Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Constructions Of Citizenship Among Multinational Corporations, Gail L. Markle

Faculty and Research Publications

Using social contract theory as a foundation I examined the ways in which four multinational corporations use disclosures of corporate social responsibility to present themselves as good corporate citizens. Several factors influence a corporation’s use of CSR: size of the corporation, public visibility, personal commitment of high ranking executives, location of manufacturing operations, and types of stakeholders. There is a significant difference in the responsibilities and obligations Proctor & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Colgate-Palmolive ascribe to themselves as corporate citizens compared to those of SC Johnson. I attribute this difference to one of stakeholder accountability, specifically public shareholders. The three publicly …

Student Performance In A Quantitative Methods Course Under Online And Face-To-Face Delivery, P. Verhoeven, Victor Wakeling

Faculty and Research Publications

In a study conducted at a large public university, the authors assessed, for an upper-division quantitative methods business core course, the impact of delivery method (online versus face-to-face) on the success rate (percentage of enrolled students earning a grade of A, B, or C in the course). The success rate of the 161 online students was 55.3%, significantly lower (p = .000) than that (72.6%) of the 212 face-to-face students. Both students with a strong (A or B) grade in the lower-division statistics prerequisite and students with a weak (C or D) grade in the prerequisite had a significantly lower …

The Impact Of Prolonged Nomination Contests On Presidential Candidate Evaluations And General Election Vote Choice: The Case Of 2008, Jeff Dewitt, Richard N. Engstrom

Faculty and Research Publications

The fact that political parties hold competitive nomination contests that require voters to choose among multiple candidates leaves open the possibility that the contest itself could damage the prospects of an eventual nominee. In this study, we employ the American National Election Study panel survey data from the 2008 U.S. presidential election to assess the impact of the Democratic Party nomination process on candidate evaluations and general election vote preference. We find evidence that Barack Obama had greater difficulty uniting his party than his Republican counterpart due to the fact that Clinton voters were slow to coalesce around Obama. These …

Pop Culture, Politics, And America's Favorite Animated Family: Partisan Bias In The Simpsons?, Kenneth Michael White, Mirya Holman

Faculty and Research Publications

An essay is presented on the impact of the political content of the television program "The Simpsons" on the politics, pop culture and viewers in the U.S. It offers an overview of the creation of the show and explores the different aspects of the show, particularly the debate over its so-called partisan bias. It also discusses the criticism from Republicans including former President George H. W. Bush that the show favors the left.

The Impact Of Prolonged Nomination Contests On Presidential Candidate Evaluations And General Election Vote Choice: The Case Of 2008, Jeff R. Dewitt, Richard N. Engstrom

Faculty and Research Publications

The fact that political parties hold competitive nomination contests that require voters to choose among multiple candidates leaves open the possibility that the contest itself could damage the prospects of an eventual nominee. In this study, we employ the American National Election Study panel survey data from the 2008 U.S. presidential election to assess the impact of the Democratic Party nomination process on candidate evaluations and general election vote preference. We find evidence that Barack Obama had greater difficulty uniting his party than his Republican counterpart due to the fact that Clinton voters were slow to coalesce around Obama. These …

Intangible Investments And The Pricing Of Corporate Sga Expenses, Rongbing Huang, Gim S. Seow, Joe S. Shangguan

Faculty and Research Publications

This study examined whether the market fully prices the reported Selling, General, and Administrative (SGA) expenses when this item includes an intangible investment component. For a sample of intangible investment-intensive firms, we showed that their SGA expenses benefit future operating performances. Evidence suggests some degree of market inefficiency in the pricing of SGA expenses and the intangible investment component. Furthermore, the financial analysts do not appear to appreciate fully the future benefits of the component in their earnings forecasts. Finally, the pertinent disclosures in firms’ annual reports are so inadequate as to attenuate the market mispricing, suggesting a significant room …

From The Editor, Perry Bratcher

The Southeastern Librarian

Column from Perry Bratcher, editor of The Southeastern Librarian.

The Southeastern Librarian V. 59, No. 3 (Fall 2011) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 59, No. 3 (Fall 2011).

Best Practices For Hiring Academic Librarians With Faculty Status And Rank, Christopher Shaffer

The Southeastern Librarian

When library school students graduate, their primary goal frequently is to find a job; they may have a preference for a position as a public librarian, academic librarian, or school media specialist, but most important is finding gainful employment in order to put food on the table. The person responsible for hiring academic librarians must attempt to discern, based on a résumé and a relatively brief personal interview whether a candidate is capable of performing the basic tasks of being a librarian, interacting with faculty, guiding students, and performing their duties as a member of the academy. To make the …

One Mississippi Library’S Experience In Opening Up The State Judiciary To Greater Access By The Library Patron, Stephen Parks

The Southeastern Librarian

Legal materials such as case reporters and case digests can be quite expensive and burdensome for libraries to acquire, due to little use for such materials. Online legal sources such as Westlaw and LexisNexis are rarely an option for these libraries because of their tremendous costs. However, most libraries face legal-related questions from patrons, and librarians lack easily accessible materials to provide the patron an answer.

The staff at Mississippi College School of Law Library decided to do something about this problem by creating a program to provide complete access to the appellate courts of the state of Mississippi freely …

The Structure Of Client Language And Drinking Outcomes In Project Match, Tim Martin, Paulette J. Christopher, Jon M. Houck, Theresa B. Moyers

Faculty and Research Publications

Client language during Motivational Interviewing interventions is an important predictor of drinking outcomes, but there are inconsistencies in the literature regarding what aspects of client language are most predictive. We characterized the structure of client language by factor analyzing frequency counts of several categories of client speech. The results provide limited support for a model proposed by Miller et al. (2006) and Amrhein et al. (2003) but with some important differences. While Amrhein et al. (2003) found that only increasing strength in client commitment language predicted behavior change, the current study revealed that client language preparatory to commitment predicted drinking …

Are Benevolent Dictators Altruistic In Groups? A Within-Subject Design, Lucy F. Ackert, Ann B. Gillette, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, Mark Rider

Faculty and Research Publications

We use a within-subject experimental design to investigate whether systematic relationships exist across distinct features of individual preferences: altruism in a two-person context, risk aversion in monetary outcomes, and social preferences in a group context. We find that altruism is related to demographic variables, including years of education, gender, and age. Perhaps most importantly, self allocation in a two-person dictator game is related to social preferences in a group context. Participants who are more generous in a dictator game are more likely to vote against their self-interest in a group tax redistribution game which we interpret to be an expression …

Perceptions Of Beauty Among Female Chinese Students In The United States And China, Carly R. Staley, Ginny Qin Zhan

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This pilot study compared the perceptions of beauty among Chinese women who were exchange students in the United States with Chinese women who were students in their homeland. We interviewed 19 women in China and 19 women in the United States to determine differences in responses. In accordance with the sociocultural approach and the social comparison approach, we expected Chinese women in the United States to have a be more acculturate, more frequently conclude that American women were more beautiful than Chinese women, be more likely than those studying in China to report body dissatisfaction, be more likely to dislike …

Information And Resources For International Policy Students, Chris Sharpe

Chris Sharpe

A guide on international policy resources at Kennesaw State University Sturgis library. It was created for the online graduate students of the International Policy Management program.

Why The Master? Human Capital Development For Practicing U.S. Cycling Coaches, Daniel Larson, Joel Maxcy

Faculty and Research Publications

The economic structure of the industry of cycling coaches has yet to be the subject of any apparent published inquiry. This study describes the basic characteristics of practicing cycling coaches and presents economic models of the determinants of commercial success for individual coaches. Data were collected through an independent survey of current and former U.S.A. Cycling (USAC) coaches in 2010 (N = 386). Results of ordinary least squares and negative-binomial regression models suggest that coaching and competitive experience are associated with larger clienteles, but formal human capital investments do not generally add to a coach's ability to garner more clients. …

Addiction And Sociality: Perspectives From Methamphetamine Users In Suburban Usa, Paul Boshears, Miriam W. Boeri, Liam Harbry

Faculty and Research Publications

This article contributes to a growing body of literature that emphasizes the social nature of drug use, abuse and addiction. Current discourses of addiction tend to focus on the individual while limiting attention on the social environment and the role of sociality. We seek to contribute a more intuitive, insiders'' perspective of the drug trajectory and a broader conceptualization of addiction. Drawing from our qualitative study on 100 current and former methamphetamine users in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), we examined the trajectories of methamphetamine use to provide greater insight on what influences drug initiation, progression, cessation and relapse …

People News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent professional developments from SELA members.

The Southeastern Librarian V. 59, No. 2 (Summer 2011) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 59, No. 2 (Summer 2011).

Suburban Poverty: Barriers To Services And Injury Prevention Among Marginalized Women Who Use Methamphetamine, Miriam W. Boeri, Benjamin Tyndall, Denise R. Woodall

Faculty and Research Publications

Objective: This paper aims to identify the needed healthcare and social services barriers for women living in suburban communities who are using or have used methamphetamine. Drug users are vulnerable to injury, violence and transmission of infectious diseases, and having access to healthcare has been shown to positively influence prevention and intervention among this population. Yet little is known regarding the social context of suburban drug users, their risks behaviors, and their access to healthcare.

Methods: The data collection involved participant observation in the field, face-to-face interviews and focus groups. Audio-recorded in-depth life histories, drug use histories, and resource needs …

Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation Of Discretely Observed Diffusions, Xiao Huang

Faculty and Research Publications

This paper introduces a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator for discretely observed diffusions when a closed-form transition density is unavailable. Higher-order Wagner-Platen strong approximation is used to derive the first two conditional moments and a normal density function is used in estimation. Simulation study shows that the proposed estimator has high numerical precision and good numerical robustness. This method is applicable to a large class of diffusions.

Comment On Hoerger: Early Pilots Of Medicare Auctions Brings No Solace To Auction Experts, Peter Cramton, Brett E. Katzman

Faculty and Research Publications

Peter Cramton and Brett Katzman stick to their guns: Medicare auctions remain fatally flawed and must be fixed. They argue that contrary to Hoerger's comment, no comfort can be drawn from the fact that the market was able to withstand price reductions in early pilots.

Is There A Link Between Money Illusion And Homeowners' Expectations Of Housing Prices?, Lucy F. Ackert, Bryan K. Church, Narayanan Jayaraman

Faculty and Research Publications

Money illusion is a behavioral bias in which a person thinks in terms of nominal rather than real values. This article reports homeowners' responses to a survey designed to measure the extent of money illusion as well as homeowners' expectations regarding home valuations. Our survey respondents suffer from money illusion, yet they have reasonable expectations of home prices. Our analysis did not identify any unique individual characteristic that correlates with homeowners' choices and suggests that the relationship between money illusion and mispricing is subtle and multifaceted.

Gla Officer Candidates

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

State News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent developments from SELA member institutions.

Sela News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent activities from the Southeastern Library Association. Highlights include: the SELA Summer Conference will be held August 12-13 at the University of Alabama Birmingham; the SELA President asks SELA to provide more help to librarians; the SELA Mentoring Program is looking for participants.

Using An Ir To Enhance The Undergraduate Experience, David Evans, Laura Burtle

David Evans

In this session, our keynote speaker, David Evans, Assistant Vice President for Library Services at Kennesaw State University, will provide a senior administrator’s viewpoint on the role of IR’s in the undergraduate experience. Laura Burtle, Associate Dean and University Librarian for Learning and Technology Initiatives at Georgia State University, will share a first-hand account of how Institutional Repositories are being used to publish and promote student journals, theses, and other undergraduate research. David Stout, Sales Director for Digital Commons, will emcee the event.

The San Pedro Mission Village On Cumberland Island, Georgia, Carolyn Brock

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The San Pedro de Mocama mission, located on Cumberland Island, Georgia, was the principal Spanish mission of the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians from 1587 to the early 1660s. This paper describes some of the results of archaeological fieldwork and research (Rock 2006) completed at the mission village site, technically known as the Dungeness WharfSite (9CM14). (Figure 7.1).

Archaeologically, most mission studies have focused on the missions themselves, particularly on their churches, conventos, and kitchens. At the San Pedro mission village site, however, the church complex has not been located and may have been lost to erosion. Therefore, in the course of …

Sixteenth-Century Mechanisms Of Exchange, David J. Hally, Marvin T. Smith

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

European artifacts found on Native American archaeological sites have long interested archaeologists. Such artifacts have often been used as temporal markers (Brain 1975, Smith 1987, Smith and Good 1982) or as ways to measure acculturation (Brown 1979a, 1979b, White 1975, Smith 1987), but scholars have paid little attention to the mechanisms which delivered such artifacts to the Native populace (but see Brain 1975, DePratter and Smith 1980, Waselkov 1989). Using historical records, archaeological remains, and, most importantly, the context of the archaeological finds, it should be possible to gain some understanding ofhow European materials were obtained by Native Americans and, …

Recent Investigations Of Mission Period Activity On Sapelo Island, Georgia, Richard W. Jeffries, Christopher R. Moore

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Prior to their retreat to Florida in 1684, Muskogean-speaking Guale Indians inhabited much of what is now the Georgia coast. The arrival of Spanish missionaries in Florida and Georgia in the mid-1500s began what is known archaeologically as the mission period (1568-1684), a time of sustained interaction between the Spanish and the Guale people. Over time, population loss due to European-introduced diseases and conflict with English-backed Native American slave raiders resulted in a drastic reconfiguration of Guale society and the abandonment of the Guale's ancestral homeland (Worth 2007).

Sapelo Island (Figure 6.1) is the site of at least one Spanish …

Introduction/Introducción, Robert A. Devillar, Dennis B. Blanton

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Introduction to the issue.