Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Convicted Felons And Voting, Olivia Corley

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

Felony disenfranchisement impacts nearly 4.6 million individuals in the United States with low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately affected. This policy is a practice that restricts the voting rights of individuals who have been convicted of a felony. This brief provides an overview of the challenges faced by those affected by felony disenfranchisement, as well as the implications for democracy in the United States. Highlighting a 50-state scan of state voter restrictions, I showcase the different laws and policies that restrict the voting rights of individuals with felony convictions across the United States. The history of felony disenfranchisement in …

¿El Papel Lo Aguanta Todo? Linguistic Nationalism In Hispanic Constitutions, Mihir Kale

Gaines Fellow Senior Theses

Linguistic nationalism is among the most well-documented sections of nationalist study, as it is one of the predominant mechanisms in which nationalist sentiments are codified or enforced within a state. Cultural or ethnic nationalist preferences are typically expressed through the imposition and preference of a certain nation’s language to demonstrate power, and examples of linguistic nationalism have been recorded across all continents and societies throughout history.

The Primacy Of Openness In Ecological Complexity Theory, Colby Clark

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Five principles are at the foundation of complex systems theory: emergence, openness, contingency, historicity, and indeterminacy. Of those five, the principle of emergence is easily the most prevalent. Simply put, emergence refers to the idea that some wholes cannot be properly accounted for by appealing to individual explanations of the parts that compose it. In ecological complexity theory, the principle of emergence is strongly associated with the self-organizing feedbacks that often identify the structural framework of ecosystems.

Within the last half century, the intense focus on the principle of emergence has engendered the development of many conceptual distinctions that have …

Substance Use And Trauma Among Adult Education Students In The United States, Brittany Miller-Roenigk, Michael Awad, Maria C. Crouch, Derrick M. Gordon

Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology Faculty Publications

Adult basic education (ABE) programs in the United States serve millions of students annually to help them achieve high school equivalency, English proficiency, and other skills. These skills are necessary for upward mobility and competitiveness in the labor market, which is important for ABE students who are disproportionately affected by racial/ethnic disparities and poverty. Among learners who are not in ABE programs, substance use and trauma affect student outcomes. Similar research is limited among ABE students. Understanding the influence of these factors among ABE students can better inform interventions. The current study, grounded in Stress and Coping Theory, examined rates, …

An Exploration Of Athlete Thoughts And Perceptions Of Cohesion In Coacting Sports, Jared Scott Hrabcak

Theses and Dissertations--Kinesiology and Health Promotion

Cohesion is a central element in group dynamics that contributes to a team’s functioning and performance. Most of the cohesion research to date has focused on the dynamic within interacting sport teams (i.e., football, basketball, soccer) but has looked past coacting teams (i.e., golf, tennis, cross-country running). While interacting sports command worldwide popularity, a significant portion of student athletes compete in coacting sports and represent the bulk of NCAA affiliated participants on the world stage at the Olympics. Thus, with such status on the world stage of competition, the investigation of coacting sports is justified. Therefore, the purpose of this …

“Who Do You Love, And Are You For Sure?”: Black Relationship Attitudes And Partner Preferences, Chesmore Simon Montique

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Historically, research has identified Black relationships as deviant, unstable, and pathological as compared to White relationships (Frazier, 1966; Moynihan, 1965). This outlook centers on White experiences as a baseline for comparison and dismisses the cultural nuance within Black relationships. Examining intraracial Black relationship formation dynamics – specifically romantic partner preferences – using an intersectional framework seems more relevant as Black people are least likely of all races to date White people (Batson et al., 2006; Yancey, 2009). As Black immigrants continue to increase their presence in the U.S. (Anderson & López, 2018), the current research examines how cultural factors influence …

A View Into Collaborative Methods Between Minority Organizations And Archivists At The University Of Kentucky, Claudia Elizabeth Benito

Anthropology Presentations

This poster examines the white and male-dominated narrative promoted in the archives. Archivists hold the power to record and contribute to what is included in the archives. The lack of descriptions and identifiers causes archivists to define materials to the best of their ability. A third party is then creating historical notes that may not be complete and the materials lose, to some extent, their meaning and value. This becomes even more problematic when the materials have originated from or highlight minority individuals or groups. Particular language, or lack thereof, can make locating and understanding these materials more difficult for …

Early Childhood Language And Literacy Development Programs For Autism Spectrum Disorder And D/Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Students, Mayson Spillman

Lewis Honors College Thesis Collection

This paper examines several popular approaches in the United States for enhancing early childhood literacy and language development in two special education populations— d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing (d/DHH) students and students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In addition to examining the effectiveness of these approaches, I adopt an educational equity lens to describe how variability in implementation can impact outcomes for these children. Based on my critical reading of the literature, I offer three broad recommendations for school psychologists: (1) Carefully consider dosage and fidelity of implementation, (2) Use caution when modifying existing interventions for these populations, and (3) Increase in-service …

Automatic Transcription Of Northern Prinmi Oral Art: Approaches And Challenges To Automatic Speech Recognition For Language Documentation, Connor Bechler

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

One significant issue facing language documentation efforts is the transcription bottleneck: each documented recording must be transcribed and annotated, and these tasks are extremely labor intensive (Ćavar et al., 2016). Researchers have sought to accelerate these tasks with partial automation via forced alignment, natural language processing, and automatic speech recognition (ASR) (Neubig et al., 2020). Neural network—especially transformer-based—approaches have enabled large advances in ASR over the last decade. Models like XLSR-53 promise improved performance on under-resourced languages by leveraging massive data sets from many different languages (Conneau et al., 2020). This project extends these efforts to a novel context, applying …

Comparing Indirect Assessment Results To A Direct Function Focused Preference Assessment To Identify Potential Reinforcers To Increase Task Completion In A School Setting, Kailee Joy Matthews

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

In the present study, a concurrent operant analysis (COA) was conducted for one elementary aged student in a publicly funded school to determine if the results yielded an interpretable outcome to identify a potential reinforcer to increase work completion. A simultaneous treatments design was used during the COA to assess choice making behavior. The results of the COA indicated the student’s choice making behavior was maintained by access to attention. An indirect measure of motivation was used as a secondary assessment to identify a potential reinforcer to increase work completion and to determine if the results would align with the …

Local News Deserts In China: The Role Of Social Media And Personal Communication Networks, Zixue Tai, Bai He, Jianping Liu

Journalism and Media Faculty Publications

The field of local news is often associated with news deserts, commonly defined as geo‐based communities without news‐ papers or other legacy media as providers of locally oriented news and civic information. This phenomenon is expanding in global society due to the diminishing presence of newspapers at moments of accelerated digitization. This study examines the multiplex nature of news deserts in rural and suburban areas in China. Data were collected through a multi‐methods approach combining two focus groups and 44 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews. Patterns of engagement among inter‐ viewees reveal that smartphone‐based social media applications and digital platforms function as …

Organizational Access Points And Substance Use Disorder Treatment Utilization Among Black Women: A Longitudinal Cohort Study, Sugy Choi, Amanda Bunting, Talia Nadel, Charles J. Neighbors, Carrie B. Oser

Sociology Faculty Publications

Introduction Health and social service organizations, including the emergency department (ED) and public assistance programs, constitute a social safety net that may serve as an “access point” for substance use treatment utilization. Racialization of substance use disorder (SUD) and gender disparities in access to treatment contribute to differences in health and social service utilization, including substance use treatment for Black women. We therefore explored the role of various access points in facilitating the use of substance use treatment among Black women with substance use and involvement in the criminal justice system.

Methods We used data from the Black Women in …

1-Back Matching And Mismatching By Pigeons, Thomas Zentall

Psychology Research Data

No abstract provided.

Southeastern Law Librarian 2023 Special Election Edition, Seaall

Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Southeastern Law Librarian Winter 2023, Seaall

Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Offshoring And Subordinate Financialization In Developing Countries, Logan Kuegel

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

This study will investigate the relationship between global value chain integration and financialization in the Global South. It is intended for policy research committees in international organizations such as the United Nations (Commission on Trade and Development Special Committee on Cization), the International Monetary Fund (Development Committee), the World Trade Organization, and World Bank. The global production network represents the international division of production through intermediate offshoring, while financialization represents the entrance of traditionally nonfinancial actors (namely firms, governments/banks, and households) into the financial system.

Attempting to use a heterodox framework, this paper builds upon literature that synthesizes the two …

Bolstering Resistance To Misinformation Through K-12 Education, Allison Johnson

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

Misinformation online and in news media is a problem because it degrades truth and hinders legitimate democratic discourse. As misinformation becomes more prevalent, we need to start finding ways to limit the extent of the problem. To do so, I recommend a policy solution based on inoculation theory. Inoculation theory, as the name suggests, uses the metaphor of a vaccine. When receiving the flu shot, we get a weakened dose of the virus, which in turn helps us to create antibodies and later be more effective at fighting the real flu. In this instance, people are exposed to weakened doses …

Curbing Diabetes Prevalence And Reducing Risk Through Policy, Grayson Blount

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

The purpose of this policy brief is to illuminate the dire circumstances surrounding the ongoing diabetes epidemic in Kentucky. Type II diabetes mellitus, a preventable and manageable chronic illness, affects nearly 465,000 Kentuckians currently. Beyond the daily struggle associated with diabetes, many acute complications can arise that are severly detrimental to quality of life, such as blindness or lower extremeity amputation. Additionally, the costs associated with diabetes are tremendous, to patients, to providers, and to the state. It is in the best interest of all stakeholders to do whatever we can in order to reduce prevalence and improve management of …

Child Welfare And The Opioid Crisis In The Bluegrass State, Irina Mohler

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

This brief discusses the challenges facing Kentucky's child welfare system, particularly due to the opioid epidemic, childhood adversity, mental health needs, and limited social services. Kentucky has one of the highest child neglect rates and opioid dispensing rates in the nation. The state's child welfare system includes services like the Child and Family Services Plan, Independent Living Program, and Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Team (START), but it faces issues such as high caseloads and data gaps. It aims to emphasizes the importance of providing the highest standard of care for children in Kentucky and seeking effective recommendations by examining similar …

Homeownership And Mortgage Loans: How Important Is A Conventional Loan?, Zachary Owen

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

Communities across the United States face a housing crisis that stems in part from a scarcity of conventional home mortgage loans. Conventional mortgage loan application numbers have decreased, and racial disparities persist in mortgage application denial rates. In 2020, the Urban Institute reported that when applying for a mortgage, Black applicants were denied 27.1% of the time, yet White applicants were denied only 13.6% of the time. These denial rates are highly correlated with homeownership rates. Today, despite policy efforts, the difference in White and Black homeownership rates is higher than in the 1960s when the government enforced discriminatory housing …

Making Transportation Safer, Jack Reynolds

Undergraduate Public Policy Capstone Projects

While often overlooked, the overreliance on private transportation across the United States has become a major source of danger, with thousands of lives lost every year to motor vehicle crashes. These deaths have been taken for granted, yet what is often forgotten is that in the face of increasing rates of motor vehicle crash deaths, we have the capability to prevent future tragedies like these from occurring through targeted policy decisions. While certain reforms to private transportation were found to be effective in improving traffic safety, such as implementing graduated licensing systems and lowering speed limits, the primary component of …

"Does This Make Sense?": The Effect Of Congruent Guise In Regional Accent On Grammatical Acceptability Judgments, Nour Kayali

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This study seeks to unite sociophonetic speech perception and syntax research by presenting participants with congruent or incongruent social expectations during a structural grammaticality judgement task. Participants completed a between-subjects matched guise survey with place-based grammatical structures spoken in either a congruent place-based, local accent or a nonlocal accent. Place-based structures are consistently rated more acceptable in the local accent than the nonlocal. These results suggest that judgment of grammaticality results from an interplay of sociocultural expectations with accent and sentence structure. Judgement of structural grammaticality is not independent of social expectation.

So You Want To Be A Leader? Examining Pathways To Special Collections Administration, Sarah Horowitz, Colleen W. Barrett

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

This article seeks to understand the current state of the field of special collections library administration in the United States. Using a dataset gathered through publicly available information about special collections directors from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Independent Research Libraries Association (IRLA), and the Oberlin Group institutional members, the authors explore the educational backgrounds of directors, the types of positions they held prior to taking on their current roles, and the effect of gender on leadership advancement. This article also discusses the similarities and differences between institution types as well as promotions within institutions and across types of …

Looking Back: Kentucky And Children’S Book Publishers, Reinette F. Jones, Charlotte Stephens

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

Though Kentucky was not a leader in the early publishing industry for children, it was an active participant. Printers within the state, as in the rest of the country, saw the potential in producing literature for young readers. Through the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, this literature became more established. Slowly, children’s books started to step away from solemn moral instruction toward the playful stories we know and love today.

Looking Back: Woman's Library Club In Kentucky, Reinette F. Jones

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

The Woman’s Library Club Movement arrived in Kentucky around 1896. It was not a true movement, but rather a period when dissociated groups named Woman’s Library Club were established throughout the United States. There was not a national office or state offices. Each club functioned independently. The state of Kentucky was a minor player in the Woman’s Library Club Movement. Had it not been for the Paducah newspaper articles, the state as whole may have been overlooked.

The University Of Kentucky, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Books and Chapters

On July 1, 2010, a long-sought realignment between the University of Kentucky’s main library and the Law Library went into effect. Under the new arrangement, the Law Library would no longer be a semi-autonomous entity with oversight performed by both the law school and the main library, but rather a unit wholly situated within the law school. The steps toward this outcome and the negotiated details are sketched below.

Paper Gowns, Cold Hands, Or Something Else? Black Women's Barriers To Gynecologic Screening, Nadia Ayesha Sesay

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Cervical cancer mortality burden is carried disproportionately by African American women. Early indicators of cervical cancer are identified through prevention screening, a procedure typically performed by a gynecologist. Ideally, the patient group with the most severe mortality would likewise be the group with the most robust communication exchange with their physician to prevent cervical cancer incidence. However, a slew of factors contributes to continued mortalities among Black women. This study uses semi-structured interviews (n=10) and the health belief model to examine one barrier to Black women’s prosocial behaviors regarding routine gynecologic care—awkwardness, which here is conceptualized as social anxiety. The …

Cold Calling In The Classroom: Exploring Student Perceptions Of Instructor Communication Using The Face Negotiation Theory, Cynthia Chinazo Nnagboro

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

Using face negotiation theory (Ting-Toomey, 1988) as a theoretical framework, this dissertation sought to determine students’ perceptions of instructor communication during classroom discussions where instructors use cold calling tactics. According to FNT, students perceived that self-construal determines their face concern as either self, other/mutual face. Therefore, an instructor must determine the best facework strategies to prevent face loss during classroom discussions to maintain optimal student outcomes in communication satisfaction and motivation to participate. This was accomplished by using 8 hypothetical vignettes, a pilot test and an experiment that measured face threat, face support, student communication satisfaction and motivation, intention to …

The Influence Of Instructor Immediacy Beyond The Classroom: An Experimental Investigation Of Relational Messages During Office Hours, Adam Tristan

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This dissertation examines instructor relational messages during office hours. Office hours are one of the few pedological tools where instructors can engage with their students outside the classroom. Office hours, in general, are widely adopted at many US higher education institutions, yet the context is under-researched and, thus, worthy of exploration. According to rhetorical and relational goals theory (Mottet et al., 2006), some students prefer building relationships with their instructors; others prefer task-focused interactions. To acknowledge the students' relational needs while also addressing students’ academic concerns, instructors could employ instructor immediacy behaviors to achieve simultaneous goals. A 2 x 2 …

Identity And Perception Among Aspec Consumers Of Mass Media, Jericho Franke

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The portrayals of sex and romance, as well as asexuality and aromanticism, in mass media can have a profound impact on the way asexual and aromantic media consumers view relationships and their own identities, and affect the perception and treatment of the aspec community as a whole. This study uses mixed qualitative methods of online discourse analysis and participant interviews to examine the how mass media has shaped the self-perception and life experiences relating to sex and romance among aspec audience members.