Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of Acculturation On Bosnian Refugee Adult Child Mate Selection, Emina Herovic

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Forced by the atrocities of war from their native country, Bosnian families came to United States seeking refuge and a new life. Immigrating to a new country, however, involves the process of acculturation which can dilute many native practices. Like many refugees that immigrated, Bosnians sought to adapt to the American way of life, while keeping their traditional ethnic customs, practices, and religion (Val & Iain-Walker, 2003). Many Bosnian refugee parents worked to keep the Bosnian practices prevalent in their first and second generation Bosnian American children. By doing so, Bosnian parents imbedded into their children the original customs, practices, …

A Message-Centered Approach To Understanding Young Women’S Decision-Making About Hpv Vaccination, Katharine J. Head

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The HPV vaccine represents an important step in the primary prevention of cervical cancer, yet uptake rates for the vaccine remain below what is needed to establish "herd immunity" from the virus. While many studies have examined both psychosocial and communication factors affecting HPV vaccination decisions, this study adopts a unique approach to understand the communication environment within which this health decision happens, such as the many and sometimes conflicting messages about vaccine efficacy and safety guiding young women's decisions. Using the message convergence framework, this project identifies how further study of converging and diverging messages in the communication environment …

Communication At Superfund Sites And The Reification Of Division: Toward A Convergence-Building Model Of Risk Communication, Anna G. Hoover

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This case study evaluates government communication practices at Superfund sites. I describe agency communication practices in Superfund communities, paying particular attention to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's

Seven Cardinal Rules of Risk Communication and its role as a model for federal agencies engaged at these sites. Situating the study within a theoretical milieu that includes sensemaking and symbolic interactionism, I examine whether current practices deepen divisions among stakeholders, reducing the possibility for communicative convergence.

I implement textual analysis and narrative inquiry to examine written and spoken communication about the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant National Priorities List Superfund site. Through …

Both Sides Of Our Mouths: Contemporary Legends As A Means Of Dissent In A Time Of Global Modernism, Gerald D. Abbott Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The legend is a permanent fixture of human societies. Though the legends themselves are permanent, their functions and meanings can fluctuate as the context in which they are told and retold shifts. As societies move through history, certain authoritative institutions create narratives that direct those societies and frame debates within them. Issues neglected by these institutions yet experienced by members of the population can be said to be unconstructed. Social problems that have achieved some level of construction inevitably provoke those who dissent from those constructions.

In these situations, members of a society look for alternative means for talking about …

Face Threat, Face Support, And Advice Effectiveness Following Infidelity, Molly S. Eickholt

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This study examined advice interactions following infidelity. Participants (N = 213) completed a survey concerning an instance on infidelity and a subsequent advice interaction. Injured party perceptions of advice interactions were measured by examining advice messages, perceived face threat, and perceived face support, in addition to perceived effectiveness of the advice message. Results from this study showed no significant differences in perceived face threat, perceived face support, or advice effectiveness between different advice messages. Results also indicated both positive and negative face threat as negative predictors of advice effectiveness. While negative face support was a positive predictor of advice …

Organizational Response To Perceptual Risk: Managing Substantial Response To Unsubstantiated Events, Elizabeth L. Petrun

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Analysis and perceived severity of risk influences organizational decisions to anticipated threats. As economic development and technology improve our standards of living, they also create new challenges to conceptualizing concrete and abstract threats. Organizations that face new threats, along with agencies that oversee these organizations, produce tightly coupled systems that increase risks for direct, indirect, and future stakeholders (Perrow, 1999). Natural disasters, political misbehavior, organizational corruption, financial collapse, food and water contaminations, chemical or nuclear accidents, international tension, to name a few, all present risks and challenges. Unfortunately, many of these situations endanger the lives and well-being of persons. The …

Expressions Of Concern And Social Support About Reproductive Care For Young Women On An Online Message Board, Sarah E. Riley

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The experience of a pelvic exam or Pap smear is something that, while necessary to maintain reproductive health, can be fraught with difficulty for women. Ouj, Igberase, Exe, and Ejikeme (2011) note that “[m]ost women feel a level of discomfort or pain and for some it is embarrassing, dehumanizing, degrading and associated with fear, anxiety and apprehension” (p. 637). However, little recent research has focused on the specific communication surrounding reproductive care for young women. The Internet is a common place for young people to seek health information, understand their own health risks, and seek social support from others. The …

The Role Of The Message Convergence Framework In Obstetricians’ Clinical And Communicative Practices, Kathryn E. Anthony

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Over the past few years, the rate of elective interventions in pregnancy in the United States, including elective inductions of labor and elective cesarean deliveries, has increased dramatically. While scholars attribute some of the increase in elective interventions to the female patients who request elective procedures from obstetricians, some literature contradicts that notion and suggests physicians are actually the primary perpetuators of the growth in elective procedures. Although pregnant women may seek elective interventions because of desired convenience, physicians can also claim the benefit of convenience in scheduling deliveries. In addition, elective procedures provide physicians greater monetary compensation than labor …

Marijuana Behaviors In The Arabian Gulf (Gcc): Applying Theory Of Planned Behavior, Nola Almageni

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The theory of planned behavior is a great tool for understanding predictors of drug use, specifically marijuana. Although the theory has been applied in the U.S. and European context, research on the predictors of behavioral intention for marijuana use within the Arabian Gulf context is limited. This thesis provides an overview of the theory of planned behavior as used in the U.S. and European context. An argument for the need to better understand predictors of behavioral intentions to use drugs, in the Arabian Gulf Region, prior to developing interventions and preventions is presented. Data was collected from 95 participants between …

Economic Optimization And Precision Agriculture: A Carbon Footprint Story, Rachael M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This thesis examines the economic and environmental impacts that precision agriculture technologies (PATs) can have on the carbon footprint of a grain farm. An analysis is offered using two manuscripts. The first examines the impacts of three PATs and compares the findings to a conventional farming method. It was found that all three PATs investigated showed a potential Pareto improvement over conventional farming. The second manuscript expanded the model used previously to in order to develop a process to construct a carbon efficient frontier (CEF). The model employed examined uniform and variable rate technologies. In addition to the CEF, a …

Direct Climate Markets: The Prospects For Trading Teleconnection Risk, Grant Cavanaugh

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This dissertation provides the analysis necessary to launch the first direct climate markets. Combining statistical modeling with qualitative interviews, I build off of an innovative insurance project to show why and how to start traded markets on indexes of El Niño/La Niña. I provide statistical models of El Niño/La Niña's worldwide economic impacts; a stochastic catalog used to price virtually any risk management contract on El Niño/La Niña, even as new forecasts change traders' expectations; a comprehensive statistical description of the lifecycle of new derivatives showing how the prospects for new derivatives changed fundamentally in the last decade (this work …

Relationships Among Pain Threshold, Self-Regulation, Executive Functioning, And Autonomic Activity: A General Inhibitory System Perspective, Ian Andres Boggero

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Chronic pain patients have poorer pain inhibition, self-regulatory ability, executive functioning and autonomic inhibition than those without pain, supporting the view that suppressing pain is mentally taxing. In the current study, an alternate explanation was proposed; namely, that pain inhibition, self-regulation, executive functions, and heart rate variability (HRV) are all controlled by the same general inhibitory system. To test this hypothesis, participants came into the laboratory for three sessions. At the first session, individual differences in pain thresholds, self-regulatory strength, executive functioning, and HRV were measured. At the second and third sessions, self-regulatory persistence and within-session changes in pain thresholds …

The Nature And Perceived Influence Of Lifestyle Discussions With Older Adults In Primary Care, Shoshana H. Bardach

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

The Nature and Perceived Influence of Lifestyle Discussions with Older Adults in Primary Care Rationale: A healthy diet and physical activity help with disease prevention and disease management and can promote quality of life regardless of the age at which an individual begins engaging in these behaviors. Despite the value of these health behaviors, many older adults do not follow lifestyle recommendations. Given that older adults frequently interact with the healthcare system, primary care providers are well situated to counsel older adults to improve their health behaviors. Unfortunately, we do not know how to most effectively engage in this counseling. …

Facsimile Reprints And Reproductions As Preservation Copies, Kathryn Lybarger

Library Presentations

No abstract provided.

A Struggle Within: The Rise And Fall Of Kentucky Nationalism And The Political Transition Of John Marshall Harlan, Luke Glaser

Gaines Fellow Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Nanotechnology In The Food System: Consumer Acceptance And Willingness To Pay, Guzhen Zhou

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Nanotechnology is one of the key innovative technologies in the present century. The food industry has applied this technology in each of its sectors. Nanotechnology has tremendous potential in food and agriculture, including advancing agricultural cultivation and food production, enhancing food nutrition and flavor, and improving food packaging and preservation. However, the novel properties of nanoscale materials that allow beneficial applications are also accompanied with uncertainties, even unknown risks. A number of studies have examined public understanding as well as acceptance of nanotechnology via surveys in both the US and Europe. However, most of these studies concentrated on public attitudes …

Implications Of Off-Farm Income For Farm Income Stabilization Policies, Simon Jette-Nantel

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This dissertation examines to what extent off-farm diversification may be an appropriate and accessible tool to mitigate the adverse effects from market failures and incompleteness in the crop and farm income insurance market. While the influence of the nonfarm sector has long been recognized as a primary force in shaping farm structure, off-farm income is rarely acknowledge as a risk management tool for operators and households of commercial farms. The dissertation develops a dynamic model that includes capital market imperfections, economies of scale in farm production, and the presence of adjustment costs in labor allocation decisions. The model provides a …

Using Geospatial Technologies To Characterize Relationships Between Travel Behavior, Food Availability, And Health, Warren J. Christian

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Epidemic obesity in the U.S. has prompted exploration of causal factors related to the built environment. Recent research has noted statistical associations between the spatial accessibility of retail food sources, such as supermarkets, convenience stores, and restaurants, and individual characteristics such as weight, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. These studies typically use residential proximity or neighborhood density to food sources as the measure of accessibility. Assessing food environments in this manner, however, is very limiting. Since most people travel outside of their neighborhood on a daily basis, the retail food sources available to individuals residing in the same area could vary …

Locative Media, Augmented Realities And The Ordinary American Landscape, Andrew Boulton

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation investigates the role of annotative locative media in mediating experiences of place. The overarching impetus motivating this research is the need to bring to bear the theoretical and substantive concerns of cultural landscape studies on the development of a methodological framework for interrogating the ways in which annotative locative media reconfigure experiences of urban landscapes. I take as my empirical cases i) Google Maps with its associated Street View and locational placemark interface, and ii) Layar, an augmented reality platform combining digital mapping and real-time locational augmentation. In the spirit of landscape studies’ longstanding and renewed interest in …

Re-Placing Sprawl: Mapping Place In An American Suburb, Ryan M. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In the post-World War II era land development in the United States has largely been focused on the expansion away from urban centers and out into the surrounding suburbs. While the development of suburbs began with utopian ideals of spiritual wholeness, their actual manifestation on the American landscape has been subject to harsh critiques about their long-term economic and environmental feasibility, fostering of social alienation, and general placelessness. In this thesis I address the criticism of suburbs as placeless, asking ―What are the particular practices of place-making in North American suburbs?‖ Examining interviews, cognitive map surveys, participant observation, archival materials, …

Neoliberalizing The Streets Of Urban India: Engagements Of A Free Market Think Tank In The Politics Of Street Hawking, Priyanka Jain

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation looks into the processes by which neoliberalism is mutating with various local and global discourses in order to transform urban space for marginalized street hawkers in the Global South, specifically Delhi, India. Following the current engagements in geographic literature on neoliberalism that focus on the contextually embedded character and the path-dependent process of the spread of free market ideas, I make free market advocacy think tanks--a rather unknown and under-investigated accomplice to this process--my main entry point. Corporate funded think tanks are often found advocating a neoliberal doctrine of free markets, minimal government intervention, and privatization. A self-professed …

Financial Inclusion And Natural Disasters, Benjamin L. Collier

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This dissertation explores the implications of natural disaster risk for access to financial services, especially credit. Its results show that disasters can dramatically undermine the ability of financial intermediaries (FIs) to lend after an event, increasing the cost of the disaster and delaying recovery. Moreover, the risk of natural disasters discourages investment in vulnerable regions and economic sectors and so slows economic development. Financial risk transfer mechanisms such as insurance can help maintain lending following an event. While many international development projects have targeted disaster insurance markets to households, managing disaster-related credit risk may be done more effectively through insurance …

Distinct Effects Of Enriched Environment On Dopamine Clearance In Nucleus Accumbens Shell And Core Following Systemic Nicotine Administration, Jun Zhu, Michael T. Bardo, Linda P. Dwoskin

Psychology Faculty Publications

Environmental enrichment during development may reduce drug abuse liability by modulating dopamine transporter (DAT) function. Nucleus accumbens (NAc) shell and core respond differentially to regulate the rewarding properties and locomotor stimulant effects of psychostimulants. The current study evaluated dopamine (DA) clearance (CL_DA) in the NAc shell and core using in vivo voltammetry in rats raised in an enriched condition (EC) or an impoverished condition (IC) and determined the effect of nicotine (0.4 mg/kg) on CL_DA. Baseline CL_DA in NAc shell and core was not different between EC and IC rats. In the saline control group, …

Conditioned Place Preference And Aversion For Music In A Virtual Reality Environment, Mikaël Molet, Gauthier Billiet, Michael T. Bardo

Psychology Faculty Publications

The use of a virtual reality environment (VRE) enables behavioral scientists to create different spatial contexts in which human participants behave freely, while still confined to the laboratory. In this article, VRE was used to study conditioned place preference (CPP) and aversion (CPA). In Experiment 1, half of the participants were asked to visit a house for 2 min with consonant music and then they were asked to visit an alternate house with static noise for 2 min, whereas the remaining participants did the visits in reverse order. In Experiment 2, we used the same design as Experiment 1, except …

Embedded, Participatory Research: Creating A Grounded Theory With Teenagers, Shannon Crawford Barniskis

Communication Faculty Publications

Objective – This project, based on a study of the impact of art programs in public libraries on the teenaged participants, sought to show how library practitioners can perform embedded, participatory research by adding participants to their research team. Embedded participatory techniques, when paired with grounded theory methods, build testable theories from the ground up, based on the real experiences of those involved, including the librarian. This method offers practical solutions for other librarians while furthering a theoretical research agenda. Methods – This example of embedded, participatory techniques used grounded theory methods based on the experiences of teens who participated …

The Everyday Spaces Of Humanitarian Migrants In Denmark, Malene H. Jacobsen

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Through an analysis of the Danish Immigration Law and asylum system, this research illustrates how the Danish state through state practices and policies permeates and produces the everyday space of humanitarian migrants. Furthermore, it examines how humanitarian migrants experience their everyday life in the Danish asylum system. An examination of state practices in conjunction with humanitarian migrants’ narratives of space and everyday practices, offers an opportunity to explore what kind of politics and political subjectivities that can emerge in the space of humanitarian migrants. This research contribute to our understanding of first, how the securitization of migration has direct impact …

Audience Response To The Nature/Society Binary In Kurosawa’S Dersu Uzala: An Observational Online Ethnography, Laura L. Sharp

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Geographers researching cinema have predominantly been interested in how geographic meaning is constructed and negotiated within film, but have been less productive in accounting for how these constructs are received by viewers. Using the method of observational online ethnography, I therefore investigate how fans in online reviews have interpreted the nature/society binary in the film Dersu Uzala. Working from a social constructionist view of nature I begin by deconstructing the binary as it appears in Dersu Uzala before proceeding to illustrate the way this constitutive absence is made up for by the visuality of the film’s landscapes and techniques of …

Counting On The Environment: Measuring And Marketing Ecosystem Services In Oregon, Eric Nost

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

New markets for the conservation of so-called ecosystem services, like the ability of a wetland to mitigate floods, are emerging worldwide. According to environmental economists, these markets require some metric - ecological or otherwise - that names the relevant characteristics of the service to be traded as a commodity. But while this is often assumed to be a simple task of science, I argue that the environmental regulators, eco-entrepreneurs, and conservationists who actually design and implement metrics are not so easily brought into agreement. In “rolling-out” revamped metrics and protocols, regulators and their conservationist allies in one market in Oregon …

Security, Development, And (Im)Mobility: The Uneven Geography Of Migration And Border Management In Ukraine, Jonathan Austin Crane

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

As a country of origin, transit, and destination for migrants that now borders four European Union (EU) member countries, Ukraine has seen future integration possibilities with the EU become, in part, conditional upon its willingness to cooperate in controlling cross-border migration. The EU is now “externalizing” aspects of migration and border control to Ukraine through making investments in Ukraine’s capacity to selectively “manage” cross-border flows in line with EU security and economy priorities. In the context of this emerging spatial arrangement of EU externalization, this thesis analyzes how, by whom, and to what effect migration is being managed in and …

Moveable Feasts: Locating Food Trucks In The Cultural Economy, Jessa M. Loomis

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In this thesis, I consider the emergence of a new generation of food trucks and question their popularity, narration and representation. I examine the economic and cultural discourses that have valorized these food trucks, and pay attention to the everyday material and embodied practices that constitute them. This research is situated in Chicago, where proposed changes to the existing mobile food vending ordinance spurred contentious debates about food safety, regulations, rights to the city and livelihoods. I follow the myriad actors involved in the food truck movement to understand the strategies employed to change the mobile food vending ordinance on …