Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Creating Positive Lasting Changes With Utah Farmers Markets: Usda Farmers Market Promotion Program Impact Report 2018-2022, Roslynn Mccann, Regan Emmons, Lacee Jimenez, Kelsey Hall, Jaclyn Pace, Celina Wille, Carrie Durward, Mateja R. Savoie-Roskos

All Current Publications

This report identifies ways that farmers markets and direct marketing farmers can address and connect low-income and ethnic-minority populations to healthy food in Utah. It outlines three objectives and highlights program impacts.

Making The Old New: The Recontextualization And Traditionalization Of Tree Spirits In Video Games, Alexandria Ziegler

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Folklorists study the active rituals between humans and deities, as well as the inactive participation between them in narrative. However, they do not study the active participation that comes in the form of video games between them, though with shifts in society, this new way of engaging through digital forms is widespread and accessible. In my research, I studied Russian and Japanese tree spirits in a variety of video games to understand this new form of engagement with ancient deities. These video games are Okami, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Black Book, and The Witcher 3: The …

Utah Farmers Market Network: Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Community Of Practice, Jaclyn Pace, Regan Emmons, Kelsey Hall, Celina Wille, Lacee Jimenez, Carrie Durward, Roslynn Mccann

All Current Publications

The Utah Farmers Market Network convened a virtual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Community of Practice (CoP) to explore how markets could be more welcoming and inclusive to historically excluded populations. Between May and November of 2021, members of seven Utah farmers markets convened at least twice monthly to explore basic DEI concepts and create personalized DEI strategic plans for their markets. This document reviews impacts on participants and the personal, market, community, and organizational goals created.

An Electroencephalographic Analysis Of Strategy Usage During Social Dilemmas, Nick Wan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The neuroscience of strategy usage during social dilemmas is said to require Theory of Mind (ToM). The process of ToM takes into consideration the actions of another person, so implications with strategies like tit-for-tat (TFT) or win-stay-lose-switch (WSLS) are logical. However, using either TFT or WSLS does not require ToM since these strategies are based on the previous opponent choice. Thus using a quantifiable strategy like TFT or WSLS during a social dilemma game may not necessarily incur activation of ToM. To investigate whether this is possible, 31 participants participated in the Prisoner’s Dilemma while being recorded via electroencephalography (EEG). …

An Exploration Of Parent Management Training Programs And Their Cultural Relevance, Maria De La Caridad Alvarez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Behavioral parent training is a research-supported treatment for improving child behavior and increasing parenting skills. Despite many programs sharing a theoretical foundation and common elements, there is great variety in terms of treatment targets, populations served, treatment length, delivery setting, and expected outcomes. The purpose of this research was to first systematically organize and categorize relevant program information for the most frequently referenced Parent Management Training (PMT) programs. To this end, 19 programs were identified for review. We summarized each program and their available research evidence which ranged from 1 to 72 studies. The findings from this first project informed …

The Impact Of Covid-19 And Telehealth Services On Attrition Rates In Psychotherapy, Rylan B. Hellstern

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Clinicians in psychotherapy are constantly looking at their outcomes in order to identify and remove barriers that may inhibit effective treatment. Defined generally as the ending of a treatment prior to proper optimal benefit, attrition has been found to both hinder treatment efficacy and cost-effectiveness in therapy. While most attrition literature focuses on the contributing factors to such premature termination, little to no research is available that discusses potential resources for attrition rates. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the use of telehealth services which may serve as a resource to combat attrition. The current study aims to identify how …

'I Try To Take The Whole Family Thing Out Of The Picture': How Professionals Navigate Motherhood Bias At Work, Rachael Gulbrandsen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This research aims to improve our understanding of professional mothers and the strategies they develop to navigate bias and sustain their careers. Previous research has shown that women with children face a motherhood bias that results in negative career outcomes such as reduced wages, fewer high-quality assignments, and decreased chances for promotion and leadership opportunities. This research investigates how professional mothers respond to that bias by analyzing interviews with forty-seven women in the field of law about their professional experiences: their experiences before and after having children; the challenges they face navigating their careers and families; and the strategies they’ve …

Measuring Changes In Motivation In Response To An Online Repeated Reading Intervention With Self-Monitoring, David N. Longhurst

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Reading is a complex cognitive process that is integral to learning, achievement, and future life outcomes. Students with reading disabilities struggle to obtain information and develop specific interests. Unfortunately, many students in the United States do not meet expected reading benchmarks. Also due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has presented multiple challenges for student academic reading growth. Motivation beliefs, such as self-efficacy, interest, and goal-directed behavior, play an important role in students’ education and development. This study examined whether motivational constructs change throughout the course of an online repeated reading intervention with self-monitoring. Five elementary students were selected …

Let Us Live To Make Men Free: Locke And Aquinas On Toleration And Natural Law, Micah Safsten

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Tolerance is a difficult and controversial concept in political rhetoric. For many, tolerance requires the acceptance of what one believes is evil. Still, most of us feel as though we must accept the differences of others on some level. This thesis is an attempt to better understand tolerance. To do so, it uses the concept of natural law, or the idea that all law should justified through one, universal theory of good. This would seem contradictory, as natural law supposes that a single vision of the good life exists for all. Yet the natural law theory of one legal theorist, …

Evaluating Short Term Effects Of Opportunity Zone Designation, Sarah M. Bennett

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 included a substantial economic development effort known as Opportunity Zones. These Zones cover 12% of the census tracts in the United States and are estimated to cost $1.6 billion in lost capital gains tax revenue. Our paper seeks to find whether this program has had an impact four years after going into effect, using an econometric analysis on changes in housing prices.

Kids And Campaigning: The Impact Of Child Care As An Approved Campaign Expense On Women's Legislative Candidacy, Matilyn Kay Mortensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

While women’s candidacy continues to reach record numbers in the United States, women remain grossly underrepresented as candidates and elected officials at all levels of government. Many people and groups are focused on increasing women’s political involvement and often these efforts focus on empowering individual women to become candidates. However, when women do run for office, there are many systemic challenges they face, such as the fact that whether or not women work professionally or for compensation, they perform more unpaid care work than their men counterparts.

In the past few years, multiple states across the nation have begun allowing …

Teaching Japanese As A Foreign Language With A Cultural Context, Naomi Fujii

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of the author's work during her studies in the Master of Second Language Teaching program at Utah State University. It also includes the author's reflections on her language teaching experience as a graduate instructor. This portfolio is organized into three primary sections. The first section includes the author’s teaching perspectives which include professional environment, teaching philosophy statement, and professional development through teaching observations. The second section consists of two research papers, one on refusal strategies in Japanese, the other on the use of CALL for the development of oral proficiency. The third section contains an …

Oaths And Evasion: Variable Honesty In Tax Evasion Games, Logan Krebs

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Previous research has indicated that an ex-ante pledge of honesty reduces the likelihood that participants will lie during a lab experiment. We show that a bandwagon effect, occurring when participants know that others are acting dishonestly, can erode the positive effects of honesty oaths. Taxpayers do not make their reporting decisions in a vacuum. They have access to information concerning how others in the community are behaving and develop perceptions around this information. We add these realistic features to a tax evasion game involving an ex-ante honesty oath. Results indicate that social context can reduce the positive effects of honesty …

Pragmatics In Game Activities, Humor, And Technology In Second Language Learning, Zachary Brandon Brown

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio compiles work the author explored and developed during the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University (USU). It encompasses a range of experiences from teaching abroad and at USU, insights from the observation of other classrooms, and reflections from studies in the MSLT program.

Three distinct sections comprise the portfolio: teaching perspectives, research perspectives, and an annotated bibliography. The teaching perspectives detail beliefs regarding games, computer technology, humor, and pragmatics and how they influence second language learning based on the author’s personal experiences. The research perspectives and annotated bibliography elaborate further on those topics …

Detecting Accurate Emotions In Faces, Emma Greenwood

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Anger race bias is the tendency to misidentify expressions of emotion, specifically anger, in Black or racially ambiguous faces that are fearful or neutral (Hutchings & Haddock, 2008). Anger is often associated with aggression (Murphy et al., 2005). Therefore, the inaccurate perception of anger and threat may lead to an inappropriate response and could increase the likelihood that a police officer will shoot at a suspect (Correll et al., 2007). From 2015 to 2020, police officers shot and killed over 100 unarmed Black males (Washington Post, 2020). This study examined if anger race bias could be reduced through emotion identification …

A Sentiment And Content Analysis Of Facebook Posts Regarding Wild Horse Management, Libbie G. Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to better understand public sentiment and current conversations on Facebook regarding wild horse management practices, including adoption, roundups, and contraception, in the timeframe between the June 2021 BLM Wild Horse Advisory Board meeting and January 31, 2022. Social media monitoring and quantitative content analysis were used to examine the Facebook posts of four organizations communicating about the wild horse controversy. The research questions guiding this study included: (1) How many total mentions of “fertility control,” “contraception,” “roundup,” “gather,” “adoption,” and “management” as they pertained to wild horses occurred across Facebook from June 1, 2021 …

Anticipatory Intelligence Resilience Modeling Evaluation Of Aspire Research Center, Madeleine Alder

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The analysis of threats and vulnerabilities in a system is essential in developing resilience strategies to strengthen the system’s ability to adapt and succeed. This report delivers a threat analysis of ASPIRE, a research organization centered on engineering solutions for promoting electric vehicle (EV) adoption. ASPIRE, which is an international network of university research partners and comprised primarily of engineering teams, is focused on developing technology that can be used by industry or governmental partners. The threat of low public buy-in for ASPIRE technology is one of the most significant concerns facing the system. Low adoption rates or public resistance …

Punishment And Choice, Rafaela M. Fontes

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Punishment is defined as a consequence that decreases the frequency of behavior that produces it and is an important behavior regulation mechanism for learning to stop engaging in maladaptive behavior. Punishment has implications for behavioral disorders and treatments and plays an important role in both programmed and natural contingencies. Despite the clear relevance of punishment for behavioral regulation, little is known about how punishment works. Furthermore, punishment research has been in evident decline, leaving important empirical and theoretical gaps in the literature. Therefore, the overall goal of the present set of studies is to fill in some of these gaps. …

The Gambler's Edge - A Theoretical Framework To Trading Securities, Matthew Haines

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Like gamblers, retail investors seeking excess returns in financial markets are prone to miscalculation and their models are often misspeciffied. Forecasting asset prices is extremely difficult in the long run and nearly infeasible in the short run. Additionally, retail investors are likely to be at a disadvantage both technologically and informationally—rarely will they be ahead of the curve. With these disadvantages and the difficulty of predicting future outcomes, retail investors may come to view prices as unpredictable and random in nature, like a roll of the dice. This theoretical research explores a possible investing methodology (derived from gambling principles) should …

Voces: Experiences Of Undocumented Latines, José Manuel González Vera

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to learn about the challenges that this community faced before the pandemic and how they coped through those challenges. To answer this question, I examined transcripts from group interviews collected in the state of Texas. In total, there were 67 participants, many of whom were undocumented (n = 49) while the others had a relative or friend who was undocumented. Data were analyzed by looking for common patterns and themes in the transcripts, and guided by Critical Race Theory, Latine Critical Theory, and Undocumented Critical Theory. Results suggest that psychological distress is common …

Changes In Voting Behavior Along Partisan Lines Due To Extreme Weather Events Linked To Climate Change, Daniel Brinkerhoff

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This paper investigates the relationship between extreme weather events linked to climate change and partisan voting behavior. Looking at House of Representative and Senate elections in the US between 2000-2018 and comparing them to extreme damages from droughts, flooding, tropical cyclones, and fire. Ultimately, we do not find a stable relationship between weather damages and partisan voting behavior.

Cultivating Agrobiodiversity In The U.S.: Barriers And Bridges At Multiple Scales, Kaitlyn A. Spangler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The diversity of crops grown in the United States (U.S.) is declining, causing agricultural landscapes to become more and more simplified. This trend is concerning for the loss of important plant, insect, and animal species, as well as the pollution and degradation of our environment. Through three separate but related studies, this dissertation addresses the need to increase the diversity of these agricultural landscapes in the U.S., particularly through diversifying the type and number of crops grown. The first study uses multiple, openly accessible datasets related to agricultural land use and policies to document and visualize change over recent decades. …

Minority Stress: A Model For Understanding Sexual Minority Adolescents’ Mental Health, Sean N. Weeks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Taken together, the three papers included in this dissertation offer an investigation of sexual minority adolescents’ stress as a predictor of adverse mental health outcomes (Paper 1), as being influenced by school and home climates (Paper 2), and as a measurable model for stress across levels (Paper 3). Results from this series of studies generally support theory and findings from other studies in that minority stress was found to be a meaningful predictor of mental health in sexual minority youth and that school and home climates were found to be important for understanding sexual minority youth wellbeing. However, the current …

A Randomized Controlled Trial On Using Peer-Support Coaching To Improve Adherence To Online Self-Help For College Mental Health, Korena S. Klimczak

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Online self-help programs can serve as accessible mental health resources, allowing users to learn skills for improving their mental health at their own pace. The self-guided nature of these programs allows them to be cost-efficient as compared to traditional therapy and appealing to those who do not want to attend traditional therapy due to stigma or low-perceived need. However, these programs also struggle with low adherence rates, with typically only a small subset of users completing a given program in full. Coaching has been previously explored as a way to increase program adherence, adding a low-intensity human component to self-help …

Implicit Cost Of Retaliatory Tariffs By Mexico On U.S. Cheese Export, Pengyan Sun

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mexico imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheeses ranging from 20 to 25 percent in July 2018. In order to provide valuable information for the government and farmers, my research estimated the implicit cost of retaliatory tariffs by Mexico on U.S. cheese exports. In particular, I estimate the difference between the forecasted value of cheese exported to Mexico and the actual value of cheese exported to Mexico using four different models. The total impact to the U.S. economy from the losses due to retaliatory tariffs was assessed by IMPLAN, an input/output model. The results showed that Mexican tariffs decreased U.S. industry …

Toddler Internalizing And Externalizing Problem Behaviors And Child Care Provider Mental Health, Danielle M. Jensen Egan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Caregiver depression, particularly maternal depression, has repeatedly been shown to be a risk factor for the development of problem behaviors in young children. Problem behaviors fit within two categories: internalizing and externalizing. Externalizing behaviors include peer aggression, defiance, and impulsivity. Internalizing behaviors include generalized anxiety, withdrawal, separation distress, depression, and inhibition to novelty.

Gaps still exist in the research regarding the mental health of other caregivers that directly interact with children’s lives. Increasingly more children spend a great deal of time in child care settings. Less is known about child care provider stress and depression in relation to toddler problem …

Measuring Srl Differences During Mathematics With Srl Microanalysis, Aliya Halterman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is an essential skill for achievement and progress in several settings including academics. It is known that students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) struggle with SRL skills. However, this knowledge has been acquired primarily from self-report measures. While this has provided a solid foundation within the literature regarding SRL skills within the population with ADHD, there are a few limitations that these measures posit. These limitations can addressed with a measurement called SRL microanalysis. The purpose of this study was to use SRL microanalysis to measure SRL differences between students with and without ADHD symptomatology during a mathematics …

Early Sibling Play Interactions As A Source Of Developmental Support For Toddlers: Observation Of Young Children's Developmental Support During Play With Toddler Siblings, Tasha L. Olson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The sibling relationship is a unique and important context for infant and early child development. Despite the important role of siblings and the unique aspects of the sibling relationship, sibling interactions are largely overlooked by scholars as a resource of potential developmental support. Identifying and fostering developmentally supportive interaction (DSI) behaviors in sibling relationships may expand available supports for children’s early development and may also support family well-being.

This study used a sample of 15 child-toddler sibling pairs to identify DSI behaviors in interactions between young children and their toddler-aged siblings, determine if and how well DSI behaviors could be …

Representation Of Students With Disabilities In Charter Schools Compared To Traditional Public Schools, Brenda K. Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

There is a perception that charter schools enroll a disproportionately lower number of students with disabilities than traditional public school districts (TPS). Coupled with this perception are antidotal stories of students with disabilities being turned away by charter schools during the enrollment process. This study sought to determine what research has been completed to compare enrollment of students with disabilities in charter schools to enrollment in TPS, complete data comparisons on an entire state education system to see what enrollment differences exist for students with disabilities in charter schools and TPS, and review federal reports regarding students with disabilities to …

Maternal Education And Changes In Parenting Beliefs, Values, And Practices, Becca E. Richards

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mothers’ education level has been an important predictor of life outcomes across many different areas. Higher education in mothers has been associated with outcomes such as higher reading levels and decreased chances grade repetition for their child. Due to gaps in the research, this study emphasizes the importance of mothers’ beliefs about parenting, the practices they use, the amount of closeness they have with their child, and how they change when mothers return to school. This study used new mothers and their newborn children across time to understand whether mothers’ beliefs, practices, and values change when mothers return to school. …