Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

National Food Security, Immigration Reform, And The Importance Of Worker Engagement In Agricultural Guestworker Debates, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern

Food Studies - All Scholarship

This article looks at the United States’ federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Visa Program and reforms proposed by the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. In this policy analysis, we draw on media content analysis and qualitative interviews to compare the viewpoints of farmers, workers, grower and worker advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians. We find that perspectives on the program are dependent upon actors’ level of direct interaction with workers. Moderate-sized farmers and regionally based worker advocacy groups tend to be the most concerned with day-to-day program operations and fair working conditions. In contrast, national-level advocacy groups, intermediary agents, and politicians are …

A Gis Suitability Model Evaluating Habitat Characteristics Influencing Beaver (Castor Canadensis) Lodge Site Selection And Lodge Occupancy In Central Adirondacks, New York, Amanda K. Jacobs

Theses - ALL

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) represents a quintessential example of an "ecosystem engineer." Yet the species' landscape-scale impacts on hydrology, geomorphology, and ecosystem ecology are not uniformly distributed through landscapes or time. Understanding beaver lodge site selection and lodge fidelity through time can help to predict where the greatest effects of beaver activity may occur. In this research project, I seek to understand the relationships between beaver habitat suitability, the habitat variables that currently define suitable areas, and lodge occupancy over time. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to model habitat suitability, I use hydrologic, vegetative, and physiographic variables to …

Ideological And Strategic Influences On Hezbollah's Decisions To Deliver Social Service Provisions, Morgan Mcminn

Theses - ALL

Hezbollah is a unique organization that acts as a transnational group, an insurgent group and a major political party in Lebanon. Since the founding of Hezbollah, they have found social service provisions to be an important aspect of their organization and have had immense control over the territory, acting as a state within the state of Lebanon. Hezbollah offers an organizational structure, a conflict resolution mechanism, healthcare, education and much more to their primarily Shi'a constituents, however to other sects as well. My master's thesis seeks to examine the reasons that Hezbollah does offer these social service provisions. Through the …

The Psychological Empowerment Impact Of Twitter Microblogging: The Case Of #Stopasianhate During Covid-19 Pandemic, Natnaree Wongmith

Theses - ALL

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents across the US (Misra et al., 2020). As a response to the alarming escalation in xenophobia and racism resulting from the pandemic, #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate have been employed to shed light on the issues. Twitter can effectively assist protestors to participate in the movement by facilitating collective effort, efficiently disseminating the information, and encouraging the discussion about a topic (Chon & Park, 2020). Social media has been recognized for its contribution to one's empowerment in various domains, allowing the marginalized group to regain their sense of power …

Code^Shift Newsletter Summer 2022, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Rayana Weller

CODE^SHIFT Research

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Repeal And Replace: Testing The Limits Of The Affordable Care Act's Behavioral Policy Feedbacks, Emma Clare Dreher

Dissertations - ALL

What happens when a policy with millions of beneficiaries is threatened? The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been under attack since before it was signed into law, culminating in its only legislative challenge under the Trump administration in 2017. While we know that policies like the ACA produce policy feedbacks that affect policymaking and shape policy attitudes, less is known about behavioral feedback effects that serve to mobilize beneficiaries to protect and maintain their health insurance benefits in the face of ACA threat. This dissertation leverages a 3-paper design to evaluate under what conditions threat facilitates behavioral change, and how …

Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor On The Early Modern Stage, Evan Alexander Hixon

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation, "Hell's Black Intelligencers: Representing Clandestine Labor on the Early Modern Stage," builds upon critical scholarship pertaining to early modern service and political theory to interrogate the imagined economic and social functions of clandestine service in the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Webster. Drawing heavily on the works of András Kiséry, David Schalkwyk, Elizabeth Rivlin, and Michael Neill, I look at the exchange of service between spy and spymaster as an accumulation of social and cultural capital. Thinking through spying in this light, this dissertation explores how playwrights represent these service relationships which fall outside of systems of patronage-driven …

An Nlp Analysis Of Health Advice Giving In The Medical Research Literature, Yingya Li

Dissertations - ALL

Health advice – clinical and policy recommendations – plays a vital role in guiding medical practices and public health policies. Whether or not authors should give health advice in medical research publications is a controversial issue. The proponents of "actionable research" advocate for the more efficient and effective transmission of science evidence into practice. The opponents are concerned about the quality of health advice in individual research papers, especially that in observational studies. Arguments both for and against giving advice in individual studies indicate a strong need for identifying and accessing health advice, for either practical use or quality evaluation …

Three Essays On Pupil Transportation, Christopher Rick

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation, I examine the link between pupil transportation policy and three outcomes.

The first paper exploits idiosyncratic variation in the percentage of weekdays that are instructional school days in a month and variation in pupil transportation spending within districts over time. I build a rich, monthly, longitudinal data set for congestion, school days, and transportation policy for 51 cities from 2013 to 2019 and find congestion is significantly higher on school days and pupil transportation alleviates congestion caused by school children's travel.

The second paper uses a difference-in-differences design to answer whether desegregation court order release delivered the …

Development Of A Combined Model Of College Student Alcohol-Associated Condomless Sex, Alan Z. Sheinfil

Dissertations - ALL

Harmful alcohol use and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are significant public health concerns for college students. Because alcohol use and condomless sex often co-occur in this population, alcohol-associated condomless sex has been identified as a target for behavioral interventions. Existing theoretical frameworks have not garnered sufficient empirical support to serve as the foundation for interventions. The primary goal of the current study was to use a mixed-methods approach to develop a novel model of college student alcohol-associated condomless sex that combines elements from well-established health behavior theories. In Aim 1, multilevel structural regression models were estimated to predict condomless vaginal …

Essays On Economic Geography And Development Economics, Yao Wang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation comprises two papers studying economic geography in a developing country context. Chapter 1 quantifies the effects of cultural barriers on internal migration and welfare in Indonesia. I estimate internal migration gravity using linguistic distances as a proxy for cultural barriers and instrument for current linguistic differences using data from the 1930 colonial census. I find inverted U-shaped effects of linguistic distance on migration, which are more prominent for unskilled and older populations. To quantify welfare and distributional implications of linguistic barriers, I further develop a quantitative spatial model with heterogeneous skill groups, incorporating linguistic distance as migration and …

Three Essays On Education And Childhood Health, Stephanie Grau Coffey

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on education and childhood health. Each chapter examines the effect of health or health insurance coverage during childhood on schooling outcomes. Chapters 1 and 3 estimate the impact of insurance coverage for disability-related healthcare on academic and behavioral outcomes for students with disabilities. Chapter 1 exploits variation in Medicaid coverage for mental and behavioral healthcare generated by the Rosie D. vs. Patrick class action lawsuit. The resulting reforms improved outcomes for students diagnosed with an emotional disturbance and enabled them to be educated in more inclusive settings. The attendance rate for students with …

Policing The Project: Crime, Carcerality, And Chicago Public Housing, Madeleine Rose Hamlinn

Dissertations - ALL

This project examines how Chicago's public housing was policed from 1937 to 2000, when the city announced plans to redevelop public housing into privately-owned mixed-income communities under the Plan for Transformation. Drawing upon interviews, historical newspapers, and archival records, it centrally argues that policing contributed to making public housing into a carceral space: one that resembled the prison in design and management and also funneled residents into the criminal-legal system. Writing against popular narratives of public housing as an inherent site of crime and violence, this project instead positions the police—and, by extension, the state—as a central contributor to violence …

The Sneaker Value: A Disquisition Into Sneaker Resale Market, Xincheng Ding

Theses - ALL

The secondary market for sneakers has proliferated in recent years. In the secondary market of sneakers, it is typical for the resale price of sneakers to be higher than the retail price. Using the theory of planned behavior as a theoretical framework, this study will examine how the economic, hedonic, symbolic, and social values of sneakers influence consumer attitudes and subjective norms. In addition, this study will examine the relationship between social media hype and perceived behavioral control. Finally, this paper examines how TPB components (subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and attitudes) influence consumers' purchase intentions. To achieve this research …

Differential Evaluation Of Straight And Gay Men For Nonverbal Effeminate Behavior, Art D. Marsden

Theses - ALL

The purpose of this study was to determine how violation of gender-based expectancies might influence attitudes toward men who differ by sexual orientation (i.e., straight or gay). While other studies have examined attitudes toward gay and straight men who differ by gender expression, their designs may have been susceptible to demand effects; this study was specifically designed to avoid such methodological issues. This research was informed by Expectancy-Violation Theory (EVT) and the Black Sheep Effect, which together suggest that an effeminate straight man should be evaluated by other straight men more negatively than an effeminate gay man because the former …

The Maay Maay Nominal System And Its Tonology, Katrina Smith

Theses - ALL

The aim of this thesis is to explore the tonology of the nominal system in Kenyan Maay Maay (KMM). In particular, this thesis describes the structure of nouns and noun phrases and outlines an analysis of tonal alternations based on a combination of word shape and grammatical gender that have not previously been discussed. The goal is to understand the nature of the language's prosodic system and how it may have developed. This thesis complements research on other Maay dialects that report rather different prosodic properties, ranging from not having a tonal system (Comfort & Paster 2009; Paster 2006; Paster …

The Impact Of Live Streaming E-Commerce Features On Chinese Consumers' Attitude And Purchase Intention, Tianmeng Yan

Theses - ALL

In recent years, live streaming e-commerce has been gaining popularity among Chinese consumers as a new social trend. Compared to traditional e-commerce, the shopping model of live streaming service plus e-commerce demonstrates some benefits of social media features, encouraging consumers to engage in live shopping. This study aims to predict how different live streaming e-commerce features (visibility, interactivity, price discount, and celebrity endorsement) influence Chinese consumers' attitude and purchase intentions. It also examines how TPB components (subjective norm, perceived behavior control, and attitudes) can affect Chinese consumers' purchase intention using a theoretical model combined with the TPB model and the …

The Harder The Battle, The More We Talk: The Effects Of Perceived Risk Of Player Death On Social Presence And Enjoyment In Mobile Fps Game, Heejae Lee

Theses - ALL

Even though the relationship between presence and game enjoyment has been explored, there are unsolved theoretical questions regarding the degree to which social presence may be generated in games. Drawing on (social) presence theory, this study investigated the effects of the perceived risk of player death on game enjoyment. Specifically, the current study examined whether there is a relationship between the perceived risk of player death and communication between players; if this communication will serve as a trigger for a social presence; and if social presence will increase game enjoyment. Results from a self-report survey (N = 128) indicated that …

Dividing The Blue Line: The Cultural Work Of Rural Policing In Upstate New York, Michael Branch

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation focuses on the ways in which residents of Old Forge, New York make use of policing as a resource to structure and reproduce social and symbolic boundaries. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a combination of 40 permanent residents and second-home owners in the area, I explore how policing in this rural amenity-based tourist town is rooted in the economic and social histories of the area and how it structures access to social and moral capital for residents. I focus on how social divisions between permanent residents and second-home owners are observed and experienced by both groups and how …

Research Data Management Practices And Impacts On Long-Term Data Sustainability: An Institutional Exploration, Sarah Elaine Bratt

Dissertations - ALL

With the 'data deluge' leading to an institutionalized research environment for data management, U.S. academic faculty have increasingly faced pressure to deposit research data into open online data repositories, which, in turn, is engendering a new set of practices to adapt formal mandates to local circumstances. When these practices involve reorganizing workflows to align the goals of local and institutional stakeholders, we might call them 'data articulations.' This dissertation uses interviews to establish a grounded understanding of the data articulations behind deposit in 3 studies: (1) a phenomenological study of genomics faculty data management practices; (2) a grounded theory study …

Saving This Honorable Court: Supreme Court Legitimacy And Support For Court Reform, Nathan Thomas Carrington

Dissertations - ALL

For the first time in nearly a century, serious conversations are taking place involving re- form of the Nation's highest court. Scholarly wisdom holds that such discussions indicate a decrease of the Court's legitimacy which will have detrimental effects on the rule of law and minority rights. Indeed, several generations of political science scholarship have exam- ined the relationship between institutional support for the Supreme Court and its ability to exercise judicial power effectively, all finding a strong relationship. Do reform efforts actu- ally signal a collapse in Court legitimacy and the death of the rule of law as we …

Three Essays On Urban Property Taxes, Yoon-Jung Choi

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the economic and fiscal effects of property tax policies in urban areas. The dissertation aims to expand current understanding of urban property tax dynamics and fragmentation features.In the first chapter, titled "Property Tax Interaction among Overlapping Local Jurisdictions: Quasi-experimental Evidence from School Bond Referenda," I empirically examine interactive behaviors of local jurisdictions that are not perfectly overlapping. This topic remains largely underexplored in current scholarship. I specifically estimate the causal effect of a property tax increase by a school district on the fiscal decisions of overlapping municipal governments using both regression discontinuity …

Startup Futures: Entrepreneurs, Investors And Imaginaries Of Care In Global India, Ipshita Ghosh

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the emerging cultures of venture capital-driven, technology-infused startups in India and the multiple ways in which they shape the nation's entrepreneurship landscape. Based on findings drawn from 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Delhi's startups, I argue that entrepreneurship serves as a cultural and ideological formation that creates a new regime of values and reshapes our social, political, and civil life. In this sense, I suggest that previous studies on entrepreneurship which focus purely on its economic impacts (or lack thereof) tend to undervalue the long-lasting cultural transformations created through it. One of the primary ways in …

Cannabis Sleep Aid Use In Daily College Life: An Intensive Longitudinal Assessment Approach, Patricia A. Goodhines

Dissertations - ALL

Objective: Emerging evidence suggests that college cannabis sleep aid use may increase vulnerability to diurnal impairment, despite proximal sleep-related benefits. In contrast, relatively little is known about proximal precipitants of cannabis sleep aid use in daily college life. The identification of modifiable, situational intervention points preceding cannabis sleep aid use in daily college life is critical to accelerate the development of college harm reduction efforts. This 14-night mixed methods study tested temporal associations of THC-based cannabis sleep aid use with cognitive arousal-based precipitants (consistent with cognitive theory of insomnia) and sleep outcomes.

Method: Daily diary (pre-sleep and waking) and actigraphy …

The Effect Of The Education Realignment On Party Position Taking In The United States, Joel B. Kersting

Dissertations - ALL

In recent decades, observers of American politics noticed a growing divide in the voting behavior of individuals with and without a college education. Today, Americans with a college degree are much more likely to support the Democratic Party and those without a college degree are much more likely to support the Republican Party. This trend, concentrated among whites, is a reversal of voting behavior in the past. I call this reversal the education realignment: the movement of college educated whites from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party; and of non-college educated whites from the Democratic Party to the Republican …

Three Essays At The Intersection Of Child Welfare And Public Policy, Mattie Mackenzie-Liu

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays which examine policy relevant issues in the child welfare system. In the United States the goal of the child welfare system is to protect the well-being of children by ensuring their safety and promoting permanency. Children typically become involved with the child welfare system due to an allegation of neglect or child maltreatment. If the allegation is substantiated, the government can take custody of the children, remove them from their homes, and place them in foster care. All three of these papers examine foster care outcomes. Removing a child from their family is …

The Politics Of Security: Syrian Refugees In The Middle East And Western Europe, Sefa Secen

Dissertations - ALL

Under what conditions do governments view and respond to the arrival of refugees primarily as a security threat? Comparatively analyzing the securitization of Syrian refugees in two pairs of countries, Turkey and Lebanon and Germany and France, this dissertation proposes a domestic political context-based theory and typology of securitization. Based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the media data including mainstream national newspaper articles, political speeches, and policy documents, this research differentiates between different levels of securitization. It finds that moderate securitization was present in Lebanon during the early years of the refugee crisis (2013–2014) and coincided with …

Essays On International Trade, Yimin Yi

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies issues at the intersection of trade policy, labor market outcomes, and firms' productivity. It consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1 investigates firms' importing and exporting decision-making and how these decisions impact firms' future productivity. First, I document some facts about firms' importing and exporting behavior. Firms display remarkable persistence in exporting and importing status. However, firms' export and import status do not overlap perfectly, as some exporters do not import while some importers do not export. Motivated by these facts, I then develop a dynamic discrete choice model of a firm's decision to import and export. A …

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: June 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during June 2022

The Wqw Annual Program Report -- July 2022, Bonnie Chapman Beers, Keoki Spaulding, Kicia Sears

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

In early 2021, Warriors & Quiet Waters engaged the Evaluation and Capacity Building team at the IVMF to help measure and communicate the impact of their programs and better tell the story of the participant journey to thriving. The purpose of this evaluation was to test the hypothesis that participants experience a type of transformation or improvement during or immediately after a Fishing Expedition (FX), and that this effect is sustained for some individuals or can be enhanced through participation in additional FXs. Overall, this evaluation found that survey respondents reported improvements in nearly all domains investigated, including the value …