Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Essays On Income And Wealth Inequality, Damir Cosic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays on income and wealth inequality. The essays examine various aspects of this complex feature of the economic system.

The first essay shows that the distribution of firm sizes in an economy is an important determinant of wage distribution. I use data from the U.S. Current Population Survey and the ExecuComp between 1992 and 2012 to construct a new dataset and estimate wage distribution and various measures of wage inequality. I decompose differences in wage inequality across firm sizes and over time by using semi-parametric methods. In 1992, wages were distributed more unequally in small …

The Spark That Lit The Flame: The Creation, Deployment, And Deconstruction Of The Story Of Mohammed Bouazizi And The Arab Spring, Elizabeth Ann Cummings

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The story of Mohammed Bouazizi is credited with being the "spark that lit the flame," first of the Tunisian Revolution, then the Arab Spring as a whole, creating a domino effect that brought down the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan and Yemeni leaders, and threatened to topple still more. In this thesis I explore the narrative structure of the Tunisian revolution, how the story of Mohammed Bouazizi represented that structure and how the narrative sparked the Arab Spring. I also ask how narrative is created and what role social media played in allowing this particular story to become a part of the …

The Relationship Between Social-Emotional Development, Academic Achievement And Parenting Practices In Young Children Who Attend Head Start, Emily A. A. Dow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the preschool years, children develop social-emotional skills -- such as cooperation and self-regulation -- which predict later academic achievement. Research shows that parents play an important role in the development of these skills. However, it remains unclear how specific parenting practices may facilitate the relationship between social-emotional development and academic success. Often, children who grow up in low-income families are at risk for a variety of cognitive and emotional problems. Head Start is a federal program offered to low-income families that provides services, including early childhood education programs, to help offset these risks. Using Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory, the purpose …

Carbon Emission Policy In The United States: State Patchwork Vs. National Policy, Samuel T. Frank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The lack of a national law in the United States to mitigate climate change has prompted many states and cities to take the lead in implementing policies to reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the threats posed by a warming planet. This project adopts two established systems that classify states by their relative involvement in climate policy (Wheeler 2010; Lutsey et al. 2008) and combines them into a single, six-point ranking scale. States are then cross-tabulated against EPA data showing the amount and trajectory of each state's carbon emissions from the electrical power sector over the period 2005-2010. States …

A Syntactic Treatment Of Adjectival Non-Intersectivity In English, Alexander Funk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Natural language has long been observed to be rife with apparently 'non-intersective' modification constructions (false teeth, huge flea, heavy smoker, etc.), whose apparent non-compositionality poses difficulties for formally-articulated theories of language. Bolinger's (1967) demonstration of the extent and significance of the issue ushered in several lines of investigation, first in semantics (most notably Kamp 1975, Siegel 1976, Partee 2009), but more recently in syntax as well, with the insights of Larson (1998) and Bouchard (2002) informing approaches to the nominal domain such as that in Cinque (2010). However, 'semantics-only' accounts of non-intersectivity phenomena have limited explanatory …

Negotiating Limits: Boundary Management In The Bondage/Discipline/Sadomasochism (Bdsm) Community, Karen Marie Holt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study sought to gain insight into the attitudes, beliefs, and values that shape Bondage/Discipline/Sadomasochism (BDSM) activities and how participants negotiate and maintain boundaries in order to engage in mutually satisfying BDSM activities. Additionally, this study explored the degree and consequences of unintended or non-negotiated harms, including physical, emotional, and sexual coercion. A qualitative approach consisting of semi-structured interviews and ethnography was used in order to develop an in depth exploration of the lived experiences of participants. Grounded theory was employed to reveal common themes which all supported a symbolic interactionist / dramaturgical understanding of the protective and predatory processes …

Mothers' Mental Health Evaluations In Foster Care Practice: A Social Constructionist, Qualitative Data-Mining Study, Michelle Salvaggio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This qualitative research study utilizes social constructionist theory and the client career perspective as a framework for developing a grounded theory that explains how mothers' mental health evaluations function in the context of foster care practice. Using clinical data-mining methodology, the foster care records of sixteen mothers were purposively selected. Selection criteria included having completed psychiatric and psychological evaluations and having one child or more in foster care. The sample was divided into subgroups of substance users (n = 9) and those who did not use substances (n = 7), mothers who acknowledged their mental illness (n …

Foreign Direct Investment And The Chinese Economy: Theory And Impact, Gerasimos Seriatos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Chinese economy has sustained a high rate of growth during the last three decades. This economic growth has been the outcome of an innovative strategy, which the Chinese leadership has been implementing within the model of the state directed economy. This strategy has been manifested in a variety of tactical moves one of which is the utilization of Foreign Direct Investment as a source of finance and industrial know-how. The argument in this study is that Foreign Direct Investment has positively contributed to the phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy. Moreover, the performance of Foreign Direct Investment in China …

Assumptions Underlying Behavioral Linkage Revisited: A Multidimensional Approach To Ascertaining Individual Differentiation And Consistency In Serial Rape, Marina Sorochinski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While investigative use of behavioral evidence to help link and solve serial offenses has been in use for centuries, the empirical and theoretical grounds for whether and how to use this evidence effectively has begun to emerge only in recent years. In order for behavioral crime linking to be validated, two base assumptions must be met: individual differentiation (i.e., that offenses committed by one offender will be distinctly different from those committed by another offender) and consistency (i.e., that a degree of similarity will be apparent across crimes committed by the same offender). The present study empirically tested (a) the …

The Intrinsic And Synaptic Properties Of Inverted Pyramidal Cells Within The Neocortex, Robert Michael Steger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within the nervous system, the cortex is the area of the brain where higher order sensory, motor and cognitive processing occurs. The cortex contains a diverse array of cell types which form complicated and intricate circuits which gives rise to higher order sensory, motor and cognitive functions. The majority of neurons found in the cortex are pyramidal cells. While pyramidal cells differ based on soma size, dendrite span and cortical position, almost all share a noticeable defining characteristic: their apical dendrite extends toward the pial surface. However, there also exists a class of pyramidal cell where the apical dendrite extends …

College Graduation Rates Of Hispanic Students: A Review Of The Literature, Jessica Hall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This literature review examines what factors cause Hispanic college students to drop out before completing their bachelor's degrees. Factors include the type of college attended, financial aid, attending college part-time, enrolling in college later in life, stopping-out, taking a gap year, parents' educational levels, whether students are native- or foreign-born, high school academics, SAT and standardized test scores, college academics, the peer group, multiple disadvantages can compound for Hispanic students, sense of belonging on campus, stereotype threat, and a mentoring program. Recommendations are made for how non-college-educated Hispanic parents can be better informed about the college application process, what student …

Obstruent Voicing And Tone In Siklis Gurung, Danielle Ronkos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines proposals for the tone system of Gurung, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal, in light of data collected from a speaker of Siklis Gurung. Although Gurung is widely acknowledged to be a tonal language, existing descriptions of Gurung disagree as to how these tone categories should be defined and whether word-initial obstruent voicing is phonemic or allophonic. The data presented in this paper suggests that, despite claims otherwise, voicing is phonemic in some dialects of Gurung. It also suggests that Siklis Gurung is best analyzed as having three tone categories: a low tone that occurs with breathy …

Successful Implementation Of Solution-Based Casework; A Child Welfare Casework Practice Model?, Naomi Weisel Schear

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Across the country, child welfare agencies have started to implement casework practice models in an effort to improve the safety, permanency and well-being of vulnerable children and families. In their effort to do so, child welfare systems have faced complex contextual challenges to implementation. To date, however, there has been limited empirical research describing successful implementation of these practices. Moreover, little systematic feedback exists concerning service providers' perspectives of various aspects of the implementation process.

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore child welfare supervisors' and case workers' responses to various methods of implementation of Solution-Based Casework …

What Condoms Can't Cover: Do Structural Factors Predispose Black, African American, And Latina/O Adults In Harlem And The South Bronx To Engaging In Hiv Sex Risk Behaviors?, Fabienne Snowden

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

More than thirty years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Black, African American, and Latina/o communities continue to demonstrate the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the US, accounting for 64% of all new infections and 58% of all AIDS diagnoses in 2009. Despite the longevity of this public health crisis, individually-based behavioral change approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention continue to be the most widely used and funded methods of combating HIV risk in Black, African American and Latina/o communities. These methods have been proven to lower the risk of HIV transmission, but HIV incidence in the US remains high at approximately 50, 000 …

Object Categorization In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd), Jaime Vitrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to investigate hierarchical object categorization in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), examining three levels of category inclusiveness (superordinate, basic, subordinate) across three tasks (sequential touching task, generalized imitation task, sorting task) in three domains (animals, tools, kitchen utensils) in the same group of children with ASD. Previous research on the categorization abilities of children with ASD has shown mixed results. This study was designed to clarify past discrepancies in the literature.

Ten children with ASD participated in this study (mean CA = 4 years, 10 months; range 3 to 6 years; mean VMA …

Black Like Me? A Narrative Study Of Non-Anglophone Black U.S. Immigrant Selves In The Making, Yvanne Joseph

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished discriminatory national origin quotas that favored European immigrants. The U.S. has since experienced steady flows of immigrants of color. These diverse groups have brought their racial, social, cultural and historical experiences, which adds greater complexity to the existing Black/White and ingroup/outgroup models that shape group relations, and psychological theorizing about identity. This dissertation focuses specifically on the smaller, less visible, yet growing segments of these immigrant populations. It presents a study of the lives of ten individual immigrants of African descent originating from a non-Anglophone country within Africa, Latin America …

Sensitizing Jurors To Factors Influencing The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Identification: Assessing The Effectiveness Of The Henderson Instructions, Angela M. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court determined that jurors may not be able to effectively evaluate eyewitness evidence (New Jersey v. Henderson, 2011). Research generally supports this contention, finding that jurors do not take into account factors surrounding the commission of the crime and identification when determining the reliability of an identification (Devenport et al., 1997). Courts have implemented various safeguards to assist jurors in evaluating eyewitness evidence, including judicial instructions and expert testimony. The New Jersey Supreme Court proposed the use of judicial instructions and suggested their use would reduce the need for expert testimony. The current …

Rebellion Under The Palm Trees: Memory, Agrarian Reform And Labor In The Aguán, Honduras, Andres Leon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On December 9, 2009, the Unified Peasant Movement of the Aguán (Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguán; MUCA) occupied over 20,000 hectares of oil palm covered lands in the Aguán region in the Honduran northern coast. This was the latest, and probably most dramatic, chapter in the region's tumultuous recent history. This dissertation explores this history and the process of creation of the Aguán region from the perspective of a set of impoverished peasant families that migrated from different parts of Honduras towards the Aguán from the 1970s onwards, in search of a better present and future.

It asks about the …

Effectiveness Of Psychological Techniques In Increasing Deviant Sexual Fantasy Self-Disclosures, Christian Maile

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The assessment of deviant sexual fantasy and interests is an important component in sex offender risk assessment and subsequent treatment planning. However, clinicians and researchers have long acknowledged that sex offenders often distort or underreport details related to their sex offenses, particularly details relating to offense-related deviant sexual fantasy and interests. Some of the common methods used to minimize underreporting of deviant sexual fantasy and interests include the use of phallometry (or plethysmography) and polygraphy; however, not all assessment/treatment facilities or private practitioners providing services to sex offenders have access to such resources. Thus, the development of more efficient, cost-effective …

Privilege In Haiti: Travails In Color Of The First Bourgeois Nation-State In The Americas, Philippe-Richard Marius

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Who are the elites in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere? Do Haiti's elites constitute themselves in a Blackness vs. Whiteness/Mulattoness opposition? Through the investigation of these questions, the central thesis of this ethnography emerges as the material unity in privilege of Haiti's colorist fragments. Noirisme, a fundamentalist strain of Haitian black nationalism that reached hegemony in the dictatorship of François Duvalier in the 1960s, is in marked retreat in contemporary Haiti. Its lingering influence nonetheless continues to foster a black qua black sociality among privileged black nationalists. Mulatto nationalism as political project and public discourse lapsed into …

Super Fun Superfund: Polluted Protection Along The Gowanus Canal, Jessica Ty Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research reflects on the patterns of uneven development occurring in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, social and physical changes taking place there, and how these elements of the canal relate to the changing purpose of urban waterways. Gowanus has mimicked the development of New York City since the 1600's through several phases: city settlement and development, abandonment, and redevelopment. The redevelopment phase in Gowanus couples environmental clean up with gentrification and displacement. Using an urban political ecology framework, this research attempts to answer the following questions: Why, after many years of pollution, is the area being cleaned up? Will …

The Impact Of Technology On Consumerism, David Naranjo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

E-commerce is shifting the way people purchase their goods and services and affecting the relationship between technology and society. Consequently, traditional retailers, aware of the inevitable change, have developed strategies to keep up with the continuously evolving marketplace. These strategies vary from creating virtual stores (i.e., websites) and developing digital social networks to data mining and spamming.

Therefore, from a historical point of view, this thesis will analyze the impact of technology on commerce and how the creation of new virtual marketplaces had affected consumers' behavior. This thesis will explore the origins of e-commerce, the technologies that made possible its …

A Spelling Pronunciation Strategy Helps College Students Remember How To Spell Difficult Words, Turkan Ocal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drake and Ehri (1984) showed that children could utilize a spelling pronunciation strategy in order to remember spellings of words. One purpose of the current study was to determine whether college students could also benefit from a spelling pronunciation strategy in remembering spellings of 20 commonly misspelled words. The second aim of the study was to examine the contribution of decoding skill, exposure to print and vocabulary knowledge in explaining variance in general spelling ability of college students. Based on Share's (1995) self-teaching hypothesis, each of these predictors was expected to explain unique variance in the ability to remember the …

The Domain Of Finiteness: Anchoring Without Tense In Copular Amalgam Sentences, Teresa Elizabeth O'Neill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The central thesis of this work is that a clause consisting only of left-peripheral functional structure can be fully finite. Generative models of clause structure typically assume that a finite clause must be tensed, including a projection of T and a temporal relation between the proposition and the utterance context. In light of evidence from tenseless languages, this assumption has come under scrutiny in recent years. This dissertation offers a new body of evidence from English, a tensed language, in support of the claim that finite clauses can lack the projection of T.

Drawing on the results of formal acceptability …

An Exploratory Study Of The Role Of Cooperating Teachers In Preparing Teacher Candidates For Academic Success With Students Of Color In High-Need Schools, Audra Michelle Watson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the teaching practices, attitudes, beliefs, and expectations, cooperating teachers hold and model for teacher candidates preparing to work in high-need schools with significant populations of students of color. Using a culturally relevant and critical race theory lens, I argue that the clinical placements in which many teacher candidates are placed provide limited opportunities for them to see and engage in the full spectrum of culturally relevant pedagogical practices.

The data for this study were captured from participants in a nationally-administered, state-based teacher preparation program through surveys, interviews, and observations over a period of four months. Using a …

Civil War Incentives, Identities, And Group Allegiances In Syria's Contested Provinces: A Case Study On Civil War, Hilary Weitze

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to answer the following questions: Why did the 2011 Syrian Revolution transition into a civil war? What contributed to the popularity of rebel efforts in the countryside? This case study on the Syrian Civil War begins by characterizing key events in the current civil war setting in order to characterize the nature of participation on the insurgent side of the conflict. Further, this project sets out to identify key events and actors in their respective geographic and demographic frameworks in order to identify the nature of participants and their respective characteristics. I will ultimately draw a connecting …

Collisions Of The Personal And The Public In Post-Realignment California: How Women And Front-Line Workers Manage Post-Incarceration Work, Megan Welsh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a largely taken-for-granted aspect of post-incarceration life: the various forms of work associated with rebuilding one's life, and how this work is organized by the institutions that typically process individuals who are reentering society from prison or jail. This project also considers how post-incarceration work has changed in one California county under the Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 and the subsequent changes made to the state's penal policies as implemented through Assembly Bill 109 (AB 109).

Rooted in the principles of institutional ethnography, a mode of inquiry that examines work processes and how they are coordinated, …

Triple Stigma In Forensic Psychiatric Patients: Mental Illness, Race, And Criminality, Michelle Leigh West

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Stigma involves negative beliefs and devaluations of people in socially identified groups (e.g. race, mental illness). Although people have many reactions to social stigma, some labeled people internalize these attitudes. Research has increasingly explored mental illness self-stigma, when people with mental illness begin to believe that society's negative beliefs are true of them (e.g., that they are hopeless due to mental illness). Self-stigma predicts poorer functional and treatment outcomes. Stigma research has typically investigated stigmatized labels individually. Forensic psychiatric patients, people with mental illness with history of criminal conviction, by definition experience multiple stigmas, yet no research has explored how …

The Incidence And Evolution Of Palatalized Consonants In Latvian, Linda Zalite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the evolution of the palatalized rhotic /r^j/ in Baltic languages with focus on the continuation of this segment in Latvian and its recent neutralization with /r/. Historical, phonological, phonetic, and synchronic data is gathered as evidence to further our understanding of the Latvian palatalized rhotic and its near-disappearance in the 20^th century. Previous typological works of Endzelīns (1922, 1951), Dini (1997), Rūķe-Dravņia (1994) and Ābele (1929) were considered intending to answer three central questions. Was the Latvian palatal rhotic a palatalized segment or a true palatal? What factors played a role in the depalatalization …

Generalized Event Representation In Pre-School Children With Mild- To High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (Asd) And Children With Cognitive And Linguistic Delays (Cld), Tashana S. Samuel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) frequently establish rigid routines and have difficulties flexibly applying what they have learned. Three experiments were conducted to examine generalized event representation in 34 pre-school children. In Experiment 1, children diagnosed with varying kinds of cognitive and language delays (CLD: n = 14) were tested with the generalized imitation paradigm, a reliable measure of representational capacity. Two sets of perceptually dissimilar objects with similar functions were used to perform the same task: one set consisted of modeling props and the other set was the generalization props. At the generalization assessment, children observed actions modeled …