Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Revised Dacs Principles In Action: Applying Modern Practice To Legacy Description, Ryan Lee, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Becky Skeen, Paul Daybell, Heather Housley, Kelly Rovegno

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Since SAA revised DACS's archival description principles from 8 concepts into 11 reworked value statements in 2019, archivists have wondered how to incorporate the revised principles into existing description practices. Archivists from BYU and USU libraries have undertaken large projects on legacy collections informed by these principles. We invite attendees to learn from our experiences in implementing current DACS principles while grappling with less-than-ideal records. BYU will describe a project to revise the description of a significant collection of Mesoamerican materials after discovering the finding aid had serious problems introduced by previous revisions by archivists. USU will describe an undertaking …

Factors Affecting Remote Workers’ Job Satisfaction In Utah: An Exploratory Study, Amanda D. Ali, Lendel K. Narine, Paul A. Hill, Dominic C. Bria

Extension Research

With structural changes in work arrangements, employee retention becomes more important for organizational success. Guided by the Ability, Motivation, Opportunity (AMO) framework, this study investigated the factors affecting remote workers’ job satisfaction and personal wellbeing in Utah. From a sample of n = 143 remote workers, the study used a correlational design to identify the significant predictors of job satisfaction and personal wellbeing. It mapped the relationships between significant predictors of job satisfaction and personal wellbeing and explored the role of human resources (HR) policies and organizational culture in a remote work environment. Results showed intrinsic motivation, affective commitment, opportunity, …

Connections: Library Orientation, Usu Libraries

All E-Learning Resources

Attention: As of 2026 updated versions of this module will no longer be available on Digital Commons. Please contact [email protected] for more information.

This module is a library introduction for incoming USU Connections students. This module will discuss library spaces on USU campuses, money-saving resources, and research tips and resources. This module can be embedded in USU-1010 Canvas courses.

Time-Inconsistent Preferences And The Welfare Effects Of Financing Unfunded Social Security With Consumption Taxation, Emily E. Sorensen

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

A sizable body of evidence suggests that individuals make retirement preparation plans for the future, but then they persistently fail to follow through and prepare adequately to fund their retirement. In parallel, observational and experimental evidence suggests that people discount the future hyperbolically, and a hyperbolic discount function leads to inadequate preparation for retirement in modeling applications. In this paper, I construct a life-cycle model of consumption, saving, and intensive labor supply in which the representative individual possesses a hyperbolic discount function. The model exhibits time-inconsistent dynamic optimization as the individual persistently formulates, breaks, and then re-formulates consumption, saving, and …

Gibberellic And Naphthalene Acetic Acid Effects On ‘Rupert’ Potato Variety, Logan Atkinson

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

Potato processing facilities often rely on early maturing potato varieties to maintain adequate supplies before harvest of more traditional varieties. The Rupert variety is an example of such an early-maturing variety. However, the Rupert variety has traditionally been characterized by low average stem counts and large tuber sizes. Abnormally large tubers can add difficulties and costs to the processor. Gibberellic acid (GA) and Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) are plant growth regulators that promote growth and have the potential to affect average stem count and in turn, decreases average tuber size. Across two trials and locations (Gooding and Jerome, ID) GA …

Immigrants’ Attitude Toward Immigration, Aflatun Kaeser

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

This study analyzed the relationship between immigration attitudes and demographic and socioeconomic factors. It examined the difference in attitudes toward immigration in the immigrant population using General Social Survey 2021 data. The analysis with an ordered probit model reveals significant relationships between immigration attitude with several socioeconomic and demographic factors and how that differ between natives and immigrants. As age increases, support for limiting immigration increases, but this is not true for immigrants. With the increase of years of education, support for limiting immigration decreases; however, in the immigrant population, support for limiting immigration increases as the education level increases. …

Toward A More Holistic Understanding Of Uranium-Related Views And Experiences Of Residents In The Four Corners Region Of The United States, Matthew J. Barnett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Research on rural Four Corners Region (FCR) residents’ views about uranium production has focused mainly on predominately-White communities in the northern portion of the region. Meanwhile, residents in the southern part of the region, which includes the Navajo Nation and other tribal nations and communities, have dealt with the worst environmental and health effects of the uranium boom. Through a series of three studies in the southern part of the FCR, I explore the uranium-related views and experiences of racially diverse FCR residents.

In the first paper of this dissertation, I used 53 interviews to explore how sociodemographic factors (e.g., …

Livestock Risk Protection: An Analysis Of Coverage Length And Level To Determine Optimal Contract Selection, Logan B. Haviland

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

We evaluate the historically optimal producer-selected coverage options comprised of coverage length and level for each marketing month for various types of livestock insured with Livestock Risk Protection insurance. We begin with feeder cattle steers (600-900lbs) and then analyze the other types of feeder cattle, followed by fed cattle and swine. The optimal contracts are identified as those that have historically provided the highest probability of a positive net return and the highest average net return. We find that regardless of marketing month, the optimal contracts consist of relatively high coverage levels whereas the optimal length of the contracts varies …

The Intermountain West Lgbtq+ Oral History Project: The Folklorization Of Queer Theory, John Priegnitz

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

Following the passing of a friend who witnessed firsthand the transformation of Salt Lake City’s Queer community from the 1950s to 2020, I created the Intermountain West LGBTQ+ Oral History Project to document the queer experience within the Intermountain West. Since beginning the project in 2020, I have documented several diverse stories that intersect class, race, sexuality, gender, faith, and politics. By documenting the queer experience, a marginalized community will have their voices heard and preserved for the enlightenment of future generations. This presentation provides an overview of my project and its preliminary findings.

The Sexual Objectification Experiences Of Non-Binary People, Lee R. Pradell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Transgender people are a historically marginalized and disenfranchised group, leading to discriminatory interpersonal treatment such as sexual objectification experiences (SOEs), a type of objectification. Women look at themselves the way men look at them, reducing themselves to objects for someone else’s viewing. This flattening of oneself to value your bodily presentation over functioning increases dissociative states and promotes disordered eating behaviors. Non-binary people experience additive stressors within objectification experiences as people with less social power than cisgender women. This thesis is composed of three separate studies aimed at understanding the SOEs of non-binary people.

The first of three studies recruited …

Digital Collaborative Language Learning And Augmented Reality, Matthew Taylor

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

This portfolio is a collection of works written by the author as he was studying in the Masters of Second Language Teaching program at Utah State University. The focus of these works is on technology and its impact on language learning. The first few sections consist of an introduction to the portfolio, a few pages dedicated to the author’s philosophy on second language teaching, and details and insights from an observation of a teacher in practice while in the program. The following section comprises the bulk of the portfolio and includes a paper devoted to augmented reality’s place in digital …

Multivariate Econometric Regression Of Factors That Determine Form Of Disposition Of Human Remains Using Archival Death Certificates, Salt Lake County, Utah, Delphine T. Feigenbaum

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

This project considers the inescapable and burgeoning issues concerning the long-term allocation of scarce natural resources between the living and the deceased. America’s population growth will demand more space and maintenance resources used for disposition. To meet the forthcoming exigencies, economic planners need to address natural resource availability for future generations while incorporating sustainable and innovative technologies to prohibit environmental injustice.

The goals are to answer the following questions: How do demographical variables, age and sex influence the choice of disposition? How do cause of death variables influence the choice of disposition? I also evaluate the hypothesis that the average …

Mediated Cheap Talk With An Uncertain-Biased Expert, Xianzheng Sun

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

When bridging between experts and audiences, media firms often have their own biases which give them the incentive to manipulate information deliveries. This paper studies a cheap talk game in which media firms(moderators) can strategically design the delivery of experts’ messages to decision makers. A moderator is allowed to affect the delivery of messages by selecting experts and informing the decision-maker about the experts’ biases. I show that moderators can in equilibrium send partition-type messages to inform the receiver of experts’ biases, and moderation can improve communication informativeness.

Historic Downtown Streetscape Plan Price City, Utah, Patricia Beckert

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

The idea of a small-town Main Street has profound meaning within the American culture that has prevailed for the past two centuries. Historically, Main Street serves as the beating heart of a community, a place where economic, social, cultural, and civic activities are centered (Francaviglia, 1996; Main Street America, n.d.). Since the beginning of the 19th century, many factors have led to the decline of Main Streets, and despite a variety of efforts from different stakeholders, that decline has only intensified in recent decades (Isenberg, 2008; Orvell, 2014 Howard, 2015). In 1980, after a three-year project conducted by the National …

Shifting The Paradigm With Wednesday Addams: Why Nuanced, Intersectional Portrayals Of Autistic People Matter, Camille Alyse Bassett

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

For decades, Autistic people have been portrayed in the media through dehumanizing stereotypes such as the robot, the superhuman savant, and the empty shell. Through these stereotypes, Autistic people are construed as non-human, above-human, and sub-human but never as human beings with complexity, authenticity, and dignity. In addition to being stereotypical, depictions of Autistic people have historically featured white and male characters, a longstanding pattern that erases Autistic women and people of color, among others. In 2022, however, Netflix’s spinoff series of The Addams Family, Wednesday, brought to the screen one of the very first autistic-coded …

Connections For Success: Social Networking In Virtual University, Clara K. Cook

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Online learning has experienced an unexpected increase in the last two years in response to the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying mitigation efforts. As universities engage in discussions regarding whether to keep offering a wide selection of online courses or transition fully back to traditional course modes, it is important to understand the extent to which students are able to network with their instructors and classmates in their online courses and the ways in which it differs from in-person courses. This paper explores the differences in networking between in-person, synchronous online, and asynchronous online courses. Additionally, it …

Oppression In Xinjiang: Rhetorical Parallels To The Causal Mechanisms, Christina Elizabeth Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper compares the framings of ethnic conflict with theoretical political science explanations of the causes of such conflict. Framings are statements used to portray the who, what, and why of an issue through the emphasis or exclusion of information to create a specific agenda. The theoretical expectation from social science is that ethnic conflict is a result of a commitment problem, where the two parties in the conflict cannot credibly guarantee the protection of the other. This arises from situations where there is a large minority group population that is underrepresented from government and has grievances from economic disparities …

The Levant: Climate Change’S Effects On Domestic And Foreign Security Policy, Mary Mckenna Kump

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This project applies a comparative analysis of climate effects on security perspectives in the Levant (Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon) with evidence from historical events and modern processes. In other words, how do the effects of climate change threaten states’ core national security interests? What areas of the system are likely to be impacted by climate effects? Researchers project that climate change will affect current and future global conditions, so how does it impact how states perceive the environment in relation to their national security interests? To examine these questions, I have developed a relatively informal cause-and-effect relationship between climate …

Adversity And Leader Development: Mindfulness As A Potential Moderator, Isaac V. Dixon

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Why do some leaders respond to adversity by becoming more empathetic, impactful, and resilient — while others do not? Since the Covid-19 pandemic, suffering has gained personal relevance to each one of us. Although many researchers have explored why some individuals – when faced with trauma – grow as a result, little work has been done to understand this process specifically within the context of leaders and leader development. As such, the primary purpose of this paper is to explore what allows some leaders to respond to adversity/trauma with leadership development. Based on the mediators of productive framing, cognitive engagement, …

Ethics, Fashion, And Film In The 1950s And 60s, Sara Miner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

To truly understand the nature of identity, autonomy, and morality in the 1950s and 60s, one must look at what artifacts of humanity have been left behind. More specifically, clothes and fashion capture, represent, and immortalize the human experience through each stitch and seam. By analyzing clothing from an anthropologic lens, one can discover the socio-cultural reality of a time long past. Known for intense culmination of social and political movements, the 1950s and 60s contain many radical shifts. Ranging from social movements like Civil Rights, Women’s Liberation, Black Feminism, and others, to the political metamorphosis as a result of …

Detecting Accurate Emotions In Faces, Marisa Pualani Davis

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 …

Grounded In Reality: An Exploration Of Acceptance In Relational Conflict, Audrey Johansen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Acceptance work encompasses “the processes that allow us to be fully grounded in reality” (Canfield, 2023). It allows individuals to embrace what truly is, both the good and the bad. It enables them to be at peace with what they can’t control, so that they can put their energy into changing what is within their power.

This project explores how acceptance work connects with other aspects of conflict process, including grieving, emotional regulation, and other concepts. Research was conducted by studying materials on communication and conflict processes, and by applying the materials to the author’s life. The author explores how …

Trial Spacing And The Conditioned Motivational Effects Of A Food-Predictive Cue, Gabrielle M. Sutton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Stimuli in the environment can come to influence motivation and behavior through a process known as Pavlovian conditioning. During Pavlovian conditioning, stimuli in the environment come to predict the availability of a reward. Two different procedures are used to investigate how stimuli can modify ongoing behavior and reward consumption, known as Pavlovian-instrumental transfer and potentiated feeding, respectively. In other procedures that investigate how stimuli modify behavior, certain time intervals during Pavlovian training can influence how much a stimulus can modify behavior. One of those intervals is the time between the presentation of a stimulus and the associated reward. This interval …

Understanding Parent-Adolescent Transmission Of Values, Jesse P. Higgins

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand the way that parents attempt to influence the values that may influence their adolescent children’s behavior and goals. In the first study, we use a newly created questionnaire, the Transmission of Values Scale or TVS, that measures the use of 27 parenting strategies that influence value transmission. Examples of strategies included in the TVS include being an example of good values, encouraging family discussion about values, and even using coercive strategies like guilt to encourage valued behavior. The results of this study found that these strategies work together to explain how …

Finding Their "Why": Examining The Development Of Sense Of Purpose During The University Years And Its Role In Student Well-Being, Michael Q. King

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nearly 20 million students were expected to be enrolled for college or university studies during the 2020-2021 academic year. These institutions often advertise to prospective students that, in addition to advancing their education, they will discover their purpose. Given previous work and current interest in sense of purpose, additional attention on sense of purpose in the university setting is worthwhile. In addition, as many university stakeholders are concerned about an ongoing mental health crisis, a further examination into a developmental construct (i.e. sense of purpose) thought to provide a “sheltering fortress in a world of constant threat” seems …

County Characteristics And Opioid Mortality Rates In The United States, Baksun Sung

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Opioid overdose deaths are not equally distributed across the United States. While some areas have a less severe problem with opioid abuse, others face serious challenges, which are affected by various social factors. To address that question, in Chapter 1, I investigate how opioid mortality trends differ according to opioid types, race, and region to identify susceptible populations and areas. In Chapter 1, I contend that synthetic opioid is a main trigger for the current opioid epidemic and that the epidemic is concentrated among blacks and in the Eastern United States. Next, the following studies examine how varying social vulnerabilities …

Exploring The Process Of Mindful Breathing With Stressed Mothers, Caleb D. Farley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mindfulness exists in many parenting and family interventions and are intended to decrease stress, improve familial relationships, and indirectly improve child wellness, and these mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) are relatively effective at doing so. However, critical issues remain related to designing effective and useful interventions for school-based and other community practitioners. Specifically, research has not demonstrated clear relationships between parent mindfulness practice increasing generalized mindfulness behaviors (i.e., awareness and acceptance), experiencing subsequent parental stress reduction, and reporting decreased behavior problems in children. The current study examined these relationships between practicing mindfulness and experiencing changes in parents’ mindfulness process, wellbeing, and perceptions …

The Relation Between Racial Attitudes And Facets Of Impulsivity, Diana M. Perez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Racism is an ongoing issue in U.S. society. The present study examined the relation between racial attitudes and two types of impulsivity (i.e., behavioral inhibition and delay discounting). Prior research has not touched upon the relationship between impulsivity and racial bias; nonetheless, the factors that influence the ability to interfere with automatic thinking and bad decision making may be a way to address racial bias. One hundred eighty-seven White adult participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online survey taking website. The value participants place on future rewards (i.e., delay discounting) and the ability to stop their behavior …

Who Is Accessing Ipse Programs? Examining The Demographics Of Students Enrolled In Inclusive Post-Secondary Education, Madison Heider

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This initial survey study was designed to examine the demographics of students attending inclusive post-secondary (IPSE) programs for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). IPSE programs are designed to deliver a similar, if not identical, collegiate experience to students with IDD as their peers without disabilities. Previous research has investigated IPSE programs and their impact, but there is limited information regarding student makeup. The researchers looked to identify the diversity of students beyond their disability categories; research questions surrounded student diversity, barriers to accessing IPSE programs, and what, if anything, programs do to increase diversity within their programs. The …

The Supreme Court And Presidential Elections: An Analysis Of Divisive Decisions And Judicial Review In Presidential Elections, Jeff Hastings

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A presidential election is, arguably, the most important event in the American political system. The Congress and the president are undoubtedly affected by the pressures and publicity of these events, but we have little understanding of whether the Supreme Court behaves differently in presidential election years. In this paper, I argue that the Supreme Court will experience more consensus in its decisions and make less use of judicial review because of the potential for heightened public scrutiny that can arise during the term overlapping with a presidential election. I test this claim using ordinary least squares regression. I find that …