Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Mexican Return Migration Across The Life Course, Mara G. Sheftel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Foreign-born individuals make up a growing share of older adults in the US. Older immigrants offer an important vantage point from which to investigate integration because outcomes at older ages can be considered “final” measures providing empirical evidence for theoretical understandings of the forces impacting immigrant trajectories. However, considering the non-negligible portion of immigrants that ultimately return to their country of origin it is impossible to get the full range of immigrant outcomes without considering returnees. Further, patterns of return may differ across the life course with distinct economic, social, and health considerations at older ages. However, the impact of …

Divergent Expectations And Dynamic Price Discovery, Shankar Narayanan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose: To provide empirical evidence supporting the claim that divergent expectations underlie price formation during the U.S. equity market opening hours. We focus on earnings announcements to support this claim. This dissertation argues that the clarity of earnings announcements and a firm’s balance sheets is inversely associated with the quality of price discovery during the opening hours after the earnings announcements, as ambiguities in information underlie divergence in expectation. We look at short-term volatility during the opening half-hours of U.S. equity markets after the earnings announcements to assess the quality of price discovery. We also consider changes in short-term …

From The Voices Of Five African American Teenage Girls: Demystifying The Role Of Stress In School, Selena M. Williams-Yii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explored how African American Teenage Girls framed and navigated their stressful experiences in educational contexts. Drawing from one-on-one interviews and focus groups, this study aimed to raise awareness about the ways African American Teenage Girls defined, interpreted, and internalized the tensions of stress in a school setting. This exploratory qualitative study was grounded in the conceptual frameworks of Black Feminist Theory (BFT), and Critical Race Theory (CRT). These theories were used to explore how systemic oppression may cause stress. By sharing their collective and individual stories, this study revealed my participants grappled with sources of stress, such as …

The Federalist Papers' Account Of Human Nature, Jeffrey P. Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper is an analysis of the account of human nature found in The Federalist Papers. This interpretation assumes The Federalist is a work of political rhetoric and advocacy, but also one of genuine significance as political science and philosophy. As a book, The Federalist is a coherent whole, which offers a coherent account of human nature, despite the collective nature of its authorship, the time pressures of its publication, and the piecemeal nature of its workmanship. This understanding of human nature is the thread which runs through all its analysis and numbers. Its arguments asserting the inadequacies of …

The Influence Of Prosecutorial Overcharging On Defendant And Defense Attorney Plea Decision Making: Documenting And Debiasing The Anchoring Effect, Stephanie Aurora Cardenas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Strategic overcharging, a practice that some prosecutors readily employ to threaten defendants with excessively severe sentences, undermines the Sixth Amendment right to trial by coercing defendants to plead guilty rather than face penalties disproportionate to their alleged misconduct. Legal scholars and psychologists have long suggested that strategic overcharging may elicit powerful anchoring effects that bias defendants’, but not attorneys’ evaluations, of the plea offer. The current research sought to examine (a) the extent to which mock defendants and legal professionals were susceptible to the anchoring bias, (b) elucidate the mechanism underlying susceptibility to the anchoring effect in plea contexts, and …

The Impact Of Local Demographic Change In The Contemporary United States, Christopher Maggio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Growing racial/ethnic diversity has undoubtedly made a major social and political impact in many localities across the United States in recent times. Various studies have addressed local reactions to this demographic change, most commonly highlighting backlash among the White population. This dissertation takes an in-depth look at the impact of these demographic changes on several key outcomes: the 2016 presidential election, White attitudes toward immigration policy, and perceptions of racism among racial/ethnic minorities that may emerge as a result of White backlash. These studies are careful to examine particular subsamples that may be more or less susceptible to backlash or …

The City As A Learning Lab: Using Historical Maps And Walking Seminars To Anchor Place-Based Research, Anne E. Leonard, Jason Montgomery

Publications and Research

Information literacy, inquiry, and empirical observation skills are essential to undergraduate students’ success, supporting the development of their independent critical thinking skills. In this chapter, we discuss an interdisciplinary course that we, an architecture professor and a librarian, co-taught at New York City College of Technology. The course, Learning Places: Understanding the City, combines place-based learning with primary source research, developing students’ abilities to observe an urban site chosen for study and to document their observations, and in the process build a line of inquiry for further research. The documented observations, newly created primary sources in their own right, initiated …

Nuances In Bottom-Up Interpretations: Colombia's And Guatemala's Radically Different Approaches To Transitional Justice, Chelsea L. Carrick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars have treated “bottom-up” transitional justice processes as a non-nuanced whole, situating grassroots actors in direct opposition to large-scale, or “top-down,” approaches to transitional justice. Such an analysis is limited because it fails to take into account complex contextual factors that contribute to the ways in which bottom-up mechanisms manifest. Colombia and Guatemala are two cases in which bottom-up actors have strived to influence the ways in which peace and justice were articulated by their respective governments; however, the methods and outcomes are strikingly different. In Guatemala, grassroots actors sought to achieve ethnic inclusion, neglecting class and land-based demands. Colombia’s …

Youth Bystander Intentions To Intervene In Peer Intimate Partner Violence: The Co-Influence Of Perceived Perpetrator Race And Perceived Culpability, Nana Amoh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, bystander intervention programs that focus on addressing violence have notably become more popular and prevalent on college campuses. Bystander intervention programs serve to help college students identify and intervene in emergency situations like intimate partner violence. Despite advances in the bystander intervention literature, there is a dearth of research that has examined bystander intentions to intervene in situations of intimate partner violence among youth who have witnessed violence between peers. This study examined bystander intentions to intervene among young adults who witnessed peer male-to-female physical intimate partner violence and whether intentions to intervene varied depending on perpetrator …

Vertebrate Scavenger Diversity And Ecosystem Services Along An Elevational Gradient In Central Nepal, Aishwarya Bhattacharjee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A growing number of studies recognize the ecological significance of vertebrate scavengers, and several species belonging to this diverse, functional guild are of high conservation importance around the globe. Studies on taxonomic and functional components of biodiversity often use elevation gradients to comprehensively examine patterns and drivers across multiple spatial scales. Yet, there are relatively few elevational studies on large vertebrates or multi-taxa guilds, and the related variation of their ecosystem services. In particular, scavenger research has largely focused on local-scale studies or regional/global comparisons of local-scale investigations. Moreover, these studies primarily consider taxonomic community characteristics and the patterns of …

Childhood Adhd, Impulsivity, And Alcohol-Related Impairment Among Diverse College Students, Mariely Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Aims: We examined (1) if students with high childhood ADHD symptoms, and at high risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD) reported greater alcohol-related impairment (ARI) than their low childhood ADHD peers who had comparable rates of alcohol use; and (2) whether alcohol-related problems were more severe for those with high childhood ADHD and high AUD risk when their trait impulsivity was high.

Method: 18-to 25-year-old (N=81), racially/ethnically diverse, college students completed a two-part study. An online survey assessed childhood ADHD symptoms (Wender Utah Rating Scale) and past-year alcohol use (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test). Laboratory assessment comprised neuropsychological and self-report …

"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a reflection on how loss was articulated in the wake of 9/11. The terror attacks engendered a memorial style that sought to give shape to grief, acknowledging it without filling it in or erasing it. This new style, which I term embodied absence, exists across a range of mediums, from literature to architecture. It is such a potent memorial form because it also captures the traumatic process, which is prolonged, layered, and potentially open-ended. However, despite their ability to mirror the nature of trauma, instances of embodied absence never verbalize the attacks’ root trauma—the disconnect between our …

What We Owe To Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility Of Fiction Creators, Kathryn Wojtkiewicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this project is to provide a theoretical underpinning for the belief that creators of fiction should dedicate time to diversifying the cast of characters in their fictions, and to avoiding harmful stereotypes when doing so. I establish this as a hermeneutical responsibility: because of the epistemic influence fictions can wield over their audiences, trafficking in harmful stereotypes of marginalized identities (instances of which I call Bad Representation Problems) or excluding marginalized identities entirely (which I call No Representation Problems) from one’s fictions can reinforce harmful beliefs about real people with those identities. The more popular the fiction, …

Institutions, State Capacity, And Intra-State Conflict: Evidence From A Decade-Long Civil War In Nepal, Nishant Yonzan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

First, while mass armed civil conflicts predominantly occur in weak states, which are states that lack state capacity, it is unclear why not all weak states experience mass armed civil conflict. Second, political stability and highly unequal distribution of resources are opposing forces that are unlikely to coexist together. However, highly unequal societies have existed with relative stability. Indeed, cross-country literature on civil war finds little relationship between conflict and unequal distribution of resources. This dissertation attempts to address these issues using the Civil War in Nepal which lasted from 1996 to 2006.

Institutions are fundamental for the proper functioning …

Evaluation Of The Potential Of Automated Sem-Eds Analysis For The Discrimination Of Inorganic Soil Particles, Anna S. Duggar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Soil, that complex mixture of minerals, organic particles, chemicals, and anthropogenic materials, is ubiquitous and easily transferred, which gives it forensic relevance. Forensic soil analysis has traditionally included the identification and comparison of both organic and inorganic components, the inorganic portion being most commonly examined by light microscopy and other instrumental techniques. Predominantly, the inorganic materials in soil are naturally-occurring minerals, contributed as grains from the surrounding bedrock, which gives a soil its regional character. That parent material then undergoes physical, chemical, and anthropogenic changes producing wide geographic variation within a single region. This variation forms the basis for potential …

The Grid Elegies, Pamela A. Kallimanis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Immigrants are a key component in New York City’s pandemic. Historically, New York is a city of immigrants and their children. In the latter part of the 20th Century, more immigrants arrived due to changes in migration policy. There was also an increased outmigration through second and third generations, which mirrors an economic trajectory seen in previous points in history, mainly in the 1970s. At that time, there was the lure of government policies – from federal mortgage agencies that graded white suburban areas as safer areas for banks to make loans than racially mixed urban areas, to road construction …

Avocado Mania: The Rise And Costs Of Our Obsession With Avocados, Rosa C. Lourentzatos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The past two decades have seen a surge in global demand for avocados, which have become popular among middle- and high-income fractions of society in developed regions of the world. Avocados are predominantly consumed far from their centers of origin and out of their traditional cultural context. The United States imports 87 percent of its avocados from a single region in Mexico, Michoacán. The systems of production and provision that have risen to meet the demand for this fashionable fruit have had devastating social and environmental effects, including deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, pollution, displacement of indigenous populations, food insecurity, …

Examining Probation And Judicial Adherence To The Nyc Disposition Matrix, Susruta Sudula

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Decisions made by criminal justice professionals in the juvenile justice system can have long-lasting and far-reaching impacts on youth. Structured decision-making (SDM) models, such as disposition matrices, seek to reduce unwarranted disparity and ensure uniformity in sentencing, while still safeguarding public safety and improving youth outcomes. This dissertation is the first to review the New York City (NYC) Disposition Matrix. Using bivariate and multivariate analyses, the present study examines factors that predict probation and judicial adherence to the matrix and provides some reasons for probation deviations. It also explores whether matrix recommendations and judicial adherence predict rearrests.

Findings demonstrate that …

Pandemic Schooling: Lessons In Equity, Advocacy, And Racial Justice, Donna Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It was my fourth year of teaching at a Brooklyn elementary school when the COVID-19 pandemic forced school buildings, and the entire city, to enter a world of lockdown and quarantine. New York City was an early epicenter of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, and the virus quickly revealed severe racial and socioeconomic disparities across the city. A disproportionate number of cases, serious illnesses, and death has been experienced by low-income Black and Latinx communities. At the same time, 2020 also ushered in a national racial reckoning following the May murder of George Floyd.

In this thesis, I will provide a …

Telehealth Caregiver Training: Treating Food Selectivity Without Extinction, Christina M. Alaimo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Telehealth behavioral interventions are becoming increasingly necessary given limited accessibility for in-person services; while there is a growing evidence-base for these interventions, there are few applications for pediatric feeding disorders. Those studies that have evaluated telehealth feeding interventions have done so only after children received some form of in-person services. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a telehealth caregiver training package to teach caregivers to implement an alternative to escape extinction feeding intervention in their home to treat their child’s food selectivity. All three caregivers demonstrated high levels of correct performance following training and all children demonstrated increases …

The Effects Of Constant And Descending Criterion-Level Frequencies On Skill Acquisition Outcomes, Anna Budd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Higher levels of performance during skill acquisition predict higher levels of response maintenance, but less is known about how many observations of high levels of performance are needed to produce this effect of criterion levels. Across two experiments, we analyzed multiple criterion-level frequency values, or the number of observations of criterion-level performance during teaching. In Experiment 1, we taught children with disabilities target skills to 90% accuracy using constant criterion-level frequencies: one day versus three consecutive days. Across three participants and five comparisons, participants required fewer sessions to meet the terminal acquisition performance criterion when the frequency value was set …

Spectral Urbanism: Modern Ghost Cities, Rare Earths, And Political Time At The Limits Of Materialism, Linsey Ly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contemporary urbanization in China is marked by speed, repetition, and similitude, key features of what I call spectral urbanism that also attends to the presence or absence, to recursivity and deferral. The mass development of empty, outmoded, and seemingly abandoned modern ghost cities in China’s borderlands come to be used as evidence of an interruption or lack in the veneer of Chinese modernity. The contours and quality of stalled development are measured, read in objects of the built environment that have yet to fulfill their anticipated function: vacant buildings, quiet roads that lead no one to empty parks, homes which …

Fitness Culture: Making New Persons In Quasi-Socialist Belarus, Emily J. Curtin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines women’s fitness culture in Minsk, Belarus. While fitness is a global phenomenon, it has received very little attention within anthropology. I argue that this seemingly unpolitical subject plays an important role in shaping subjectivities and social relations in post-Soviet Belarus. Belarus, which is located on the fault line between Russia and the EU, has so far not transitioned to anything resembling either capitalism or democracy. While the possibility for political change has seemed nearly unimaginable under President Alexander Lukashenko’s long tenure, the recent penetration of global consumer culture—in particular, the proliferation of fitness clubs and a new …

Documenting The Undocumented: Experimenting Europe At The Biometric Migrant Archive, Romm Lewkowicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation is a critical ethnography of the biometric governance of asylum seekers and illegal migrants in the European Union, an integral apparatus for the policing of border-free Europe. Interrogating the paradox of how ‘undocumented migrants’ have been—and are—the most documented subjects in Europe today, the research explores how this documentation assumes the form of biometric technology and its relation to the postwar eradication of Europe’s internal frontiers. At the center of these processes and my research object is Eurodac: a pan-European apparatus for the biometric documentation and regulation of Europe’s paperless migrants and asylum seekers. By attending to both …

Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome And Promotion Of Maternal Caregiving: Missing Voices Of Mothers In Medication Assisted Treatment, Hedi Levine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In response to the increasing rates of opioid exposure among pregnant women and their infants, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) published “Clinical Guidance for Treating Pregnant Women with Opioid Use Disorder and Their Infants” (2018). The expert panel, which was assembled for this clinical guidance did not include women who were the focal subjects for the guidance. The current qualitative study contributed the missing voices of women in methadone-assisted treatment (MAT) who gave birth subsequent to the publication of the guidance.

The SAMHSA guidance was based upon a preponderance of evidence guiding recommended practices regarding rooming-in, …

The Influence Of Evidence-Based Sex Discrimination Policies On Women’S Perceptions Of Organizational Climate, Sexism, And Identity Safety, Maya A. Godbole

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexism has proven to be a stubborn barrier to women’s participation and advancement in workplaces and academic institutions (Rosette, Akinola, & Ma, 2017). Importantly, sexism in organizational settings has endured despite the implementation of federal, state, and organizational policies that prohibit discriminatory behavior. One reason for this may be that because organizational policies are typically written for the purpose of complying to federal and state laws, they do little to foster psychological safety among employees and address the “chilly” organizational climates that enable sexism. To that end, the current research aimed to (a) develop novel, evidence-based sex discrimination policies and …

Advancing Gender Equity Through Legislation: Overview Of Select Laws Passed From 2014–2020, Maria J. D’Agostino, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

Advancing Gender Equity through Legislation: A Compilation of Laws Passed from 2014 - 2020 aims to provide New York City residents with information about legislation passed under the de Blasio administration that aims to promote gender equity in the city.

Must Consent Be Informed? Patient Rights, State Authority, And The Moral Basis Of The Physician's Duties Of Disclosure, D. Robert Macdougall

Publications and Research

Legal standards of disclosure in a variety of jurisdictions require physicians to inform patients about the likely consequences of treatment, as a condition for obtaining the patient’s consent. Such a duty to inform is special insofar as extensive disclosure of risks and potential benefits is not usually a condition for obtaining consent in non-medical transactions.

What could morally justify the physician’s special legal duty to inform? I argue that existing justifications have tried but failed to ground such special duties directly in basic and general rights, such as autonomy rights. As an alternative to such direct justifications, I develop an …

Reimagining Recovery: Debt, Mutual Aid, And Disaster Governance In Puerto Rico, Sarah Molinari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the politics and lived experiences of debt and climate disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. It examines mutual aid and debt resistance in relation to governance techniques and overlapping crises marked by the U.S. territory’s bankruptcy, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (2017), and culminating with popular mobilizations in the summer of 2019 that propelled the governor’s resignation. Tracing the ways that the post-hurricane social disaster and debt crisis are mutually constitutive, I investigate a case of women-led grassroots mutual aid organizing in the east-central municipality of Caguas, Puerto Rico and a political movement calling for a citizen audit …

Detection And Morphological Analysis Of Novel Russian Loanwords, Yulia Spektor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper investigates recent English loanwords in Russian and explores ways in which computational methods can help further theoretical research. The goal of the study is two-fold: to find new, previously unattested loanwords borrowed over the last decade and to examine the rate of adaptation of the new borrowings, attested by the degree to which they conform to the constraints of the Russian language. First, we train a finite-state pipeline that combines character n-gram language models, which encode phonotactic and lexical properties of loanwords, with a binary classifier to detect loanwords. The model achieves state-of-the-art performance results during evaluation, surpassing …