Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Intersections Between Gender, Race, And Justice-Involvement: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of Women's Experiences In The Oregon Criminal Justice System, Breanna Lynne Boppre

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since the 1970s, the rate of female incarceration in the United States skyrocketed, with highest imprisonment rates among Black and Latina women. Nonetheless, few studies examined disparities in female imprisonment and the distinct experiences of women of Color within the justice system. To fill this gap in the literature, this dissertation utilized conflict and intersectional perspectives to assess the differential treatment of women in the Oregon justice system. Using a convergent mixed methods design, this dissertation examined disparities in female imprisonment using state-level prison admissions and population data from 1983-2014 in conjunction with qualitative interview and focus group responses among …

Is It Still Impossible To Be Black And American?, Darrian Carroll

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis engages Bill Clinton’s presidential rhetoric to investigate how liberal rhetorical practices can be used to extend and sustain the oppression of Black Americans. By adopting Du Bois’ concepts of the color-line and double-consciousness this thesis examines how Bill Clinton was able to recreate the color-line in the Mason Temple speech and benefit from and recreate a world devoid of consciousness in other selected speeches from his corpus. This project takes up three separate speeches by Bill Clinton as texts. The second chapter focuses on Bill Clinton’s “Remarks to the Rainbow Coalition” and “Remarks announcing the initiative” to make …

Police Interventions, Public Perceptions, And The Rdfc Interaction Model, Stacey L. Clouse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Procedural justice and police legitimacy research suggests that perceptions of legitimacy are based on the credibility of police (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). However, highly publicized incidents of police use of force serve to threaten that credibility. High profile incidents between police and citizens in Black communities have contributed to national protests and, as some data suggest, increased violence toward the police (FBI.gov, 2016). Extensive media coverage of these incidents has contributed to an increased sensitivity toward police- citizen interactions leading to incidents of civil unrest (Weitzer, 2002). The incidents of civil unrest suggest that we should more closely examine factors …

Media Portrayals Of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Cars2 And Frame Analysis Of The Sesame Street Character Julia, Sallyann Ficarrotta

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Media Portrayals of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A CARS2 and frame analysis of the Sesame Street character Julia Media portrayals of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are grossly exaggerated and inaccurate. Julia, a Muppet with ASD, is not depicted as having high-functioning autism, but most of the exaggerated portrayals depicted in movies and television are of a person on that end of the spectrum. The current study, a quantitative content analysis of Julia from Sesame Street, draws from framing theory, most importantly stigmatizing cues, and utilizes the professional assessment tool, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS2). The tool was used to rate …

Money Matters: Exploring The Financial Resources For Sports Medicine Programs In Public And Private Secondary Schools--A Qualitative Study, Natalie Mercedes Aviles Flores

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Context: Institutional funding and strained school budgets are a barrier to placing certified athletic trainers (ATCs) in secondary schools. The size and location of a school appear to be coinciding limitations (Mazerolle et al, 2015), but what is lacking in the literature is an

evaluation of how schools manage to provide adequate medical coverage. Resources are available, but there is question as to whether these schools consider or even utilize them.

Objective: The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the funding techniques and budget sources of high school athletic training clinics from the perspective of both private and …

Examination Of Mental Health And Family Relationship In Collegiate Athletes, Julia Hussey

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Athletes at the collegiate level frequently experience unique stressors that cause them to be at risk for a number of mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, and substance use. Current research in the field suggests that athletes are not as likely as their non-athlete peers to seek out psychological services for mental health difficulties. Social supports have been shown to impact athletes’ mental health and sport performance. Specifically, family relationships appear to have an influence on athletes’ level of stress and motivation, with positive family relationships showing decreases in athletes’ worry as well as faster recovery following injury. Surprisingly, there …

Mate Preferences Among Single Mothers, Carol Yvette Franco

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As individuals become parents, they shift time and energy towards parenting to ensure the survival and wellbeing of their offspring. However, it is not uncommon for a romantic partnership between parents to dissolve, which may lead a single mother to pursue a new partner in the future. But how does having a dependent child influence whom she will choose for her new partner? And how will resource availability and assistance from family influence the decisions she makes? A significant amount of research has been conducted on female mate preferences in the United States and elsewhere, yet little is specifically focused …

Investigating The Role Of Liminality In The Cultural Transition Of The Late Eighth Millennium Bc On Cyprus, Levi Keach

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Near East has the earliest and best documented Neolithic in the world. However, most research attention has focused on the mainland. The spread of the Neolithic to the adjacent Mediterranean islands was once considered relatively late. The last three decades of research has changed this perception, demonstrating that the spread of the Neolithic to Cyprus was contemporary with its continental development.

This work addresses the change between the archeologically defined cultures of the Cypro-Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (Cypro-PPNB) and the Khirokitian Culture (KC) on the island of Cyprus between the 9th and 6th millennia cal BC. The purpose of this …

Reimagining High School Writing: A Multi-Case Examination Of The Impact Of External Pressures On High School Writing Contexts, Nicole Elizabeth Klimow

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research concerning teachers’ pedagogical beliefs shows a strong relationship between planning and instruction; however, the sources of pedagogical beliefs have not been researched thoroughly. Because teachers bring their histories and experiences to their interactions with students, their pedagogical beliefs may also be present in their instruction, mediating the relationship between knowledge (planning) and action (writing instruction). Framed by Sociocultural Theory (SCT), the purpose of this qualitative, multi-site, multi-case case study was first to understand teachers’ expectations for teaching writing based on their beliefs about learning. A secondary intent was to examine ways in which high school English teachers’ learning expectations …

Power And Authority Of Royal Queen Mothers: Juxtaposing The French Queen Regent And The Ottoman Validé Sultan During The Early Modern Period, Reneé N. Langlois

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Women and their relationship to sovereignty, during the early modern era has become a rapidly growing topic, given that during this period an unprecedented number of women rose to high positions of power. This paper aims to compare the lives of the queen regents in France with their counterparts, the validé sultans in the Ottoman Empire, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when both groups of royal women acquired substantial power. Although these women were prohibited from ruling in their own right, the paper explores the ways in which queen regents and validé sultans used both official …

School Bullying: Exploring Juvenile Victimization Trends With The Ncvs School Crime Supplement (Ncvs-Scs), Matthew Morris Le Claire

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bullying is broadly defined as the act of repeatedly exercising superior strength or social capital to intimidate an individual or group and is enacted by different modes. This research is the first to distinguish between traditional modes (direct and indirect bullying) and contemporary modes (cyberbullying) of bully victimization using the National Crime Victimization Survey’s School Crime Supplement (NCVS-SCS). While establishing new conceptual criterias for defining bullying modes, the study explores the relationship between demographic variables (i.e., agre, gender, and race), socioeconomic disadvantage (i.e., hate words present on school premises, households earning less than $25,000 per year, perceptions of controlled substance …

Working With Constraints: The Merit Of Prudence, Matthew Martinez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Families are essential building blocks of human social organization. For most of human history, families were fundamental economic and social elementary units (Chapais, 2009). Past research has identified a relationship between family structure and political regimes, such that specific types of kin organization seem to be typically associated with particular forms of political regimes. Such systematic macro-level associations have held up to significant scientific scrutiny. However, little research has attempted to provide detailed mechanistic accounts of those associations. Notably absent from the literature are empirical studies into the possible association between specific features of families and political orientations has been …

Institutional Dissonance And Reserved Cooperation: Theory And Evidence From International Environmental Agreements, Erika Komura Masaki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As global environmental problems have received more attention in the international arena, questions of global environmental governance have become more salient. The increase of international and multilateral environmental agreements has raised questions about participation, compliance, and ultimately, effectiveness of these institutions. Consequently, this dissertation seeks to understand what factors affect participation in and compliance with international environmental agreements. Specifically, I find that treaty design plays a critical role in levels of participation. Using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, I also examine the case of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as a case study, and find that …

“Everyone Wants That Ring, And I Have It”: A Content Analysis Of Identity Expressions From Female Castmembers On The Reality Television Series Wags (Wives And Girlfriends Of Sports Stars), Kaitlyn Millican

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Identity formation has been conceptualized in communication studies, but holds reduced presence as applied to contemporary cases involving the reality documentary television genre. This study investigates identity formation by examining the reality television series WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends of Sports Stars). This study utilized social identity theory as a lens through which an examination of how female partners of professional sports stars manage identity via the social medium platform of Twitter, with consideration to whether the identity management reinforces or negates identities portrayed on WAGs. In order to examine if the identity management reinforces or negates identities portrayed on WAGs, …

Why Such Constriction Of The Moral Sphere? The Importance Of Social Coordination In Croatia’S Ethnic Conflict, Michael Arthur Moncrieff

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Scholars have described ethnic violence in great length and detail. Many of the social and

psychological causal mechanisms that facilitate the rapid mobilization of ethnic groups and the eventual violence that can ensue are less understood. Morality typically eases cooperative interactions between members of a community by establishing rules that help to restrain self- interested actions that may be harmful to others. It is well documented that during periods of increasing ethnic conflict once intimate neighbors, colleagues, and friends can be recruited to take part in violence against each other solely on account of declared ethnic differences. In such circumstances, …

Assessing The Potential For A Backfire Effect On Citizen Perceptions: A Test Of Hot Spot Policing In Las Vegas, Steven Andrew Pace

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Objects: In this dissertation, I explore whether the use of motorized police saturation patrol in high crime neighborhoods negatively impacts citizen perceptions of police activity, opinions about the police, and perceived safety level. This research focuses on evaluating

whether or not any backfire effects were attributed to the use of the hot spot policing tactic. Methods: I report on survey data from the Smart Policing Initiative (SPI), which entailed face-to face interviews in 12 hot spot neighborhoods (n=1,005) (6 paired locations) as part of an evaluation from the SPI on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Mobile Crime Saturation Team. …

Evaluation Of A Continuous Air Monitoring System On An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle For Measurement Of Airborne Radioactive Material, Adam Pfannenstein

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The release of airborne radioactive material presents a health risk hazard to many individuals, emergency responders and public. It is necessary to characterize the unknown radioactive dangers produced in the event of these incidents. Advantages to utilizing unmanned aerial systems in this effort are personnel risk reduction and quick attainment of data points in a plume. By pairing a continuous air monitor and detector with a drone, radioactive material concentration can be quantified, and thus the extent of potential doses can be estimated. A small, low-flow air sampler with a Geiger-Mueller counter was characterized using measurements of sources representing a …

Nutrition Transition Of Hadza Foragers: Implications For Juvenile Behavior, Trevor Pollom

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Hadza foragers of Tanzania are undergoing early stages of nutrition transition and an increased level of market integration. Accompanying these shifts is a significant change in diet composition with greater access to maize, wheat, and other domesticated cultigens, even in the most remote bush camps. Despite the rapid rate of nutrition transition, few studies have attempted to quantify the possible effects this transition is having on Hadza diet or foraging behaviors. Here, we attempt to fill this gap in the literature by reporting results of a mixed methods cross-sectional study on juvenile foragers taken from two time points, 2005 …

The Importance Of Cultural Competence: The Defining Characteristic Separating Veteran Treatment Courts From Other Specialized Dockets, Kyle Nathan Rodgers

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The current study provides a systematic review of veteran treatment court research with two main purposes in mind. The first is to establish whether and how the courts adhere to current evidence-based best practices, and if such practices differ from other specialty court programs. The second is to establish whether and how the concepts of “moral injury” and “posttraumatic growth” are incorporated in current veteran treatment court research and court practices, as an indicator of the cultural competency of both researchers and practitioners. This is a groundbreaking study that expands current research on moral injury and posttraumatic growth from the …

A Quantitative Study Of Mitigating Resistance To Change Through A Neuro Linguistic Approach: With The Use Of Narratives And A Neuro Linguistic Pattern, Mary J. Sanders

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Resistance to organizational change by employees and management delays implementation, creates emotional stress for both, and reduces the potential savings from rapid change implementation. The delay comes from organizational members’ beliefs stuck in the status quo thus reducing the change’s potential improvement in productivity and effectiveness. If beliefs about the change could be embraced creating organizational readiness, these negative effects could be mitigated and improvements in productivity could be realized sooner.

Reducing the resistance to organizational change through the use of metaphors and a specific neuro linguistic programming pattern (NLP) is the focus of this research study. NLP was originally …

Beyond The Bench And The Bedside: Examining Women’S Success In Stem Via Active Learning Projects, Sarah E. Thoman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Gender inequality is a persistent challenge in fields related to science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) in the U.S. The current study aims to advance the literature in a burgeoning area of inquiry by identifying factors that may help to account for women’s success in STEM. To evaluate STEM success, I used a mixed methods design to investigate STEM identity, career identity status, career commitment, and both individual and situational resilience among women undergraduates. Students were engaged in two project-based STEM programs organized at a large, diverse, research intensive university in the Southwest U.S. Associations between resilience and career commitment, …

Predictors Of Child And Adolescent Bias And Flexibility In The Attractiveness Domain, Stephanie Verba

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Children often associate positive attributes with high attractive peers and negative attributes with low attractive peers (bias), although some think both peers have positive attributes and neither has negative attributes (flexibility). Children also believe those they think positively of will think positively of them (positive bias reciprocation/positive flexibility reciprocation) and such beliefs in reciprocation predict bias and flexibility. Given the negative effects of bias (i.e., differential attributions based on one’s attractiveness) and the positive effects of flexibility, this study investigated individual differences in children and adolescent’s attractiveness biases and flexibility. Specifically, the author examined whether 9-11-year-olds and 14-16-year-olds’ beliefs in …

College Is For Everyone: Examination Of Family Support For Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities Transitioning To Postsecondary School, Allison Simpson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Through a qualitative research study using Baxter’s (2011) contrapuntal analysis and Ellingson’s (2008) crystallization, this project illuminates the support needed for students with intellectual developmental disability (IDD) transitioning into postsecondary education. Through comparing interviews with parents of students in a postsecondary education (PSE) program, four PSE program websites, and shared experiences from an online webinar found on “Thinkcollege.net,” dialectical tensions in messages are highlighted. By analyzing what is stated (and not stated), perceptions of students with IDD attending college are understood. The aim of this research study is to use the identified perceptions to help provide better support for PSE …

The Effects Of Physical Attractiveness In The Health Care Industry, Richard Shane Westfall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Physical appearance has a far-reaching influence on a variety of human interactions, yet the effects on one domain has been largely ignored. This dissertation examines the potential effect of physical attractiveness on health care quality. Theoretical explanations for the development of both prejudice and stereotypes are presented, with a focus on the development and effects of attractiveness-based stereotypes. Several studies have found that workers in the medical field are susceptible to the same biases as the general public and that these are associated with lower health care quality for those more marginalized by society. Therefore, two studies were conducted to …

Postpartum Maternal Mood Among Hadza Foragers, Kristen Herlosky

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The postnatal period immediately following birth is a time of critical importance for both mother and offspring due to the vulnerabilities associated with poorer health outcomes. Infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world in Sub-Saharan African, often due to lack of professional health care services available. Further, postpartum depression (PPD) impacts 1 in 5 women in low and middle-income countries, with those estimates likely being underestimated. Cross-cultural research on PPD is often measured using westernized screening tools, but new research recommends utilizing combined qualitative methodologies. Here, we present the first investigation of postpartum maternal mood …

Change Deafness: A Comprehensive Examinations, Vanessa Claire Irsik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Environmental changes are a vital source of information which can drive advantageous behavioral responses. For example, detecting visual changes can be critical when driving a vehicle or when simply walking down a busy street. Auditory perception is an essential complement to vision as it can allow awareness of changes in and out of sight. While subjective perception would suggest that our sensory representation of the world is complete, research on change deafness indicates that quite often the opposite is true. Healthy listeners often miss salient, suprathreshold auditory changes. Three separate manuscripts will be presented, each of which aims to advance …

Fathers’ Caregiving In Fragile Families: Variation By Family Contexts, Gender Ideology, Race And Ethnicity, Rachel Teressa Macfarlane

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, I explore factors that predict fathers’ caregiving for children up to five years old. I study the role of social contexts in fathers’ caregiving trajectories for their young children, including family dynamics and parent’s gender ideology, across ethnoracial groups. I use OLS regressions to investigate how fathers’ early caregiving experiences, their linked-lives with others, and their attitudes about the fatherhood role predict later caregiving for their children, and how those patterns very between families with different ethnoracial backgrounds. I use summed averages of itemized caregiving by fathers, rather than proxy …

A Middle Pueblo Ii Production Zone For Shivwits Ware Ceramics: Implications For Understanding Settlement Patterns And Socio-Environmental Responses On The Shivwits Plateau, William Morrow Willis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The distribution of ceramics from upland regions in Northern Arizona into Southern Nevada is one of the many curiosities concerning the Virgin Branch Puebloan culture. From the Shivwits Plateau, it is more than 100 kilometers to the Moapa Valley, yet Shivwits Wares make up a sizeable proportion of sherds found at many lowland sites. These networks appear to reach their height in the Middle Pueblo II period and then collapse sometime around AD 1150. The reason for this is not yet fully understood; however, research performed on the southern end of the Shivwits Plateau concerning landscape usage and settlement placement …

Household Financial Assets Inequity And Health Disparities Among Young Adults: Evidence From The National Longitudinal Study Of Adolescent To Adult Health, Shiyou Wu, Xiafei Wang, Qi Wu, Kathleen Mullan Harris

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Introduction: Research has established a strong relationship between financial resources and health outcomes. Yet, little is known about the effects of assets disparities on health outcomes, especially during the critical period when adolescents transition to adults.

Methods: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (n = 10,861), this study investigated the relationships between three household total assets value groups (low, moderate, and high assets) and three net worth groups (negative, neutral, and positive) on young adults’ general health, obese, and depression.

Results: Both assets and debts were related to young adults’ health status, …

Development Of A Culturally Appropriate Smokeless Tobacco Cessation Program For American Indians, Kathryn Rollins, Charley Lewis, T. Edward Smith, Ryan Goeckner, Jason Hale, Niaman Nazir, Babalola Faseru, K Allen Greiner, Sean M. Daley, Won S. Choi, Christine M. Daley

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

This study describes a multiphasic approach to the development of a smokeless tobacco cessation program targeted for American Indians (AI) of different tribal nations. The authors gathered formative data from a series of focus groups and interviews to investigate the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of AI and smokeless tobacco (SLT) use. Predominant themes emerged from four major topic areas (SLT use, initiation and barriers, policy, and program development) across both studies. This study further assessed educational materials developed for the cessation program for scientific accuracy, readability, and cultural appropriateness. Program materials were scientifically accurate and culturally appropriate. The average corrected …