Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Diverging Impacts Of Organizational Dei Practices: The Role Of Objective And Subjective Group Status, Julia Oberlin, Claudia Toma, Tessa L. Dover

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose – While DEI practices aim to enhance the outcomes of disadvantaged groups, their impact remains uncertain, with disparities often persisting. This paper examines whether the accumulation of DEI practices helps reduce psychological and work disparities between employees, considering both their objective (e.g. gender and race) and subjective (or perceived) (dis)advantage.

Design/methodology/approach – Study 1 surveyed 602 employees to assess the impact of perceiving their organization as having many orfew DEI practices on theirsense ofinclusion and job satisfaction. Study 2 used an experimental design (N 5 739) to extend the findings of Study 1 by manipulating the number of DEI …

God's Not Neutral: Narrative Tropes, Spiritual Warfare, And The Construction Of Evangelical Political Identity In American Christian Fiction, Evelyn L. Mccullough

Dissertations and Theses

Evangelical Christian fiction has reached tens of millions of readers and viewers during the most sustained period of evangelical political mobilization in American history, yet its narrative construction remains largely unexamined. This study asks how recurrent tropes in this genre build the attitudinal and emotional preconditions for political engagement. Combining systematic qualitative content analysis of eight texts spanning four decades (1986–2024) with Critical Discourse Analysis grounded in van Dijk's sociocognitive framework, it traces how storytelling devices connect theological belief to political behavior. The analysis reveals a single organizing logic: the corpus holds one regressive heroic disposition constant while making it …

Without A Map: A Lived Experience Study Of The Paths People Create Through Homelessness, Kathleen P. Conte, Susan Avila, Desiree' J. Duboise, Carlton Bone, Marisa A. Zapata, Transformational Research For Equity And Experience In Shelter (Trees) Committee

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

The Pathways to Housing Study examines how people experience and navigate homelessness and the systems intended to help them move toward stable housing. Conducted in Multnomah County, Oregon, the study used a participatory mixed-methods design co-led with the TREES lived experience committee. The first phase was reported in April 2026 included surveys with 541 people with current or recent experience of homelessness. The second phase, reported here, used in-depth interviews and journey mapping with 29 participants to explore how pathways through homelessness unfold over time and across service systems.

Findings demonstrate that homelessness pathways are rarely linear. Participants described entering …

The Cross-Section Of Empirical Evidence And Personal Experience: A Deeper Look At School Resource Officers Through The Lens Of Demarcus A. Jenkins' Research On The Public Opinion Of Their Potential Removal From Public Schools, Quin Armstrong

University Honors Theses

Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter and Anti-Police movements, there were many discussions across the nation about possible changes to law enforcement operations. Among these discussions included specific discussions about what to do about law enforcement officers stationed in schools. These law enforcement officers are known as school resource officers, or SROs.

The focus of this thesis is specifically on Portland, Oregon's Portland Public School (PPS) district's decision to sever ties with the Portland Police Bureau, and what may have contributed to that ultimate decision. This is accomplished through an analysis of a research paper written by fellow Criminal Justice …

Evolution Of Global Sea‐Level Rise Projections And Their Uncertainty, Andra J. Garner, Amy Appollina, Jessica Slotter, Gregory G. Garner, Aimée B. A. Slangen, Robert E. Kopp, Benjamin P. Horton

School of Earth, Environment, and Society Faculty Publications and Presentations

For more than 40 years, scientists have projected future sea‐level change. Documenting how sea‐level projections have evolved is vital for tracking progress, uncertainties, and future research needs. Here, we update and analyze a database of global‐mean sea level (GMSL) projections dating from 1982 to 2025, identifying five key findings. First, GMSL projection generation has been concentrated in a small number of developed countries, with 95% of projections produced in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, or Australia. Second, while GMSL projections for 2050 and 2100 have been published regularly since the early 1980s, only 30 of 103 studies have …

Statistical Model Of Subsurface Scattering Bias In Icesat‐2'S Atl06 Product, Thilini Bamunu Arachchige, Kelly E. Gleason, Jonathan C. Ryan, Markus Allgaier

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

ICESat‐2 uses visible laser pulses and photon‐counting detectors to range the Earth's surface, providing precision altimetry for measuring ice sheet elevation change. However, since water ice is transparent to visible light, the photon returns recorded by ICESat‐2's ATLAS instrument may originate from subsurface scattering inside the snow or glacier ice volume, making the surface appear lower than it is. Here, we develop a Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer model to characterize the potential bias caused by subsurface scattering in snow and ice. Our model allows us to study the subsurface scattering bias in relation to photon number, scattering coefficient, and slope …

Credence Goods In Markets With Collective Reputation: Nature Of Equilibria And The Value Of Certification, Erin Krupka, Thomas P. Lyon, Arnab Mitra

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Fraud can cause markets for credence goods to collapse, but collective reputation has been suggested as a potential solution, especially when buyer valuations for quality are high. We develop a discrete model of a market for label credence goods and provide conditions for no-fraud equilibria based on collective reputation. We identify conditions under which all equilibria may be asymmetric or involve mixed strategies and hence sellers may face coordination problems. Our analysis suggests such coordination problems are the greatest when the size of the high-quality market is approximately half of the overall market (that incorporates both high- and low-quality goods), …

Unmanned Aerial Support Program In Portland Police Bureau: A Case Study, Eiryn Renouard

Dissertations and Theses

With the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) adopting drone technology in 2024 as a tactical tool, officers have begun to experience change in the way they approach their roles as they learn to work in conjunction with this new technology. Known as the Unmanned Aerial Support program (UAS), this drone program is embedded into PPB's patrol unit. The recency of the program offers an opportunity to examine how a new program using new technology builds its culture and impacts the perspectives and behaviors of its participating officers. By interviewing officers and conducting field observations of the officers and drones in action, …

Shade Tree Democracy: Maintaining Peace In Post-Conflict Societies, Jaafar M. Sh Jama

Dissertations and Theses

Under what conditions does customary law contribute to maintaining peace in post-conflict societies? I study this question in the context of Somalia, a country that has lacked an effective central government since the outbreak of civil war in 1991. I argue that in the wake of civil war, traditional systems of government are capable of facilitating peace whereas governance by the modern state apparatus is often an impediment to peace. The underlying mechanisms that I argue explain the effectiveness of a traditional system of governance are that it is 1) in tune with broadly-held societal values, 2) intuitive for citizens …

“Turn The Faucet”: Right-Wing Hydrosocial Imaginaries Of Irrigation Water In The Western United States, Alexander Reid Ross, Thien-Kim Bui, Alida Cantor

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The second administration of United States President Donald Trump has taken an authoritarian, centralized approach to governance in the United States. Water management is one area in which the president has attempted to show dominance. This research theorizes President Trump’s concept of water in the United States West as a “hydrosocial imaginary” in which the release of water from rivers and reservoirs indicates virility, action, and power, instead of liberal cautiousness and prudence. By ordering the release of two billion gallons of water from California’s Central Valley into the dry Tulare Basin one hundred miles north of Los Angeles for …

We Don't See Race, We See Blue: A Case Study Of Police Unions As Racialized Organizations, Sarahfina Aubrey Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

In the late 1960s, police began to unionize. Today, they are the most well-organized labor force in the United States, with 70% to 80% of sworn officers now represented by a union. Though it has been decades, little scholarship has developed about how police unions affect policing. Much of the research that does exist uses race-neutral frames to address an organization steeped in racial history. This study aims to address this gap in scholarship, in part, by introducing race as a motivation for and explanation of organizational output.

This research applies Victor Ray's racialized organizations theory to police unions. I …

Trapped In Transition: Structural Change And Political Dynamics In Middle-Income Countries, Gabriel Duvidovich

Dissertations and Theses

The middle-income trap literature has examined why relatively few middle-income countries transition to high-income status. A range of explanations has been proposed, but the political dimension has often been overlooked. Studies that take a political perspective often focus on institutional form rather than the state’s ability to effectively implement policy. This study addresses this gap by bringing political capacity to the center of the analysis. It argues that political capacity appears important for the productive upgrading required for sustained growth in middle-income economies and shapes economic growth trajectories across countries at different income levels.

The empirical analysis uses country-period panel …

The Freedom Myth: How Ski Culture's Hidden Conformity Reveals The Unconscious Power Of Brand Belonging, Isabel R. Phillips

University Honors Theses

Purpose: Ski culture sells freedom and enforces conformity. This review asks what unconscious behavioral patterns hold that contradiction in place, and how brands capitalize on it to manufacture belonging.

Design/Methodology/Approach: A narrative literature review across consumer psychology, behavioral neuroscience, sociology, and ski industry research. No primary data were collected. Four accounts of consistency-seeking are synthesized into one framework, then applied to three ski industry cases at ascending scales and tested against a comparative case from Spanish football.

Findings: Belonging is a conditioned response, and conditioning requires a stable stimulus. Consistency is therefore the precondition of belonging rather than a constraint …

Oak Savanna Expansion: Indigenizing Psu's Urban Landscape, Ash Herb

University Honors Theses

Since time immemorial Indigenous Peoples have resided in what is now named Portland of the Pacific Northwest in the Willamette Valley. For hundreds of years, this forested Land has been colonized, razed to stumps and covered in cement in order to build the urban landscape. Due to such destruction on a broad scale, we are experiencing the results of climate catastrophe. By finding ways to reclaim our relationship with Land and returning to Indigenous epistemologies, our urban landscape has the opportunity to shift towards restoration and prosperity. Indigenous plants have existed here, supporting humans in a reciprocal relationship, for thousands …

A Scoping Review Of Participatory Tools And Practices In Collaborative Processes: Towards Multi-Actor Collaboration In Integrated Landscape Approaches, Irmeli Mustalahti, Ida Herdieckerhoff, Rebecca Mclain, Anna Mustonen, Rijal Ramdani, Agustiyara Agustiyara, Denis Dobrynin, Nicole Klenk, Gadfly Stratton, Miriam Castillo Orozco, Multiple Additional Authors

National Policy Consensus Center Publications

In this article, we ask how the different tools and practices used in participatory and collaborative processes could support multi-actor collaboration in integrated landscape approaches (ILAs). First, we conducted a scoping review to identify and synthesize literature on participatory and collaborative approaches related to forest, water, land and landscapes. Secondly, we analysed 130 articles to understand how and by which means these approaches engaged different actors in multi-actor collaborations. Our findings identified a wealth of different tools and practices available to support participatory and collaborative approaches, such as participatory mapping and modelling, games and visualizations, scenario development, and knowledge co-creation. …

Impact Of Chronic Pain On The Families Of U.S. Adults, Jennifer S. De La Rosa, Katherine E. Herder, Rita D. Romero, De'sha S. Wolf, Tally M. Largent-Milnes, Mohab M. Ibrahim, Stacy S. Pigott, Greg T. Chism, Beth E. Meyerson, Julie G. Pilitsis, Multiple Additional Auhors

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Introduction:. Chronic pain (CP) can profoundly strain family systems, yet few population studies have explored prevalence and population dynamics of CP with high impact on families. Objectives:. Examining prevalence and phenomenological characteristics of chronic pain with high impact on the families of U.S. adults. Situating HICP-family within a tiered cascade of functional impact. Methods:. Prevalence estimated using 2023 National Health Interview Survey Data (n = 29,522) Results:. Findings are as follows: (1) the population prevalence of CP with high impact on families (high-impact chronic pain [HICP]-Family) is 4.4% among U.S. adults, 18.1% among U.S. adults with CP, and 46.3% among …

Ƒ(Enlightenment): A Complex Adaptive Systems Model Of Recursive Causality And Human Meaning-Making, Daniel Lambert

Dissertations and Theses

Conflict Resolution has developed as a richly interdisciplinary field; however, its theoretical architecture remains fragmented across distinct bodies of scholarship. Existing approaches offer valuable but often isolated explanations of conflict behavior, limiting their ability to account for its complexity. This thesis addresses this limitation by advancing systems science as an organizing framework for integrating these perspectives. It introduces the Human-Complex Adaptive Systems (H-CAS) framework, which conceptualizes human behavior as a recursive adaptive process operating across interconnected regulatory domains. Within this model, conflict is not treated as a discrete event or purely deliberative process, but as an emergent property arising from …

Macro Social Work Education And Practice Over 1980–2024 Through Multiple Lenses: A Systematic Review Of The Empirical Literature, Bowen Mcbeath, Nguyen Thi Bich Thao

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Over the past 40 years, conceptual and empirical scholarship on macro social work has grown, particularly as the social work profession has turned to macro practice to respond to crises of neoliberalism and increasing social development needs. Using a systematic literature review with a sequential mixed-methods (quant→Qual) study design, we synthesize over four decades of empirical research (1980–2024) on master’s-level macro social work education, practice, and professional identity development. Our findings testify to the growth and diversity of macro practice from the perspective of social work educators, students, and alumni. Yet we find that this trend is accompanied by significant …

Trust And Signaling: An Exploratory Study Of Residential Attitudes Towards Energy Efficiency Advisors And Outdoor Media, Hal T. Nelson, Ivana Osmanovic

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the building sector shifts toward community-led energy efficiency (EE) initiatives to mitigate the climate crisis, scaling adoption requires understanding behavioral drivers. This study examines key drivers of EE measure adoption: perceived non-energy benefits, trusted advisors, and behavioral signaling. This research contributes to the energy policy and social science literature by empirically linking social trust with signaling preferences. It extends existing EE adoption decision theories by identifying distinct clusters of “expert” versus “close” advisors across demographic groups. Data from an experimental survey (n = 238) in Portland, Oregon, were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) and multivariate regression modeling. Results …

Civic Activism Of Refugee Community Organizations And Their Effectiveness In Supporting Refugees, Anis Zaman

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

The development and governance architecture of migration policy often lacks migrants' perspectives. Thus, in most cases, migration policies generate conflicts between migrants and host communities. In this regard, refugee-led community organizations (RCOs) offer solutions by promoting collective action among refugees. RCOs play a vital role in fostering collective action by refugee communities to alleviate suffering and assert refugee rights. However, RCO’s operations and interactions in the host country are challenging and are shaped by the nature of migration governance and the host government’s tolerance for refugee activism. The nature of migration governance dictates the spaces for refugee civic activism. This …

Domestic Gastrodiplomacy In The U.S. During The Great Depression And International Relations Theory, Leah Tucker

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

International Relations scholarship has generally treated food as an outward-facing instrument of soft power, leaving its domestic political functions comparatively underexamined. This paper argues that, during periods of systemic crisis, food policy can also operate inwardly as a mechanism of regime stabilization with broader political implications. Using New Deal food programs during the Great Depression as a case study, it introduces the concept of “domestic gastrodiplomacy” to describe how the management of subsistence can reinforce confidence in governing institutions when that confidence is under strain.

The paper evaluates this claim through realist, liberal, and constructivist perspectives. Each highlights a different …

Unspent Donations In Donor Advised Funds - Policy Recommendation, Oriel Nolan-Smith

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

Billions of dollars are sitting in Donor Advised Funds, delaying support for charitable organizations seemingly at odds with the intent of U.S. charitable tax policy. With no requirement for annual distribution nor timelines for disbursement, Donor Advised Funds allow individual and institutional donors to postpone directing funds to charitable organizations - despite already claiming tax benefits. As a result, some DAFs distribute less than 5% of assets annually, while many of the institutions managing the DAFs continue collecting fees.

Two complementary policy interventions are recommended: (1) the issuance of a federal regulation requiring annual minimum distributions from all DAFs, and …

Senator Mark O. Hatfield And The Commitment To Intellectual Rigor And Integrity, Carlos A. Arias

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

No abstract provided.

Message From The Editors

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

No abstract provided.

Masthead, Carlos A. Arias

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

No abstract provided.

The Growing Needs For Young Adults’ Behavioral Health Services In Oregon And Pathways For Sustainable Service Deliveries, Anis Zaman

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

Recent OHA data indicate a significant surge in behavioral health cases among young adults ages 17-26 across Oregon. Every year in Oregon, the total number of young adults receiving medical treatment includes a significant number of them who have behavioral health challenges. This large group of young adults with mental health conditions is vulnerable to suicidal ideation and substance overdose. Despite sincere efforts by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), the young adult mental health state of Oregon remains a concern. Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive action plan for the sustainable delivery of mental health services to young …

From Policy To Practice: Analyzing Inclusive Education Strategies In Nigerian Internally Displaced Persons (Idps) Camps, Chukwuyem Joel Arimie, Williams Okotie Dr

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

Through high-quality education delivery, inclusive education indicates the pursuit of social justice for all marginalized societies. The study examines how the Edo camp's internally displaced people are impacted by inclusive education policies. Relevant policy and regulatory frameworks pertaining to inclusive education in Nigeria were examined in the research. Because the Hope for the Needy Foundation provides for the educational needs of the children in the camp, interview responses suggest that despite the policy frameworks, strategies for the effective execution of the policy in the IDP camp have not yet been put in place. The article makes the case that the …

Desert Desires And The War On Terror: Pre- And Post-9/11 Sheikh Romances, Leena Altamimi

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

The existence of sheikh romances as a subgenre has prevailed for well over a century in Western literature. Therefore, would one be able to discern whether the book cover imagery as well as the textual content showcases any tangible differences pre and post 9/11, and America’s “war on terror” campaign? A total of five books are observed: The Sheik by E.M. Hull published in 1919, Sarah Holland’s Desert Destiny published in 1991, Loreth Anne White’s The Sheik Who Loved Me and Penny Jordan’s Possessed by the Sheikh (both published in 2005), and lastly Crowned for the Sheikh’s Baby by Sharon …

Resisting Dualism In Contemporary Movement Building: Lessons From The Zapatista Movement On Creating Assertive, Insurgent, And Generative Praxis, Nico Killian

University Honors Theses

The common struggle of social movements, revolutionary and otherwise, in the contemporary era is how to establish a collective capable of asserting its politics via grassroots organizing in the face of the logic of global capitalism that atomizes communities, reconfigures the role of the state, and unleashes the fragmentizing and simultaneously totalitizing forces of the global market. Discourse regarding effective movement building in the contemporary era often falls into two dualistic avenues of resistance - complete autonomy that rejects any engagement or affiliation with political structures out of fear that it would result in demobilization through co-optation or negotiating a …

Intersectional Pathways To Prison And Sentence Disparities: Exploring The Role Of Race, Gender Identity, And Sexuality In Women’S Sentencing Outcomes, Jae Collett

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the relationship between race, gender identity, sexuality, and prison sentence length using data from the Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016. While state and federal guidelines are ostensibly in place to prevent disparate sentencing outcomes, research still finds disparities in prison sentence lengths across identities of defendants. Women generally receive more lenient sentences than men, and may be shown chivalry when processed through the criminal legal system. However, qualifications for chivalrous treatment have historically only been accessible to certain women (i.e. cisgender, heterosexual, white women). The social and institutional exclusion queer women and/or women of color experience may …