Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Data Driven Approaches For Understanding And Improving Urban Mobility, Yujie Guo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the adoption of advanced information technologies, the transportation system keep innovating. It now offers more travel options, becomes smarter, but meanwhile gets more complicated and imposes more challenges to researchers and practitioners. For example, demand responsive public transit operates according to user demand instead of traditional timetable-based and fixed route services, which brings a lot of convenience to users. These emerging services also reshapes the way people travel. With the popularity of ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, people are more accessible to vehicle use without an ownership. Given the increasing popularity of emerging services, it is …

Climate Action And Indigenous Land Relations: A Case Study In Nagaland, Northeastern India, Osensang Pongen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research grew out of my interest in the implications of climate action, especially its effects in natural-resource-rich peripheral regions like my home state of Nagaland. This study will be of interest to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the ways in which global ecodevelopment programs expand and mutate at the micro-scales in Indigenous communities. This includes structural transformations to their Indigenous socio-economic and political lifeworlds, their cosmologies, and their affective relations with their ancestral lands and environment. More broadly, the study draws attention to the growing challenges confronting Indigenous peoples in the Global South who are being seduced by …

Relationship Between Individual Characteristics And Received Social Support Among People With Serious Mental Illness, Samantha Dicorte

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Past research on social support has mainly focused on perceived social support. Relatively less research has been done on received social support and how it can promote positive behavior outcomes. This study examines the importance of received social support, including background on social support, social support outcomes, and a theoretical foundation overview of the social stress model. In addition to a literature review, this study investigates the association between individual characteristics (i.e., diagnosis and substance abuse including alcohol, race/ethnicity, gender, age, and marital status) and different types of received social support (i.e., daily, mental health, and adherence support). Simple linear …

Essays On Contributions In Social Knowledge-Sharing Platforms And Their Impact On Employee Performance And Job Mobility, Moe Esmaeili

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the interest of practitioners and managers in social networking applications and social knowledge-sharing has increased. While these platforms allow individuals to collaborate, form/maintain social ties, and share/receive knowledge and expertise, and share/receive knowledge/expertise, they also provide a unique collaborative environment for organizations, enabling leaders to promote communication and collaboration among employee silos, engage them with others, and promote corporate core values once adopted internally.

Despite increasing efforts by scholars to uncover the underlying factors that influence members' participation in such platforms, there is still a lack of understanding of the fundamental motivating factor for such contributions and …

Decreasing Property Destruction And Self-Injurious Behavior With Dnro, Lauren D. Turenne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Differential negative reinforcement of other behavior (DNRO) involves the delivery of reinforcement and the removal of an aversive stimulus contingent on the absence of problem behavior. HT was an 8-year-old female diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). She used an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device to communicate independently using typed sentences composed of three or more words. She frequently engaged in property destruction (PD) and self-injurious behavior (SIB) in the form of head banging when presented with a demand. The purpose of this case study was to decrease SIB and PD and increase on-task behavior using a DNRO procedure …

Reducing Screaming When Items/Toys Are Touched By Others, Talitha Vargas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Differential and positive reinforcement are non-intrusive interventions that have proven to be successful in decreasing problem behavior. This study aims to decrease the screaming behavior exhibited by a four-year-old male diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by using differential reinforcement without extinction alongside positive reinforcement in the form of edibles. The researcher hypothesized that the use of both interventions would be more effective than the use of one intervention. Using an AB experimental design, the intervention was successful in producing an 80% decrease from baseline screaming. Though successful, many limitations were presented throughout the study, affecting the consistency and replicability …

The Impact Of Critical Illness Insurance Among Older Adults In China, Jiaosi Li

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although China has made considerable progress towards universal health insurance coverage, high out-of-pocket medical expenditures due to catastrophic illnesses (e.g., cancer, heart attack, or stroke) remain a concern. To address this concern, the Critical Illness Insurance (CII) program providing additional coverage for high medical expenditures was introduced in 2012. We combine data on the timing of CII implementation across prefecture cities in China with the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to examine its impact on medical expenditures, inpatient utilization, health outcomes, household consumption and savings. To account for the staggered implementation across regions, we employ the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) …

Towards Precision Audiology: Perceptual Profiles & Their Relation To Ecologically Valid Communication Assessments, Dana Cherri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Living in a sonic world, a person with hearing loss experiences difficulty in communicating with others. One of the reasons why some people with hearing loss do not wear hearing aids (HAs) is limited perceived benefit, which may result from HAs that are not fit using “best practices” or because the best practices fail to address individual difficulties experienced by the listener. The typical audiogram provides information regarding audibility as a function of frequency and is used to establish degree, type, and configuration of hearing loss, but does not measure the ability of an individual to process various components of …

Surviving A Broken System: Synergies Between Solidarity Economies And Sustainable Development Goals, Julie Beach

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Capitalism has created problems including wealth polarization, rapid depletion of natural resources, and pervasive systemic societal issues. Hard work is not enough to solve the unequal distribution and barriers preventing access to necessities. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created to remedy the harsh reality of global inequities and negative environmental impacts by working towards a more just and equitable future for all. Solidarity Economies (SE) offer an alternative framework to achieve these goals.

This research used multiple qualitative methods to investigate the synergies between SE and SDGs in a growing urban environment. St. Petersburg, FL struggles with affordable housing, food …

An Anthropology With Human Waste Management: Non-Humans, The State, And Matters Of Care On The Placencia Peninsula, Belize, William Alex Webb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The management of human waste is a seldom studied phenomenon in anthropology. Yet across the globe, in countries both rich and poor, it presents pervasive and difficult to tame problems. This dissertation draws on complimentary theories of management and entanglements to explore the practices and processes of organizing human waste on the Placencia Peninsula, Belize. The results illustrate how problems are conditioned and defined by messy relations between institutions, people, technologies, materials, and ecological life.

Fieldwork and analysis for this work was a culmination of years of interdisciplinary collaboration between other anthropologists and engineers at the University of South Florida. …

Towards More Task-Generalized And Explainable Ai Through Psychometrics, Alec Braynen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, we propose that adopting the methods, principles, and guidelines of the field of psychometrics can help the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to build more task-generalizable and explainable AI. Three arguments are presented and explored. These arguments are that psychometrics can help by providing 1) a framework for formulating better datasets, 2) psychometric AI data that can lead to models of generalization in AI, and 3) explainable AI through more informative evaluations.

A review of psychometrics and psychological generalization is performed, along with an overview of evaluation, generalization, and explainability in AI. Various ideas are presented throughout for …

Farmers’ Organizations And Development Actors In A Pandemic: Responses To Covid-19 And The Food-Energy-Water Nexus, Atte Penttilä

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the lives of millions, if not billions, in some shape or form. This global multi-sited dissertation documents responses and changes in the agricultural development context within the AgriCord Alliance and network as they had appeared during the pandemic, with a specific focus on co-production of resilience and the Food-Energy-Water Nexus. The research elucidates experiences representing the whole ‘food chain’ of a global agricultural development network. As the Covid-19 pandemic was a global event, it offered an opportunity for global disaster research. During the pandemic, the farmers’ organizations and their members faced economic stress as marketplaces closed …

Perceptions Of Workplace Discrimination: A Closer Look, Jeremiah Doaty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research operationalized perceptions of workplace discrimination (PWD) as a multidimensional construct and examined relationships between different types of PWD (subtle, interpersonal, and formal discrimination) and potential antecedent variables. Furthermore, this research investigated whether different types of PWD related to job attitude variables differently across different demographic groups (race, sex, and age). Participants of this study consisted of 1,610 employees from multiple southeastern public universities. Results from this study found that psychological diversity climate had the strongest relationship to the different dimensions of PWD, followed by hostile attribution bias and perceived group dissimilarity. Blacks and Black females reported the most …

Do Sociability Expectancies Moderate Social Anxiety Predicting Alcohol Consumption Following A Social Stressor Speech Task, Jacob A. Levine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are two of the most common and chronic psychiatric conditions in the United States. Research indicates individuals with SAD are more likely to meet lifetime criteria for AUD and experience greater AUD symptomatology and severity. Theories explaining this connection are limited, with most built upon tension reduction principles not specific to SAD; however, a recent biopsychosocial model focuses on factors specific to SAD, such as drinking to cope with states of high negative affectivity and arousal. Despite high rates of comorbidity, and more severe AUD presentation, the literature is mixed regarding …

Reviving The Christian Left: A Thematic Analysis Of Progressive Christian Identity In American Politics, Adam Blake Arledge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While Christianity in American politics today is mostly dominated by the voice of the Religious Right, many are unaware that there also exists a significant number of progressive Christians throughout the country. This diverse group, often referred to as the Christian Left, is not as organized or outspoken as conservative Christians and tends to shy away from the restrictive influence of identity labels. However, members all share in common a passion for social justice issues. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the identity of Christian Left individuals through a thematic analysis of interviews. By interrogating participants’ identity …

Communicating Breast Cancer Awareness: Using The Health Belief Model To Develop Mass Communication Themes To Influence Early Detection Behaviors, Srisai Kamakshi Ramya Harika Pucha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer (BC) is the most fatal cancer in India and has affected more than 1.3 million people in the year 2020 alone, making it a national public health priority. The reason for this alarming increase in BC incidences and mortality rates stems from a severe lack of awareness and the absence of targeted interventions. Considering the absence of a national level breast cancer awareness program, the following study sought to understand Indian women’s preconceived notions about the disease and the available screening methods to contribute to future mass communication campaigns in India. The study used a pre-designed interview guide …

Identifying Significant Factors Affecting The Likelihood And Severity Level Of Shared E-Scooter Crashes, Recep Can Cakici

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

• Objective: To identify significant factors that affect the possibility of shared e-scooter related crashes in Tampa and St. Petersburg, FL, and also to capture determinants contributing to the level of injury of shared e-scooter related crashes in Tampa, FL.
• Background: Over the past few years, shared e-scooters have become a common form of micromobility; however, safety concerns have been raised due to the increased number of injury accidents involving e-scooters.
• Data and data sources: Survey questionnaires were designed to collect data from the general public on e-scooter sharing programs in Tampa and St. Petersburg, FL. The collected data include respondents’ …

Evaluation Of Response Modality In Online Discussion Boards, Tatiyanna A. Dunn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since 2020, over 3 million students have enrolled in a postsecondary distance learning course (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). One challenge in distant learning is fostering student engagement. Student engagement is a broad construct that refers to increasing contact between three pillars of education. Students, teachers, and course material. Past research has shown increasing engagement leads to improved student performance and instructor evaluations. Unsurprisingly, promoting student engagement is desirable for both students and instructors (Cobb, 2009). Discussion boards allow student engagement between themselves and Instructors while knowledge can still be tested. Few studies have evaluated the modality of student …

Organizing For Here And There: Exploring The Grassroots Organizing Of The Puerto Rican Diaspora In The Tampa Bay Area, Dominique Rivera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drawing upon participant observations and semi-structure interviews with 10 Puerto Rican grassroots organizers from the Tampa Bay area of Florida, this project examines the processes by which Puerto Rican diaspora members build, maintain, and utilize social and symbolic ties as resources for organizing and executing grassroot projects and campaigns with a dual focus on the Puerto Rican community in the Tampa Bay area and in Puerto Rico. Complex webs of interlocking social and symbolic ties that transcend region of origin and regions of destination constitute a transnational social field, within which exchanges of ideas, practices, and resources are organized among …

An Object For Sexual Pleasure: Does Viewing Sexualized Media Predict Increases In Self And Partner Objectification Impacting Feelings Of Sexual And Romantic Closeness?, Kaitlyn Ligman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to sexually objectifying media has been linked to the objectification of the self and of one’s romantic partner (e.g., partner-objectification); yet the implications of this for romantic relationships have remained relatively unexamined. There is, however, reason to suspect that exposure to sexually objectifying media and engaging in objectification may have implications for romantic couples. When a woman frequently monitors her appearance this may undermine her ability to sexually connect with her partner and when a man views his partner as an object for sexual pleasure it may impede his ability to develop intimate feelings of relational closeness to his …

Deceptive Appeals And Cognitive Influences Used In Fraudulent Scheme Sales Pitches, Rafael J. Toledo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fraud schemes exploit the complex interplay that results from utilizing deceptive appeals to activate underlying cognitive influences. This study was designed, first, to identify the deceptive appeals present in the messaging of fraudulent schemes and, second, to identify the underlying cognitive influences being exploited by the deceptive appeals utilized. Findings reveal that effectively used deceptive appeals work to keep viewers’ mental processes in a state of cognitive ease. This state allows cognitive influences--such as heuristics, cognitive biases, and the System 1 mind--to remain in control of mental processing; however, System 1 is prone to accept deceptive beliefs. The results of …

Power Of The Collaborative: A Case Study Of Businesses Engaging In Cross Sector Partnerships To Find Talent, Jacqueline Skryd

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The widening skills gap and growing demand for workers has led to evidenced-based practices to connect the supply and demand to fill the void. Cross-sector partnerships have emerged as an approach to address the workforce skills gap. The purpose of this case study was to understand the experiences of businesses who engaged in cross-sector partnerships to identify common themes, specifically why they engaged, what limited engagement, and how cross-sector partnerships sustained and grew engagement. With businesses playing such a vital role in cross-sector partnerships, it is important to understand these questions to help expand engagement by other businesses in the …

Beliefs, Identity, And An African American Cemetery: An Exploratory Study Of Difficult History Curricular Decision- Making, Shannon Peck-Bartle

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this qualitative exploratory study, I examine the influence of administrative curricular decision-makers’ beliefs and values towards race and ethnicity, heritage, and place on curricular aims for the inclusion of local difficult history associated with the erasure of a racialized cultural landscape, The Ridgewood Cemetery. I additionally examine the influence of contemporary issues on beliefs and values as administrative curricular decision-makers navigate ways to incorporate local cemetery history into secondary social studies curriculum. Through semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and research’s reflective journaling I shed light on ways beliefs, values, and contemporary issues influenced administrative curricular decision-making for local difficult history. …

The Impact Of Cannabis On Motivational Processes For Smoked Tobacco And Cigarettes, Claire M. Gorey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cannabis and tobacco are very commonly used across the United States. Given the high prevalence of their dual use, an important health consequence of cannabis is its impact on tobacco usage rates. After all, cigarettes are a leading cause of death in the United States. Theoretical models of drug abuse suggest that cannabis cues and intoxication may be responsible for enhanced smoked tobacco/cigarette motivation. Therefore, the present research sought to assess these routes via two studies. In study 1 (validation & cross-drug cue effects), researchers validated a set of realistic cannabis images among a sample of participants residing in the …

Gender Differences In College Drinkers: The Role Of Masculine Norms, Jared A. Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drinking among college students has remained a prominent problem within the United States, with more than 50% of college students drinking alcohol, 30% considered binge drinkers, and 9% considered heavy drinkers (SAMHSA, 2018). Evidence also shows that males are more likely to partake in risky drinking behaviors (e.g., binge drinking or drinking to intoxication) and are at higher risk to be diagnosed with a alcohol use disorder when compared to women (Iwamoto et al. 2014; Grant et al., 2004). Recent findings suggest that adherence to particular masculine norms as a risk factor for problematic alcohol use among men (Mahalik, 2000; …

Advanced Methods For Railroad Station Operation Decisions: Data Analytics, Optimization, Automation, Yuan Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The continued and substantial growth in railroad transportation in many countries inspires railroad operators to leverage advanced methods into better railroad operation decisions. Among all facilities, significant returns on investment can always be achieved by optimizing the operations of network nodes - junctions and stations, because stations usually form the capacity bottlenecks in the system.

There are thousands of decision-making problems in relation to the station operations and can be classified into different levels to achieve different goals. From top to bottom, high-level business strategies aim to make decisions to achieve long-term strategical benefits, such as optimizing local station functionalities …

Hidden Struggles Within The Mental Healthcare Workplace, Tammy V. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have reported on the worldwide pervasiveness and increasing societal costs associated with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). A recent post on the WHO website cited recent scientific research (2022) indicating the magnitude of harmful effects attributed to ACEs, even classifying them as “violence against children.” Esaki and Larkin (2013) indicate that ACEs are prevalent among many social service professionals, including mental health clinicians.

This study uses mental health clinicians as the sample population to identify the impact of ACEs on job performance. Findings from a volunteer …

Inflammatory Bowel Disease & Social (In)Visibility: An Interpretive Study Of Food Choice, Self-Blame And Coping In Women Living With Ibd, Jessica N. Lolli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an interpretive project that uses autoethnography and qualitative interview methods to understand the role Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) plays in women’s quality of life and interpersonal relationships. It focuses on the impacts on patients of dietary changes and how food choice serves to make this ordinarily “invisible” illness visible to others, leading to unwanted exposure. Using Erving Goffman’s stigma theory and its extensions in studies of chronic illness, I demonstrate that IBD is characterized by layers of stigma because it creates situations in which patients are forced to disclose their illness even if they are not ready …

Inland Tropical Cyclone Intensity Decay In The Continental United States, Yijie Zhu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tropical cyclone (TC) hazard preparation is mostly focused on coastal cities with less attention typically paid to inland regions. The impact of TCs that propagate far inland is often underestimated and can cause unexpected loss of life and economic loss. This dissertation aims to understand the decay process of TCs during the post-landfall stage by answering three main research questions: (1) What are the general patterns of inland tropical cyclones, including spatial variations, decay rates, and translation speeds? (2) Are there temporal changes in the intensity decay from inland moving hurricanes? (3) How is the hurricane post-landfall dissipation related to …

A Bathroom Break For Teachers: An Institutional Ethnotheatrical Inquiry, Jonathan M. Coker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the teacher bathroom dilemma, a term I coined to describe teachers not having adequate access to the bathroom during their workdays. While this issue is widely known by those in the profession, only a handful of articles have been written on this topic. The teacher bathroom dilemma is part of a litany of working conditions that have intensified due to the neoliberal turn in education, forcing teachers to perform precarious actions that endanger their physical and psychological health. This dissertation explored how the teacher bathroom dilemma impacted teachers’ work and personal lives. …