Digital Commons Network^™

Informal Networks Social Capital Of Fathers: What Does The Social Engagement Survey Tell Us?, Zenaida R. Ravanera

PSC Discussion Papers Series

Using the General Social Survey on Social Engagement conducted by Statistics Canada in 2003, this paper examines social capital derived from informal networks and its variation among men categorized as: (1) men with no children, and (2) men living with children in (a) intact, (b) step, and (c) lone parent families. The focus on men stems from a concern that their role in families has not been as extensively studied as that of women. The results show that married men living with children have higher social capital - measured in terms of the number of friends, relatives, and neighbours, and …

The Relationship Between Birth Order And Personality And Career Choices, Colleen Ann Collins

Social Work Theses

Birth order plays a substantial role in a child’s life because the family is the first social system to which a child is exposed. One hundred subjects from a private liberal arts New England College were surveyed and asked to report their birth order, perceived traits, career choice, and college major. Analysis revealed there is statistically significant data regarding the relationship between first children and predicted, typical first child personality traits. The second hypothesis pertaining to birth order and chosen college majors was not statistically significant. However, there does exist a significant relationship between those subjects that tended to select …

The Unique Social Isolation Homosexual Adolescents Experience, Marisa Finnerty

Social Work Theses

A pioneering group of teenagers are identifying themselves as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning (GLBTQ). GLBTQ adolescents experience a unique social isolation as compared with other minority and oppressed groups. However, current research and interventions is aimed at addressing their social isolation only once these adolescents have "come out". It was hypothesized that before "coming out" the social isolation that GLBTQ feel may be lessoned by educating all children before they begin to explore their sexual identity. A booklet was developed using feelings, experiences and supports before and after the "coming out" process, as identified by GLBTQ adolescents. With …

Building A Global Community: Bridging And Bonding Through International Social Work, Erica Rioux

Social Work Theses

Globalization has created a world in which social problems are interconnected and inter reliant. Social problems such as AIDS and extreme poverty can not be resolved by independent countries; they must be addressed on a global scale. Social Workers must respond to the global demands and expand their international knowledge base and participation. Research on the present state of AIDS and extreme poverty in the world was conducted. An exploration of the current reforms and their success rate was researched. A comparative analysis of two international without borders organization, Doctors Without Borders and Engineers Without Borders was performed. Findings revealed …

Creating Virginia: The Role Of John Lederer In The Transition Of Western Virginia From A Wilderness Into A Colony, Richard Jason Burns

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis seeks to explore and explain the role of John Lederer, a German physician and expedition leader, in the creation of the colony of Virginia. Lederer led three expeditions into the western mountains of Virginia in the years 1670-71, and was the first European to document his expeditions in writing. Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, commissioned him to explore the western frontier of Virginia in hopes of finding a short route to the East India Sea. The immense commodities, trade, and settlement possibilities within the western Virginia region eventually overshadowed this initial goal.;Following the three expeditions, Lederer's expedition …

Computer Simulation Of Crowd Dynamics And Destructive Crowd Behavior, Bruce Bassi

Honors Scholar Theses

The social processes that lead to destructive behavior in celebratory crowds can be studied through an agent-based computer simulation. Riots are an increasingly common outcome of sports celebrations, and pose the potential for harm to participants, bystanders, property, and the reputation of the groups with whom participants are associated. Rioting cannot necessarily be attributed to the negative emotions of individuals, such as anger, rage, frustration and despair. For instance, the celebratory behavior (e.g., chanting, cheering, singing) during UConn’s “Spring Weekend” and after the 2004 NCAA Championships resulted in several small fires and overturned cars. Further, not every individual in the …

Credit Card Debt: A New Class Or A New Culture?, Rebecca Olympia Millan

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis project examines the current situation of credit card debt on college students in two colleges in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas and seeks to understand whether the use of credit cards is the result of an emerging class or an emerging culture. In order to explain this distinction, students' credit card debt will be viewed as being created through three main areas: the result of the current living wage, the presence of a "buy now, save for later" philosophy, and the desire to obtain the means of the cultural capital to bridge from one social class …

Run, Chicano, Run: Efraín Gutiérrez, In Search Of The Individual Within Chicano Cinema, Fred Garcia

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Run, Chicano, Run (2006) is about Efraín Gutiérrez, the first Chicano to direct a feature-length film. Because he was active after the Chicano Movement and before the rise of Chicano Studies, his movies are difficult to interpret. His movies are personal, not adhering to ideological formulations. Gutiérrez ceased making movies in 1979 and was not present during the later years of Chicano filmmaking and the emergence of a body of literature dedicated to Chicano cinema.

This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One explores Gutiérrez's place within the literature dealing with Chicano cinema. Chapter Two tells the story behind …

Heroic Feminism In James Cameron's Titanic, Shannon Grilli

ESSAI

No abstract provided.

Sociology Discipline Assessment Report 2005/2006, Sociology Discipline

Assessment of Student Learning Reports

No abstract provided.

Inequality And The Life Course: Differentials In Trajectories And Timing Of Transitions Of Canadian Women, Zenaida R. Ravanera, Rajulton Fernando, Thomas K. Burch

PSC Discussion Papers Series

There has been a recent concern over polarization of family life among the younger Canadians; that is, differences in family life are accentuated by the differences in their social and economic situations. Using the retrospective data on life course events gathered through the 2001 General Social Survey, we show that there is basis for this concern - the timing of transitions and early life trajectories of Canadian women born from 1966 to 1975 do differ by parental socio-economic status. However, the influence of social inequality on the life course is not a recent phenomenon - results of our analysis show …

Tying The Knot Or Just Living Together: Demographic And Socioeconomic Characteristics, Don Kerr, Melissa Moyser, Roderic Beaujot

PSC Discussion Papers Series

Abstract not available

Neighbourhood Characteristics, Individual And Household Attributes And Health Perception Among Elderly Canadians, D. Walter Rasugu Omariba

PSC Discussion Papers Series

This paper uses the Canadian Community Health Survey of 2003 to examine health perceptions among elderly Canadians (age 60 and over). The results indicate that individual factors explain more of the variation in perceived health compared to community factors (employment rate, incidence of low income, percentage of visible minority, percentage of Canadians and percentage of non-family persons in private households). Among individual factors, age, sense of community belonging, education and income adequacy are particularly important in determining how individuals perceive their health. On the other hand, among community factors, the incidence of low income, percentage of visible minority and percentage …

Deconstructing Truth: A Review Of Carol Burke's Book "Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, And The High-And-Tight: Gender, Folklore, And Changing Military Culture", Charles H. Rose Iii

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Borders And The Kingdom, Steven Ybarrola, Eunice Irwin

ATS Conferences

No abstract provided.

Attachment Theory And Wellbeing For The Young Person In Residential Care: The Provision Of A Second Chance Secure Base For The Child In Crisis, Gay Graham

Articles

Aristotle argued that happiness for humans is not possible in the absence of reciprocal, affective relationships or friendships (Sherman 1991). Such relationships for children are only possible in the context of satisfactory attachments which provide for them a secure base from which to explore their environment (Bowlby 1988). Young people placed in the child welfare system, particularly those in residential care, often experience a system that is problem focused, intent on physical protection and control, where warm reciprocal relationships are not prioritised. This paper states that young people in residential care, whose primary attachments, whatever their quality, have been disrupted; …

A Cross-Cultural Study Of Weddings Through Media And Ritual: Analyzing Indian And North American Weddings, Erika Buckley

McNair Scholars Journal

The wedding is one of the only rituals or events that many cultures of the world consistently have in common. Weddings are found in almost every society. A wedding can feed consumer appetites and the industry that supports it. Costs for the average United States wedding can range from $26,000 to $35,530 or more (“Cost of Weddings” 2006). The costs of Indian wedding ceremonies vary from $34,000 up to $2 million (Das 2005). Despite this large range the Indian wedding industry averages only $11billion annually while its American counterpart is a whopping $50 billion each year (“Cost of Weddings” 2006, …

The Great Middle Class Revolution: Our Long March Toward A Professionalized Society, Melvyn L. Fein

KSU Press Legacy Project

Nowadays, liberalism is in crisis. Whereas conservatism suffered a profound meltdown during the Great Depression, today it is liberals who must confront the disconfirmation of many of their cherished beliefs. Sometimes, it seems as if a few are behaving like teenaged rebels, trying to prove that they will not buckle under adult hypocrisies. Yet, despite refusing to conform, they reflexively align themselves with the symbols of their sedition. Festooned with tattoos, body piercings, and spiky green hairdos, they insist they have arrived at these fashions independently. Liberals similarly take positions without acknowledging that these derive from groupthink. Like the journalists …

Re-Presenting And Re-Membering The Female Body, Danielle Moran

Whittier Scholars Program

This project examines print media and the effects representational images of the female body have on women. It explores the influence of visible representations of the female body, and the connection between sexuality, identity, and the male gaze. I believe I would find that the formation of female identity and sexuality was often linked to the male gaze, which constructs disfigured images of the female body. I thought I would discover that though women are constantly defined by the word ‘sexy’ in women’s magazines, they would not have a clear definition of it for themselves, as opposed to the way …

The Economics Of Childbearing: Three Essays, Andrea Kutinova

Doctoral Dissertations

Expenditure programs, business cycles, and government interventions can affect many decisions surrounding the birth of a child. For example, public insurance programs such as Medicaid have the potential to increase the utilization of prenatal care. This, in turn, may lead to better infant and maternal health outcomes. Given the high and increasing number of pregnant women covered by Medicaid, the effectiveness of the program in promoting prenatal care use and improving health needs to be evaluated. Also, the impacts of business cycles on childbearing are of interest to policymakers. For example, does unemployment substantially affect the decision to conceive a …

Family Structure, The State Children's Health Insurance Program (Schip) And Child Outcomes, Minghua Li

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three separate but interrelated essays that investigate how family structure and public policy are linked to health and developmental child outcomes. Each essay employs two or three waves of the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) as the primary data source. The first essay broadly investigates how family structure, including the less typical non-traditional families such as single father and grandparent households, are related to a wide of array of child outcomes with a focus on the interplay of parent-child gender. The results from this study show that children in single father families have better health …

Lawyers And The Building Of Communities, Roger Cotterrell

National Law School of India Review

The intermingling of diverse cultures in India and the U.K. forms the backdrop of this special note, which deals with the relevance of culture to law. The recognition that culture plays a role in jurisprudence entails the recognition of differences, whereas in the present era of globalization, there is a movement towards homogenization. The note elaborates on how the role of the lawyer is also in a state of flux, in the midst of these changes. It deals with the way that the society views lawyers: as a lawyer as a technician serving individual clients, rather than a more esteemed …

Television Exposure, Feelings Of Fear And Confidence In The United States Government: Is The Government Using Media To Create A Culture Of Fear?, Janine Marie Soule

Master's Theses and Capstones

This study examines the relation between television media and fear as it pertains to the trust or confidence in the United States government. Using the fundamental hypothesis of cultivation theory (i.e., heavy viewers of television are more likely to believe that the world is a "mean and scary" place), the relation between the amount of television one watches, one's corresponding level of fear, and one's level of confidence in each branch of the United States federal government is examined. It is hypothesized that fear will have a mediating effect on the relation between heavy television consumption and respondents' confidence in …

Satisficing Negotiations, Wynn C. Stirling, James K. Archibald, Jared C. Hill, F. Ryan Johnson

Faculty Publications

Negotiation procedures that are founded on the doctrine of individual rationality, where each participant is committed to maximizing its own satisfaction, are limited in their ability to accommodate the interests of others, and therefore, may unnecessarily constrain the negotiability of a decision maker, particularly in cooperative environments. Satisficing game theory provides a distinct alternative to the hyperrationality of conventional rational choice by waiving reliance on the individual rationality premise and offering an approach to negotiatory decision making that is based on a well-defined mathematical notion of satisficing, or being good enough, that permits the modeling of complex interrelationships between agents. …

10x The Talent = 1/3 Of The Credit: How Female Musicians Are Treated Differently In Music, Meggan Jordan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is an exploratory, qualitative study of female musicians and their experiences with discrimination in the music industry. Using semi-structured interviews, I analyze the experiences of nine women, ages 21 to 56, who are working as professional musicians, or who have worked professionally in the past. I ask them how they are treated differently based on their gender. Three forms of subtle discrimination are inferred from their narrative histories. First, female musicians are mistaken for non-musicians. They are encapsulated into inferior roles, like "the gimmick," "good for a girl," and "invisible accessory." Second, band mates and band managers control women's …

Rural Low-Income Mothers' Experiences With Foster Care, Talia Jennie Glesner

Master's Theses and Capstones

This study explores the grief experiences, parental views, supports, and barriers of 22 rural low-income mothers with children in foster care. The family ecology perspective framed the research. T-tests were utilized in a quantitative analysis comparing depression and parental support and confidence between mothers with children in placement and children not in placement.

Results indicated that the differences in mean depression scores were statistically significant between the participants and the control group. Depressive symptoms were found to be much more prevalent in mothers with children in placement than mothers with children not in placement.

The differences in mean scores between …

Talking About Abortion: A Qualitative Examination Of Women's Abortion Experiences, Diana L. Dumais

Master's Theses and Capstones

The sociological literature on women's responses to the experience of abortion is remarkably sparse. This thesis seeks to contribute to redressing that research gap. I use semi-structured, in-depth interviews with twenty women from relatively diverse social backgrounds who have had abortions to explore the range of factors that they saw as being influential in their abortion decision and experience. Although the ages and the family circumstances of the women interviewed varied, and although some had more than one abortion, nevertheless, common themes emerged in their accounts of their abortion experiences. Among the most salient influences on my interviewees' experiences was …

"My Parents Made Me Do It!" Parental Influences On Self-Handicapping: Athletes' Perceptions And Goal Orientation, Kristina L. Moore

Master's Theses and Capstones

As socializers, parents provide and interpret experiences which ultimately influence achievement beliefs and behaviors in their children. Eccles' Expectancy-Value model (Eccles & Harold, 1991), the model of parental influences on motivation and achievement (Eccles et. al., 1998) and Achievement Goal Theory (Nicholls, 1989) provide the theoretical framework for this study. The investigation explored the relationships between athlete goal orientations, perceptions of parental self-handicapping, perceptions of parental goal orientations and athlete tendency to employ self-handicapping. Adolescent soccer athletes (N=134) completed the 14-item Self-Handicapping Scale (SHS) and the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ), as well as adapted versions of …

Change In Family And Peer Adverse Life Circumstances In Relation To Juvenile Firesetting, Patrick A. Roberts

Master's Theses and Capstones

Juvenile firesetting is a major problem causing millions of dollars worth of damage each year, and yet there is very little know about it. In order to address this lack of knowledge the present study examined the relationship between adverse life events and juvenile firesetting behavior. This relationship was examined using a sample of students from 17 public and 10 private schools in Southern Australia (2105 males, 1629 females). Data were collected from the students during grade 8 (mean age of 13) using the Youth Assessment Checklist, and again during grades 9 and 10.

Adverse life events were found to …

Escape To Utopia: Mental Illness, Veterans, And Gowanda State Hospital (1946-1952), Ursula Irene Anna Goldsmith

LSU Master's Theses

This study will cover the history from 1946 to 1952 of a state hospital located in Helmuth, New York, known as Gowanda State Homeopathic Hospital (GSH). It describes the community, physical campus and the surrounding area where it is located. The experience of treating military personnel suffering from combat-related mental illness during the 1940s led many psychiatrists to emphasize the social dimensions of mental disorder and to hypothesize that mentally ill civilians and veterans may best be treated outside of traditional mental institutions in their hometowns. This theory was implemented with the discovery of psychotropic drugs in the mid 1950s. …