Digital Commons Network^™

Substance Use Education For Youth, Lizet Borrayo

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The City of Watsonville Parks and Community Services Department offers community members a variety of different activities aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle. One of the locations within the department is the Gene Hoularis and Waldo Rodriguez Youth Center, primarily focusing on youth. Due to a lack of information, it is essential for youth to become well informed about the impact drugs can have on their future. For this project, we raised awareness about substance use through a total of three workshops. The purpose of this project was to allow youth to build on their knowledge regarding substances and guide …

Attention To Attendance At Marina Vista, Jaylord Gapol

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Marina Vista Arts Elementary school has a high rate of absenteeism among students, which is negatively affecting their education. Problems associated with chronic absenteeism include illness, communication issues between schools and parents, and socioeconomic status. Consequences of chronic absenteeism include being at an academic disadvantage, increased risk of not graduating, and potential involvement with the criminal justice system. The capstone project created an educational flier that standardized the expectations for student attendance and highlights the negative consequences of chronic absenteeism. A database of 50 students were selected for the project with their attendance inputted into a database for tracking. Results …

Police And Their Relationship With The Public, Kevin Hebri

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This research essay aims to understand some of the social themes relevant to issues present between the public and the police institutions of the United States. Existing literature about this topic has noted the decentralized nature of law enforcement in the United States and the differences in policies and procedures used by different police departments and agencies. The existing literature has also cited the importance of police officer discretion and the situational factors that contribute to their decision-making. Occupational stress, and characteristics of a civilian involved in a police interaction, influence the decision-making process for police officers. This research is …

The Emerging Jurisprudence Of The African Human Rights Court And The Protection Of Human Rights In Africa, John M. Mbaku

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

During most of the post-independence period, many African countries have either been unwilling or unable to protect human rights or relegated this important function to a small group of poorly funded but brave and courageous non-state actors. Most importantly, some African governments have either actively engaged in human rights violations or failed to bring to justice those who have committed atrocities against their fellow citizens. In the 1970s and 1980s, many African heads of state were more concerned with national sovereignty in an effort to hide the violation of human rights committed within their jurisdictions than participating in the building, …

Two Countries In Crisis: Man Camps And The Nightmare Of Non-Indigenous Criminal Jurisdiction In The United States And Canada, Justin E. Brooks

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Thousands of Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or have been found murdered across the United States and Canada; these disappearances and killings are so frequent and widespread that they have become known as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Crisis (MMIW Crisis). Indigenous communities in both countries often lack the jurisdiction to prosecute violent crimes committed by non-Indigenous offenders against Indigenous victims on Indigenous land. Extractive industries—businesses that establish natural resource extraction projects—aggravate the problem by establishing temporary housing for large numbers of non-Indigenous, primarily male workers on or around Indigenous land (“man camps”). Violent crimes against Indigenous …

The Lived Experience Of The Dnp-To-Phd Nursing Graduate: Examining The Journey, Bonni S. Cohen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The traditional route of obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in nursing is vertical: a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), followed by PhD in nursing. An ongoing shortage of PhD- prepared nurses—nurse educators and nurse researchers, in particular, has spurred the creation of more pathways to obtaining a PhD in Nursing. In recent years, there has been a drive to increase the number of nurse scientists with doctoral degrees through innovative pathways. A newer terminal nursing degree, the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), has taken root over the past decade to produce nurse leaders who are experts at translating …

Information-Theoretic Model Diagnostics (Infomod), Armin Esmaeilzadeh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Model validation is a critical step in the development, deployment, and governance of machine learning models. During the validation process, the predictive power of a model is measured on unseen datasets with a variety of metrics such as Accuracy and F1-Scores for classification tasks. Although the most used metrics are easy to implement and understand, they are aggregate measures over all the segments of heterogeneous datasets, and therefore, they do not identify the performance variation of a model among different data segments. The lack of insight into how the model performs over segments of unseen datasets has raised significant challenges …

Intelligent And Explainable Solution To Predict Infant Birthweight And Preterm Birth In The United Arab Emirates, Wasif Khan

Dissertations

Adverse pregnancy outcomes such as Low Birth Weight (LBW) and Preterm birth (PTB) are complex pregnancy challenges that can lead to high perinatal mortality and long-term morbidity for infants. Early prediction of such adverse outcomes can be useful for averting catastrophic outcomes for the mother and her baby. With advances in machine learning (ML)-based algorithms, several models have been proposed for both PTB and LBW predictions. However, the risk factors associated with these outcomes are still unknown, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Furthermore, existing ML-based prediction models work in a black-box manner and lack proper interpretations for clinicians, …

Immigrants’ Attitude Toward Immigration, Aflatun Kaeser

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

This study analyzed the relationship between immigration attitudes and demographic and socioeconomic factors. It examined the difference in attitudes toward immigration in the immigrant population using General Social Survey 2021 data. The analysis with an ordered probit model reveals significant relationships between immigration attitude with several socioeconomic and demographic factors and how that differ between natives and immigrants. As age increases, support for limiting immigration increases, but this is not true for immigrants. With the increase of years of education, support for limiting immigration decreases; however, in the immigrant population, support for limiting immigration increases as the education level increases. …

Towards Explainable Ai: Predicting Linear And Nonlinear Feature Relations Of Datasets, Nimmy Chhaganbhai Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes critical decisions in an opaque way without explaining the reasoning behind them. Decision support systems are often built as black boxes. This has generated interest in Explainable AI (XAI), an area of research that explains AI algorithms and provides more insight into their internal decision-making process. Advancements in XAI have enhanced machine learning (ML) models’ interpretability, explainability, and transparency. Additionally, there has been speculation on whether it is possible to predict the type of dataset used in the model by analyzing the results. In this research, we proposed a methodology for determining the linearity or non-linearity …

Developmental Differences In School Climate Predictors Of Chronic School Absenteeism, Michael Fensken

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

School attendance problems (SAPs) represent a critical developmental challenge for youth. SAPs represent a spectrum from difficulties attending school despite complete school attendance to complete absence. Ongoing SAPs can lead to chronic absenteeism, which may be defined as missing 8.3–10.0% (15–18 days) of school in an academic year. However, debate exists over the utility of a demarcation for chronic absenteeism. A shortcoming of cutoffs to defining problematic chronic absenteeism is that demographic, academic, symptom, and family variables are not delineated clearly. Yet, the present intervention frameworks (e.g., multi-tiered systems of supports models; MTSS) rely on clear delineations of such variables …

Individual Differences In Police Officers’ Decision Styles In Order Maintenance Policing, Damarrah Elisheba Jameson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Day-to-day police work tends to be in order maintenance policing. These encounters necessitate officer discretion in decision responses to manage them. These decision responses reflect an officer’s decision style which precedes the encounter and drives subsequent decision making to manage them. However, little is known about officer-level decision style. For example, whether an officer has a rational, intuitive, dependent, avoidant, or spontaneous decision style (Scott& Bruce, 1995). Police training in any format often lacks attention to decision styles. As such, an officer’s decision style is most likely associated with demographics (e.g., age, gender) and occupational self-efficacy – a reflection of …

A Cultural History Of Anti-Feminism In Marvel's Scarlet Witch, Madison M. Kooba

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Marvel Comics character Wanda Maximoff, otherwise known as the Scarlet Witch, has received significant attention in popular culture due to her recent appearances as the primary protagonist and antagonist in television show WandaVision (2021) and film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). These depictions foregrounding Wanda’s struggles with mental health have made her an admirable character to many who see her drawing power from her emotions as a celebration of aspects of womanhood that have long been shamed by society. Sourcing these contemporary adaptations, however, lies decades of blatantly anti-feminist and sexist comics that villainize and ridicule Wanda’s …

The In/Visible Stockade: Sex Offender Management, Governmentality, And The Search For Normal Life, Christopher Wakefield

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the past thirty-five years, the United States has seen a dramatic expansion of regulatory policy around individuals convicted of sexual offenses. Sex offender management policies include national and state registries, notification laws, treatment mandates, residency restrictions, and numerous exclusions from institutions. A growing body of research from sociologists and criminologists has tracked the effects of this sex offender regime by measuring recidivism and collateral consequences among released offenders. Less attention has been paid to how sex offenders adapt to their regulator context—especially the selective public visibility that the registry generates. Furthermore, sociological scholarship has not yet developed strong theoretical …

Development And Initial Validation Of The Mindful Self-Regulated Learning Scale (M-Srls), Sarah Wolff

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Modern mindfulness is a catch-all term. Just exactly what it looks like within the context of education and how it is taught vastly varies. As such, program fidelity and integrity is questioned. Here a definition of mindful self-regulated learning is proposed and the Mindful Self-Regulated Learning Scale (m-SRLS) is developed. This includes item generation and development, systematic testing of item performance, scale dimensionality, convergent and divergent validity, measurement invariance across groups and subgroups, and scale reliability over a series of five pilot studies and five primary studies using independent samples. The resulting m-SRLS is a context specific measurement tool that …

Seeking Justice For Jews From Mena Countries Through International Law: Comparing The Cases Of Morocco And Iraq, Jessica E. Yeroshalmi

Student Theses and Dissertations

Little is known of the Jews of Middle Eastern North African (MENA) origin whose long standing history in the region did not protect them from discrimination, persecution, and ethnic cleansing. Although much of the research on contemporary Jewish history and persecution revolves around the Holocaust and European events and its implications for Jews and international law, far less is researched about the uprooting of nearly one million Jews from the MENA region. In this investigation, I aim to reconstruct that narrative, applying international law to Jewish refugees from Arab countries. My thesis will be a comparative analysis of Morocco and …

Impact Of Employee-Supervisor Attachment Styles On The Prevalence And Symptomatic Expression Of Secondary Traumatic Stress In Public Child Welfare Workers., Lisa Purdy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Child welfare organizations throughout the nation grapple with turnover rates estimated to be as high as 65% (e.g., CWLA, 2016; Edwards & Wideman, 2018). Turnover contributes negatively to client outcomes, organizational financial shortages, and to perpetuating stressful conditions for the child welfare workforce. One factor found to contribute to turnover within child welfare is that of secondary traumatic stress (STS). Child welfare workers are known to experience higher rates of STS than any other helping professional (Brady, 2017). However, while many risk and protective factors for secondary traumatic stress have been evaluated, there remains a gap in the literature as …

Dystopian Trademark Revelations, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Uncovering dystopian technologies is challenging. Nondisclosure agreements, procurement policies, trade secrets, and strategic obfuscation collude to shield the development and deployment of these technologies from public scrutiny until it is too late to combat them with law or policy. But occasionally, exposing dystopian technologies is simple. Corporations choose technology trademarks inspired by dystopian philosophies and novels or similar elements of real life—all warnings that their potential uses are dystopian as well. That pronouncement is not necessarily trumpeted on social media or corporate websites, however. It is revealed in a more surprising place: trademark registrations at the U.S. Patent and Trademark …

An Intersectional Examination Of U.S. Civil Justice Problems, Kathryne M. Young, Katie R. Billings

Utah Law Review

Millions of Americans face civil justice problems each year, and most of these problems never make it to court, let alone to a legal expert. Although research has established that race and class are associated with a person’s chance of experiencing a civil justice problem, detailed intersectional examinations of everyday people’s justice experiences are largely absent. A more in-depth empirical understanding of the access to justice crisis can equip lawyers, policymakers, and other designers of justice interventions to create higher-impact, more efficient, and bettertargeted programs to meet the justice needs of everyday people.

This Article fills a critical gap in …

Mass E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring As A Bail Condition, Sara Zampierin

Utah Law Review

Over the past decade, the immigration and criminal legal systems have increasingly relied on electronic monitoring as a bail condition; hundreds of thousands of people live under this monitoring on any given day. Decisionmakers purport to impose these conditions to release more individuals from detention and to maintain control over individuals they perceive to pose some risk of flight or to public safety. But the data do not show that electronic monitoring successfully mitigates these risks or that it leads to fewer individuals in detention. Electronic monitoring also comes with severe restrictions on individual liberty and leads to harmful effects …

Preventing Trafficking By Protecting Refugees, Rebecca L. Feldmann

Utah Law Review

An inherent tension underlies the duty to prevent trafficking. On the one hand, nation-states are required to take border control measures aimed at preventing trafficking. At the same time, such measures must respect international obligations toward asylum-seekers and other migrants relating to the free movement of people. In the past twenty years, countries such as the United States have developed increasingly sophisticated systems designed to regulate and restrict the movement of people across borders. However, the same period has seen an increasing disregard for the human rights of the very people who are crossing those borders. In order to fully …

25 Is The New 18: Extending Juvenile Jurisdiction And Closing Its Exceptions, Dylan Raymond

Utah Law Review

Courts are in broad agreement that juveniles—defined as people under 18-yearsold — are less culpable than adults and thus punish them differently. Indeed, few would disagree that the adult criminal system should apply only to adults—people “fully developed and mature.” If separating adults and juveniles based on culpability is the goal, it begs a simple question: should the split happen at age 18? Some U.S. institutions imply that they believe an 18-year-old lacks the requisite maturity to assume certain responsibilities, including the House of Representatives and car rental agencies, which permit participation at 25. Looking globally, important institutions like the …

The Addiction Treatment Experience Of Legally Mandated Opioid Users, Kaitlin E. Deitz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Clients who are legally mandated to addiction treatment for an opioid use disorder have high rates of treatment dropout, relapse, and recidivism. To gain a better understanding of the impact of treatment interventions on those measures, the author conducted a study to learn about the mandated treatment experience for opioid users from the clients’ perspectives using qualitative interviews. The first theme derived from the data was The Mandated Counselor-Client Relationship with subthemes of Cookie Cutter Counselor, Feeling Commodified, and Collusion. The second theme derived from the data was Necessary Conditions with subthemes of Feeling Cared for and Trust. The findings …

An Analysis Of The Sophistication–Maturity Of Justice And Non-Justice Involved Youth And Young Adults, Lauren Grove

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Juvenile transfer refers to a set of mechanisms whereby a juvenile’s case may be processed in criminal court. Forensic mental health evaluators often assess youths’ risk/dangerousness, sophistication–maturity, and treatment amenability to assist judicial determinations regarding youth disposition. Of these three factors, sophistication–maturity—in which the law is concerned with the extent to which a juvenile defendant’s criminal sophistication and maturity level parallels that of an adult—has traditionally been the most challenging for practitioners to define and apply in practice. The Risk-Sophistication-Treatment Inventory (RSTI) is the only commercially available, specialized forensic assessment instrument for the assessment of youths’ sophistication–maturity. However, this tool …

A Public Policy Approach To Life After Service For U.S. Military Veterans: Mental Health, Homelessness, And Reintegration, Eric D. Button

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, through a public policy lens, examines life after U.S. military service as it relates to reintegration, the ability of state-level veteran-specific mental health programs to address veterans’ mental health challenges, and states’ ability to address veteran homelessness. First, I use 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey data, along with various measures of state-level characteristics, to examine the influence of relevant state-level policies on veterans’ mental health outcomes. Based on multi-level modeling results, findings suggest that the presence of at least one state-level veteran specific mental health program may be a mitigating …

Dynamic Risk Trajectories, Community Context, And Juvenile Recidivism, Kevin T. Wolff, Michael T. Baglivio, Jonathan Intravia

Publications and Research

Purpose

While the implementation of risk assessment has expanded, the extent to which there are different trajectories of risk/protective factors among adjudicated youth during supervision in the community remains unanswered. The goal of the current study is to identify the distinct trajectories in dynamic risk and protective factors among youth on probation and assess whether different patterns in risk over time are associated with continued offending.

Method

Group-based trajectory modeling is used to identify distinct trajectories across multiple domains of risk/need. The individual- and neighborhood-level factors associated with these trajectories are then explored, prior to examining their relationship to continued …

Inter-Police Interactions And Mental Health Attitudes, Isaiah A. Jonas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the United States police officers are constantly impacted from multiple different sources. Previous literature, such as Karaffa and Koch (2016) have investigated the way that influence from police administrations and peers can create a stigma in police officers. The stigma in question is officers' stigma towards seeking mental health treatment. Peer influence has been one of the focuses of research on ways to combat this stigma in law enforcement. Kumar (2019) has established that when within police culture there are differences between the views of rookies and senior officers. These differences have yet to be properly explored throughout the …

From Teacher To Campus Leader: An Autoethnographic Study Of An Assistant Principal At A New Mexico Elementary Campus Post Covid-19, Mona E. Plaza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began its effect on public school education. With online classes, students without remote access, and teachers with little to no experience in technology-based instruction, students, parents, and teachers were navigating the unknown. We have returned to campus, and routines are back in place, but education will never be the same. This autoethnography explores the first year of a teacher transitioning to an assistant principal on a small New Mexico elementary school campus as the education system recovers from the fallout of the pandemic. The purpose of this study is to use research as a …

Exploring The Mediating Link Between Stressful Life Events, Adverse Psychological Effects, And Ipv Victimization, Valeria Torres-Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Purpose: Research has established that violent victimization is influenced by a variety of life events and psychological effects. However, limited research has examined this relationship with a specific type of victimization, such as intimate partner violence (IPV). To fill this gap in the literature, this study aims to test whether stressful life conditions induce adverse psychological effects on a person, which then may lead to IPV victimization. Methods: To test this, a series of regression analyses are conducted. Data from the American subsample of the International Dating Violence Study (n = 4,162) are analyzed to test the link between stressful …

Examining The Role Of Pretrial Detention On The Juvenile Plea Process, Isabelle May Clough

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Plea bargains are a necessary part of the criminal justice system as a whole, and the juvenile justice system more specifically. However, juveniles may be at a particular disadvantage when entering into a plea bargain as a result of their developmental capacities. Pretrial detention in particular might influence the quality of the final plea agreement that a juvenile accepts, as adolescents would be motivated towards the short-term goal of being released from detention. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between juvenile pretrial detention and plea discounts through mediating relationships with number of attorneys and time to plea. Data …