Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sleep-Wake Problems And Daytime Sleepiness As Predictors Of Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Longitudinal Study In Early Adolescence, Megan Toney

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Objective: Research has analyzed the association between poor sleep and emotion regulation abilities, yet most studies have focused on adult samples which may not generalize to youth. The present study examines how sleep problems and daytime sleepiness in early adolescence were associated with specific forms of emotion regulation later in adolescence.

Methods: A group of 109 children from a larger longitudinal study on cognitive development completed questionnaires at two separate timepoints. Cognitive tasks and survey-based measures were completed at the first point of data collection (M_age = 11.90, SD = .91, range = 10-14). Approximately 10 months later, …

How Media Impact Race Relations: Positive And Negative Historical Examples And Applied Psychological Principles, Sophia Nocera

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis sought to examine how media influenced interracial relations in the 1920s and 1930s. It starts by defining necessary terms like media, race, racism, and stereotypes. Afterwards, studies which demonstrate that media reflect society are analyzed as well as studies which determine the extent of media influence on society. Media are the most influential on people who agree with the content provided and those who have no specific opinion on the issue at hand.

Next, psychological studies which determine the circumstances in which racist ideology is accepted the most are analyzed. This analysis determined that in-group versus out-group sentiments …

Democratic Failure In Various Forms Of Democracy, Jonathan Lederer

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Democratic Failure is a problem which has plagued democratic states since their earliest instances, and increasingly is a problem in the world today. Accordingly, a question to ask is, “Are certain forms of democracy more likely to experience democratic failure than others?” The correlation between democratic failure and a state’s executive institutional structure has been researched extensively, while the correlation between a state’s legal tradition and democratic failure has been studied far less. This thesis attempts to confirm the conventional wisdom that certain democratic institutional structures are more likely to fail, and attempts to find out whether certain legal traditions …

Nebraska Business And Consumer Confidence Indexes: March 1, 2019, Eric Thompson

Leading Economic Indicator Reports

Consumer and business confidence remained strong in Nebraska during February 2019. The Consumer Confidence Index – Nebraska (CCI-N) stood at 103.2 in February, above the neutral value of 100 and just below the value of 104.0 in January 2019. The Business Confidence Index – Nebraska (BCI-N) stood at 108.2 in February, well above the neutral level and up from 107.4 in January. When asked about the most important issue facing their business, 29 percent of respondents chose customer demand while 27 mentioned the quality and availability of labor and 13 percent mentioned competition from other businesses. Fifty-three percent of responding …

Emerging Themes From The Esa Symposium Entitled “Pollinator Nutrition: Lessons From Bees At Individual To Landscape Levels”, Vanessa Corby-Harris, Julia H. Bowsher, Morgan Carr-Markell, Mark J. Carroll, Mary Centrella, Steven C. Cook, Margaret Couvillon, Gloria Degrandi-Hoffman, Adam Dolezal, Julia C. Jones, Christina L. Mogren, Clint R. V. Otto, Pierre Lau, Juliana Rangel, Roger Schürch, Ashley St. Clair

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Pollinator populations are declining (Biesmeijer et al., 2006; Brodschneider et al., 2018; Cameron et al., 2011; Goulson, Lye, & Darvill, 2008; Kulhanek et al., 2017; National Research Council, 2007; Oldroyd, 2007), and both anecdotal and experimental evidence suggest that limited access to high quality forage might play a role (Carvell, Meek, Pywell, Goulson, & Nowakowski, 2007; Deepa et al., 2017; Goulson, Nicholls, Botias, & Rotheray, 2015; Potts et al., 2003, 2010; Vanbergen & The Insect Pollinators Initiative, 2013; Vaudo, Tooker, Grozinger, & Patch, 2015; Woodard, 2017). Multiple researchers are earnestly addressing this topic in a diverse array of insect-pollinator systems. …

Is One Secure Attachment Enough? Infant Cortisol Reactivity And The Security Of Infant-Mother And Infant-Father Attachments At The End Of The First Year, Patty X. Kuo, Ekjyot K. Saini, Elizabeth Tengelitsch, Brenda L. Volling

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Attachment security is theorized to shape stress reactivity, but extant work has failed to find consistent links between attachment security to mothers and infant cortisol reactivity. We examined family configurations of infant-mother and infant-father attachment security in relation to infant cortisol reactivity. One-year old infants (N = 180) participated in the Strange Situation with mothers and fathers in two counterbalanced lab visits, one month apart (12 and 13 months). Infants with secure attachments only to their fathers and not their mothers had higher cortisol levels than infants with a secure attachment to mother and also exhibited a blunted cortisol response …

Producer Services: A Hub For Stem And An Engine For Job Growth, Eric Thompson, Uyen Tran

Business in Nebraska

The producer services sector, which includes professional and technical services such as accounting, engineering, computer programming, advertising and consulting, is the fastest growing, high-wage segment of the U.S. economy. Producer services employment grew by 15 percent nationwide from 2008 through 2017 but only by 5 percent in Nebraska. Nebraska growth lagged the nation in part because the state has smaller metropolitan areas. Producer service businesses tend to congregate in larger cities. To grasp more opportunities in this growing, high wage sector, Nebraska needs to train more workers in STEM occupations, encourage the development of small businesses in the sector, and …

Plant Community Composition And Structure Monitoring At Scotts Bluff National Monument, 2018 Data Report, Isabel W. Ashton

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

This report presents the results of vegetation monitoring efforts in 2018 at Scotts Bluff National Monument (SCBL) by the Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (NGPN) and Fire Ecology Program (NGPFire). This was the eighth year of combined monitoring efforts.

Crew members from NGPN visited eight long-term monitoring plots to collect data on the plant communities at SCBL. This work is part of a long-term monitoring effort designed to provide a better understanding of the condition of the vegetation community and how it changes over time. NGPN staff measured species richness, herb-layer height, native and non-native species abundance, …

Multivariate Analysis Of Hydrochemical Data For Jewel Cave, Wind Cave, And Surrounding Areas, Andrew J. Long, James B. Paces, William G. Eldridge

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Jewel Cave National Monument and Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota contain two of the six longest caves worldwide. These caves contain subterranean lakes that are important points of intersection between the water table of the Madison aquifer and the caves. During 2015 to 2017, several subterranean lakes were discovered in Jewel Cave, which previously was thought to be above the regional water table. The objectives of this study were to better understand the hydrology of the recently discovered subterranean lakes in Jewel Cave and to evaluate their relation or possible connection to similar lakes in Wind Cave. …

Adult Attachment And Testosterone Reactivity: Fathers' Avoidance Predicts Changes In Testosterone During The Strange Situation Procedure, Robin S. Edelstein, Kristi Chin, Ekjyot K. Saini, Patty X. Kuo, Oliver C. Schultheiss, Brenda L. Volling

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

We assessed parents' testosterone reactivity to the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), a moderately stressful parent-infant interaction task that pulls for parental nurturance and caregiving behavior. Parents (146 mothers, 154 fathers) interacted with their 1-year-old infants, and saliva samples were obtained pre- and post-task to assess changes in testosterone. We examined whether testosterone reactivity differed between mothers and fathers, the extent to which parents' characteristic approaches to closeness (i.e., adult attachment orientation) contributed to testosterone changes, and whether any influences of adult attachment orientation were independent of more general personality characteristics (i.e., the Big Five personality dimensions). Results revealed that mothers …

Interpersonal Discrimination And Mental Health Among Minority Students At Predominantly White Institutions: Does Racial Identity Matter?, Marissa Lynn Cardwell

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Large proportions of minority group members commonly report experiencing interpersonal racial discrimination in many different domains of their lives, and this exposure to discrimination may be particularly salient for minority group members attending Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). Persistent exposure to discrimination has been linked to diminished wellbeing. Given this link, research has begun to identify potential buffers to the association between racial discrimination and diminished mental health. One such protective factor is racial ideology. The current paper investigates whether racial identity attitudes serve as protective factors between racial discrimination and mental health outcomes using daily diary data from 146 students …

An Evaluation Of Police Interviewing Methods: A Psychological Perspective, Cassandra Neal

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper discusses false confessions and memory’s fallibility and how they can decrease the reliability of an investigative interview. In an effort to remedy this issue, the three most popular interview techniques utilized by police officers during an investigation were examined to decipher which one elicits the most reliable testimony. In order to determine which of the three methods out of the Reid Technique, Cognitive Interview, and PEACE Method is the most reliable, literature on the different techniques was examined to see which method resulted in the most accurate information, free from false statements. As a result of this evaluation, …

Mandatory Minimum Penalties: An Analysis Of Four State’S Penal Codes And Federal Court Policies, Cassie Geiken

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

In Nebraska, variations of bills attempting to amend mandatory minimum laws in the state have been introduced. The harshness of the mandatory sentences, as well as the looming state of emergency caused by prison overcrowding, have sustained the debate over sentencing laws. This essay identifies the core issues of mandatory minimum sentencing laws and analyzes the states of Nebraska, Texas, Alabama, California, and the federal system’s use of mandatory minimums for felony charges to identify potential solutions. Statute review found that Nebraska’s current sentencing codes are misaligned with the rest of the nation; not even Alabama with one of the …

Trendjacking: A Social Justice Analysis, Rachel Finnegan

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The purpose of this paper is to look at the intersection of trendjacking and social justice within five specific advertisements targeted at an American audience from well-known brands. A variety of success in utilizing this intersection is presented and explained through an analysis of the advertisement, people highlighted, the brand’s financial giving and history, social media response, etc. The five brands examined are Pepsi, Dove, Nike, Airbnb, and Levi’s.

To successfully utilize social justice trendjacking, brands must be genuine and specific with their message, be prepared to explain their reasoning for their decisions, have the advertisements checked by many people …

Escaping Death: Naloxone's Chemical Nature And Potential To Combat The Opioid Epidemic, Abigale Miller

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Naloxone is a life-saving drug with the ability to reverse an opioid overdose. As the opioid epidemic’s death toll rises, we can turn to Naloxone as a tool to combat the crisis. The epidemic, born of corruption, has a wide reach among the people of the United States, with especially firm grasps on middle-aged people, sufferers of chronic pain, white Americans and those living in the eastern portion of the country. Naloxone’s elegant design saves lives by effectively competing for a position on an opioid biding receptor in the brain to almost instantly end an overdose and restore normal breathing. …

"The Tyrant Father": Leslie Stephen And Masculine Influences On Virginia Woolf And Her Novel, To The Lighthouse, Anya Graubard

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper examines the volatile yet nurturing relationship between Virginia Woolf and her father, Leslie Stephen. It specifically considers the effects of three male “tyrants” in Woolf’s childhood, including not only her father but also her two half-brothers, who abused her sexually. Analysis of the dynamics of these relationships provides insight into Woolf’s lifelong battle with mental illness and helps us to understand the complicated relationships she had as an adult with men and women.

In her letters, diaries, and memoir essays, Woolf reveals how she drew from her own experiences of childhood to write her most famous novel, To …

Bringing Citations And Usage Metrics Together To Make Data Count, Helena Cousijn, Patricia Feeney, Daniella Lowenberg, Eleonora Presani, Natasha Simons

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Over the last years, many organizations have been working on infrastructure to facilitate sharing and reuse of research data. This means that researchers now have ways of making their data available, but not necessarily incentives to do so. Several Research Data Alliance (RDA) working groups have been working on ways to start measuring activities around research data to provide input for new Data Level Metrics (DLMs). These DLMs are a critical step towards providing researchers with credit for their work. In this paper, we describe the outcomes of the work of the Scholarly Link Exchange (Scholix) working group and the …

An Analysis Of Performance-Based Perception In Competitive Baseball Players, Grant Schlimgen, Michael Dodd

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Abstract: The correlation between performance hitting a baseball and perceived ball size has been described in previous work (Witt & Proffitt, 2005). The article in question used recreational softball players to demonstrate that greater performance led to a perceived change in softball size, but discussed a desire to replicate their experiment with competitive professionals. Using athletes from a semi-collegiate baseball team during their summer season, we were able to find a correlation that although weaker, continues to propagate the relationship found in previous studies. The finding of a weaker relationship also sheds new insight into why elite athletes may fare …

“That’S Why I Deleted You, Aunt Kathy”: Political Tolerance, Online Selective Exposure, And Relational Closeness, Justice Forte

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

In the present day, people have copious options for news consumption, and therefore, are presented with increased opportunity to engage in selective exposure, or the selection of media that confirm their beliefs (Stroud, 2008). Past research in the areas of political tolerance (Sullivan et al., 1979), ideology (Brandt et al., 2014), and political conversations in the context of our relationships (Mutz, 2006) highlights the negative impact of tuning out the other side. In exploring these topics, these scholars set out to determine when individuals are willing to extend tolerance toward groups or views with which they disagree and when they …

Interparental Control During Pregnancy Predicts Parental Control Directed Toward Infants, Jaime Stephenson

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Numerous studies have found that the quality of the intimate relationship between parents significantly impacts the quality of the parent-child relationship which, in turn, has important implications for child psychosocial adjustment. Research calls to Enfger’s spillover hypothesis suggesting that discord or dysfunction in one family relationship (e.g., the interparental relationship) puts other family relationships (e.g., parent-child relationships) at increased risk for dysfunction. Examining the association between interparental respect and control dynamics during pregnancy and the parent-child relationship when the child is 1 year of age is important because (a) children’s social and moral adjustment is in a critical stage of …

General Interviewer Techniques: Developing Evidence-Based Practices For Standardized Interviewing, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Jennifer Dykema, Steve M. Coombs, Rob K. Schultz, Lisa Holland, Margaret Hudson

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The practices of standardized interviewing developed at many research sites over many years. The version of standardization that Fowler and Mangione codified in Standardized Survey Interviewing has provided researchers a core resource to use in training and supervising standardized interviewers. In recent decades, however, the accumulation of recordings and transcripts of interviews makes it possible to re-visit the practices of standardization to describe both how respondents actually answer survey questions and how interviewers actually respond.

To update General Interviewer Training (GIT), we brought observations of interaction during interviews together with research about conversational practices from conversation analysis, psychology, and other …

2019 Nebraska Property Tax School Funding Issues, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

Nebraska agricultural property taxes are among the highest in the United States. Over the last three years, Nebraska farmers and ranchers have paid nearly 31 percent of their net farm income as property taxes (47 percent in 2017). When state and federal taxes are factored in, this represents an effective tax rate of more than 50 percent (over 60 percent in 2017). While no one particularly enjoys paying property taxes (or any other tax), property taxes are especially burdensome for Nebraska farmers and ranchers.

The proposed 2020 constitutional amendment to provide property tax relief would require dramatic state spending cuts, …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Interviewer Pace: Assessing Interviewer Speaking Pace At The Question Level, Allyson L. Holbrook, Timothy P. Johnson, Evgenia Kapousouz, Young Ik Cho

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The pace at which interviewers read survey questions may vary considerably across interviewers (e.g., Cannell, Miller, & Oksenberg, 1981) and as a function of interviewer experience (Olson and Petchev, 2007). The pace at which interviews are conducted can influence respondent perceptions of the importance of interaction (Fowler, 1966). Interviewer training typically includes instructions to read questions slowly and clearly to respondents is based on the assumption that doing so maximizes data quality (e.g., Fowler and Mangione, 1990). In this research, we examine possible causes and consequences of interviewer pace using data from in person surveys conducted with respondents from four …

Race-Of-Virtual-Interviewer Effects, Frederick Conrad, Michael Schober, Daniel Nielsen, Heidi Reichert

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

In developing self-administered interviewing systems that go beyond text, survey designers are faced with choices about how to represent the interviewing agent. In speech-dialog systems like ACASI and IVR, designers must decide if the voice that presents the spoken questions is unambiguously male or female, whether the pronunciation is regionally marked, etc. Any visual representation of an interviewer (e.g., a photograph, a video) requires designers to choose features that visually convey demographic features like race, gender, age, etc. Here we investigate whether the representation of animated virtual interviewers (VIs) affects responses in the same way that analogous attributes of human …

Interviewer Variation In Third Party Presence During Face-To-Face Interviews, Zeina N. Mneimneh, Julie De Jong, Jennifer Kelley

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The presence of a third person in face-to-face interviews constitutes an important contextual factor that affects the interviewee's responses to culturally sensitive questions (Aquilino, 1997; Casterline and Chidambaram, 1984; Mneimneh et al., 2015; Pollner and Adams, 1994). Interviewers play an essential role in requesting, achieving, and reporting on the private setting of the interview. Our recent work has shown that the rate of interview privacy varies significantly across interviewers; while some interviewers report high rates of privacy among their interviews, others report low rates of privacy for the interviews they administered (Mneimneh et al., 2018). Yet, there is a lack …

The Cannell Legacy, Nancy A. Mathiowetz, Peter V. Miller

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Charles Cannell engineered the study of Interviewer-respondent interaction. He created conceptual frameworks for understanding the interviewing process and its impact on data quality. He invented methods for observing and recording interview interaction. He pioneered the use of randomized experiments in the survey context. He amalgamated insights from clinical and social psychology, sociology, group dynamics, as well as research on verbal and nonverbal communication to inform his work. This interdisciplinary approach has broadly influenced both interviewing research and practice. In this paper, we review Cannell’s many contributions to the field and his enduring legacy.

The Accuracy And Utility Of Using Paradata To Detect Interviewer Question-Reading Deviations, Jennifer Kelley

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Deviations from reading survey questions exactly as worded may change the validity of the questions, thus increasing measurement error. Hence, organizations train their interviewers to read questions verbatim. To ensure interviewers are reading questions verbatim, organizations rely on interview recordings. However, this takes a significant amount of resources. Therefore, some organizations are using paradata generated by the survey software, specifically timestamps, to try to detect when interviewers’ deviate from reading the question verbatim.

To monitor interviewers’ question reading behavior using timestamps, some organizations estimate the expected question administration time to establish a minimum and maximum question administration time thresholds (QATT). …

Interacting With Interviewers In Voice And Text Interviews On Smartphones, Michael Schober, Frederick Conrad, Christopher Antoun, Alison W. Bowers, Andrew L. Hupp, H. Yanna Yan

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

As people increasingly adopt SMS text messaging for communicating in their daily lives, texting becomes a potentially important way to interact with survey respondents, who may expect that they can communicate with survey researchers as they communicate with others. Thus far our evidence from analyses of 642 iPhone interviews suggests that text interviewing can lead to higher quality data (less satisficing, more disclosure) than voice interviews on the same device, whether the questions are asked by an interviewer or an automated system. Respondents also report high satisfaction with text interviews, with many reporting that text is more convenient because they …

Interviewer Falsification In Survey Research: Detection Methods And Impact Of Fraudulent Interviews, Silvia Schwanhäuser, Joseph Sakshaug, Yuliya Kosyakova, Frauke Kreuter

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The role of the interviewer and sources of interviewer error in the survey data collection process are widely discussed topics in the survey methodology literature. An understudied problem in this context is the falsification of interview data by the interviewer. Research gaps concern, for example, how conclusions drawn from survey data are affected by falsified interviews. So far it is commonly assumed, that the possible effect of falsifications on univariate statistics can only be as high as the overall share of falsified data. Since the share of faked data is usually very low for most surveys, the problem is regarded …

Comparison Of Different Approaches To Evaluate And Explain Interviewer Effects, Geert Loosveldt, Celine Wuyts

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Within survey methodology it is common knowledge that interviewers in face-to-face or telephone interviews can have undesirable effects on the obtained answers. These effects can be created in an active way by, for example, asking suggestive questions or they can be obtained in a passive way as a consequence of certain interviewer characteristics eliciting socially desirable answers. These active and passive effects may differ from interviewer to interviewer. These differences between interviewers in systematic effects create additional variance in the data. The proportion of variance in a (substantive) variable that can be explained by the interviewers is the ‘so called’ …