Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Improving Public Health Safety Nets After An Economic Recession, Sanjay Basu

Center for Policy Research

When we say ‘here’s what’s going on with our nation’s health,’ how do we know the answer? Where is the data coming from? How can we best evaluate our public health system? We’re talking about it every day on CNN given the Ebola scare. What do we mean by our ‘public health system’? I would argue that we should expand our definition to mean something more than hospitals and clinics, or doctors and nurses. In particular, I’ll argue that some of our non-health programs that we have as part of the safety net actually make a bigger health impact than …

Research Brief: "Well-Being And Suicidal Ideation Of Secondary School Students From Military Families", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief summarizes a scholarly article of the same name. It reviews research which discusses the impact of military deployment of a parent on secondary schoolchildren, and the implications of deployment on military families mood and emotional states.

Research Brief: "The Effect Of 21st Century Military Service On Civilian Labor And Educational Outcomes", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study aims to understand the effect military service post-9/11 has on veterans, as it found veteran status positively affects minorities and women. In practice, 21st century veterans are as employable and satisfied with their civilian occupation as their non-veteran counterparts, and veterans seeking employment and career opportunities should continue utilizing VetSuccess. In policy, the VA and policymakers might evaluate current services, and focus on employment experiences and reasons veterans seek education post-service. Suggestions for future study include improving the external validity by using larger samples, as well as including datasets with older 21st century veterans to better account for …

Research Brief: "Homelessness In A National Sample Of Incarcerated Veterans In State And Federal Prisons", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

The purpose of this study was to determine relationships between homelessness and incarceration among veterans. What the study found was a correlation between homelessness and incarceration, with veterans who are chronically homeless/incarcerated experiencing serious health problems or drug/alcohol abuse/dependence. Ultimately the study found that homeless incarcerated veterans were mostly incarcerated for non-violent crimes. The recommendations for future research include standardizing definitions of homelessness and other elements for appropriate comparison of data. Likewise, studies should look to include greater assessments of external, uncontrolled factors.

Research Brief: "Experiences Of Military Youth During A Family Member’S Deployment: Changes, Challenges, And Opportunities", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief examines the changes, challenges, and opportunities military youth face when a family member is deployed. This research concludes that military children benefit from being better prepared to face age-appropriate responsibilities ahead of time, as well as maintaining a consistent extracurricular schedule. Future research in this area should include longitudinal research that interviews military youth from different socioeconomic backgrounds, specifically during and immediately after deployment to reduce memory biases.

Research Brief: "Military Parents’ Perceptions Of Public School Support For Their Children", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study examines the perceptions of school climates by military connected parents, and the effect on school culture and student engagement. The findings in this study imply that military families do not feel that educators understand complex issues associated with military connected individuals, and that districts should facilitate training programs for teachers and social workers. In the future, researchers should focus on collecting data from geographically diverse areas, as well as assess different factors, such as school curriculum and deployment length of family members.

Unrecognized States: A Theory Of Self-Determination And Foreign Influence, Kristina Buzard, Benjamin A.T. Graham, Ben Horne

Economics - All Scholarship

Unrecognized states are characterized by stagnant or crumbling economies and political instability, often serve as havens for illicit trade, and challenge the territorial sovereignty of recognized states. Their persistence is both intellectually puzzling and normatively problematic, but unrecognized statehood can be a remarkably stable outcome, persisting for decades. Our four-player model reveals that unrecognized statehood emerges as an equilibrium outcome when a patron state is willing and able to persistently invest resources to sustain it. We assess options available to actors in the international community who seek to impose their preferred outcomes in these disputes and find that, although sanctions …

The Effects Of Extended Time On Reading Comprehension Performance For English As A Second Language College Students: Is There A Need For Accommodations?, Laura Ann Miller

Dissertations - ALL

American colleges and universities are enrolling an increasing number of students for whom English is a second language (ESL). These students face literacy challenges that may impact their academic performance as well as create disadvantages on tests, particularly reading intensive tests under time constraints. This study examined the effects of extended time as a test accommodation on a timed reading comprehension test for ESL students compared to non-ESL peers under standard time, time and one half, and double time conditions. Results revealed that under standard time conditions ESL students with low Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) in English access significantly …

The Presidency Effect, Doreen K. Allerkamp

Dissertations - ALL

From humble beginnings with the merely managerial duties of a formal Chair, the rotating Council Presidency of the European Union (EU) has evolved into a crucial player in the context of EU decision making, although its impact remains largely unaddressed in accounts of EU output. More than from its formal job description, the rotating Presidency's four roles derive from the (informal) decision dynamics of the Council and the expectations it faces from its fellow Council members and the other EU institutions. Together, these factors can motivate the member state holding the Presidency to wield every tool at its disposal and …

Programming Generality Into A Performance Feedback Writing Intervention, Bridget Hier

Dissertations - ALL

Substantial numbers of students in the United States are performing below grade-level expectations in core academic areas, including mathematics, reading, and writing (Aud et al., 2012; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). National estimates suggest that these deficits are greatest in the area of writing (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003), presenting a clear need for research efforts that focus on the development of effective writing interventions. Although performance feedback procedures have been shown to produce promising short-term improvements in elementary-aged students' writing fluency skills (Eckert, Lovett, Rosenthal, Jiao, Ricci, & Truckenmiller, 2006), evidence of …

Unpacking Coalitions: Explaining International Commitment In European Governments, Sibel Oktay Karagul

Dissertations - ALL

A central debate in the Comparative Foreign Policy literature concerns the role of government composition on the international behavior of parliamentary democracies. For the past two decades, a multitude of studies have discussed whether single-party governments were more or less constrained than multiparty coalitions in their international behavior, yet they have failed to reach conclusive empirical findings. This dissertation responds to this puzzle by unpacking coalitions: as it captures the variation among coalition governments along mathematical and ideological dimensions, the dissertation introduces a nuanced 'government composition' approach to explain the international commitments of European parliamentary regimes during the post-Cold War …

The Spatial Polish Wage Curve With Gender Effects: Evidence From The Polish Labor Survey, Badi H. Baltagi, Bartlomiej Rokicki

Center for Policy Research

This paper reconsiders the Polish wage curve using individual data from the Polish Labor Force Survey (LFS) at the 16 NUTS2 level allowing for spatial spillovers between regions. In addition it estimates the total and gender-specific regional unemployment rate elasticities on individual wages. The paper finds significant spatial unemployment spillovers across Polish regions. In addition, it finds that the results for the Polish wage curve are sensitive to gender-specific regional unemployment rates. This is especially true for women.

Toward A Uses And Gratification's Model Of Twitter, Philip Ryan Johnson

Theses - ALL

This study proposed a uses and gratifications model of Twitter, an internet medium and micro-blog--a platform with both mass and interpersonal communication features for sending short messages to others. A survey was conducted among 242 Twitter users to test the model, including a standard investigation of gratifications sought and gratifications obtained of Twitter usage. In addition, expectations and availability of usage behaviors from McLeod and Becker's (1981) uses and gratifications model were examined. In the model, expectations were conceptualized as user expectations of satisfaction and operationalized as the difference between users' gratifications sought and gratifications actually obtained. Usage behavior availability …

Understanding The Effect Of Islamists' Online Persuasive Messages On People's Attitude Change And Information Seeking Behavior, Omnia Al Desoukie

Theses - ALL

In this study, the researcher aims to look at how people would react to Islamists' online persuasive messages. This study is designed to measure the effects of two types of persuasive messages on people's attitude changes and information seeking behavior. Participants were recruited from a diverse pool using the Mturk website. The researcher recruited participants who are considered out-group members. Those are people who are primarily non-Muslims and non-Arabs. A 3 by 3-multifactorial between subjects experiment with the factors of message type (action justification, group-identity and no messages) and pre-existing attitude group (negative, neutral, and positive) was conducted to examine …

School Spending Matters!, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

`Roaming In The Garden Of Freedom:' Constructions Of U.S. Ideology, Identity, And The Past In Television News's Anniversary Coverage About The Berlin Wall, Rachel Eve Somerstein

Dissertations - ALL

This study employs a multimodal close reading to examine and compare how NBC's Nightly News and various primetime CNN news shows construct the story of the Berlin Wall's opening from 1990 through 2009. It does so first by examining the networks' 1989 coverage and assessing the themes and ideologies circulated when the Berlin Wall's opening was breaking news. These themes and ideologies are used as a baseline to assess anniversary coverage that aired from 1990 through 2009. In the process of this close reading, special attention is paid to silences and omissions amid itin images and spoken discourses; the circulation …

At The Margins Of The Plantation: Alternative Modernities And An Archaeology Of The "Poor Whites" Of Barbados, Matthew Connor Reilly

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is an historical archaeological examination of the "poor whites" or "Redlegs" of Barbados. Excavations were undertaken from October 2012 to July 2013 in an abandoned tenantry, Below Cliff, on the east coast of the island, once inhabited by dozens of families locally referred to as the "poor whites" or "Redlegs", said to be the descendants of seventeenth century European indentured servants. Combining archaeological, ethnographic, and historical methodologies, this dissertation explores class relations of Below Cliff residents to processes of capitalism as well as other island laborers, including Afro-Barbadians. Additionally, racial categories are interrogated through an analysis of complex …

A Comparison Of Descriptive And Injunctive Norms Brief Interventions For College Drinkers, Mark A. Prince

Dissertations - ALL

College drinking remains a major public health concern. One contributing factor is the overestimation by college students of their peers' alcohol use (DN: descriptive norm) and their peers' acceptability of excessive drinking (IN: injunctive norm). Normative re-education interventions have traditionally focused on changing descriptive norms even though the Theory of Normative Conduct identifies both DN and IN as beliefs that motivate behavior. The current study developed a brief, manualized, personalized, IN intervention, delivered face-to-face, in a Motivational Interviewing style that can be used as a stand alone treatment or added to existing descriptive norms interventions. This randomized controlled trial compared …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Attachment Style And Body Image In Adolescent Girls: A Focus On The Mother-Daughter Relationship, Jaclyn Bex

Dissertations - ALL

Using Bowlby's attachment theory and a family systems perspective, this study explored the relationships between attachment between mother and daughters, daughter's body image, and the daughter's perception of what her mother thinks of her body. It was hypothesized that secure attachment would correlate with satisfied body image in the daughters and the belief that their mother's had a satisfied image of the daughter's body. Participants were female undergraduate students recruited from a private university. Participants completed self-report questionnaires about attachment (Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment, IPPA), body image (Contour Drawing Rating Scale, CDRS), and a researcher created demographic questionnaire. …

How Context Matters In Digital Library Use, Swati Bhattacharyya

Dissertations - ALL

This research investigates how organizational context contributes to the use of digital libraries, an ICT-enabled information infrastructure. Traditionally digital-library use is measured with the help of statistical analysis of download and other related data, but statistics alone have limited power to explain how such an expensive information infrastructure is used to meet organizational goals. Such limitation was overcome in this study by relating digital-library use to the context of such use.

In the last decade many Indian research organizations have witnessed the abundance of such information infrastructures accessible directly by end-users. The convergence of several phenomena such as current business …

Making Fenians: The Transnational Constitutive Rhetoric Of Revolutionary Irish Nationalism, 1858-1876, Timothy Richard Dougherty

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation traces the constitutive rhetorical strategies of revolutionary Irish nationalists operating transnationally from 1858-1876. Collectively known as the Fenians, they consisted of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the United Kingdom and the Fenian Brotherhood in North America. Conceptually grounded in the main schools of Burkean constitutive rhetoric, it examines public and private letters, speeches, Constitutions, Convention Proceedings, published propaganda, and newspaper arguments of the Fenian counterpublic. It argues two main points. First, the separate national constraints imposed by England and the United States necessitated discursive and non-discursive rhetorical responses in each locale that made it near impossible to sustain …

An Examination Of The First- And Second-Level Of Agenda Building With The Image Of China's President Xi Jinping In Xinhua And Four U.S. News Outlets, Zhuqing Cheng

Theses - ALL

Sources provide information subsidies to journalists at a low cost with the intention of passing on their agendas by providing the information subsidies to the media. This process is called agenda building, serving as the theoretical framework guiding this study.

Many studies have examined agenda building in political campaigns, while others have looked at it in a business context. This study tries to further test agenda building by investigating in the context of mediated public diplomacy to see how foreign leaders use the news to build images in another country. Such image building efforts have the potential to influence the …

Do Social Control Motives Combine With Perceptions Of Social Support To Predict Relationships Between Interpersonal Stress And Blood Pressure In The Normal Environment?, Gavin James Elder

Dissertations - ALL

Social support is related to lower risk for cardiovascular disease development. Yet, research has failed to yield consistent evidence for psychological mechanisms of relationships between social support and health outcomes. Explanations for these failures include limitations of research design and statistical analysis, inadequate theory-building, and a failure to investigate implicit psychological processes that operate during normal everyday social interactions. The present study utilized a promising theoretical framework (i.e., social action theory) to evaluate implicit mechanisms within a naturalistic observation study design using multilevel modeling. The primary aims of this study were to evaluate the role of between-person differences in agonistic …

Research Brief: "The Evaluation Of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction For Veterans With Mental Health Conditions", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief is about the usage of mindfulness-based stress reduction for the psychological well-being of veterans with mental health conditions. In policy and practice, mindfulness-based stress reduction instructors should be certified in the processes of mindfulness, and professionals should create a standardized mindfulness-based stress reduction treatment manual; the VHA could include mindfulness-based stress reduction treatments into current treatment plans and could commission studies about if they are more cost-effective than pharmacologic treatments. Suggestions for future research include conducting individual interviews in addition to group interviews, and assessing the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction on PTSD outcomes.

Research Brief: "Preferences For Gender-Targeted Health Information: A Study Of Male Veterans Who Have Experienced Military Sexual Trauma", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief is about male veterans' preferences for health information provided to them after experiencing military sexual trauma and the effect of that information on use of mental health services. In policy and practice, veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma should seek military sexual trauma care from the VA, health practitioners should learn more about military sexual assault to better help servicemembers, and gender-targeted literature should be distributed to servicemembers who have experienced military sexual trauma; the VHA should include gender-specific resources for male veterans who experienced military sexual trauma. Suggestions for future research include the addition of a …

Test Of Hypotheses In A Time Trend Panel Data Model With Serially Correlated Error Component Disturbances, Chihwa Kao, Badi H. Baltagi, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper studies test of hypotheses for the slope parameter in a linear time trend panel data model with serially correlated error component disturbances. We propose a test statistic that uses a bias corrected estimator of the serial correlation parameter. The proposed test statistic which is based on the corresponding fixed effects feasible generalized least squares (FE-FGLS) estimator of the slope parameter has the standard normal limiting distribution which is valid whether the remainder error is I(0) or I(1). This performs well in Monte Carlo experiments and is recommended.

Treatment Effects With Unobserved Heterogeneity: A Set Identification Approach, Sung Jae Jun, Yoonseok Lee, Youngki Shin

Center for Policy Research

We propose the sharp identifiable bounds of the distribution functions of potential outcomes using a panel with fixed T. We allow for the possibility that the statistical randomization of treatment assignments is not achieved until unobserved heterogeneity is properly controlled for. We use certain stationarity assumptions to obtain the bounds. Dynamics in the treatment decisions is allowed as long as the stationarity assumptions are satisfied. In particular, we present an example where our assumptions are satisfied and the treatment decision of the present time may depend on the treatments and the observed outcomes of the past. As an empirical illustration …

The Final Verdict On Star?, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Research Brief: "Network Supports And Resiliency Among U.S. Military Spouses With Children With Special Health Care Needs", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief summarizes a study on understanding how military families who have children with special healthcare needs can successfully cope in the context of exceptional demands of the military lifestyle and how it can inform scholarship, policy and practice to the benefit of families.

Research Brief: "Expedited Citizenship For Sale: Estimating The Effect Of Executive Order 13269 On Noncitizen Military Enlistments", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study utilized empirical data to analyze the impact of Executive Order 13269, a recruiting strategy enacted by former president George W. Bush that provides expedited citizenship to non-citizens who join the U.S. military, and it found that there was no overall effect of the Executive Order on the number of non-citizen enlistments into the military. In practice, non-citizens interested in U.S. citizenship should consider military enlistment as an alternative to the typical path to citizenship, and both non-citizen and citizen veterans should familiarize themselves with the plethora of resources available to them. In policy, the Department of Defense might …