Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

International Lessons For Promoting Transit Connections To High-Speed Rail Systems, Stan Feinsod, Eduardo Romo Urroz, Peter J. Haas, James Griffith

Mineta Transportation Institute

As the California High-Speed Rail (HSR) project becomes reality, many communities involved in, or affected by, the California HSR project have considered how to connect the new HSR passenger services to local urban transportation systems – such as bus and light rail systems – and how they can take advantage of HSR accessibility and speed throughout the state. European and other overseas systems have decades of experience in forging connections between HSR and various transportation options. This study examines international HSR stations and identifies patterns in transit connections associated with stations on the basis of size, population levels, and other …

Transit Performance Measures In California, Caroline Rodier, Emily Issac

Mineta Transportation Institute

This research is the result of a California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) request to assess the most commonly available transit performance measures in California. Caltrans wanted to understand performance measures and data used by Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and transit agencies to help it develop statewide measures. This report serves as a summary reference guide to help Caltrans understand the numerous and diverse performance measures used by MPOs and transit agencies in California. First, investigators review the available literature to identify a complete transit performance framework for the purposes of organizing agency measures, metrics, and data sources. Next, they review …

Academic Gateway, Spring 2016, San Jose State University Library

Library Gateway

No abstract provided.

In N Out — Reaching Out To The Community From Within Our Student Body, Ann Fiegen, Michael Germano, Julie Shen, Jordan Nielsen, Yuhfen Diana H. Wu

Faculty and Staff Publications

As a way to enhance their educational experience and promote global citizenship, students in higher education are often expected to participate in activities beyond the walls of their universities. These activities may include study abroad, internships, service learning projects, and much more. While these activities can take place far from the university setting, they also often occur in the university’s local community, where our students work or volunteer at local businesses, nonprofit organizations, and service agencies. These students bring their real world projects to their course work, where libraries and librarians engage with them to find real world solutions using …

Characteristics Of Communication In Families Of Alcoholics, Marie Haverfield, Jennifer Theiss, John Leustek

Faculty Publications

In the United States, roughly 43% of adults have encountered alcoholism in their family, and one in four children lives with an alcoholic parent (Grant, 2000). Prior research suggests that alcoholism can negatively impact the nature and quality of family relations, but studies rarely consider the specific ways in which family communication dynamics are impacted by the disease. Thus, the goal of this study was to identify the characteristics of communication in families of alcoholics and to develop a larger conceptual model to guide future inquiries in this context. A national sample of 682 adult children of alcoholics were asked …

The Students Run The Session: Hands Off One-Shots With A Library Game, Miriam Rigby, Ngoc-Yen Tran, Annie Zeidman-Karpinski

Faculty and Staff Publications

Librarian-instructors lead lots of one-shot sessions and often have a lot to cover to help students learn everything that they need to know. Coupled with the desire to include ACRL’s Information Literacy Framework, there are so many concepts and skills to convey that even the most eager students (and librarians) can feel overwhelmed or unengaged. Our answer is the Research Race - an active learning exercise that applies what cognitive science knows about good game design to get students to explore library resources in class. Rather than instruction via lecture, the game has students working in teams to find answers …

Conflict Resolution, Jennifer Theiss, Marie Haverfield

Faculty Publications

Conflict resolution involves various behaviors, tactics, and strategies that help to resolve disputes, reduce interference in personal goals, and rebuff negative emotions toward a partner. Individuals balance a variety of goals during conflict, including instrumental goals, relational goals, identity goals, and process goals. Interpersonal power dynamics and cognitive attributions for the conflict can also influence the extent to which individuals are willing to confront problems and to engage in perspective‐taking. Conflict resolution strategies can be distributive, integrative, or avoidant in nature. Individuals tend to enact the same conflict style in response to all disagreements, which can take the form of …

Measuring Client Satisfaction And Engagement: The Role Of A Mentor Parent Program In Family Drug Treatment Court, Laurie Drabble, Lisa Huan, Hilary Kushins, Edward Cohen

Faculty Publications

Parent engagement is an important intermediate outcome in Family Drug Treatment Court (FDTC) and child welfare services. This study explored the utility and reliability of a client satisfaction and engagement survey designed to measure interim outcomes of a Mentor Parent Program, operating in conjunction with a FDTC. Findings suggest the survey is a useful, parsimonious and reliable tool for measuring key dimensions of parent mentor services including client engagement; client-centered support and empowerment; and help with systems navigation and accessing resources. The survey may be adapted for use in other FDTC or parent mentor contexts.

Governing Countries: A Theory Of Subnational Regime Variation, Kelly Mcmann, John Gerring, Matthew Maguire, Michael Coppedge, Staffan Lindberg

Faculty Publications, School of Management

Studies of a small number of countries have revealed that both democratic and non-democratic subnational governments can exist within a single country. However, these works have neither demonstrated how common subnational regime variation is nor explained why some countries are more prone to it. This paper does both. Using Varieties of Democracy subnational data for countries of the world from 1900 to 2012, we show that subnational regime variation exists throughout all regions, in both unitary and federal states, and in both the present and past. The paper also demonstrates theoretically and empirically how social heterogeneity and factors undermining the …

Bikesharing And Bicycle Safety, Elliot Martin, Adam Cohen, Jan L. Botha, Susan Shaheen

Mineta Transportation Institute

The growth of bikesharing in the United States has had a transformative impact on urban transportation. Major cities have established large bikesharing systems, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, New York City, Salt Lake City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Washington DC, and others. These systems began operating as early as 2010, and no fatalities have occurred within the US as of this writing. However, three have happened in North America—two in Canada and one in Mexico. Bikesharing has some qualities that appear inherently unsafe for bicyclists. Most prominently, helmet usage is documented to be quite low in most …

Trend Analysis Of Long Tunnels Worldwide, Jae-Ho Pyeon

Mineta Transportation Institute

High-speed rail construction projects have frequently required long tunnels to reduce travel time and distance. The California High-Speed Rail (CHSR) authority is considering a tunnel up to 16 miles long for a direct route from Palmdale to Burbank. With advances in tunneling technology, the many long tunnels in use around the world today hold valuable lessons for CHSR, particularly with respect to minimization of ground disturbance and improved passenger and operator safety. The primary objective of this project is to determine the state of the art for construction and operation of long tunnels used for high-speed rail. With an abundance …

Remedial Actions To Prevent Suicides On Commuter And Metro Rail Systems, Patrick Sherry

Mineta Transportation Institute

The present study reviewed current efforts of commuter railroads to reduce or prevent suicide on railways and discussed preventative activities affecting rail related suicides. Primary preventative methods have included erecting physical barriers, posting warning signs with telephone numbers for hotline crisis counseling, using video surveillance on platforms, and training key personnel to identify and intervene with at-risk individuals. However, little or no evidence has been reported to demonstrate the efficacy of these methods.

The present study also sought to provide information about community awareness and attitudes toward suicide on the railroads and survey data collected from 498 respondents demonstrate that …

Estimating Uncertainty Of Bus Arrival Times And Passenger Occupancies, Vikash V. Gayah, Zhengyao Yu, Jonathan S. Wood

Mineta Transportation Institute

Travel time reliability and the availability of seating and boarding space are important indicators of bus service quality and strongly influence users’ satisfaction and attitudes towards bus transit systems. With Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automated Passenger Counter (APC) units becoming common on buses, some agencies have begun to provide real-time bus location and passenger occupancy information as a means to improve perceived transit reliability. Travel time prediction models have also been established based on AVL and APC data. However, existing travel time prediction models fail to provide an indication of the uncertainty associated with these estimates. This can cause …

Social Incentives In Pervasive Fitness Apps For Obese And Diabetic Patients, Yu Chen, Mirana Randriambelonoro, Antoine Geissbuhler, Pearl Pu

Faculty Publications, Information Systems & Technology

Social incentives such as cooperation and competition are found to motivate users in pervasive fitness applications. This work investigates how social incentives work for individuals with obesity and diabetes. We used a mobile fitness application called HealthyTogether as an experimental platform, which allows dyads to achieve fitness goals together and compete in an online community. We conducted a fourweek study with 16 obese and diabetic patients who used HealthyTogether to exercise with a buddy. Results show that participants exercised more with social incentives compared with their baseline. Collaborating with buddies to compete in a community was reported as motivating for …

Funding Resilient Infrastructure In New Jersey: Attitudes Following A Natural Disaster, Robert B. Noland, Marc D. Weiner, Michael R. Greenberg

Mineta Transportation Institute

Recent major natural disasters in New Jersey have demonstrated the need to increase the resilience of transportation infrastructure. This research examines public attitudes toward revenue sources that can be dedicated to protecting vulnerable areas, most notably the transportation linkages on which the state depends. A statewide survey was conducted to gather data approximately four months following Superstorm Sandy, the costliest natural disaster in the state’s history. The authors’ objective was to sample public attitudes while the impacts of the disaster were still fresh. They found little support for temporary tax increases to improve resiliency, with the most positive support for …

Civil Liberties And Rights, Equality And The Quality Of Democracy In Greece, Constantine Danopoulos

Faculty Publications

Good quality democracy is considered one that provides its citizens with a high degree of personal freedom, political equality, and popular control over policies and public officials through the legitimate and lawful functioning of stable institutions. It is assessed through an interrelated and interconnected three dimensional scheme: procedure, content, and result. Procedure refers to the quality of governance and is assessed through the rule of law, participation, competition, and government accountability. Result involves citizen satisfaction with the quality of governance. Content is concerned with two key components: individual liberties and political and social equality. This paper will assess the quality …

Impact On Bus Ridership From Changes In A Route’S Span Of Service, Jacob Simmons, Peter Haas

Faculty Publications

Ridership response to changes in a bus route’s span of service—the start time of the first trip to the end time of the last trip each day—was examined specifically for hours that were not altered by a change in the span of service. Data were obtained for 39 routes from nine transit agencies in the western United States that experienced changes in the span of service without any other types of changes to enable the largest known analysis of such data from American transit systems. Results demonstrated that bus routes receiving an increase in the span of service experienced a …

Regional Economic Development―A Survey Of Theories In The Past Two Centuries (1800-2000), Xiaohong Quan

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to survey the evolution of theories in the field of regional economic development in the past two centuries (1800-2000) before the new millennium. Theories from the ‘spacial’ dimension and from the ‘economic’ dimension are understood as the classical foundation of the field. Important theories are identified and discussed for regional economic development. Specifically, the topics examined here first center around the mechanisms behind regional economic growth, answering questions such as why growth happens in certain regions, why growth can shift to other places, and what factors or environments can foster growth in certain regions. …

Library 2.015 Conference: An Open Dialog About The Future Of Libraries, Laurie L. Putnam

Faculty Publications

The Library 2.0 Virtual Worldwide Conference series aims to create an open dialog about the future of libraries in the digital age. At Library 2.015, the fifth conference in the series, thousands of participants gathered online to share their knowledge, experience, and ideas on the evolution of libraries and the information profession. This article reports on some highlights of the October 20, 2015, conference. Archived conference presentations remain free, online, and open to all at http://tinyurl.com/Libr2015presentations.

Trans-Pacific Doctoral Success – A Collaborative Cohort Model, Helen Partridge, Christine Bruce, Sandra Hirsh, Ken Haycock, Sylvia Edwards, Cheryl Stenstrom, Susan Gasson

Faculty Publications

The San Jose Gateway PhD program is a doctoral partnership between the School of Information at San Jose State University (SJSU) in the USA, and the Information Systems School at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. Because of Californian legislation, SJSU has not been able to offer PhD degrees. The Gateway Program therefore provides a research pathway for SJSU’s coursework students. It also helps the School to grow the research capacity of academic staff. For QUT, the Program provides the opportunity to advance research agendas and to build strong international connections and partnerships. The Program began in 2008. …

Tackling Culturally Diverse Situations With Ease, Michele Villagran

Faculty Publications

It is not enough to be simply “aware” anymore. We must go beyond our own self-awareness and our awareness of others to really understand how we work and interact effectively in culturally diverse situations, whether domestic or global. As law firms and corporate entities operate in an ever-changing, global environment, we need to be prepared to handle any diverse situation. As our workforces become more diverse, we face the challenge of how to successfully manage increasingly diverse interactions. To address this concern, organizations are applying the framework of cultural intelligence, or CQ.

Effects Of Service-Learning On Kinesiology Students' Attitudes Toward Children With Disabilities, José Santiago, Jihyun Lee, Emily Roper

Faculty Publications

Contact theory (Allport, 1954) served as the framework to investigate undergraduate kinesiology students’ attitudes toward children with disabilities after a service-learning (SL) experience. Fifty-one undergraduate kinesiology students enrolled in an adapted physical education (APE) course served as the experimental group, and 31 undergraduate kinesiology students enrolled in an introductory kinesiology course served as the control group. The Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons Scale–Form A (Yuker, Block, & Younng, 1970) was administered at three different times: before, during, and after the SL. A mixed-design ANOVA revealed that there were no statistically significant main or interaction effects for gender, group, and time on …

Conducting Qualitative Interviews By Telephone: Lessons Learned From A Study Of Alcohol Use Among Sexual Minority And Heterosexual Women, Laurie Drabble, Karen Trocki, Brenda Salcedo, Patricia Walker, Rachael Korcha

Faculty Publications

This study explored effective interviewer strategies and lessons learned based on collection of narrative data by telephone with a subsample of women from a population-based survey, which included sexual minority women. Qualitative follow-up, in-depth life history interviews were conducted over the telephone with 48 women who had participated in the 2009–2010 National Alcohol Survey. Questions explored the lives and experiences of women, including use of alcohol and drugs, social relationships, identity, and past traumatic experiences. Strategies for success in interviews emerged in three overarching areas: (1) cultivating rapport and maintaining connection; (2) demonstrating responsiveness to interviewee content, concerns; and (3) …

Interpreters' Self-Perceptions Of Their Use Of Self When Interpreting In Health And Behavioural Health Settings, Nicole Dubus

Faculty Publications

This study examines interpreters' self-perception of their use of self when interpreting in health and behavior-health settings. Constant comparative analysis was used to analyze the individual, semi-structured interviews of thirty-six interpreters. Interpreters, who have developed the skills and techniques required to develop and improve the effectiveness of the intervention. Interpreters are vital members of care teams. Interpreters might be under-utilized if only seen as a language driven. Embracing interpreters as members of the inter professional team may hold great promise for addressing challenges in providing culturally effective services.Cette étude se penche sur l’auto-perception des interprètes de leur recours au soi …

Faculty, Students, And Perceptions Of Library Value, Ann Agee, Bernd Becker

Faculty and Staff Publications

“What do you value most about the library?” A single open-ended question on a recent San José State University survey of faculty and students revealed a world of difference between what these two groups want from a library. Students valued the library for the quiet space it offered. They commented less on the library collection and more on library services. Faculty, however, valued the variety and quality of the library resources. Their responses focused on the collection, with an emphasis on the print collection’s breadth and depth. Not only did student and faculty responses differ, but among the faculty, different …

Defining Success In Scholarly Communications: A Survey Of California Librarians, Emily Chan

Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Critical Literacy For Information Professionals, Ann Agee

Faculty and Staff Publications

A review of the book Critical Literacy for Information Professionals edited by Sarah McNicol. “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information,” wrote Paulo Freire in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed(Herder and Herder 1970, 79). Freire argued that rather than viewing students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge—termed the “banking model” of education—teachers should recognize and value students’ individual perspectives and life experiences. Today’s critical literacy movement has its roots in Freire’s philosophy. When taught critical literacy methods, students begin from the viewpoint that there can be no single “correct” way to interpret information. Instead, …

Do Snap Recipients Get The Best Prices, Raymond March, Conrad Lyford, Carlos Carpio, Tullaya Boonsaeng

Faculty Publications

This paper examines the relationship between SNAP participation and prices paid for food items. To test this relationship, we develop an expensiveness index following the method of Aguiar and Hurst (2007) and use the FoodAPS data set. Using both the ordinary least squares method and controlling for endogeneity using an instrumental variables approach, we found SNAP participation did not hold a statistically significant relationship with the prices paid for food items when we controlled for consumer behavior and food market variables. This suggests that SNAP participants are not systematically disadvantaged in their food purchases. Additional efforts to further educate SNAP …

Public Choice Lessons From The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Marta Podemska-Mikluch, Darwyyn Deyo, David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

J. K. Rowling’s series of books about the underage wizard Harry Potter is an effective tool for introducing students to the key concepts of public choice. By keeping political figures at the forefront of the story, Rowling encourages students to recognize the different incentives individuals face in markets versus politics. To illuminate the pedagogical potential of the series and to ease its adoption, we discuss a set of examples that best illustrate the key concepts of public choice. We also share a classroom exercise showcasing how the series can be used to promote active learning.

Service-Learning And Perceptions Of Homelessness, Tabitha Hart, Felipe Gómez, Priya Raman

Faculty Publications

This article examines how service-learning positively impacts students’ perspectives of the homeless. Data were collected through a pre- and post-assessment issued to students in a service-learning course. At the beginning of the course, students characterized the homeless according to common stereotypes. At the end of the course, students’ views were more humanized.