Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Climate Change Adaptation, Natural Hazard Mitigation, And Innovative Responses, Qing Miao

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays which examine innovation, both technological and institutional, as a response aimed to adapting to climate change and natural disasters. Specifically, the first two papers seek to understand the drivers and implications of adaptation-related technological innovations. The third paper draws on the policy innovation theory to examine factors that shape the decision of state governments to engage in comprehensive climate adaptation planning.

In Chapter 1, I examine the drivers of technical innovation as an important form of adaptation by investigating the impact of three types of natural disasters—floods, droughts and earthquakes—on the patenting activities …

Three Essays On U.S. Social Policy’S Impact On The Human Capital Development Of Young Adults At-Risk Of Poverty, Lincoln H. Groves

Dissertations - ALL

Social welfare programs and policies can have a variety of anticipated and unexpected effects on the human capital investments of young adults at-risk of living in poverty in the United States. My dissertation investigates how three large-scale public programs – means-tested, cash welfare (e.g., Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Temporary Aid to Needy Families), Medicaid health insurance for children, and the Social Security Student Benefit Program – affected the educational attainment and work experience of vulnerable young adults.

In the first chapter, I examine how public policies encouraging labor force participation by low-skilled single mothers during welfare reform …

Beyond “Data Thrifting”: An Investigation Of Factors Influencing Research Data Reuse In The Social Sciences, Renata Gonçalves Curty

Dissertations - ALL

The development of e-Research infrastructure has enabled data to be shared and accessed more openly. Policy mandates for data sharing have contributed to the increasing availability of research data through data repositories, which create favorable conditions for the reuse of data for purposes not always anticipated by original collectors. Despite the current efforts to promote transparency and reproducibility in science, data reuse cannot be assumed, nor merely considered a “thrifting” activity where scientists shop around in data repositories considering only the ease of access to data.

This research was driven by three main questions: 1) What are the factors that …

In Search Of Ordenamiento Ambiental Territorial In The Peasant Reserve Zones Of Colombia, Manuela Ruiz Reyes

Dissertations - ALL

This thesis is an intersection between political ecology, rural development and agrarian studies. It examines the Peasant Reserve Zone (ZRC) as a land planning designation in Colombia created in the 1990s as part of the Colombian state’s effort at agrarian reform, and the expressions of Ordenamiento Ambiental Territorial (glossed as environmental land use planning), by the state and the peasants as ways of constructing territory. Beginning by situating the emergence of the ZRC as part of the classic agrarian question of the fate of the peasantry in capitalism, it then intersects that political-economy perspective with a geographic approach to the …

American Dreams And Immigrant Realities: Transnational Migration And Notions Of 'Better' For Caribbean Immigrants In Brooklyn, Ny, Sharlene Diamond

Dissertations - ALL

Caribbean people have been migrating to New York City since the turn of the twentieth century in search of a “better” life. What has resulted due to large concentration of Caribbean immigrants is a hub of Caribbean culture that impacts everyday life and has helped to create a narrative that goes beyond previous understandings of what it means to be Caribbean in America. This project explores Caribbean immigrant experiences in the United States labor market with the immigrants’ voices and experiences as the driving force in presenting the information, with specific reference to Brooklyn, New York (NY).

This project utilizes …

Language Abstractness As Discursive Microframes: Lcm Framing In American Coverage Of International News, Josephine Lukito

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether articles covering countries with different levels of proximity and relations to the U.S. would be framed differently in American news media. In particular, this study employs the Linguistic Category Model, a tool for measuring language abstractness.

This study incorporates scholarship from mass communication, international relations and linguistics. The literature review discusses international news coverage by American reporters and journalists; past scholarship examining linguistics in news text, including linguistic relativity theory and critical discourse analysis; and framing literature, focusing specifically on the framing building process and international news frames. After, the Linguistic …

Research Brief: "Alcohol Use And Craving Among Veterans With Mental Health Disorders And Mild Traumatic Brain Injury", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief is about the relation between alcohol craving and mental health disorders among veterans, and how mental health disorders impact alcohol cravings. For policy and practices, the research shows that alcohol cravings and mental health disorders among veterans could be a sign for risk of alcohol use disorder. It also shows that the VA should assess veterans for alcohol use disorder, and also research more ties between mental health disorders and alcohol use. Suggestions for future research include conducting the study in a larger, more representative population, as well as involving families in measuring alcohol use/cravings to ensure less …

Research Brief: "Mental Health Outreach And Screening Among Returning Veterans: Are We Asking The Right Questions?", 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 assesses how healthcare providers can do more for veterans towards mental health and outreach.

Three Essays On Public Economics And Policy, Xiaoxue Li

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies the effects of public programs that target at disadvantaged population. In particular, I examine the effects of these programs on individual well-being and whether these programs lead to behavior distortions. The dissertation consists of three essays that focus on different policy contexts and different populations.

In the first essay, I examine the effects of an active labor market program on the labor market outcomes of veterans. In the 1990s, the US Department of Defense implemented the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) to help military personnel transition to the civilian labor market. The program provides career counseling, employment workshops, …

A Framework For Adoption Of Challenges And Prizes In Us Federal Agencies: A Study Of Early Adopters, Claudia Alice Louis

Dissertations - ALL

In recent years we have witnessed a shift in the innovation landscape of organizations from closed to more open models embracing solutions from the outside. Widespread use of the internet and web 2.0 technologies have made it easier for organizations to connect with their clients, service providers, and the public at large for more collaborative problem solving and innovation. Introduction of the Open Government initiative accompanied by the America Competes Reauthorization Act signaled an unprecedented commitment by the US Federal Government to stimulating more innovation and creativity in problem solving. The policy and legislation empowered agencies to open up their …

A Phenomenological Study Of Factors That Influence Project Manager Efficacy: The Role Of Soft Skills And Hard Skills In It-Centric Project Environments, Chuck Millhollan

Dissertations - ALL

One source of confusion around the factors that influence project manager efficacy already identified in the literature is the lack of clear agreement on definitions of success as viewed by different stakeholders in the context of project success, project management success, and project manager success. These are not subtle differences when making decisions related to hiring, professional development efforts, and curriculum development. The purpose of this phenomenological research was to identify what Senior IT Leaders and Certified Project Management Professionals (PMPs) identify as the most important attributes for project manager efficacy as it relates to project success. The first sub-question …

The Impact Of Natural Resource Booms On Local Economic Conditions, Mallory Vachon

Dissertations - ALL

My research examines the impacts of natural resource booms on local economic conditions. Each chapter relies upon evidence from the three-state region of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. A combination of rising prices and advancements in extraction technologies led to a boom in oil production in the region. This boom represents an exogenous shock to local economic conditions.

The first and second chapters of my dissertation examine the impact of this exogenous labor demand shock that increased earnings in the three-state region. The first chapter analyzes the impact of earnings growth on net migration rates. My estimates suggest that …

Governing Through Health: The Biomedical And Public Health Management Of Drug Using Bodies, Kelly Szott

Dissertations - ALL

Focused on the intersection of health, drug use, and poverty, this dissertation closely examines the use of discursive registers in the conceptualization of health among low-income people who inject drugs in New York City. Using qualitative in-depth interviews with 40 people who inject drugs, 13 health care practitioners who provide care for drug-using patients, and 4 researchers of drug use, the governmentality of a public health risk population--people who inject drugs--is traced. To historicize this population a genealogy of the "injection drug user" is conducted through the examination of public health research publications from the 1980s and historical literature on …

Family Cohesion And Child Functioning Among South Korean Immigrants In The Us: The Mediating Role Of Korean Parent-Child Closeness And The Moderating Role Of Acculturation, Bora Jin

Dissertations - ALL

From a family systems perspective, family connectedness is one of the essential attributes of healthy family functioning. Families who are overly connected or disconnected are regarded as dysfunctional. However, several studies on Asian and Asian American families have reported divergent findings on family cohesion in comparison to European Americans. Distinct aspects of Asian heritage culture, such as values embedded in close interpersonal relationships and devoted parent-child relationships, may account for the discrepancies. Specifically, Jung culture, Confucian ideologies, and acculturation strategies may explain the distinctive patterns in family relationships and parent-child closeness in Korean heritage families. To better understand cultural variations …

Three Empirical Essays On Energy And Labor Economics, Melissa Chirk-May Chow

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation analyzes the differences between private and non-private firms in two contexts. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the electricity industry in the United States and the motivation behind electric utilities' usage of demand side management programs. The first chapter focuses on load management programs, which decrease electricity demand during the peak hours of the day. It looks into the impact of a plausibly exogenous decrease in natural gas prices on the utilization and capacity of these programs. The second chapter analyzes the relationship between electricity market deregulation and electric utilities' energy efficiency activity. The third chapter investigates the impact …

Spatial Features Of Labor Markets And Links To The Housing Market, Nuno Abreu Faro E Mota

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation comprises three papers on spatial features of labor markets and links to the housing market. The first two papers look at how a local parental leave policy and the neighborhood in which one resides can influence women's decision to work. One paper shows that New Jersey's 2009 family leave insurance program induces women to remain employed following childbirth. The other reveals that, for women, having other women with similar aged children to yours among your closest neighbors makes you emulate their work behavior. The final paper analyzes how seasonality in occupational employment via either monthly or business-cycle induced …

Essays On International Trade And Development, Jae Yoon Lee

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of three essays. Using firm-level data from Korea, the first and second chapter examine Korean firms' offshoring strategies and the impact of these offshoring activities on firm-level employment in Korea. In the third chapter, the recent pattern of wage inequality is decomposed using an individual-level Korean labor income survey. This dissertation finds the role of industry capital intensity and firm productivity in the differential choices of global sourcing such as vertical FDI and foreign outsourcing. Also, this dissertation finds that input substitutability and firm exports can affect the impact of offshoring on firms' domestic labor demand. Finally, …

Question-Asking Behavior Of Faculty During Conceptual Instructional Design: A Step Toward Demystifying The Magic Of Design, Susan Lee Rothwell

Dissertations - ALL

Questioning is a means of information gathering as part of information seeking behavior, including but not limited to: self-questioning, asking questions of others, ignoring questions, deferring asking questions, or denying there are questions. Questioning is critical to design synthesis, supporting learning, problem identification and solving, creativity, evaluation, decision making, and identification and reduction of uncertainty. Jon Kolko refers to design synthesis the magic of design, an abductive, creative sensemaking process generally invisible to observers and often to designers, making it difficult to formalize design and discounting the value of design research and synthesis. Extensive research exists on what designers do, …

Costs And Benefits Of Employee Interaction With The Public: Extending The Knowledge On The Typology, Consequences, Processes, And Contingencies, Angsuthon Srisuthisa-Ard

Dissertations - ALL

Two areas of research approach employee interactions with the public in different ways; research on emotional labor and burnout describes it as solely harmful, while research on job design considers its merits. I propose that each area of the literature adopts a narrow perspective that creates these different views. This dissertation constructs and validates a framework based on valence (negative and positive) and content (affect-based and task-based) dimensions that identify four types of employee experiences with the public: mistreatment, gratitude, problematic demands, and cooperation. Then, I use these measures to predict employee well-being (i.e., emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction) and …

Research Brief: "Suicidality Among Military-Connected Adolescents In California Schools", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study examines the prevalence of suicidal ideations among military-connected youth in California, and found that twenty-four percent of military-connected youth reported seriously considering suicide. Given these findings, school personnel and mental health providers should teach coping techniques for anxiety, depression, and stress; they would also benefit from implementing a policy that forbids service members from bringing firearms home during extended leaves and weekends. Future studies should sample military children of all grade levels, including college/university.

Public Stigma In College Students Diagnosed With Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Kristen Pyke

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Previous research has examined both ADHD and public stigma as well as ADHD and malingering in college students. Nonetheless, to date, no research has examined all three variables simultaneously. To explore these relationships, we investigated college students’ opinions of ADHD and hypothesized that there will be a hierarchical pattern of public stigma: typical college students will report the most while college students with ADHD will report the least and the malingering group will fall between the two. The participants consisted of 106 undergraduate students that completed a questionnaire that was developed to assess opinions of mental health diagnoses (depression, ADHD), …

Mass Shootings And Mental Illness Perception, Sierra M. Korb

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This study focused on the relationship between mass shootings and mental illness stigma. Specifically, this study looks at how learning about mass shootings affects the extent to which people with mental illness are stigmatized. Participants were asked to read a short story and then answer survey questions about their opinions of the mentally ill. The main finding of this study was that participant’s preferred greater social distance from people with mental illness after learning about mass shootings, even when it was not explicitly mentioned that the shooter was a person with mental illness.

A Gendered Analysis Of A Movement For Microloans: Problematizing The Micro-Craze In The Developing World, Rebecca Lynne Waghorne

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Microcredit lending is a practice that has become increasingly common, as people and economic institutions hail its ability to offer economic opportunities to people in the developing world. The practice of lending small amounts to individuals or groups began with the creation of the Grameen Bank, and has since become considered one of the best tools for the economic empowerment of women in the so-called Global South. To best understand the potential, or lack thereof, of microlending practices to enable the further empowerment of women in terms of their economic and social status, I hope to break down the terminology …

Illusory Correlations In Mental Illness Stigma, Katrina Aberizk

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The purpose of this research is to examine people’s readiness to form an association between those diagnosed with a mental health condition and negative behavior in the absence of objective evidence for that association. The research expands on a traditional illusory correlation paradigm to include social group information and two types of negative behavioral statements. The traditional paradigm exposes research participants to a series of statements describing the behaviors of members of two different social groups, including desirable and undesirable behaviors, and participants are then required to recall behavioral information and rank members of both groups on a series of …

The Fire This Time: Assessing The Scalability Of Supportive Service Programs For Young Men Of Color, A Case Study, Ronald James-Terry Taylor

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

After spending the spring 2014 semester teaching at an urban high school in New York City, I began to question specifically what could be done to better support my students; specifically the young men and boys of color. By serving as a volunteer in the Empowering Males Leadership Class (EMLC) during the spring of 2014, I developed an interest in understanding (1) how the program was effective in servicing young men and boys of color and (2) how the interplay between federal programs and local implementation was characterized. This analysis is a hybrid of political science and policy implementation analysis, …

The Effects Of Descriptive And Injunctive Peer Norms On Young Adult Alcohol Use, Samantha Paige Detore

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Descriptive peer norms refer to one’s perception of their peer’s alcohol use, while injunctive peer norms refer to one’s perception of their peer’s approval of alcohol use. Current literature has found that both norms are positively associated with alcohol use among young adults, but it remains unknown whether one norm has a greater influence on alcohol use than the other. The purpose of the current study was to explore this gap in the literature and examine the relative influence of both descriptive and injunctive norms on alcohol consumption. One hundred Caucasian, moderate-heavy drinking young adults completed a baseline questionnaire assessing …

Water Politics In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Path Forward?, Zachary Zeliff

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Hope for an imminent two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at an extreme low. The failure to reach a comprehensive peace agreement has precluded progress on cooperative water management. A new agreement on water could benefit both sides and help protect important water resources from environmental degradation, yet no talks have occurred outside of more difficult comprehensive negotiations. This has resulted in a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip, lower quantities of quality drinking water for all Palestinians, and impediments in economic development. This paper argues through literature review and polling data that a new approach for negotiations is …

Expanding Openness: The Effect Of Actor Emotional Expression On Audience Openness To Experience, Amalia Golomb-Leavitt

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Commonly regarded as one of the Big Five domains of personality, openness to experience has the social potential to deepen group connection, increase team growth and performance, and strengthen diverse relationships. In the current study I hypothesize that emotional expression on the part of an actor has the potential to increase the levels of openness to experience of the audience. To test this hypothesis, I administered the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) to assess baseline levels of openness to experience, randomly assigned participants to view either three videos high in levels of emotional expressivity or three videos low in emotional expressivity, …

Redesigning The Use Of Electronic Health Records In The Exam Room: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Quinton Dean Fletchall

Theses - ALL

Utilizing video-recordings and transcriptions of actual clinical interactions, as well as interviews with patients and physicians, this thesis analyzes how the use of electronic health records, and the information found within them, impact doctor-patient interaction and, in effect, notions of patient-centered care. ‘Patient centered care,’ a major area of focus in doctor-patient communication literature, is a style of interaction where the patient is put first and their concerns and feelings are given priority over the ‘biomedical agenda’ by the doctor. Using a multidisciplinary approach between language and social interaction and industrial and interaction design, this thesis proposes possible changes to …

Cue Reactivity To Images Of Alcohol: Creation Of A Standardized Picture Set, Kelsey M. Krueger

Theses - ALL

To study alcohol approach inclinations in a laboratory setting, researchers commonly use cue reactivity paradigms involving presentation of alcohol cues and measurement of responses. However, available picture sets present potential limitations due to their multidimensional nature. A critical task was to develop a set of standardized images without brand labels, actors, or settings, in order to gain a clearer assessment of college students’ reactions to alcohol, and alcohol alone, while minimizing contextual influences. In Study 1, a set of images with satisfactory reliability was created. To replicate and expand upon these findings, Study 2 included a sample of 163 participants …