Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Contemporary Library Censorship Tactics: Reviewing The Literature, Lex Faller

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Library censorship efforts in the U.S. have broken records annually since 2021, spurred by social, technological, and political developments. These censorship efforts most frequently target diverse media representing Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual+, trans+, queer, intersex, and asexual+ (LGBTQIA+) communities in and at libraries. The current surge in attempts to censor library materials constitutes part of a greater conservative political strategy in the contemporary culture wars. This literature review analyzes the academic and professional literature alongside the gray literature regarding these censorship efforts to make sense of these trends. By investigating bodies of knowledge …

Motivation To Collaborate: A Qualitative Exploration Of The Perspectives Of Service Providers On An Alternative First Response Program, Desiree' J. Duboise

Dissertations and Theses

Alternative first response programs have existed in the United States for decades, and the formation of these programs has increased across the country in light of public calls for non-police responses to emergency. Portland Street Response (PSR) is an alternative first response program located in Portland, Oregon. The program assists individuals experiencing mental health crises by providing unarmed response in non-violent situations that ordinarily would be responded to by armed police officers. In order for such programs to thrive, collaboration with other organizations is crucial. Service-providing organizations are uniquely prepared to collaborate with a program such as PSR due to …

Oregon Transportation Plan: Innovations In The Exploratory Scenario Planning Approach, Adam Argo, Jonathan Slason

PSU Transportation Seminars

This seminar reviews the recently-adopted Oregon Transportation Plan and the process and innovations that underpinned the analysis to identify a preferred set of investments and actions to support the vision and goals of the plan. The plan used innovative methods for communicating how investment strategies may affect regions or example households across the state. Funding is a key influence on how the plan by identifying the affects of inadequate funding and identifying how investment priorities change if funding increases. The Statewide VisionEval strategic travel model was used to conduct an exploratory scenario planning process that informed the relationships between funding, …

Cognitive Engagement During Group Learning Activities In Chemistry Courses: An Analysis Of Student Discourse, Safaa Youssef El-Mansy

Dissertations and Theses

As educators, our goal is to help our students be successful, but in order to accomplish this, we need to understand what factors contribute to student success. One factor, small-group active learning, has been correlated to improved academic outcomes; however, the magnitude of this improvement can vary across different courses, different types of group work, and even across courses that use the same group work structure. Therefore, it is important to understand what aspects of group work contribute to its effectiveness. The work presented in this dissertation investigated one specific aspect: students’ cognitive engagement. This was done by analyzing the …

Prosecutors Or Helpers: An Institutional Ethnography Of Child Protective Services Casework, Anna Maria Rockhill

Dissertations and Theses

The mission of child welfare is to strengthen the ability of families to care for their children and to protect children and provide aid, services, or referrals to families where maltreatment is said to have occurred. The vast majority of the families who become involved with child welfare are multiply disadvantaged and child welfare is a key feature of the array of public supports for struggling families. However, the institution fails many of the families it serves. Despite recent efforts by those in the field to promote collaboration and engagement, many parents experience child welfare as neither empowering nor helpful …

An Overview Of Elements And Relations: Aspects Of A Scientific Metaphysics, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

A talk on my book, Elements and Relations: Aspects of a Scientific Metaphysics. Book description:

This book develops the core proposition that systems theory is an attempt to construct an “exact and scientific metaphysics,” a system of general ideas central to science that can be expressed mathematically. Collectively, these ideas would constitute a non-reductionist “theory of everything” unlike what is being sought in physics. Inherently transdisciplinary, systems theory offers ideas and methods that are relevant to all of the sciences and also to professional fields such as systems engineering, public policy, business, and social work. To demonstrate the generality …

The Basic Dualism In The World, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Graham Harman writes that the “basic dualism in the world lies…between things in their intimate reality and things as confronted by other things.” This paper supports Harman’s assertion from a systems theoretic perspective and illustrates it with some examples, including conceptions about truth, ethics, value, and intelligence. But dualism implies irreconcilable difference; what Harman points to is better expressed as a dyad, where the two components not only imply one another but are related, and where this spatial dyad is usefully augmented with a temporal dimension, expressed in a third component or an additional orthogonal dyad.

Active Transportation Counts From Existing On-Street Signal And Detection Infrastructure, Sirisha Kothuri

PSU Transportation Seminars

The goal of agencies is to provide a safe and reliable multimodal transportation system that connects people and helps communities and economy thrive. In order to fulfill this mission, it is important to have a robust understanding of the usage of each mode within the system as well as the linkages between modes. Currently there is no systemic accounting of pedestrian traffic across the transportation network, making it difficult to understand systemic crash safety and prioritize projects. Analysts must rely on imperfect proxies such as land use density, race, income, and transit usage in the absence of measured pedestrian traffic …

Automating Intended Target Identification For Paraphasias In Discourse Using A Large Language Model, Alexandra C. Salem, Robert Gale, Mikala S. Fleegle, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, Steven Bedrick

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose:

To date, there are no automated tools for the identification and fine-grained classification of paraphasias within discourse, the production of which is the hallmark characteristic of most people with aphasia (PWA). In this work, we fine-tune a large language model (LLM) to automatically predict paraphasia targets in Cinderella story retellings.

Method:

Data consisted of 332 Cinderella story retellings containing 2,489 paraphasias from PWA, for which research assistants identified their intended targets. We supplemented these training data with 256 sessions from control participants, to which we added 2,415 synthetic paraphasias. We conducted four experiments using different training data configurations to …

Portland’S Response To The Western North American Heatwave: A Brief Report, Athanasios Burlotos, Caleb Dresser, Vivek Shandas

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background:

In June of 2021, a heatwave resulted in high mortality across the Pacific Northwest region. The city of Portland, Oregon, had many advantages: emergency response personnel, science-based policies, political support for climate change adaptation, and collaboration among municipal, county, state, and federal authorities. Though the city’s response likely prevented many deaths, heat-related mortality was high.

Methods:

This study presents a retrospective case analysis of the 2021 Western North American Heatwave in Portland, Oregon. Specifically, the study examines the limitations of current heatwave response paradigms by means of a narrative review of the heatwave response and impacts.

Results:

Most deaths …

Gen Z And Millennials How They Use Public Libraries And Identify Through Media Use, Kathi Inman Berens, Rachel Noorda

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Gen Z and millennials have some surprising attitudes and behaviors regarding media consumption and library use. 54% of Gen Z and millennials visited a physical library within a twelve-month period. Libraries attract even Gen Z and millennials who don’t identify as readers. This report examines Gen Z and millennials' book-related behaviors (such as borrowing, buying, downloading and socializing) and and how media use shapes Gen Z and millennials' identity claims as Readers, Gamers, Fans and Writers. The report is intended for specialists such as librarians and book publishers, and broad public audiences.

The Pacific Sentinel, November 2023, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Eva Sheehan

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter from the Editor
• Death Cab for Cutie Co-Headline with the Postal Service for a Twenty Year Anniversary Release
• When the Writers Come Out at Night
• Fall of the House of Usher
• A Professor's Literary Life
• Donuts & Crypto
• Seeing Static in Jane Removers' Census Designated
• What We're Enjoying
• Events Calendar & Extras

Subseasonal Clustering Of Atmospheric Rivers Over The Western United States, Emily Slinskey, Paul Loikith, Naomi Goldenson, Jesse Norris, Jesse Hall

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

The serial occurrence of atmospheric rivers (ARs) along the US West Coast can lead to prolonged and exacerbated hydrologic impacts, threatening flood-control and water-supply infrastructure due to soil saturation and diminished recovery time between storms. Here a statistical approach for quantifying subseasonal temporal clustering among extreme events is applied to a 41-year (1979–2019) wintertime AR catalog across the western United States (US). Observed AR occurrence, compared against a randomly distributed AR timeseries with the same average event density, reveals temporal clustering at a greater-than-random rate across the western US with a distinct geographical pattern. Compared to the Pacific Northwest, significant …

Private Benefits From Ambient Air Pollution Reduction Policies Evidence From The Household Heating Stove Replacement Program In Chile, Adolfo Uribe, Randall Bluffstone, Carlos Chávez, Walter Gómez, Marcela Jaime

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We estimate the key private benefits from a program to improve ambient air quality during winter in central Chile by replacing inefficient wood-fired home heating stoves with more efficient pellet stoves. We are interested in the private benefits to households because they represent the additional value of the program and likely drive private adoption. Combining electronic stove surface temperature and air pollution monitoring with household surveys, we estimate the effects of adoption on household fuel expenditures, indoor temperatures, and indoor air pollution concentrations (PM2.5). We also explore heterogeneous effects of the program by income group and energy poverty status. Our …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And Primary Care Appointment Availability By Physician Age And Gender, Janna Wisniewski, Sarah E. Tinkler, Brigham Walker, Miron Stano, Rajiv Sharma

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using data generated through simulated patient calls to a national random sample of primary care physicians between February and July 2020, we examine the effects of the first wave of COVID-19 on the availability of the U.S. primary care physician workforce for routine new patient appointments. As states enacted stay-at-home orders, physicians overall became less selective by insurance, and there was a 7 percentage-point increase in acceptance of patient insurance. Telemedicine appointment offers increased 10.2 percentage points from near zero. However, relative to younger counterparts, physicians older than the sample mean (53.1 years) became 18.1 percentage points less likely to …

A Guaranteed Income Intervention To Improve The Health And Financial Well-Being Of Low-Income Black Emerging Adults: Study Protocol For The Black Economic Equity Movement Randomized Controlled Crossover Trial, Sheri A. Lippman, Margaret Libby, Michelle K. Nakphong, Abigail Arons, Monica Balanoff, Rain Mocello, Emily A. Arnold, Starley B. Shade, Marguerita Lightfoot, Multiple Additional Authors

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background

Economic inequity systematically affects Black emerging adults (BEA), aged 18–24, and their healthy trajectory into adulthood. Guaranteed income (GI)–temporary, unconditional cash payments–is gaining traction as a policy solution to address the inequitable distribution of resources sewn by decades of structural racism and disinvestment. GI provides recipients with security, time, and support to enable their transition into adulthood and shows promise for improving mental and physical health outcomes. To date, few GI pilots have targeted emerging adults. The BEEM trial seeks to determine whether providing GI to BEA improves financial wellbeing, mental and physical health as a means to address …

Ambulatory Intensive Care For Medically Complex Patients At A Health Care Clinic For Individuals Experiencing Homelessness The Summit Randomized Clinical Trial, Brian Chan, Christina Nicolaidis, Meg Devoe, Priya Srikanth, P. Todd Korthuis, Samuel T. Edwards, Devan Kansagara, Rachel Solotaroff, Somnath Saha

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Importance Intensive primary care interventions have been promoted to reduce hospitalization rates and improve health outcomes for medically complex patients, but evidence of their efficacy is limited.

Objective To assess the efficacy of a multidisciplinary ambulatory intensive care unit (A-ICU) intervention on health care utilization and patient-reported outcomes.

Design, Setting, and Participants The Streamlined Unified Meaningfully Managed Interdisciplinary Team (SUMMIT) randomized clinical trial used a wait-list control design and was conducted at a health care clinic for patients experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon. The first patient was enrolled in August 2016, and the last patient was enrolled in November 2019. …

Webinar: Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, And Quality Of Life In Refugee Communities In Tucson, Arizona, Orhon Myadar

TREC Webinar Series

While resettlement typically allows millions of forcibly displaced persons to escape from unpredictable and often dangerous conditions of displacement, most refugees experience an array of challenges after resettlement as they integrate into new communities. Many of these challenges are related to their ability to get to and from places that are important to their sense of autonomy and well-being, including sites of education, employment, worship and medical care. In this talk, Dr. Myadar will present some of the key findings of her collaborative research project on mobility-related challenges faced by refugees in Tucson, Arizona after their resettlement. This webinar is …

When Communities Face Drinking Water Crises, Bottled Water Is A 'Temporary' Solution That Often Lasts Years--And Worsens Inequality, Daniel Jaffee

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

As a sociologist, I study the social and environmental effects of the rapid growth of bottled-water consumption in the U.S. and beyond, and how it is linked to distrust of public tap water. In my new book, “Unbottled,” one chapter examines how these dynamics played out in Flint. As its example shows, communities can end up relying on bottled water – often at great expense – for years after a crisis.

Trimet & Tod – Opportunities For Growth, Miles Anderson, Fiona Lyon

PSU Transportation Seminars

Staff of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) will present TriMet's recently published Regional Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) plan, explaining its inception, creation, and delivery. The team will explain how the plan fits within a hierarchy of regional and sub-regional plans and how it delivers transparency to TriMet's TOD program, enabling all stakeholders to participate. Current TOD project examples will be showcased to demonstrate how partnerships can enhance project outcomes and indicate how stakeholders from various backgrounds can influence projects.

Critical Analysis Of Anti-Asian Hate In The News, Benardo Douglas Relampagos

Dissertations and Theses

Since 2019, the United States has had an increase in violence against Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities along with an increase of mainstream anti-Asian racist rhetoric. Between 2021 and 2022, The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism reported an overall 164% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. While racism against black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) communities has been the topic of an ever-growing body of critical discourse, prior to 2019 few publications had addressed racism and injustice regarding language choices and discourse in the context of anti-Asian rhetoric in the US, specifically regarding the intersection of language …

The Impetus Of International Security In European Integration: The Nature Of Eu Common Security And Defense Policy, Osman Goktug Tanrikulu

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the complicated relationship between security considerations and the European integration process. The research uncovers specific security factors that have shaped the EU integration process. Applying policy alignment and collective efforts for governance, this study offers a methodological improvement to the conventional status quo satisfaction concept within power transition theory.

Findings indicate that external militarized actions targeting European nations only occasionally disrupted integration in the short term. Instead, inner coordination among member states vis-à-vis external actors, promoted integration. During the early stages of integration, alignment with the EU collective was crucial, while aligning with regional leader Germany became …

Transportation Planning In An Aging Society, Shengxiao (Alex) Li

PSU Transportation Seminars

By 2030, all Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) will be 65 and older in the U.S. However, the understanding of how Baby Boomers travel differently from the previous generations, and the opportunities and challenges of older people's travel, do not keep pace with the increasing number of older people. This presentation starts with an overview of transportation policies for older people and challenges, followed by several empirical studies investigating older people's generational travel differences, vehicle ownership over the life course, and the interaction of technology usage and travel among older people. It concludes with a policy agenda …

The Green New Deal And Transit Investment, Eric Bruun

PSU Transportation Seminars

I have spent much of my professional life advocating for high quality transit infrastructure even if it takes a long time to build. I now believe we must focus on investments that can reduce greenhouse gas generation quickly. I cite some examples of how slowly projects have been built compared to peer nations and explain why.

Place For Sociohydrology In Sustainable And Climate-Resilient Agriculture: Review And Ways Forward, Soham Adla, Mohammad Faiz Alam, Melissa Haeffner, Murugesu Sivapalan

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Given the increasing demand for high-quality food and protein, global food security remains a challenge, particularly in the face of global change. However, since agriculture, food and water security are inextricably linked, they need to be examined via an interdisciplinary lens. Sociohydrology was introduced from a post-positivist perspective to explore and describe the bidirectional feedbacks and dynamics between human and water systems. This review situates sociohydrology in the agricultural domain, highlighting its contributions in explaining the unintended consequences of water management interventions, addressing climate change impacts due to/on agriculture and incorporating human behaviour into the description of agricultural water systems. …

Transportation Academies As Catalysts For Civic Engagement In Transportation Decision-Making, Nathan W. Mcneil, Keith Bartholomew, Matthew Ryan

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Citizen planning academies, which became popular in the 1990s, are increasingly being used in transportation planning and decision-making contexts. By making use of a longer-term, multiweek educational format, transportation academies have the potential to reduce barriers and enhance community capital leading to more meaningful and sustained government community interaction. This paper tracks the rise of transportation academies in North America, and provides a detailed look at two academies: one in Portland, Oregon with a 30-year history, and another recently launched in the Salt Lake City, Utah region. Postacademy surveys of participants provided data that illuminated whether the transportation academy model …

The House Full Of Otters: Recalling Human–Sea Otter Relationships On An Indigenous Oregon Coast, Douglas Deur, Peter Hatch, Hannah Wellman

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sea otters have held a special role in the cultural, spiritual, and economic life of Native American communities throughout recorded time. Along the coast of what is now Oregon, Native oral traditions recall a rich history of human encounters with sea otters, and speak of the species’ ubiquity, significance, and sentience. Native people also hunted sea otters, fashioning their uniquely dense fur into chiefly robes and using the pelts in ways central to community life — presaging the species’ later role in the global fur trade. Archaeological evidence of sea otter use can be found in sites of diverse antiquity …

Glimpses Of Oregon’S Sea Otters, Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sea otters are an iconic species in the history of what is now known as Oregon. Their pelts brought great wealth in late eighteenth and nineteenth century China, motivating some of Oregon’s earliest exploration, trade, and contact between Native American and Euro-American people. Over time, hunting eliminated the species from Oregon’s coastal waters. This article provides a broad introduction to the history of Oregon’s now-extinct sea otter population, describing the emergence of the Chinese market that created and sustained the hunt, the British discovery of profits to be made by trading for the pelts, and the rise of American traders. …

The Invisible Slaughter: Local Sea Otter Hunters On The Oregon Coast, Cameron La Follette, Richard Ravalli, Peter Hatch, Douglas Deur, Ryan Tucker Jones

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Most accounts of the extirpation of sea otters from the Oregon coast focus on the well-documented international maritime fur trade of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The historical record shows, however, that sea otters persisted much later. The final extirpation in Oregon occurred as a result of household-scale hunting by Native Americans and Euro-American settlers, from the mid-nineteenth century until around 1910. Especially on the south coast, a cottage industry of sea otter hunting flourished for decades — a pattern similar to the neighboring states of Washington and California. This article summarizes this long-ignored history, drawing from the …

Supporting Care Partners Of People Living With Dementia, Sherril Gelmon, Walter Dawson, Jenn Hollandsworth Reed

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report addresses the need to better support care partners of people living with dementia, including a proposal for a new Dementia Care Partner Hub (the “Hub”) that will facilitate care partner access to information, supports, services and activities. This work is the culmination of the “Supporting Care Partners of People Living with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD)” project funded by the Portland State University Institute on Aging’s “Gerontology Education & Research Initiative” (GERI) faculty grant, conducted from June 2022 to October 2023. The project focused on addressing concerns and needs of care partners and people living with dementia …