Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Library Wayfinding And Esol Students: Communication Challenges And Empathy-Based Intervention, Nora Almeida, Junior R. Tidal

Publications and Research

This article describes a wayfinding study conducted in an urban, academic library to better understand the experiences of multilingual student populations. The study, which incorporated traditional user experience methods and video ethnography, exposed communication obstacles and spatial challenges encountered by students of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) when attempting information retrieval tasks. After outlining the methodology and examining qualitative findings, the authors discuss how study findings prompted a reevaluation of local practices, service models, and staff training protocols. Finally, the authors explore the potential for qualitative, empathy-based wayfinding studies to transform library practices and spaces.

A Portrait Of Partnership Statuses In The United States Between 1990 And 2017, Daeshin Hayden Ju

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines partnership rates among the US population by race and ethnicity from 1990 to 2017.

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2017.

Discussion:

Over the past thirty years, the general proportion of married …

Diversity And Multiculturalism In The 21st Century, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Publications and Research

This is a presentation on Diversity and Multi-Culturalism in the 21st Century related to the individual and society based on responses from in-class assignments during various semester course sessions [from 2019 to 2021] taught by the presenter at the York College [CUNY]. In the course in addition to culture, students learned about norms, values, systems of beliefs, social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, race and ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation and gender, technology and culture, cultural universalism and relativism, and how these affect our shared or distinct day to day cultural practices and social interaction in our various communities.

At the …

Designing Respectful Tech: What Is Your Relationship With Technology?, Noreen Y. Whysel

Publications and Research

According to research at the Me2B Alliance, people feel they have a relationship with technology. It’s emotional. It’s embodied. And it’s very personal. We are studying digital relationships to answer questions like “Do people have a relationship with technology?” “What does that relationship feel like?” And “Do people understand the commitments that they are making when they explore, enter into and dissolve these relationships?” There are parallels between messy human relationships and the kinds of relationships that people develop with technology. As with human relationships, we move through states of discovery, commitment and breakup with digital applications as well. Technology …

Spatial Downscaling Of Goes-R Land Surface Temperature Over Urban Regions: A Case Study For New York City, Abdou Bah, Hamidreza Norouzi, Satya Prakash, Reginald Blake, Reza Khanbilvardi, Cynthia Rosenzweig

Publications and Research

The surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect is among the major environmental issues encountered in urban regions. To better predict the dynamics of the SUHI and its impacts on extreme heat events, an accurate characterization of the surface energy balance in urban regions is needed. However, the ability to improve understanding of the surface energy balance is limited by the heterogeneity of surfaces in urban areas. This study aims to enhance the understanding of the urban surface energy budget through an innovation in the use of land surface temperature (LST) observations from remote sensing satellites. A LST database with 5–min …

Integrating Natural Language Processing And Interpretive Thematic Analyses To Gain Human-Centered Design Insights On Hiv Mobile Health: Proof-Of-Concept Analysis, Simone J. Skeen, Stephen Scott Jones, Carolyn Marie Cruse, Keith J. Horvath

Publications and Research

Background: HIV mobile health (mHealth) interventions often incorporate interactive peer-to-peer features. The user-generated content (UGC) created by these features can offer valuable design insights by revealing what topics and life events are most salient for participants, which can serve as targets for subsequent interventions. However, unstructured, textual UGC can be difficult to analyze. Interpretive thematic analyses can preserve rich narratives and latent themes but are labor-intensive and therefore scale poorly. Natural language processing (NLP) methods scale more readily but often produce only coarse descriptive results. Recent calls to advance the field have emphasized the untapped potential of combined NLP …

Individual Factors Influencing Mental Illness Stigma In The New York City Metropolitan Area, Rachel M. Terrill

Student Theses

The study of individual factors influencing mental illness stigma among communities is not widely present in current mental health research. This study examined demographic variables that influence mental illness stigma. It also utilized the Attitudes Towards Mental Illness Scale, the Reported and Intended Behavior Scale, and the Mental Illness Microaggressions Scale – Perpetrator Version to determine the presence of mental illness stigma among individuals in various areas throughout the city of New York. Analysis found that higher levels of education predict fewer stigmatizing characteristics. Older respondents were found to have higher levels of stigma than younger respondents across all measures. …

Four Corners: A Values Clarification Exercise, Montsine Nshom

Open Educational Resources

Four Corners is a values clarification activity that asks participants to stand/show whether they strongly agree to strongly disagree with a specific statement, and reflect on their position during and after the activity. This four corners activity is designed to help students think about and discuss topics that are pertinent to urban community health and public health.

No prior reading or coursework is required; it is a good option for the first day of class to introduce key themes that will be covered during the course as well as practice ground rules and class discussion norms.

Blurring The "Bright Line": Examining Age-Related Differences In Jail Incarceration Outcomes Using A Resources-Challenges Model Of Emerging Adulthood, Olive F. Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Jail incarceration represents an early and prevalent point of contact with the criminal legal system. While there is some evidence of age-related differences in jail incarceration outcomes such as rearrest and reconvictions, existing research typically only make comparisons between adults and adolescents. This bifurcation ignores the unique experiences of a third group: emerging adults aged 18 to 25. Evidence from developmental research combined with shifting social and cultural dynamics suggest that 18-25-year-olds, though adults by law, straddle the line between adolescence and adulthood while facing challenges that set them apart.

The current study incorporates a resources-challenges framework of emerging adulthood …

Reducing Fear Overgeneralization With Safety Learning: Attention Bias As A Moderator, Boyang Fan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health condition and affect one out of nine individuals around the world. Fear generalization is a neurocognitive mechanism thought to maintain and exacerbate anxiety, and thus is an important target of therapeutic interventions. Yet, intervention research and practice place relatively little emphasis on its importance. Given that a significant proportion of individuals do not respond to extant treatments of anxiety disorders, a strengthened focus on fear generalization may inform the development and personalization of new treatment approaches. Recent notions have linked fear generalization to failures in distinguishing between signals that predict the occurrence …

A “Medieval” Myth For A “Modern” Empire Britain Under The Shadow Of Arthur (1461–1612), Julian Gonzalez De Leon Heiblum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the use of the Arthurian myth from the fifteenth through early seventeenth centuries, as a narrative that connected a set of political principles for the unification of Britain and its imperial expansion. Joining other competing political myths in the British archipelago, the political significance of the Arthurian myth has nevertheless been overlooked. On the one hand, the myth informed the transformations of kingship in England and Wales from the crowning of Edward IV to the early years of James’ English reign. It did so specifically within the process of institutionalizing a British crown which was intertwined with …

A Study Of The Punishment Of Crimes By Us Federal Legislators From 1798 To 2016, Kenneth J. Grossberger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public distrust of government has increased because of the criminal behavior of federal legislators over time, due, at least in part, to the political effects on Congress (which causes confrontation and accusation), and therefore it is critical to study how Congress deals with the corruption of its members. This study examines the punishment of U.S. federal legislators for criminal corruption in the context of time. This was accomplished by collecting and analyzing original data by means of the multiple methods of binomial logistic regressions and content analysis. The results showed that several variables were predictive of the criminal justice and …

Maternal Wellness: Self, Matrescence, Obstetric Violence, And Self-Care, Vanessa V. Vales-Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I engage in a self-study through an examination of my experience of matrescence (i.e., the transition to motherhood). I discuss my praxis in the development of a self-study on maternal wellness as it applies to my well-being as both a researcher and the researched. In Chapter 1, I preface this study by highlighting critical scholars and the bricoleurs who have been foundational in my undertaking of this work on a narrative study on maternal wellness. Using bricolage as part of a research methodological framework that involved key scholarly methodologies of authentic inquiry, emergence and contingence, and narratology, …

Music Pedagogy In Venezuela’S Plains: Making Space In Alma Llanera, Elaine Sandoval

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that the process of institutionalizing traditional música llanera (plains region music) education in Venezuela is informed by a hierarchical spatialization of the capital, Caracas, and the historically agricultural- and livestock-producing region known as the llanos, or the plains. Drawing on Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1991), I argue that the representations of space that have defined the llanos region and música llanera often obscure the lived space of music-making and dwelling in the llanos. This dissertation is based on fieldwork in Guárico state between 2016-2018, where I observed the state-funded Alma Llanera program, which had been …

Usability Of Health-Related Websites By Filipino-American Adults And Nursing Informatics Experts, Kathleen Begonia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Filipino-Americans are an understudied minority group with high prevalence and mortality from chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Facing barriers to care and lack of culturally appropriate health resources, they frequently use the internet to obtain health information. It is unknown whether they perceive health-related websites to be useful or easy to use because there are no published usability studies involving this population. Using the Technology Acceptance Model as a theoretical framework, this study investigated the difference between website design ratings by experts and the perceptions of Filipino-American users to determine if usability guidelines influenced the perceived ease …

Essays On Empirical Asset Pricing Models, Somayeh Ahmadi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines co-movement across industry return and value and momentum asset price anomalies through a new perspective and uses machine learning and spatial econometrics approaches. The first chapter examines the main approaches developed in the cross-section asset pricing literature for finding risk variables. The second chapter focuses on spatial co-movement across US industry returns. We show that spatial co-movement explains the variance in US industry returns after accounting for exposure to common variables, serial dynamics, and industry sector-specific characteristics using a dynamic spatial panel data model. The results show that an investment strategy that buys industry portfolios with high …

Hudson Yards: Hybrid Capital's New Home, Massimo D. Scoditti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on the material and metaphysical aspects of the Hudson Yards, the largest private development in US History. With its roots in the administration of Michael Bloomberg, the site is representative of neoliberal ideology. It is also one in which cultural production is central. This is in terms of the rationalization and mythos of the building of the space itself and the dreamworlds created to obscure the mechanisms of extraction and accumulation that make such a complex possible. The Hudson Yards is particularly interesting because, as Cindi Katz might suggest, topography lines connect it to transnational capital. And …

Committed To The Fragment: Feminist Literature And The Promise Of Wellness, Lynne Beckenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“I have never been able to blind myself” to the cruelty of a world that “destroys its own young in passing…out of not noticing or caring about the destruction,” Audre Lorde tells us in her 1980 “mythobiography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. This quality, Lorde says, “according to one popular definition of mental health, makes me mentally unhealthy.” In rejecting psychological self-possession as a sign of wellness, this passage also rejects it as one of sovereignty’s conditions. At the time of Lorde’s writing, this version of sovereignty already dominated the landscape of therapeutic culture in the United States, …

Gender-Informed Features Of Film Reviews: A Statistical Linguistic Analysis, Matthew Kadish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The project analyzes how language is used differently in movie reviews based on both the gender of the author of the review as well as the gender of the director of the reviewed film. In doing so, it aims to gain a better understanding of what contexts evoke a typically “masculine” use of language vs. a typically “feminine” use of language within the genre of film criticism, and what implications this has for the state of the film criticism with respect to gender. The results of this study seem to indicate that a critic’s language use takes on the characteristics …

Is Less More? Examining The Effects Of Predictor Method Factors On Mobile Sjt Scores And Test-Taker Reactions, Anne E. Kato

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, job applicants have increasingly taken internet-based pre-employment tests on mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) in addition to nonmobile devices (e.g., computers). This mobile assessment phenomenon introduces new issues into the test design process, such as ensuring consistent assessment outcomes across different device types. Mobile assessment research has focused on device attributes and predictor constructs as explanations for potential differences across device types but has given little attention to predictor methods. Examining the role of predictor methods is important for understanding how to design assessments that perform comparably across device types, particularly for highly modular methods like situational judgment …

Navigating The Multiple Streams: The Strategic Use Of Sunset Provisions, David F. Wall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite its long standing and historical use, temporary legislation had been a legislative tool largely ignored by scholars for many years. For the most part, temporary legislation had been used to serve specific functions within American politics and, being used in such a limited role, had avoided scrutiny. This changed in the early 2000s, following an exponential increase in the use of temporary legislation in the form of sunset provisions during the G.W. Bush administration. Scholars would debate whether or not this increased use was a good thing or not, arguing for and against a preference of temporary legislation over …

Queer And Trans Prison Voices: A Podcast Archive On Prison Abolition, Josefine Ziebell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project is located at the intersection of Critical Prison Studies, Gender Studies, Sound Studies, and American Studies. It highlights the importance of sonic modes of anti-carceral resistance by featuring the recorded voices of incarcerated people through the creation of a sonic archive of prison writings. By integrating that sonic archive into the podcast medium, this project functions as a digital archive for incarcerated voices, consisting of two tracks: a collection of short-spoken readings by queer and transgender incarcerated authors, and podcast-style interviews with activist scholars, organizations, and sound artists working towards prison abolition. In this paper, I establish …

Scientific Development Of An Integrated Workflow For Latent Print, Questioned Document, And Dna Processing Of Paper Evidence, Ashley Morgan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Touch paper evidence could be the source of probative human DNA but recovery is challenging and forensic laboratories instead prioritize processing by the Latent Print and Questioned Document disciplines. Recent advances in DNA collection methods and the increased sensitivity of STR typing kits have improved success rates for DNA testing of paper evidence; but prior to implementing DNA collection, laboratories have to decide in which order to examine paper for the different types of forensic evidence. This thesis developed and tested a multi-discipline workflow for processing paper evidence by DNA, Latent Prints and Questioned Documents experts. Preliminary sampling studies indicated …

Go Off: The Geography And Labor Of Off- And Off-Off-Broadway, Sean C. Mellott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Off- and Off-Off-Broadway remain ill-defined and misunderstood sectors of New York City’s theatre industry, at least when compared with Broadway. This capstone project examines these dual sociocultural spaces and defines some of their contours through a primary analytical lens of geography (the physical locations where Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced) and a secondary lens of labor (the professional contexts in which Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced). Both elements speak to the material conditions of theatrical production in New York City, offering clues as to Off- and Off-Off-Broadway’s position within the entertainment industry and their relationship to the larger social structure …

Fatal And Non-Fatal Police Shootings In The United States, 2015: An Examination Of Open-Source Data, Yuchen Hou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose and Significance: Police shootings do not always result in death. This fact raises a question of what distinguishes fatal and non-fatal police shootings (FNFPS). However, no existing database is available to address how often and under what circumstances civilians have died from or survived police shootings in the United States. To fill the gaps, this dissertation research uses open sources to create a crowdsourced national database on FNFPS in the United States in 2015. The creation of this database provides researchers insights into the suitability and sustainability of open-source research applied for studying police shootings and offers practitioners …

Air Pollution, Climate Change, And Our Health, Kathia Vargas Feliz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Climate change is a subject that is creating a lot of controversies nowadays. From newspapers to researchers, there are big efforts going on trying to bring awareness about the effects of air pollution and climate change over time. It is recommended that governments all over the world, and people from all communities act by taking care of the environment because the situation might turn out to be irremediable. There is a quote by Leonardo Dicaprio stating, “Climate change is real. It is happening right now; it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to …

Incomplete Neutralization In Articulatory Phonology, Sejin Oh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous studies have found small but significant phonetic traces of underlying distinctions for phonologically “neutralized” contrasts. This phenomenon, often called incomplete neutralization, has been found for final devoicing in many languages, (e.g., German; Port, Robert F. & O’Dell, 1985), but has also been reported for other neutralizing phenomena, including flapping in American English (Herd et al., 2010), monomoraic lengthening in Japanese (Braver & Kawahara, 2016), vowel deletion in French (Fougeron & Steriade, 1997), vowel epenthesis in Levantine Arabic (Gouskova & Hall, 2009), among others.

In my dissertation, I explore the (in)completeness of Russian palatalization in the Articulatory Phonology framework, implementing …

Integrating Social-Emotional Learning And School Climate With A Sociocultural Narrative Inquiry Approach, Isabella Fante

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study introduces a novel application of sociocultural narrative theory and method to integrate social-emotional learning (SEL) and school climate research. Extensive research has demonstrated the importance of SEL and school climate in promoting student success (Cohen et al., 2009; Durlak et al., 2011; Rivers et al., 2013). However, few studies examine SEL and school climate as interrelated concepts; they are frequently studied separately, most often using quantitative, survey-based methods (Brackett et al., 2012). Furthermore, despite the wealth of research on SEL and climate, there is a dearth of studies in the context of high school settings. This study employed …

Liquidity Commonality With Factor Models, Ernesto Garcia Iii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Market microstructure research has recently devoted attention to a phenomenon called commonality in liquidity. In this dissertation, I will analyze commonality in liquidity using a novel factor model approach and a generalized definition of commonality in liquidity. This analysis will show that commonality in liquidity is rarely a marketwide phenomenon and is mostly restricted to stocks with a large market capitalization. Additionally, commonality in liquidity is a very recent phenomenon whose appearance coincides with a rise in passive investing after the Dotcom Bubble burst and, more so, after the 2008 Financial Crisis. I will present evidence that suggests commonality in …

Slices Of The Big Apple: A Visual Explanation And Analysis Of The New York City Budget, Joanne Ramadani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a component of government, budgets are fundamental not only to improving the quality of a shared society, but also to understanding what our government officials consider to be their priorities. However, most budgets can be difficult to understand, using terms that are not familiar to people who have not studied finance or economics. To that end, Slices of the Big Apple is an interactive, centralized narrative website that uses visualizations at its core in order to: 1) facilitate a holistic understanding of the New York City government budget for NYC residents; and 2) conduct a five-year analysis of Community …