Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Kids Killing Kids: Mental Illness, Adolescence, And Mass Murder, Levi Cragun

Research on Capitol Hill

Are rates of mental illness higher in adolescents who commit mass violence compared to other adolescents? Are rates of mental illness higher among adolescents who commit mass murder compared to adults who commit mass murder?

Motivations For Women’S Activism In Hydraulic Fracking, Taya Godfrey

Research on Capitol Hill

Research Question: What motivates females to become anti-fracking activists?

Hydraulic fracturing is a way of obtaining natural gas and oil from deep within the earth by injecting high powered water and chemicals into shale rock to fracture it, and therefore release natural resources (Manfreda, 2015).

We have seen much activism surrounding the issue of fracking because of the environmental and health controversies associated with it. We have also noted an increasing number of female activists and hope to determine the cause. By understanding what motivates women to become anti-fracking activist we can further encourage female activism in many other spheres. …

The Influence Of Neighborhood Cohesion On Homelessness In Cache Valley, Utah, Madison Elliott

Research on Capitol Hill

• The 2017 Utah Point in Time Count reported that 2,852 Utah residents were identified as being homeless (Utah Housing and Community Development Division, 2017).
• There is a large gap in research that explores one’s likelihood of becoming homeless and its relation to community integration and neighborhood cohesion. Community integration can be defined through the feelings of acceptance within one’s social network(s), sharing common norms and values with those around you. (Sayer, et al., 2011) Neighborhood cohesion is the sense of shared morals and trust within a neighborhood community.
• Current bodies of knowledge in social science literature discuss other causes of …

Fake News! Russian Disinformation Targets American Cognitive Biases Through Diverse Mediums, Spencer Sproul

Research on Capitol Hill

"Fake news” is old news, but what is it and how do we combat it? The term describes disinformation, or the tactical creation and dissemination of false information.

My research seeks to combine traditional national security studies with cybersecurity and big data analytics to gain insight into the issue of “Fake news”, particularly regarding the Russian disinformation campaign leading up to and after the 2016 US presidential election.

The project consisted of analyzing both news and academic literature on this new Russian strategy. Its target is US citizens’ cognitive decision-making shortcuts. The campaign’s goal appears to be to covertly manipulate …

Cultural Traits Of Salvadoran Gangs Offer Chance For U.S. To Weaken Ms-13, Hannah Penner

Research on Capitol Hill

MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) was founded by Salvadoran immigrants fleeing a harsh civil war in California during the 1980s. It became an international organization after deportation tactics in the LA barrios exported the threat to El Salvador.

The Art Of Seduction: Male Perceptions Of Sexual Willingness, Lisa Starrett

Research on Capitol Hill

The United States continues to have the highest sexual assault rates of any developed nation.

The vast majority of sexual assault research studies exclusively female survivors. This overlooks half of the nation’s population. To find holistic solutions, we must address both genders.

The current study addresses:

• The male experience
  Recent research shows significant numbers of men react with shock, guilt, shame, and depression when confronted with sexual assault charges. This opens questions of intent.
• Confirmation bias & “echo chambers”
  Social media and preference tracking amplify our tendency to see information that confirms our existing worldview. This further separates genders.
• Environmental …

Career Regret: An Analysis Of Physician Assistants, Talia Sierra, Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez, Jennifer Forbes

Psychology Faculty Publications

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify life and career variables that differ between physician assistants (PAs) with and without career regret. The information in this article may be useful to PAs and PA students in their search for a professional environment that is associated with a lower risk of career regret. Methods: A survey was emailed to 5,000 PAs nationally. Aspects of their life and careers were compared between those with career regret and those without. Results: 26.9% of respondents indicated career regret. Differences were found between …

Everybody’S Publishing But Me! How A Writing Group Can Help Actualize Your Publishing Dreams, Dory Rosenberg, Karin M. Kettenring, Anne R. Diekama

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

On any given day, one can go to the Chronicle of Higher Education and see a new article on the trials and tribulations of publishing and seeking tenure in academia. Anxiety inducing titles such as “Measuring Up” and “The Stress of Academic Publishing” reaffirm the notion that one must publish, or perish. While this type of pressure pushes some to success, for others, it makes it harder to write. However, you don’t have to travel this writing and publishing road alone. Inspired by the book Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women Scientists by Ellen Daniell, a small …

Chatting Without Borders: Assessment As The First Step In Cultivating An Accessible Chat Reference Service, Teagan Eastman, Mckenzie Hyde, Katie Strand, Rachel Wishkoski

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

As distance education programs grow at college and universities across the country, libraries must ensure virtual reference services are prepared to meet the needs of patrons in these programs. This article describes the process and results of a 2018 chat analysis conducted at a midsize research university with a large distance education program. The authors discuss the implications of their findings, as well as their process of closing the assessment loop. By using data to inform changes to virtual reference services, chat becomes more accessible and approachable to all users regardless of location.

Risk Perceptions Of Extreme Heat Events At The State, County, And Census Tract Level In The U.S., Peter D. Howe, Jennifer R. Marlon, Xinran Wang, Anthony Leiserowitz

Browse all Datasets

Project summary, description or abstract: This dataset contains model estimates of how Americans perceive the health risks of extreme heat events at the state, county, and census tract level in the U.S. Estimates are produced using a statistical model based on national survey data.

These data are associated with the following publication: Howe, Peter D., Jennifer R. Marlon, Xinran Wang, and Anthony Leiserowitz. “Public perceptions of the health risks of extreme heat across U.S. states, counties, and neighborhoods.” 2019. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1813145116

Utah State University’S Cache Valley Latinx Voices Project: Social Justice In The Archives, Randy Williams, Eduardo Ortiz, Maria Luisa Spicer-Escalante

Journal of Western Archives

Northern Utah Speaks is an in-depth ethnographic effort by Utah State University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives (SCA) to bring diverse voices of Northern Utah communities into the Archives. Since 2006, the focus is with social justice in mind as SCA endeavors to bring the voices of underrepresented and historically excluded people into the Archives. Calls to make archival records more inclusive stretch back fifty years, however for many archival institutions this work has moved forward in fits and starts, if at all, and most often without the input and assistance from the community to be studied, collected, and included. …

Voices From Drug Court: Partnering To Bring Historically Excluded Communities Into The Archives, Randy Williams, Jennifer Duncan

Journal of Western Archives

While many archivists have evolved their professional scope to bring diversity into their collections, we posit that much can still be done. One area for growth is greater work by archival professionals to partner with communities to help them tell and preserve their own stories, incorporating a community’s own perspective and goals. This article discusses the community-based project between the Cache Valley Utah Drug Court and Utah State University Library’s Special Collections & Archives. The project was conceived and co-managed by Andrew Dupree (name used with permission), a participant and now graduate of the Cache Valley Drug Court. Perhaps the …

The Cost Of Care And The Impact On The Archives Profession, Alexis Braun Marks, Rachael Dreyer, Jennifer Johnson, Michelle Sweetser

Journal of Western Archives

The archives profession has, in recent years, exerted considerable effort to become more welcoming and inclusive to diverse archival professionals. Many of these efforts have focused intensively on recruiting a diverse workforce. In this article, the authors propose a new approach through which to create and sustain inclusive archival work environments: caregiving. National research has shown that caregiving responsibilities affect women more than their male counterparts, and within these gender divides there are aspects of caregiving that impact individuals of different racial and cultural backgrounds unequally. The issue of navigating the demands of caregiving, work responsibilities, and professional engagement must …

Understanding My Home: The Potential For Affective Impact And Cultural Competence In Primary Source Literacy, Jaycie Vos, Yadira Guzman

Journal of Western Archives

The archival profession is currently embracing primary source literacy in significant ways and fostering important conversations about diversity, inclusion, and affect in libraries and archives. This all contributes to concrete steps toward change and a more open conception of who uses archives and how, and what the impact could be. Taking one student’s experience from a series of assignments designed to encourage archival research and discovery of community history, the authors encourage the serious consideration of the emotional impact of primary source materials, particularly those that reveal underrepresented historical narratives, and their power to connect students to complex, larger narratives …

When Building Namesakes Have Ties To White Supremacy: A Case Study Of Oregon State University’S Building Names Evaluation Process, Natalia M. Fernández

Journal of Western Archives

In recent years, more and more communities, including colleges and universities, across the United States are challenging the existence of memorials associated with the Confederacy and white supremacy. Archivists and special collections librarians are often called upon to provide historical context, and have the opportunity to engage their communities in productive and transformative discourses. As a case study, readers will learn about the Building and Places Names Evaluation process at Oregon State University; the process which included developing evaluation criteria, providing historical research assistance to scholars, designing a community engagement plan, and implementing a renaming process. Readers will be able …

The Doorway From Heart To Heart: Diversity's Stubbornly Persistent Illusion, Terry Baxter

Journal of Western Archives

Archivists have been working to diversify the archival endeavor for 35 years. On the face of things, this work has had limited success. Perhaps archivists should recognize that diversity is already in place and their role is in hiding and revealing that diversity. They should also recognize that their power flows from community and connection, not from control.

Seeking Grace: Reconstructing The History Of African American Alumnae At The University Of Denver, Katherine Crowe

Journal of Western Archives

The University of Denver (DU), a private college founded in 1864–12 years before Colorado became a state–has recently begun to grapple with its complex and sometimes fraught histories with alumni of color. The DU Archives has partnered over the past five years with the Sistah Network, a student group formed by Black women faculty to support Black women graduate students, as its founder, Dr. Nicole Joseph, wished to focus specifically on the history of the University's Black alumnae. Since 2013, the Archives has completed several oral histories with alumnae from the 1960s, and have recovered the names, graduation dates, and …

Archivist-In-Residence: Advocating And Managing Archival Diversity Residency Opportunities In University Archives And Special Collections, Angela Fritz

Journal of Western Archives

This article outlines a basic roadmap for administrators of university archives and special collections who seek to develop an "archivist-in-residence" position for the first time. The article explores how university archives and special collections can apply diversity management best practices to optimize their unit and organizational approach to diversity and inclusion initiatives. Topics encompass advocacy models, defining a culture of mentorship, recruitment, onboarding and training, assessment as well as addressing opportunities for innovation and areas of expansion.

Introduction, Helen Wong Smith

Journal of Western Archives

Introduction to the Special Issue on Diversity and Inclusion.

Death By State? The Country Discusses Abolition Of Capital Punishment, Rachel Robinson-Greene

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Many Netflix viewers in recent weeks have familiarized themselves with the details of a set of notorious crimes committed by a criminal executed by the state of Florida in the 1980’s. The Ted Bundy Tapes tells the story of the life and crimes of Theodore Robert Bundy, a depraved serial killer who raped, tortured, and killed women and engaged in necrophilic acts with their bodies. A case like Bundy’s is just the kind of case that motivates supporters of the death penalty in their arguments for the claim that capital punishment is a moral necessity.

The Importance Of Cognitive Diversity For Sustaining The Commons, Jacopo A. Baggio, Jacob Freeman, Thomas R. Coyle, Tam Nguyen, Dale Hancock, Karrie E. Elpers, Samantha Nabity, H.J. Francois Dengah Ii, David Pillow

Ecology Center Publications

Cognitive abilities underpin the capacity of individuals to build models of their environment and make decisions about how to govern resources. Here, we test the functional intelligences proposition that functionally diverse cognitive abilities within a group are critical to govern common pool resources. We assess the effect of two cognitive abilities, social and general intelligence, on group performance on a resource harvesting and management game involving either a negative or a positive disturbance to the resource base. Our results indicate that under improving conditions (positive disturbance) groups with higher general intelligence perform better. However, when conditions deteriorate (negative disturbance) groups …

“We Weren’T Raised That Way”: Using Stigma Management Communication Theory To Understand How Families Manage The Stigma Of Substance Abuse, Sydney O'Shay-Wallace

Publications

While people who abuse substances experience widespread health and social consequences stemming from their substance use, these consequences also extend to their family through stigmatization. Such stigma has implications for families’ mental and physical health, as well as their overall quality of life. This study seeks to fill a gap in research surrounding the stigma experienced by families with a history of substance abuse by investigating how affected family members experience and communicatively manage stigma messages relating to their family member’s substance abuse. Fifteen people whose families include a person who uses substances (PWUS) participated in semi-structured interviews where they …

Identification And Transformation Difficulty In Problem Solving: Electrophysiological Evidence From Chunk Decomposition, Zhonglu Zhang, Yu Luo, Chaolun Wang, Christopher M. Warren, Qi Xia, Qiang Xing, Bihua Cao, Yi Lei, Hong Li

Psychology Faculty Publications

A wealth of studies have investigated how to overcome experience-based constraints in creative problem solving. One such experience-based constraint is the tendency for people to view tightly organized visual stimuli as single, unified percepts, even when decomposition of those stimuli into component parts (termed chunk decomposition) would facilitate problem solving. The current study investigates the neural underpinnings of chunk decomposition in creative problem solving by analyzing event-related potentials. In two experiments, participants decomposed Chinese characters into the character’s component elements and then used the base elements to form a new valid character. The action could require decomposing a “tight” chunk, …

Student Involvement & Leadership Center: Impact Report Spring 2015 To Fall 2018, Erik Dickamore, Amanda M. Hagman, Spencer Bitner, Nathan Laursen, Mitchell Colver

Publications

Leadership and involvement programs are an integral part of the student experience on University campuses. Volunteers and scholars within leadership and involvement serve their peers by providing rewarding events that unify the student body. Volunteers and scholars also benefit through opportunities for personal exploration and growth. Working with SILC allows students to serve and lead in a unique way. This report explored the association between student participation in leadership and involvement programs, and student persistence to the next term at Utah State University. METHODS: Students participation was captured by rosters across all SILC programs. Students who had a record of …

Motor Preparation For Compensatory Reach-To-Grasp Responses When Viewing A Wall-Mounted Safety Handle, David A. E. Bolton, David M. Cole, Blake Butler, Mahmoud Mansour, Garrett Rydalch, Doug Mcdannald, Sarah Schwartz

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The present study explored how motor cortical activity was influenced by visual perception of complex environments that either afforded or obstructed arm and leg reactions in young, healthy adults. Most importantly, we focused on compensatory balance reactions where the arms were required to regain stability following unexpected postural perturbation. Our first question was if motor cortical activity from the hand area automatically corresponds to the visual environment. Affordance-based priming of the motor system was assessed using single-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to determine if visual access to a wall-mounted support handle influenced corticospinal excitability. We evaluated if hand actions were …

Questioning The Morality Of Raising Neanderthal, Rachel Robinson-Greene

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 2013, Harvard professor George Church raised the possibility that an “extremely adventurous female human” might one day serve as a surrogate mother to a cloned Neanderthal child. In the recent bestseller Sapiens, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari discusses the possibility of resurrecting Neanderthal, reintroducing the idea into popular discussion. Bringing Neanderthal back to life would be an instance of what many scientists call de-extinction. The idea that something like this may be possible is certainly both intriguing and entertaining. But, to paraphrase Jurassic Park, when it comes to using emerging technology in this way, are people spending so …

Workplace Democracy And The Problem Of Equality, Jared Sterling Colton, Avery C. Edenfield, Steve Holmes

English Faculty Publications

Purpose: Professional communicators are becoming more invested in unique configurations of power in organizations, including non-hierarchical and democratic workplaces. While organizations dedicated to democratic processes may enact power differently than conventional organizations, they may fall short of practicing equality. This article explains the differences in non-hierarchical workplaces, considers businesses where democracy is a goal, and argues for considering equality as a habitual practice, particularly when writing regulatory documents.

Method: We conduct a review of the literature on non-hierarchical workplaces and organizational democracy, applying Jacques Rancière’s concept of equality to two examples (one using primary data collection and one using secondary …

The Birch Creek Canids And Dogs As Transport Labor In The Intermountain West, Martin H. Welker, David A. Byers

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Historically, domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) have been documented as central features of Intermountain West and Great Plains Native American camps. Some of these dogs were bred specifically for largeness and stamina to haul travois and to carry pannier-style packs. Ethnographic accounts frequently highlight the importance of dogs in moving through the Intermountain West and the plains, reporting loads as heavy as 45 kg (100 lbs). We calculated body mass from skeletal morphometric data and used these to estimate prehistoric and historic dog load capacities for travois and pannier-style packs in the Intermountain West, Great Plains, and Great Basin. Specimens of …

The Moral Quandary Of Testing On Animals, Rachel Robinson-Greene

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The topic of testing on animals as a form of scientific research has been contentious for quite some time. In most cases, the discussion tends to focus on whether it is morally permissible to test various products and procedures on animals in order to determine whether they would be safe and beneficial for human use. Animal experimentation is not always conducted simply for the benefit of human beings—sometimes the parties that stand to benefit from the research are other non-human animals, often including other members of the same species as the animals being tested.

Challenges In Columbia River Fisheries Conservation: A Response To Duda Et Al., Brian K. Hand, Courtney G. Flint, Chris A. Frissell, Clint C. Muhlfeld, Shawn P. Devlin, Brian P. Kennedy, Robert L. Crabtree, W. Arthur Mckee, Gordon Luikart, Jack A. Stanford

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The salmonid fisheries of the Columbia River Basin (CRB) have enormous socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological importance to numerous diverse stakeholders (eg state, federal, tribal, nonprofit), and there are a wide array of opinions and perspectives on how these fisheries should be managed. Although we appreciate Duda et al.'s commentary, it offers only one perspective of many in this context. The objective of our paper (Hand et al. 2018) was to provide justification for “the importance of social–ecological perspectives when communicating conservation values and goals, and the role of independent science in guiding management policy and practice for …