Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Employment Proximity And Outcomes For Moving Toopportunity Families, Michael C. Lens, C. J. Gabbe

Environmental Studies and Sciences

The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration (MTO) randomly assigned housing vouchers to public housing residents in an experimental test of the effect of neighborhood and location on household outcomes. In terms of adult employment outcomes, the 2 treatment groups did not significantly differ from the control group. We use MTO data to examine whether spatial proximity to jobs and job growth explains this lack of treatment effect. We first estimate differences in access to jobs and job growth for the 3 MTO groups. We then use 2-stage least squares models to test relationships between employment accessibility and 2 …

Security-Autonomy-Mobility Roadmaps: Passports To Security For Youth, Jeremy Schulz, Laura Robinson

Sociology

Taking the highway along the California coast and swinging inland into one of the state's agricultural belts, the hills appear golden in the distance, spotted with gnarled oak trees. Vineyards rise up on either side of the highway, and occasionally cowboys may be seen in the distance herding grazing cattle. Yet as clouds of dust rise from the fields in this agricultural community, the idyllic scene fades dramatically in the town of Rancho Benito, a community wearing the signs of the hard economic times. This once relatively prosperous community is now a place in which many families sit down to …

Principles Of Incorporating Spirituality Into Professional Clinical Practice, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Incorporating spirituality into contemporary professional clinical practice has become more common in recent years most notably with the popular interest of mindfulness meditation, mindfulness based stress reduction, and yoga in particular. However, many other spiritual and religiously based assessment and treatment approaches have also been successfully utilized with a great deal of evidence-based research to support their use and effectiveness. The purpose of this brief article is to outline several guiding principles for those professionals interested in integrating spiritual and religious wisdom and approaches into their professional clinical practices in the spirit of diversity and multiculturalism sensitivity and respect. Psychology …

Individual Party Donors: True Allies Or Free Agents?, Anne E. Baker

Political Science

Habitual party donors represent an important revenue source for American political parties. What remains unclear is whether the party committees can also count on these donors to support the congressional candidates who represent the parties’ best chances for seat maximization. Utilizing structural equation modeling and contribution data from the 2006 to the 2012 election cycles, I find habitual party donors and certain new party donors respond to changes in party control of the House by providing more support to incumbents when their party is in the majority and more support to nonincumbents when their party is in the minority. Moreover, …

Connecting Pedagogies: Accelerating Impact With Service Learning And Information Literacy, Jennifer Nutefall, Alex Hodges

Staff publications, research, and presentations

Librarians can play an important role in supporting service learning initiatives in making informed use of the knowledge resources available to them. Presenters will outline how the pedagogy that underlies service learning also foregrounds the pedagogy that occurs in library-based research instruction, i.e. information literacy. Attendees will learn how to connect service learning and information literacy through the use of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. This framework can serve as an important tool for: designing campus resources that can impact community welfare; creating environments of collaboration across the education continuum; and appraising the impact of community-based assignments.

Pegxit Pressure: Evidence From The Classical Gold Standard, Kris James Mitchener, Gonçalo Pina

Economics

We develop a simple model that highlights the costs and benefits of fixed exchange rates as they relate to trade, and show that negative export-price shocks reduce fiscal revenue and increase the likelihood of an expected currency devaluation. Using a new high-frequency data set on commodity-price movements from the classical gold standard era, we then show that the model’s main prediction holds even for the canonical example of hard pegs. We identify a negative causal relationship between export-price shocks and currency-risk premia in emerging market economies, indicating that negative export-price shocks increased the probability that countries abandoned their pegs.

Getting Short‐Changed? The Impact Of Outside Money On District Representation, Anne E. Baker

Political Science

Objective
As incumbent House members increasingly recruit campaign contributions from individuals who reside outside of their districts, this raises the question of whether a dependency on outside money affects members’ responsiveness and ideological proximity to district constituents.

Method
Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies of 2006, 2008, and 2010 as well as individual contribution data corresponding to those years from the U.S. Federal Election Commission, I examine this relationship using responsiveness and proximity models of representation.

Results
I find a dependency on outside contributions decreases members’ responsiveness to their districts and increases the members’ ideological extremity. Moreover, within‐district …

Going Beyond Dda’S “They Clicked It → We Bought It → Done” Assessing Ebook Use Pre- And Post-Purchase, Nicole Branch, Tina Chrzastowski, Jessica Harris

Staff publications, research, and presentations

Ebook DDA (demand-driven acquisitions) programs have become common in academic libraries of all sizes. To establish a DDA program, a library creates potential subject collections by establishing profiles and downloading e-records that match them into their online catalog; when books are “used” (in an amazingly wide array of options), the library buys the book, often after a certain threshold is met. This is a fairly seamless process that users are often unaware is happening. DDA assessment by libraries, however, is often limited to the obvious demarcation between those ebooks that are purchased (after meeting library thresholds), and those that remain …

Is Everything All Right At Night? Measuring User Response To Overnight Library Services, Jennifer Nutefall, Tina Chrzastowski

Staff publications, research, and presentations

A multiple-methods study was conducted in FY15 at Santa Clara University Library to assess 24/5 hours, focusing specifically on impact and value. The purpose was to assess not only the overnight use of the library, but the perceptions of late-night users on the value of 24-hour library accessibility. This three-component study included a survey (conducted over three quarters in FY15, with 616 respondents), hourly patron headcounts, and more detailed headcounts by hour of day and user activity. A fourth component is also now underway (results available by conference time); hourly patron counts are currently being conducted that focus on user …

Fall 2016, Santa Clara University Library

@SCU_Library Newsletter

The focus of our fall 2016 newsletter is the amazing work occurring in SCU's Archives & Special Collections.

Introduction: Envisioning The Good Life In The 21st Century And Beyond, Shannon Vallor

Philosophy

In May 2014 cosmologist Stephen Hawking, computer scientist Stuart Russell, and physicists Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek published an open letter in the UK news outlet The Independent, sounding the alarm about the grave risks to humanity posed by emerging technologies of artificial intelligence. They invited readers to imagine these technologies "outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand." The authors note that while the successful creation of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to bring "huge benefits" to our world, and would undoubtedly be "the biggest event in human history ... …

Pricing Competition: A New Laboratory Measure Of Gender Differences In The Willingness To Compete, John Ifcher, Homa Zarghamee

Economics

Experiments have demonstrated that men are more willing to compete than women. We develop a new instrument to “price” willingness to compete. We find that men value a $2.00 winner-take-all payment significantly more (about $0.28 more) than women; and that women require a premium (about 40 %) to compete. Our new instrument is more sensitive than the traditional binary-choice instrument, and thus, enables us to identify relationships that are not identifiable using the traditional binary-choice instrument. We find that subjects who are the most willing to compete have high ability, higher GPA’s (men), and take more STEM courses (women).

The Increasing Happiness Of Us Parents, Chris M. Herbst, John Ifcher

Economics

Previous research suggests that parents may be less happy than non-parents. We critically assess the literature and examine parents’ and non-parents’ happiness-trends using the General Social Survey (N = 42,298) and DDB Lifestyle Survey (N = 75,237). We find that parents are becoming happier over time relative to non-parents, that non-parents’ happiness is declining absolutely, and that estimates of the parental happiness gap are sensitive to the time-period analyzed. These results are consistent across two datasets, most subgroups, and various specifications. Finally, we present evidence that suggests children appear to protect parents against social and economic forces that may be …

Relationship Science And Interventions: Where We Are And Where We Are Going, Kieran T. Sullivan, Erika E. Lawrence

Psychology

Relationship distress and divorce often have profound effects on couples and their children. Relationship science has long sought to prevent and alleviate relationship distress; this chapter is a summary of many important recent developments in the field. Ongoing challenges in studying and assisting intimate relationships are also discussed.

Nurturing Compassion Development Among College Students: A Longitudinal Study, Thomas G. Plante, Katherine Halman

Psychology

Little research exists on the development of compassion among college undergraduates. This study tracks changes in compassion and identifies factors associated with these changes over the course of undergraduate students’ college careers, from the time of admittance to the time of graduation. Compassion levels assessed at the point of college entrance accounted for 25% of the variance in compassion at the time of graduation. These findings provided evidence for the notion that compassion can continue to be cultivated once in college. Predictors such as diversity training, the frequency of religious service attendance, participation in community-based service-learning, political identification, and feeling …

Hidden Costs And Deadweight Losses: Bundled Parking Andresidential Rents In The Metropolitan United States, C. J. Gabbe, Gregory Pierce

Environmental Studies and Sciences

There is a major housing affordability crisis in many American metropolitan areas, particularly for renters. Minimum parking requirements in municipal zoning codes drive up the price of housing, and thus represent an important potential for reform for local policymakers. The relationship between parking and housing prices, however, remains poorly understood. We use national American Housing Survey data and hedonic regression techniques to investigate this relationship. We find that the cost of garage parking to renter households is approximately $1,700 per year, or an additional 17% of a housing unit’s rent. In addition to the magnitude of this transport cost burden …

Compassion Predictors In Undergraduates: A Catholic College Example, Erin S. Callister, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Compassion is sorely needed in contemporary society, including within faith-based colleges. Past research has examined the prevention of compassion fatigue in healthcare professions, but relatively little research exists on the predictors of compassion, particularly among student populations. This study examines the factors associated with higher compassion levels in graduating college seniors, revealing demographic, experiential, and beliefrelated factors contributing to compassion. Results suggest that the general profile of a highly compassionate graduating college senior is a student who is female, politically liberal, religious, studying the natural or social sciences, actively involved in community service or volunteering, and who has undergone workshops …

Implementation Of Best Practices In Online Learning: A Review And Future Directions, Matthew C. Bell, Patti Simone, Lisa C. Whitfield

Psychology

Best practices for helping students learn and retain information have been well established by research in cognitive science (Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel, 2014; Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013). Specifically, repeated testing has been shown in numerous instances to enhance recall. In particular, we know that students retain information best when it has been recalled versus re-studied (Butler, 2010) and rehearsed with delayed (spaced) versus massed presentation (Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006), and when the items to be studied and later tested are similarly framed (McDaniel, Wildman, & Anderson, 2012). Although these effects were initially demonstrated in …

Hegel, History, And Evil, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel tells us that what he means by "right" includes not merely morality (Moralität) and ethics (Sittlichkeit) but world history. He even tells us that the right of world history "is the highest right" (PR [White] §33, §33A).2 He tells us that, through interaction with other nations, the spirit of a people realizes itself in world history (PR §33). This can involve a collision of rights, and such collision will mean that one right gets subordinated to another: "Only the right of world spirit is absolute without restriction" (PR [White] §30R).3 It is quite clear, …

How Do Presence, Flow, And Character Identification Affect Players’ Empathy And Interest In Learning From A Serious Computer Game?, Christine Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, Chad Raphael, Amanda Waldron

Communication

This study develops and tests an integrated model of how three psychological variables—presence, flow, and character identification—contribute to interest in learning and empathy with people from other cultures through a simulation game. U.S. college students played one of two roles (an American journalist or Haitian survivor) in the game that dealt with the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Presence was a powerful predictor of flow, character identification, and empathy felt during the games. Furthermore, empathy experienced by game play significantly predicted interest in learning more about the game topics. Flow and identification made secondary contributions to learning outcomes, with …

That The Worst Shooting In Us History Took Place In A Gay Bar Is Unsurprising, Nancy Unger

History

The selection of Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub, as the site for a murderous homophobic rampage makes the killer’s crime a special outrage in view of the role that nightclubs have played in this nation’s LGBTQ history. Like many popular LGTBQ clubs, Pulse serves not only as a welcoming place to party, but also as a community partner, hosting a variety of social and educational events including, for example, Breast Cancer Awareness and HIV/AIDS prevention. According to its website, Pulse Orlando serves as “a driving force within the GLBT community” and strives to “to make strides towards equality awareness, and …

The Earned Income Tax Credit, Mental Health, And Happiness, Casey Boyd-Swan, Chris M. Herbst, John Ifcher, Homa Zarghamee

Economics

We study the impact of the earned income tax credit (EITC) on various measures of subjective well-being (SWB) using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to estimate intent-to-treat effects of the EITC expansion embedded in the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. We use a difference-in-differences framework that compares the pre-and post-expansion SWB-changes of women likely eligible for the EITC (low-skilled mothers of working age) to the SWB-changes of a comparison group that is likely ineligible (low-skilled, childless women of working age). Our results suggest that the EITC expansion generated sizeable SWB-improvements in the three major categories of SWB …

Reconsidering Citizenship Models And The Case For Cultural Citizenship: Implications For A Social Psychology Of Social Justice, Regina Day Langhout, Jesica S. Fernández

Ethnic Studies

This chapter reviews citizenship constructions in the United States and examines how historic, legal, economic, schooling, and multicultural “melting pot” ideology landscapes shape citizenship and its performance. It introduces cultural citizenship as an alternative starting point for citizenship and its performance, providing a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence for cultural citizenship, and argues in support of incorporating this framework into social psychology when working toward collective social justice. It also discusses the implications of adopting a cultural citizenship perspective for social psychology and how this perspective can extend our understanding of citizenship practices to enact social justice. We conclude with …

Developing A (Boutique) Personal Librarian Program For Transfer Students And Other At-Risk Groups, Shannon Kealey, Helene Lafrance

Staff publications, research, and presentations

Transfer students, first-generation college students, those on academic probation, and other at-risk groups may benefit from a Personal Librarian Program more than the average freshman. This presentation describes the planning, implementation, and assessment of a boutique program targeting such groups. We discussed group selection, our collaboration with campus units, the involvement of librarians, marketing activities, the challenges we encountered, and the results of our assessment. We shared best practices for establishing such a program, and discussed our concerns regarding its long-term sustainability. Attendees completed an exercise to explore the viability of such a program at their institutions, and to determine …

Psychometric Properties Of The Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale, Thomas G. Plante, Jesus Mejia

Psychology

The Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale (SCBCS) is a five-item scale intended to operationalize and measure compassion. Santa Clara University has been administering the SCBCS, along with other demographic questions, to all new entering as well as exiting graduating students for the past decade. Previous research has utilized compassion scores and demographic data collected from these surveys in both between and within-subject designs to examine compassion among these undergraduate students. The purpose of the current study was to examine the reliability and validity of the SCBCS through various psychometric tests utilizing 6,763 responses that have been collected in recent years. …

Erasing The Mark Of A Criminal Past: Ex-Offenders’ Expectations And Experiences With Record Clearance, Ericka Adams, Elsa Y. Chen, Rosella Chapman

Political Science

Through the process of record clearance, individuals can have certain minor convictions removed from their criminal records or designated as expunged. This study analyzes data gathered from semi-structured interviews with 40 persons with past criminal convictions to examine the expectations of individuals who seek record clearance and the extent to which completion of the process facilitates efforts to reintegrate into society and desist from crime. The analysis finds that record clearance benefits exoffenders through external effects, such as the reduction of barriers to employment, and internal processes, such as the facilitation of cognitive transformation and the affirmation of a new …

Scholar Commons Post Card, Ray Scroggin

Staff publications, research, and presentations

No abstract provided.

First Floor Renovation, Jennifer E. Nutefall

Staff publications, research, and presentations

No abstract provided.

Assessment @ Scu Library, Jennifer E. Nutefall

Staff publications, research, and presentations

No abstract provided.

Do Gender-Variant Preferences For Competition Persist In The Absence Of Performance?, John Ifcher, Homa Zarghamee

Economics

The well-established gender gap in preferences for competition has been attributed to gender-variant feelings about performing in competitive environments. Using a novel task with agency, in which subjects experience competition but cannot perform, we find evidence that performing may be sufficient but not necessary to generate gender-variant preferences for competition. This suggests that the gender-gap cannot be eliminated by correcting beliefs alone; that eliminating performance—for example, routinizing tasks—may not eliminate the gender gap; and that there may be heretofore unidentified determinants of preferences for competition—for example, men may prefer payment schemes that are based on social comparison. (JEL J16, C91, …