitor Hard, Natural, And Nature-Based Shoreline Features In New York State, Katinka Wijsman, D. S. Novem Auyeung, Pippa Brashear, Brett F. Branco, Joseph H. Graziano, Kathryn Graziano, Peter M. Groffman, Helen Cheng, Dylan Corbett

Advanced Science Research Center

There is growing interest in the application of nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change and promote resilience, yet barriers exist to their implementation. These include a perceived lack of evidence of their functioning in comparison to conventional solutions and an inability for existing design, policy, and assessment processes to capture the multiple benefits of these solutions. Positing this as a challenge of operationalizing and measuring resilience, we argue that the concept of resilience needs to be given concrete meaning in applied management contexts. Starting with shoreline vulnerability as a policy problem and natural and nature-based shoreline features as a …

Large Scale Subject Category Classification Of Scholarly Papers With Deep Attentive Neural Networks, Bharath Kandimalla, Shaurya Rohatgi, Jian Wu, C. Lee Giles

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Subject categories of scholarly papers generally refer to the knowledge domain(s) to which the papers belong, examples being computer science or physics. Subject category classification is a prerequisite for bibliometric studies, organizing scientific publications for domain knowledge extraction, and facilitating faceted searches for digital library search engines. Unfortunately, many academic papers do not have such information as part of their metadata. Most existing methods for solving this task focus on unsupervised learning that often relies on citation networks. However, a complete list of papers citing the current paper may not be readily available. In particular, new papers that have few …

Interpretive Entrepreneurs, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Private actors interpret legal norms, a phenomenon I call "interpretive entrepreneurship." The phenomenon is particularly significant in the international context, where many disputes are not subject to judicial resolution and there is no official system of precedent. Interpretation can affect the meaning of laws over time. For this reason, it can be a form of "post hoc" international lawmaking, worth studying alongside other forms of international lobbying and norm entrepreneurship by private actors. The Article identifies and describes the phenomenon through a series of case studies that show how, why, and by whom it unfolds. The examples focus on entrepreneurial …

Originalism From The Soft Southern Strategy To The New Right: The Constitutional Politics Of Sam Ervin Jr, Logan E. Sawyer Iii

Scholarly Works

Although originalism’s emergence as an important theory of constitutional interpretation is usually attributed to efforts by the Reagan administration, the role the theory played in the South’s determined resistance to civil rights legislation in the 1960s actually helped create the Reagan coalition in the first place. North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin Jr., the constitutional theorist of the Southern Caucus, developed and deployed originalism because he saw its potential to stymie civil rights legislation and stabilize a Democratic coalition under significant stress. Ervin failed in those efforts, but his turn to originalism had lasting effects. The theory helped Ervin and other …

One Child Town: The Health Care Exceptionalism Case Against Agglomeration Economies, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

This Article offers an extended rebuttal to the suggestion to move residents away from dying communities to places with greater economic promise. Rural America, arguably, is one of those dying places. A host of strategies aim to shore up those communities and make them more economically viable. But one might ask, “Why bother?” In similar vein, David Schleicher’s provocative 2017 Yale Law Journal article, Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation urged dismantling a host of state and local government laws operating as barriers to migration by Americans from failing economies to robust agglomeration economies. But Schleicher said little …

The Relationship Between Sexual Orientation Outness, Heterosexism, Emotion Dysregulation, And Alcohol Use Among Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Emerging Adults, Lillianne Villarreal, Ruby Charak, Rachel M. Schmitz, Claire Hsieh, Julian D. Ford

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Introduction

Research demonstrates that both proximal personal characteristics (e.g., outness, emotion dysregulation) and distal stressors (e.g., heterosexism) may be associated with harmful alcohol use among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals. No study has systematically examined the factors linking LGB identity outness to harmful alcohol use. The current cross-sectional study bridges this gap by testing a sequential mediation model wherein heterosexist experiences (HE) and emotion dysregulation (ER) were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between outness and alcohol use.

Method

Participants were 264 LGB emerging adults in the age range of 18-29 years (M/SD = 25.46/2.74; 16.7% lesbian, 23.1% gay, …

Ambivalence Over Emotion Expression And The Effects Of Religious Coping In African American Christians, Anya Loraine Dobbs

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African Americans are 10% more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to report having serious mental health issues from psychological stressors. Mental health concerns, such as depression and anxiety, that arise from psychological stressors, are more than likely to go untreated in African Americans. African Americans are more likely to turn to religion- their church, their pastors, and fellow parishioners to address these concerns. Religion and religious coping has influenced African Americans’ attitudes regarding help-seeking and mental health treatment, with the “Black Church” historically being a source of many things, including mental health care. Pargament’s theory of religious coping served as a …

Foucault’S Keystone: Confessions Of The Flesh, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The fourth and final volume of The History of Sexuality offers the keystone to Michel Foucault’s critique of Western neoliberal societies. Confessions of the Flesh provides the heretofore missing link that ties Foucault’s late writings on subjectivity to his earlier critique of power. Foucault identifies in Augustine’s treatment of marital sexual relations the moment of birth of the modern legal actor and of the legalization of social relations. With the appearance of the modern legal subject, Foucault’s critique of modern Western societies is complete: it is now possible to see how the later emergence of an all-knowing homo oeconomicus strips …

Brock On Open Borders, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Justice for People on the Move includes rich and insightful discussions of many areas of immigration policy. But, in this paper, I’ll focus on evaluating Brock’s arguments against open borders. Justice for People on the Move includes rich and insightful discussions of many areas of immigration policy. But, in this paper, I’ll focus on evaluating Brock’s arguments against open borders.

Intimate Partner Violence: Effects Of Emotional Abuse In Women, Judith Marie Watiti

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractEstimates by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics point to over 30% of women being victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) yearly. Severity and frequency of violence in childhood have been shown in several studies to predict adult interpersonal violence. Research has shown that emotional abuse predicts other forms of abuse, thus identifying it as a potential causal link to IPV. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether emotional abuse mediates the relationship between history of childhood abuse and IPV. Social learning theory served as the theoretical framework for the study, in which 182 adult female participants from …

Using A Smart Phone To Learn Spanish: Does It Work And Will Students Use It?, Andrew J. Demil, Alysha Assaf, Ryan Cragun

The Coastal Review

Over time, mobile devices have penetrated the classroom, requiring new and beneficial ways to implement classroom instruction. Research suggests that Short Message Service (SMS) based instruction is an effective tool for acquiring second language (L2) vocabulary and idiom knowledge (Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu,). Additionally, studies have found that students believe that mobile learning (m-learning) is beneficial to acquiring a second language (Cavus & Ibrahim; Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi; Lu, 2008). This study examined whether m-learning can lead to Spanish vocabulary familiarity and if sentence comprehension outperforms reading definitions. Participants were 29 native English speakers studying Spanish as a second …

Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors’ Self-Employment Perceptions And Related Client Characteristics, Deborah Ashley, Noreen M. Graf

School of Rehabilitation Services & Counseling Faculty Publications

Self-employment is a viable option to increase the quality of life and well-being of people with disabilities. People with disabilities are also twice as likely to be self-employed than those in the general population. While self-employment interest and activity among people with disabilities has remained constant over the past three decades, vocational rehabilitation counselors rarely use self-employment as a closure option. The purpose of the present study was to examine counselors’ perceptions regarding self-employment and identify client characteristics deemed necessary for self-employment success. The national sample consisted of 205 Certified Rehabilitation Counselors. Significant statistical differences were found among counselors in …

Anticipating And Adapting To The Future Impacts Of Climate Change On The Health, Security And Welfare Of Low Elevation Coastal Zone (Lecz) Communities In Southeastern Usa, Thomas Allen, Joshua Behr, Anamaria Bukvic, Ryan S.D. Calder, Kiki Caruson, Charles Connor, Christopher D'Elia, David Dismukes, Robin Ersing, Rima Franklin, Jesse Goldstein, Jonathon Goodall, Scott Hemmerling, Jennifer Irish, Steven Lazarus, Derek Loftis, Mark Luther, Leigh Mccallister, Karen Mcglathery, Molly Mitchell, William Moore, Charles Reid Nichols, Karinna Nunez, Matthew Reidenbach, Julie Shortridge, Robert Weisberg, Robert Weiss, Lynn Donelson Wright, Meng Xia, Kehui Xu, Donald Young, Gary Zarillo, Julie C. Zinnert

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Low elevation coastal zones (LECZ) are extensive throughout the southeastern United States. LECZ communities are threatened by inundation from sea level rise, storm surge, wetland degradation, land subsidence, and hydrological flooding. Communication among scientists, stakeholders, policy makers and minority and poor residents must improve. We must predict processes spanning the ecological, physical, social, and health sciences. Communities need to address linkages of (1) human and socioeconomic vulnerabilities; (2) public health and safety; (3) economic concerns; (4) land loss; (5) wetland threats; and (6) coastal inundation. Essential capabilities must include a network to assemble and distribute data and model code to …

Shifting Sands: The Reconfiguration Of Neoliberal Youth Penality, P Gray, R Smith

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

This article begins by tracing the emergence of ‘therapeutic surveillance’ as a new formula for neoliberal disciplinary power. It maps and interrogates the reconfiguration of a hybrid array of neoliberal rationalities and technologies for the penal governance of young people who offend. It then engages with the challenges posed by critical realists to the governmentality position by questioning how human agency can contest, subvert and resist the dystopian reach of ‘therapeutic surveillance’ in action. While ‘therapeutic surveillance’ is steeped in a disciplinary logic of individualization and responsibilization, we argue that it also opens the space for a more transformative youth …

The Interacion Between Humans And Buildings For Energy Efficiency: A Critical Review, T Harputlugil, P De Wilde

School of Art, Design and Architecture

Buildings consume energy for different purposes. One core function is to provide healthy and comfortable living conditions for the humans that inhabit these buildings. The associated energy use is significant: taken together, buildings are responsible for roughly 40% of the world's total annual energy consumption. This large percentage makes the built environment an important target for researchers, policy makers, innovators and others who aim to decrease energy consumption and the associated emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Unfortunately, the significant body of research on energy efficient buildings conducted since the 1970s has had only a limited impact on the overall energy …

The 100-Year Life And The New Family Law, Elizabeth S. Scott, Naomi Cahn

Faculty Scholarship

This draft book chapter, prepared as part of a symposium on The 100-Year Life by Linda Gratton and Andrew Scott, reflects on the future of family law in an era of longer lives. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the 100-year life is indeed likely to have an impact on the nature, scope, and definition of family law, but that families will continue to function as the primary setting for intimacy and for caregiving and caretaking, whatever form those families take. Further, the importance to both individual and social welfare of family support throughout life points to a need …

The Classic Arguments For Free Speech 1644-1927, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines the classic arguments for freedom of speech. It traces the first comprehensive argument for freedom of speech as a limiting principle of government to John Milton’s Areopagitica, a polemic against censorship by a requirement of prior licensing in which Milton develops an argument for the pursuit of truth through exposure to false and heretical ideas rather than the passive reception of orthodoxy. Despite Milton’s belief in the advancement of understanding through free inquiry, he was far from liberal in the modern sense of that term and he did not, for instance, extend the tolerance he advocated to …

Religion, Conscience, And The Law: Reasons, Bases, And Limits For Exemptions, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Kent Greenawalt discusses the permissibility, scope, and rationale for law to provide exemptions to protect religious and nonreligious conscience in the United States. It may be difficult for the law to determine which sentiments amount to conscience given differences in individuals’ perception and the strength of their convictions. Even the notion of a religious conscience is complex. Religious citizens’ conclusions about matters of interest to religion may proceed from both religion and reason, or only from reason. It is not clear what should count as religious, given differences between denominations and their ideas over time. There are a host of …

Ideology And Institutions In The Evolution Of Capital, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

In Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty poses the intriguing thesis that ideology, or ideas about how society should be governed, is a powerful determinant for how society will be governed-as long as we take advantage of historical switch points. In this review essay I challenge this thesis by pointing out that many powerful ideas have run aground because of countervailing institutional arrangements. Oftentimes, they are leftovers from earlier times that precede the change and are now strategically employed for reconstituting private wealth. Clearly, ideology and institutions are deeply intertwined. I credit Piketty for putting ideology on the map of …

The Social Science Approach To International Law, Daniel Abebe, Adam S. Chilton, Tom Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

For over a hundred years, scholars have argued that international law should be studied using a “scientific” approach. Throughout the twentieth century, however, the most prominent methods used to study international law primarily consisted of different theoretical and analytical claims about how international law should be developed, interpreted, and critiqued. It is only in the first two decades of the twenty-first century that the conventional social science approach to research — identifying a specific question, developing hypotheses, using a research design to test those hypotheses based on some form of qualitative or quantitative data, and presenting conclusions, all while acknowledging …

Addressing Hidden Barriers To Follow Up Healthcare: A Community Referral Pilot Project, Amber Williams

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Objective: The project was aimed to reduce the number of participants lost to primary care follow-up following a mobile health unit screening event.

Design: A pilot study program screening tool implementation was utilized to address the hidden barriers of the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) during a Winter 2021 event.

Sample: A group of 12 participants were screened during a mobile health unit event. Eight of the participants opted to be a part of the pilot study.

Measurements: A comparison ratio of Primary Care follow up was compared from the Winter of 2020 with Winter of 2021, where the screening …

Enhanced Breastfeeding Support Using Video Education To Improve Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates In A Baby-Friendly Acute Care Facility, Carol Mayernik

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) provides health benefits and is recommended by professional health organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, The World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Healthcare facilities support families to achieve EBF by educating clinicians and patients about the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding, providing prenatal education and hospital support to patients, and by achieving Baby-Friendly Designation through the Baby-Friendly USA, as endorsed by the World Health Organization/UNICEF. Most pregnant patients desire to exclusively breastfeed yet multiple barriers exist to achieve this goal. Evidence supports the use of video learning as an effective way to …

Decolonizing Food Systems Research – The Case Of Household Agricultural Food Access In Bikotiba, Togo, Katryna Maria Kibler

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Indigenous West African farmers are among the most climate change threatened globally. Food insecurity is prevalent in West Africa because ecological, social, political, and economic instabilities, and globalization worsen climate pressures. In this study, I collaborated with the community of Bikotiba (bih-CO-ti-buh), Togo, to understand their household agricultural food access, one aspect of resilience to food insecurity. I adopted a feminist approach of reflexivity, radical vulnerability, and radical empathy, combined with decolonizing principles, to argue that there could be an ethical way for well-trained Western researchers to engage Indigenous communities, if negotiated carefully. Together, Indigenous Research Assistants and I developed …

The Lie Of Pandemic Pivot And Essential Work, Alexandra Crampton

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

My emotional responses to this moment include feelings of anger, hope, and déjà vu. Although the scope and scale of this pandemic is unprecedented in our lifetimes, what has been especially hard is not necessarily new – nor entirely unprecedented – and therefore unavoidable. In this essay, I reflect on what was avoidable and call for better response. We must question the seemingly benign (if not optimistic) terms emerging as pandemic discourse, such as “pivot to a new normal” and “essential work,” for what they reveal of social injustice and failure to avert future crisis.

Dangerous Women/Women In Danger: Gendered Impacts Of The September 11th Attacks, Louise Cainkar

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

VERBAL AND PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of public animosity toward Arab and Muslim Americans surged in the United States in the first months after the attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11), and then quelled to highly varying degrees afterward, depending on place (Levin 2017). This pattern was unlike punitive government actions, which continued nationwide at high levels for years (see Cainkar 2009). My ethnographic and sociological study of the impacts of 9/11 on Muslim Arabs in metropolitan Chicago, involving field research conducted between 2002 and 2005 and in-depth interviews with 102 Arab Muslims (45 percent of whom were women), found that women …