Digital Commons Network^™

Social Workers' Perception On Hiv/Aids And The Effects On Their Service Delivery, Elsa Rodriguez, O'Shonda Mcdowell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between social workers’ perceptions of the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) /AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) population and the effects on their service delivery. This study used a quantitative online survey with a self-administered questionnaire. Data was collected for 60 social worker participants for this study. Participants were provided a postcard to a link of the questionnaire that surveyed participants’ regarding demographics, general knowledge, knowledge about contracting HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS risk, and service delivery. Implications from the correlation coefficients identify a significant negative relationship between stigma and HIV/AIDS knowledge, suggesting that higher levels of stigma were present …

The Role Of Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivation Focusing On Self-Determination Theory In Relation To Summer Bridge Community College Students, Cynthia J. Spence

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The student population of the Southern California community college used for this study was just over 10,000 students in 2011. While retention rates for all community college students are a matter of concern, retention rates for Basic Skills students are particularly alarming. The college used for this study reports that 97% of their students assessed into developmental education courses. Currently, California community colleges are working towards implementing several types of intervention strategies with the objective of positively influencing Basic Skill student persistence. Summer bridge programs are one of these strategies. Students completing summer bridge programs are showing signs of immediate …

Informed: The Impact On Decesion Making During An Unplanned Pregnancy, Jamie M. Stallings

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this research project was to determine if there was a significant difference between women who had unplanned pregnancies and the amount of information those women received about their pregnancy options regarding parenting, adoption, and abortion, and those who were not. Additionally, the level of information about pregnancy options, and whether it would reduce termination of pregnancies was examined. The aspects explored included the information available to clients and the decision making process for women who have experienced an unplanned pregnancy. The methods for this study involved using an anonymous survey via Survey Monkey. Additionally, this study examined …

Bruised But Not Broken: How Coping Styles, Spirituality And Social Support Are Contributing Factors To How Well People Do After Divorce, Tasha L. Brown Ms

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The main purpose of this study was to examine how coping styles, spirituality, and social support contributed to divorced persons’ adjustment to life after divorce. The study used a qualitative research design with face‑to‑face interviews. A snowball sample was used in order to inquire divorced participants’ experiences after divorce. Twelve participants were interviewed to obtain their individual experiences and discernment of divorce transition.

The study found that spirituality (e.g., attending church, Bible reading, prayers) was a major copying strategy used by most of the participants after divorce. The study also revealed that the support of family and friends was utilized …

Tspoons: Tracking Salience Profiles Of Online News Stories, Kimberly Laurel Paterson

Master's Theses

News space is a relatively nebulous term that describes the general discourse concerning events that affect the populace. Past research has focused on qualitatively analyzing news space in an attempt to answer big questions about how the populace relates to the news and how they respond to it. We want to ask when do stories begin? What stories stand out among the noise? In order to answer the big questions about news space, we need to track the course of individual stories in the news. By analyzing the specific articles that comprise stories, we can synthesize the information gained from …

Integrated Senior Housing, Kyungok Ha

Master's Theses

It is difficult to have an integrated population throughout all age strata in a society. Especially if one considers the growing percentage of the aged population and their feeling alienated in their current physical surroundings. In order to solve imminent problems with the growing elderly population, a primary task should be considering how to improve the housing of senior citizens. Furthermore, bringing the youth and elderly together would produce a functioning self-help system. It engenders interaction strategies by employing the strengths of one generation to serve another generation’s needs. This idea was introduced by the systemic family therapist Gerhard Schiele. …

2014/2015 University Of The Pacific General Catalog, University Of The Pacific

Catalogue, Bulletin, Catalog

No abstract provided.

Normalizing Sexual Violence: Young Women Account For Harassment And Abuse, Heather R. Hlavka

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Despite high rates of gendered violence among youth, very few young women report these incidents to authority figures. This study moves the discussion from the question of why young women do not report them toward how violence is produced, maintained, and normalized among youth. The girls in this study often did not name what law, researchers, and educators commonly identify as sexual harassment and abuse. How then, do girls name and make sense of victimization? Exploring violence via the lens of compulsory heterosexuality highlights the relational dynamics at play in this naming process. Forensic interviews with youth revealed patterns of …

A Study On The Factors Influencing The Usage Of Environmentally Friendly Products, Nicole Esposito, Vimal Viswanathan, Julie Linsey

Faculty Publications, Mechanical Engineering

Benchmarking in Design Projects: Lessons Learned from a Sophomore Design Course This paper presents some of the lessons learned from a sophomore design course offered at one of the major universities in the United States. This course is developed to provide realistic design, machining and mechatronics experiences to mechanical engineering sophomores. As apart of this course, the students are required to generate ideas for solving a real-life design problem. The objective of this study is to identify the influences of benchmarking products on the final concepts generated by student designers. Literature shows that designers, while solving open-ended design problems, tend …

Ways To Refuge: Bosnians In Central New York In Ethnographic Perspective, Fethi Keles

Dissertations - ALL

Ways to Refuge: Bosnians in Central New York in Ethnographic Perspective

This dissertation documents the resettlement experiences of Bosnian Muslims relocated to two urban locales in the north of New York State during and after the Bosnian War in the Balkans. To do so, it relies on ethnographic data gathered mainly through extensive interviews and participant-observation conducted over a period of fourteen months of fieldwork in a variety of places in Central New York.

The dissertation provides individual- and group-level descriptions and analyses of various aspects of the diasporic experiences of the Bosnians encountered in the research, in addition to …

Perceptions Of The Communications Studies Major: Is There A Female Stereotype?, Kyle Petersen, Karina Almaguer

Communication Studies

This paper investigates whether there is or is not a correlation between feminine perceptions of Communications and the relevance of the major. One Hundred Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students were asked to complete a survey that included basic student demographics as well as if they have taken courses within the major or know anyone within it, their perceived relevance of the major, and whether they believed it to be for males or females. The test between the two variables was shown as approaching statistical significance. After analyzing these results, using feminine perceptions as the independent variable and the relevance …

Gender Representation In Sports Communication, Michelle R. Stiller

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Getting Into The Minds Of Consumers, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Under what circumstances are our decisions influenced by emotions? And when are we more likely to make rational, logical choices? Assistant Professor Hannah Chang of the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business studies the science behind how consumers make decisions.

Of Accessibility And Applicability: How Heat-Related Primes Affect Belief In “Global Warming” And “Climate Change”, Jonathon P. Schuldt, Sungjong Roh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research shows that exposure to heat-related cues (e.g., warm temperatures, “fry” and “boil”) influences the belief that global warming exists and poses a serious threat to humans. Drawing on social-cognitive principles of concept accessibility and applicability, we hypothesized that these effects may depend on how the issue is framed, given that heat-related concepts are more compatible with “global warming” than “climate change.” Exploring this possibility, we asked campus passersby about their belief in global warming or climate change shortly after a real-life unseasonably cold weather event (i.e., snowfall during Spring; Study 1). A controlled Web experiment …

Democracy Of Deeds And Voices, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In an invited commentary, SMU Behavioural Sciences Institute Director Professor David Chan discussed the nature of a negativity mindset and how to foster positivity in Singapore. He suggested that Singapore should be a “democracy of deeds and voices” and build psychological capital as a core resource.

Debate On Bernard Yack’S Book Nationalism And The Moral Psychology Of Community, Jonathan Hearn, Chandran Kukathas, David Miller, Bernard Yack

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Bernard Yack's Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community (2012) was the subject of the eighth in a long‐running series of debates hosted by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) and the journal Nations and Nationalism in November of 2013. These debates bring together the authors of recent important works in the study of nationalism and ethnicity with appropriate scholars to explore the questions they have provoked. On this occasion Professor Yack was joined by Professor Chandran Kukathas and Professor David Miller.

Latinos In Massachusetts Selected Areas: Pittsfield, Phillip Granberry, Sarah Rustan, Mayara Fontes, Michael Berardino

Gastón Institute Publications

This report provides a snapshot of selected economic, social, educational, and demographic indicators pertaining to Latinos in Pittsfield. It reflects a commitment by UMass Boston’s Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy to provide periodic updates on the Latino population in Massachusetts.

The report on Pittsfield is part of a larger series that covers cities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a significant population of Latinos. This report analyzes data from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey (ACS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. We obtained the data from the American Factfinder website in tabular form and transformed …

Youth Advocate Programs (Yap) Helps To Keep Youth Out Of Secure Facilities And Living In Their Communities, Douglas N. Evans, Sheyla A. Delgado

Publications and Research

This report, conducted by the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College, examines the impact of Youth Advocate Programs, Inc. (YAP) on youth living situations. The study, based on a sample of 1,851 youth aged 14-17, found that YAP participation was associated with increased community living and reduced reliance on secure confinement. While nearly 85% of youth were living in the community upon entry, over 87% remained in the community six to 12 months after discharge, with less than 5% in secure placement. This suggests YAP’s effectiveness in helping youth remain in their homes and engage with community resources.

Openline Newsletter, June 2014, Civil Service Council

OpenLine Newsletter

A monthly newsletter for Civil Service employees, Volume 38, Number 12, June 2014.

The Performativity Of Objects: The Sociomaterial Role Of 'Imaginal Others', Conor Horan, John Finch, Emma Reid

Conference papers

In this paper we assess how objects can provide us with a clearer understanding of performativity especially when these objects become accounted for and calculated among actors as they review relationships. We assert that objects carry with them, and are associated with generalized others, understood here as imaginal others which as a concept used n this paper also contributes to objects’ performativity.

Work-Family Balance Practices Among Irish Hotel Employees In A Human Resource Management Context, Kathleen Farrell

Conference papers

The study explored work-family balance among Irish hotel employees. Employees of a 5*, 4* and 3* hotels were surveyed in a unionised hotel group, a non-unionised hotel group and two family-run hotels, including a 4* and a 3*. Two thirds of those surveyed were front-line employees and a total of 246 (22%) returned questionnaires were used for data analysis. Regarding work-family supports, there was a considerable range varying from hotels with no supports, hotels with one support and hotels with all eight supports available. Company benefits were not associated with numerical flexibility, but company benefits were associated with functional flexibility …

The Perception Of Emotion From Acoustic Cues In Natural Speech, John Snel

Doctoral

Knowledge of human perception of emotional speech is imperative for the development of emotion in speech recognition systems and emotional speech synthesis. Owing to the fact that there is a growing trend towards research on spontaneous, real-life data, the aim of the present thesis is to examine human perception of emotion in naturalistic speech. Although there are many available emotional speech corpora, most contain simulated expressions. Therefore, there remains a compelling need to obtain naturalistic speech corpora that are appropriate and freely available for research. In that regard, our initial aim was to acquire suitable naturalistic material and examine its …

Labour Market Outcomes And Egypt’S Migration Potential, Mona Amer, Philippe Fargues

Faculty Journal Articles

Will the radical political changes Egypt has gone through since early 2011 have an impact on emigration from the country? This all depends on young Egyptian adults, who are the potential migrants of tomorrow. In order to understand the consequences of the Egyptian revolution on migration, a questionnaire survey was conducted amongst Egyptian youth in 2013. The objective of this paper is to analyse the Egyptian labour market together with Egyptian migration to see whether changing conditions in the labour market, in particular after the revolution of 25 January 2011, may affect migration. This study is divided into three parts. …

The Impacts Of Study Abroad Opportunities On International Students, Seza Zerman

Theses

The emerging global structure requires interaction between societies and the international flow of knowledge. Exchange of students and study abroad programs are components of this internationalization process. The Erasmus program, the most common study abroad program in Turkey, has a great impact on the exchange of cultures and academic knowledge. This study will reveal different kinds of Erasmus experiences, the cultural and academic impacts of the program, how the program changes the expectation of participants, and how participants experience the return home after their study abroad program.

Data were collected via a qualitative method--a semi-structured interview, as the objective of …

The Role Of Prayer And Mission For Church Revival Through A Case Study Of Myung Dong Presbyterian Church, Chunkyung Cho

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this project is to suggest the role of prayer and mission for church revival through a case study of Myung Dong Presbyterian Church (MDPC located in YangSan city South Korea). MDPC has been in a revival for 10 years that has resulted from prayer and mission, as used in this thesis project. The case study focused on the principles, critical components, and elements that have been important for the revival. This project included questionnaires and interviews with MDPC members. Based on the questionnaires, this project explained the current conditions of MDPC and identified the strengths and weaknesses …

Beyond The Ancestral Code: Towards A Model For Sociolinguistic Language Documentation, George Tucker Childs, Jeff Good, Alice Mitchell

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Most language documentation efforts focus on capturing lexico-grammatical information on individual languages. Comparatively little effort has been devoted to considering a language’s sociolinguistic contexts. In parts of the world characterized by high degrees of multilingualism, questions surrounding the factors involved in language choice and the relationship between ‘communities’ and ‘languages’ are clearly of interest to documentary linguistics, and this paper considers these issues by reporting on the results of a workshop held on sociolinguistic documentation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over sixty participants from Africa and elsewhere discussed theoretical and methodological issues relating to the documentation of language in its social context. …

The Development Of Low-/No-Emission Electric Vehicle Infrastructure In The Portland Metro Region: A Roadmap, John Macarthur, Peter Murchie, George Beard

TREC Final Reports

The shift from combustion engines to low- and no-emission electric vehicles is underway and gaining momentum. During the last year, Oregon has become an active player in the electric vehicle arena, with a number of promising relationships and activities in the early stages of formalization. With additional thought, effort and strategy Oregon can seize the opportunity to become the national leader in the adoption and incorporation of new vehicle platforms and mobility strategies into the fabric of urban life and the built environment. Oregon is currently actively engaged in relationships with international automotive companies and local businesses and utilities interested …

Gresham Opportunity Framework Plan, Belinda Judelman, Carlos Gonzalez, Hayley Pickus, Lori Parks, Mike Simpson, Pamela N. Phan

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Map Gresham project was a five-month long planning process led by Camassia Community Planning (CCP) to create “opportunity maps” and an Opportunity Framework Plan for the City of Gresham, OR. Opportunity mapping is a relatively new planning method for analyzing the spatial distribution of indicators linked to opportunity and determining which populations have access to these factors.

The overarching objective of the Framework Plan is to improve equitable access to opportunities for Gresham’s neighborhoods and diverse populations. We created the plan by putting community at the center and collaborating with local organizations, technical advisors, and City staff. It includes …

Sharps, Squares, And Scalpers: Gambling In The Urban Underground, Annemarie Cesario

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study was conducted to examine the role of bookmakers in urban communities. Although bookmaking dates to 1780 in London, there has been little academic research on the bookmaker, or "bookie," and his role in neighborhood life. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research across three U.S. cities, I sought to answer two questions: 1. What is the relationship between the bookie and the neighborhood he serves, and how is his deviant identity managed in the larger community; and 2. How is trust established and maintained among actors in illegal gambling transactions? Once established, does this strengthen social networks and …

The Representation Of Nonmonogamy On Feminist Blogs, Caitlin M.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When young women look to enhance their understanding or knowledge about sexuality and relationships they often seek out internet resources. Young women, who are looking for knowledge that challenges norms surrounding relationships and sexuality, can go to feminist blogs to discuss and discern these topics. Therefore, it is important to note what these blogs are offering the women who read them and how the blogs challenge compulsory norms in our society.

This thesis will combine a study of content pertaining to nonmonogamy on feminist blogs and a literary analysis of cyberfeminist theories. Through these findings I will determine what information …