Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Wellness Profile Of Student-Veterans At 4-Year Higher Education Institutions: The Role Of Gender, Combat Tours, And Deployment, William Monroe Heath

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Afghanistan and Iraq war student-veterans have increased in population on college campuses in the United States (U.S.) as a result of using the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Healthy Campus 2020 (American College Health Association, 2012) highlighted the importance of college student wellbeing, health promotion and disease prevention, while the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs has called for an approach to services that is strength based (United States Department of Veteran Affairs, 2008). To date, however, wellness studies conducted on Iraq and Afghanistan student-veterans using an evidenced-based model of holistic wellness have not been conducted. This study was designed to address …

State Funding Decision-Making For Higher Education Institutions During Capital Campaigns, Everrett Alexander Smith

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Public higher education has experienced a decline in state funding in real dollars. This has created financial challenges for many students and their families, as well as institutions.

Tax revenue has decreased as a result of the economic recession, causing state leaders to reprioritize their fiscal responsibilities. Higher education has been viewed as a discretionary expense in competition with other state programs, so funding can, and often, does vary. Colleges and universities use alternative financial resources, most notably private fundraising, to meet their goals. The study was conducted to identify college leaders' perceptions of state funding during their institution's mega-capital …

Educational Effects Of State Actions Banning Access To In-State Resident Tuition Rates For Unauthorized Immigrant Students, Luis Alexander Villarraga Orjuela

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This research studies the effects of state laws banning access to in-state resident tuition (ISRT) rates and other educational benefits for unauthorized immigrant students (UIS) in five states: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, and Ohio. It measures the overall effect of policies denying ISRT that were implemented between 2005-2012 in the United States.

Three potential effects are evaluated. First, the study estimates the policy effects on the college enrollment of UIS. Because the policy does not deny access to higher education institutions, the possibility exists for this population to attend public or private colleges. However, facing higher costs (i.e., out-of-state tuition) …

The Role Of Higher Education In Rural Community Development, Anita Faye Thompson

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Higher education institutions commonly play a role in community development. Rural communities may be even more dependent on the university's investment. As higher education has looked to meet demands of stakeholders calling for greater accountability, it has become necessary for universities to be able to justify the effectiveness of these efforts. The purpose of this study was to determine the elements necessary for successful rural community development in Western Oklahoma. Utilizing the Delphi research method, 20 community development experts in rural Western Oklahoma participated in the three-round survey process. In the initial survey, participants collectively submitted a list of 41 …

Examining The Role Of Street-Level Bureaucrats In The Implementation Of An Affordable Rental Housing Policy For Extremely Low Income Households In The District Of Columbia, Rod Williams

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The individuals who staff the nation's 4,600 Community Development Corporations (CDCs) represent the front line in production of affordable housing for America's poor. CDC staff members work within chronic funding uncertainties, applying complex and often ambiguous policies, under pressure to address shortfalls in affordable units. As such, they represent a prime example of Lipsky's (1980) street level bureaucrats (SLBs): agency workers with no formal policy role, who nevertheless shape policy by exercising discretion in the course of implementing ambiguous directives under stressful and alienating conditions.

The purpose of this study is to uncover how CDC SLBs experience their work and …

Incarcerating Exceptional Pupils: Is There A School-To-Prison Pipeline In Eastern Oklahoma?, Brett Alan Fitzgerald

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The school-to-prison pipeline metaphor represents an educational environment that allows public schools to push many at-risk children out of school and into the juvenile justice system or even worse, the adult criminal justice system (Wald and Losen, 2003; Lynn, 2010; Tuzzolo and Hewitt, 2006). The purpose of this study is to examine whether a school-to-prison pipeline exists in eastern Oklahoma, and if so, to better understand the characteristics of the public schools that may be contributing to it. The school-to-prison pipeline metaphor guided three research questions regarding whether certain public schools in eastern Oklahoma referred greater percentages of their students, …

Educator Perceptions Regarding Quality Workplace Professional Development, Darrel Chris Rink

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This study, Educator Perceptions Regarding Quality Workplace Professional Development, attempted to formulate through interviews and surveys the attitudes of educators regarding their personal experiences with professional development. The study was based on Donald Super's Career Development Theory, Jack Mezirow's Transformational Learning Theory, and David Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory. These three theorists help form the conceptual foundation for the study.

One of the challenges the United States has had within the past fifty years is that workers were not being adequately prepared for the workplace during their school years or after. Super, Mezirow, and Kolb helped to identify stages of growth …

Estimating The Efficiency Of Four-Year Public Master's Universities In Arkansas Using Data Envelopment Analysis, Blake R. Decker

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For the fourth time in the past 20 years, the state of Arkansas has implemented a performance-funding program. Although directly referenced in the title of Act 1203 of 2011, the implemented performance-funding program does not include a measure of how efficiently institutions are converting their inputs into outputs. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to examine, through the conceptual framework of agency theory, why the state of Arkansas adopted performance funding policy after experiencing three adopt-implement-abandon cycles in the past 20 years, and (2) to estimate the efficiency of four-year public Master's universities in Arkansas in achieving one …

Cash On The Table? A Behavioral Analysis Of Refund Claimants And Annuitants In The Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, Martin F. Lueken

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This dissertation documents pension benefit choices made by public school teachers enrolled in the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), where they choose between taking a lump-sum withdrawal of their refundable contributions and deferring a pension benefit. The analysis explores the extent to which vested teachers enrolled in TRS separate from service with positive pension wealth, estimates how much money is "left on the table" at a conventional discount rate, and investigates what types of teachers display higher or lower discount rates as indicated by cashout patterns. To control for the relative attractiveness between choices, the analysis relies on three central …

Assessing Food Policy Options In Asia To Reduce Price Volatility Of Rice Market, Ranjitsinh Mane

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Rice is a staple food in Asia and its prices at national and international levels are largely influenced by different policy actions of trading countries. The consequence of the 2008 food crisis was food riots and rationing of rice in many nations. The ASEAN Plus Three (APT) countries have adopted an institutional framework called ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserves (APTERR) to address food security concerns of ASEAN countries that may arise due to climate change, supply chain disruptions or price speculation in the regional rice market. The RICEFLOW model is used to study the effectiveness of the strategic grain …

The Responses Of The Roman Imperial Government To Natural Disasters 29 Bce-180 Ce, Michael Timothy Mccoy

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This dissertation examines the practice of imperial disaster relief between 29 BCE and 180 CE. It focuses upon both the process of disaster aid delineating how Roman emperors were petitioned for assistance, the forms disaster relief took, and the political motives individual emperors had for dispensing disaster aid. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the topic. Chapter 2 outlines the scope of the study as well as the examples used to establish disaster relief in context. Chapter 3 gives an overview of euergetism and also discusses two cases of disaster assistance that pre-date the reign of Augustus. Chapter 4 …

Evaluating The Effects Of The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery On College Participation, Noah Aaron Pittman

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In recent years, lottery scholarship programs have become a popular policy program for states that wish to help students afford higher education without having to raise new taxes. Through a statewide lottery, profits from the program are passed onto college students in the form of merit-based scholarships. Even with strong opposition from opponents who questioned how much a lottery would benefit the entire population of the state, the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery was created via voter referendum in 2008.

A key goal of the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery was to increase college participation, especially among underrepresented students. The study therefore sought to …

Essays On Smallholder Farmers In Jamaica: Context-Specific Evidence For Food Security Policymaking, Deborah Evadne Brown

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This dissertation is comprised of three essays that examined the experiences and welfare of traditional food crop farmers in Western Jamaica. It systematically analyses the interplay between smallholder farmers and often overlooked variables in society. The study used qualitative interviewing, field observations and discourse analysis techniques to generate context-specific evidence for food security policymaking.

The first essay examined smallholder farmers' motives for farming. This formed the basis for a farmer typology that provides a portrait of the participants, and was used to inform findings in subsequent essays in this dissertation. The theory of planned behavior provided the conceptual grounding and …

Means-Tested Vouchers: Impacts On Public School Performance & Racial Stratification, Anna Jacob

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This dissertation examines the systemic effects of private school choice in the context of two statewide, means-tested school voucher programs-- the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program (ICSP) and the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP). Specifically, I examine public school responses to private school competition from the ICSP and the LSP and the direct impacts of the LSP on racial stratification in public and private schools. In Louisiana, I show that the lowest-graded public schools had a modest, statistically significant, positive response to the injection of competition, with impacts ranging from .001 to .06 SD. In Indiana, the evidence is slightly weaker. In …

Power To The People? An Evaluation Of State-Level Environmental Justice Policies, Angela Michelle Hines

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Communities of color in America lacking economical, educational, and political power have been largely invisible in the process of making major policy decisions. This is lack of access to decision-making venues has been viewed by many as the reason behind marginalized populations bearing the brunt of many societal burdens. The Environmental Justice Movement legitimized the claims of inadequate access to the decision-making process concerning environmental conditions in which African-Americans lived and worked. Through the use of disruptive actions reminiscent of those used throughout the Civil Rights Movement, the plight of communities plagued by the daily presence of hazardous waste gained …

Empowering Positive Youth Development In Saudi Arabia: Youth Civic Engagement, Agenda Setting And Policy Formulation, Abdullah M. Alshanbri

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The purpose of this study was to investigate what issues youth are facing in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and to examine how these issues can be brought to the forefront for decision-makers' agendas. Additionally, the study determines whether the concept of youth civic engagement "youth councils" could help to address youth issues and identify the constraints to implementing such a policy proposal. This study utilizes Kingdon's Agenda Setting Theory as a theoretical framework. Additionally, this study used a qualitative methods approach. High school students and public officials from the government were participants in the study. The literature review …

The Effects Of Kindergarten Redshirting From A Parental Perspective, Kelli Dougan

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Kindergarten redshirting is the term used to describe the phenomenon where a parent chooses to keep their child from attending kindergarten so that the child may gain a year's worth of maturity. This qualitative dissertation examines the decision making process undergone by parents who have redshirted their children. While some parents began the decision making process soon after their child's birth, every parent in the study considered the decision carefully. The study also provides an analysis of the outcomes the redshirting has provided for children as perceived by their parents. Parents rated the academic, Social and emotional effects of kindergarten …

The Perceived Impact Of The National Board Certification Process On Arkansas Teachers, Darlynn Cast

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study assessed the perceived impact of the National Board Certification program on Arkansas teachers, relative to their professional practice, leadership practice, and students' achievement. An electronic survey was sent out to 2144 Arkansas National Board Certified Teacher (AR NBCTs) and received a 53% response rate. The survey asked AR NBCTs demographic information and questions to determine the factors that influenced them to pursue NB certification. They responded to Likert scale questions about their professional practice, leadership practice, and student achievement, ranking how they perceived each was affected by their participation in National Board Certification. The study found that AR …

Lobbying On Behalf Of The Faithful: Three Mainline Protestant Denominations And Their Advocacy Efforts On Capitol Hill During The 110th Congress, Julia Ann Summers

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A number of mainline Protestant denominations engage in direct lobbying and grassroots advocacy efforts with Congress on behalf of the poor and other marginalized groups. This study explores the work of three specific denominations the Presbyterian Church [PC(USA)], the United Church of Christ (UCC), and the United Methodist Church (UMC), as religious special interests. Specifically, the study explores how they facilitated their policy agendas on Capitol Hill during the 110th Congress (2007-2008). This question is answered primarily through interviews with and surveys of the professional staff engaged in this work during that session. Results indicate that each denomination works extensively …

Against Self-Defense, Stephen Blake Hereth

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Absolute Pacifism (or AP) is the thesis that no act of assault is morally permissible. This entails that all acts of self-defensive assault are impermissible. This essay defends AP against non-eliminativist theories of justified self-defensive assault - that is, theories of self-defensive assault which, contrary to AP, claim that at least some instances of self-defensive assault are morally permissible. Chapter 1 begins by defining assault and AP and subsequently exploring a species of AP wedded to the Doctrine of Double Effect (or DDE). Chapter 2 defends AP against the thesis that self-defensive assault is morally permissible but not morally obligatory. …