Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Wmu Collaboration With Michigan State University: The American Economic Association Summer Training Program, Christine Moser

Academic Leadership Academy

Since 1974, the American Economic Association Summer Program and Minority Scholarship Program has prepared talented undergraduates for doctoral programs in economics and related disciplines, by offering a unique opportunity for students to gain technical skills in economics and conduct research with prominent faculty. This program has been exceptionally successful, and a recent study suggests that around 20 percent of PhDs awarded to minorities in economics over the past 20 years can be attributed directly to the program. Starting in 2016, the Economics Department at Michigan State University will host this program in collaboration with Western Michigan University.

September 13, 2015: Ellis Series Kick-Off Event: New Discussion Forum, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series featuring The New Discussion Forum

Federal Advances To Support Grandfamilies, Ana Beltran

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

It is the year of grandfamilies in our nation’s capital. Not since the mid-1990s has there been so much activity among federal lawmakers and policymakers to try to help all grandfamilies, both those within and outside the foster care system. In August 2015, a major piece of legislation was introduced in Congress, which would make holistic reforms to our nation’s child welfare financing system. For the first time, child welfare funds could be used to provide supportive services to parents and grandfamilies outside the system, so children do not have to enter it. For those children who are removed from …

Experiences With Grandparents And Attitudes Toward Custodial Grandparenting, Julie Hicks Patrick, Allyson Stella Graf, Danielle K. Nadorff, Bert Hayslip Jr.

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

The goals of the current study were to examine attitudes about custodial grandparents and to examine whether personal experiences with grandparents influenced those attitudes. Data were provided by 730 younger adults (mean age about 20 years) who completed surveys regarding their experiences with their own grandparents, attitudes toward custodial grandparenting, and openness to becoming a custodial grandparent in the future. Mean differences in attitudes as a function of experience did emerge. In addition, a mixed structural model showed that young adults who felt their grandparents helped to raise them perceived custodial grandparenting as less distressing, and it was these perceptions …

Bullying And Victimization Among Children Raised By Grandparents, Oliver W. Edwards

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

Increasing numbers of school-age children are being raised by their grandparents. Yet, a dearth of research investigates the children in these families. The few studies suggest the children experience higher levels of academic, behavioral, and emotional difficulties than their peers. These behaviors are often associated with involvement in bullying, but no empirical research investigates bullying among children raised by their grandparents. This current study helps to fill the noted lack of research in this area and the gap in the literature by investigating the intersection of these two important phenomena – bullying and children raised by their grandparents. This study …

Group Leaders’ Perceptions Of Interventions With Grandparent Caregivers: Content And Process, Bert Hayslip Jr., Julian Montoro-Rodriguez, Gregory C. Smith, Frederick Strieder

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

Nineteen (Mage = 45, SD = 12.8) professionally trained group leaders were surveyed regarding their experiences in leading a 10-week program with one of three RCT conditions (cognitive behavior training, parenting skills training, information only support). While a high percentage indicated that the intervention led by them was beneficial, leaders nevertheless felt that some participants benefited more so than others. Perceived program benefits were seen as being linked to regular attendance and the completion of weekly homework. The major benefits to participants were gaining personal insight, receiving and providing support to others, successfully applying learned skills and knowledge …

Challenges And Resilience In African American Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: A Review Of The Literature With Practice Implications, Fengyan Tang, Heejung Jang, Valire Carr Copeland

GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy

This paper reviews literature on grandparents raising grandchildren, focusing on caregiving challenges and resilience in African American grandparent caregivers within a socio-cultural context. A strengths perspective that emphasizes capacities and competencies at the individual, family, and community levels is applied in understanding how African American grandparents rely on their strengths to overcome caregiving challenges. Building on the review of social programs and intervention services that targeted empowerment practice, the authors propose an empowerment model of working with African American grandparents, that is, building capacities through an empowerment process to address caregiving challenges and to achieve positive caregiving outcomes. Finally, the …

14-12 Capacity Analysis Of Pedestrian Facilities Involving Individuals With Disabilities, Mohammad Sadra Sharifi, Keith Christensen, Anthony Chen

Transportation Research Center Reports

Walking facilities are important infrastructures that must be designed to accommodate the behavior of pedestrians in order to be effective. Heterogeneity in pedestrian composition is one important factor generally overlooked in walking facility design guidelines. Particularly, individuals with disabilities are often ignored due to lack of available data on their pedestrian behaviors. A controlled, large-scaled walking experiment involving individuals with disabilities was conducted at Utah State University to observe individual pedestrian behaviors in various walking facilities; these facilities include passageway and bottleneck formations. The purpose of this report is twofold: (1) to model time headway between different individual types using …

Socially Deviant Communities Online: How The Pro-Anorexia Movement Utilizes The Anonymity Provided By The Internet To Thrive, Samantha Thomas

Honors Theses

The creation of the internet has produced an environment in which many communities have been able to develop into strong and thriving societies. A large number of communities that are now predominantly online were unable to exist successfully before the establishment of the internet for a variety of reasons. The internet has made it easier for people from different backgrounds and locations to network, form communities, and share information with one another. Unfortunately the internet has also given harmful underground communities the opportunity to develop and thrive as well. Socially deviant communities, groups that support ideas and behaviors deemed unacceptable …

Shared Prosperity Initiative As A Solution To The City Of Kalamazoo's Impoverished, Maurice Washington

Honors Theses

The Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo Initiative acts a combatant to reducing poverty for the City of Kalamazoo rather than a solution. Combining micro social work training of treatment plans for clients and its incorporated methodologies to the macro problem of poverty for the City’s constituents emphasizes a unique but valuable perspective to have as a potential policy maker. The question is whether such a perspective is truly applicable and such was the goal of the nearly year-long research. Data obtained from interviews, meetings, focus groups and interviews were reviewed from a prior initiative to formulate much of the research and analysis. …

Tourism And Organic Food Production In Croatia: Case Study Of The Cetina Region, Marina Pavletic

Masters Theses

Croatia is an emerging tourist destination where attractive beaches, rich culture and culinary delights form a perfect combination for a great vacation. As the number of tourists visiting Croatia continues to grow, their demand for food is following suit. However, more than half of the food purchased in Croatia is imported, while agricultural land in many Croatian regions is neglected. As the largest number of Croatia’s tourists comes from the European Union, which spent €22 billion on organic food in 2014, this study looks at opportunities and challenges for organic farming in Croatia as an alternative to conventional agriculture in …

The Adoption And Diffusion Of Leed Certification In The Great Lakes Region: 2008-2015, Douglas Vander Hulst

Masters Theses

This research examines multiple factors that were previously used to describe where LEED-certified homes locations from 2008 to 2015 in the Great Lakes states. This study includes an analysis of 1,040 buildings located in 144 cities across six Great Lakes states. Along with the data in the LEED homes dataset, LEED homes locations are compared using three climate factors: heating degree days, cooling degree days, and average annual temperature. Socioenvironmental factors hypothesized to influence the location of LEED-verified buildings included the city population, the city’s total area, water area, percent water area, land area, population density, and housing density. Two …

Breastfeeding With The Bronson Mothers’ Milk Bank, Marykate Bodnar

Masters Theses

Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo is home to one of only 15 certified breast milk banks in the United States. Women have shared breast milk for centuries through wet nurses, but this institutionalized and regulated version of sharing is distinct from previous forms. Breastfeeding has become a symbol of successful motherhood; donor milk adds a new dimension to this aspect of idealized motherhood. This study explores how the milk bank works: its organizational structure within a hospital, how donors are selected, and how recipients qualify for donor milk. It is grounded in Feminist and Medical Anthropology literature. Using semi-structured interviews …

Phase Change Lines, Scale Breaks And Trend Lines Using Excel 2013Tm, Neil Deochand

Masters Theses

The development of graphing skills for the behavior analyst is an ongoing process. Specialized graphing software is often expensive, not widely disseminated, and may require specific training. Dixon, et al. (2009) provided an updated task analysis (Carr & Burkholder, 1998) in the widely used platform Excel 2007. Vanselow and Bourret (2012) provided online tutorials outlining some alternate methods also using Office 2007. This article serves as an update to those task analyses with alternative and under-utilized methods in Excel 2013. To examine the utility of our recommendations twelve psychology graduate students were presented with the task analyses and the experimenters …

Language Policy In Turkey And Its Effect On The Kurdish Language, Sevda Arslan

Masters Theses

For many decades the Kurdish language was ignored and banned from public use and Turkish became the lingua franca for all citizens to speak. This way, the Turkish state sought to create a nation-state based on one language and attempted to eliminate the use of other languages, particularly Kurdish, through severe regulations and prohibitions.

Firstly, this thesis traces the language planning policies in the 20th century which resulted in the invisibilization and denial of Kurdish through an attempted linguicide. Through decade long oppressions which resulted in mass killings, arrests, re-location of Kurds, monopolization of education in Turkish and eventually the …

Canning Jars And Patterns Of Canning Behavior: A Study Of Households On The Hector Backbone, New York. 1850-1940, Jayne Ann Michaels

Masters Theses

Typically, late 19^th or early 20^th century domestic sites contain fragments of a common item: canning jars. Such is the case regarding 21 sites along the Hector Backbone in New York State. These sites, investigated by the Finger Lakes National Forest Farmstead Archaeology Project, produced a rich sample of over 250,000 artifacts and thousands related to canning.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the potential of these common artifacts to yield important information about these Backbone households. Specifically, my questions include: when did these households adopt canning and who were they?

The intentional decision to include …

Pedagogical Approaches To Multicultural Education Within Teacher Preparation Programs, Mark Steven Barajas

Dissertations

Despite national standards established in 1979, U.S. teacher preparation programs have struggled to incorporate comprehensive, multicultural teacher education into existing curriculum (Sleeter, 2008). The weakness of multicultural training in most teacher preparation programs is theorized as a major contributor to the persistent achievement gap between students of color and White students (Ferguson, 2003). Furthermore, literature indicates White teachers frequently hold lower expectations for racial and ethnic minority students compared to White students and these lowered expectations often manifest as lower academic achievement (McKown & Weinstein, 2007).

This study provides empirical data regarding multicultural education within teacher preparation programs. Individual course …

Behavior Analysis Program To Improve Habits Of Physical Activity, Eating, And Sleeping, Ivan Noe Martinez Salazar

Dissertations

An Internet-based five-week duration program to improve “health habits” using behavior analysis principles and eHealth technology was developed and evaluated. The “health habits” include recurring behaviors that impact health status such as eating, sleeping, and physical activity.

Ten adult participants were recruited online from Mexico. A multiple baseline design was used and participants were randomly assigned into two different groups (i.e., ABBAA and AABBA groups). Participants received online training using videos describing the characteristics of the program and its components. Each participant recorded selected health behaviors using a Microsoft Excel® tool designed specifically for this program’s goal achievements. Participants reported …

An Examination Of Several Variables Influencing The Efficacy Of The Gateway In Street Sign Configuration On Motorist Yielding Behavior, Miles Bennett

Dissertations

This study contains five different experiments that examine the effects of several variables influencing the effectiveness of the In-Street sign and various In-Street sign configurations. Experiment 1 and 2 compared the effects of the Gateway configuration using R1-6 signs to blank fluorescent yellow-green signs arranged in the Gateway configuration on motorist yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks. The results showed that the blank signs produced an increase in yielding from 7% to 33%, while the addition of the message and symbols to the sign increased yielding to 78%. Experiment 1, 2, and 4 examined the effects of different configurations of the …

Saliva Cotinine As A Measure Of Abstinence In A Lottery-Based Contingency Management Treatment For Smoking Cessation, Catherine M. Gayman

Dissertations

Contingency management decreases smoking by delivering monetary incentives contingent upon objective verification of abstinence. The present study investigated the effectiveness of monitoring saliva cotinine twice weekly in a contingency-management treatment for cigarette smoking using a cash prize-based payment system. Participants were randomly assigned to either a contingent reinforcement group or a non-contingent reinforcement group. The study began with five consecutive Baseline days during which participants smoked as usual, and was followed by four consecutive Shaping days, during which participants were asked to gradually decrease smoking. During the subsequent three-week Abstinence phase, participants submitted saliva cotinine and breath carbon monoxide samples …

Assessing The Interpersonal Effectiveness Of The Dear-Man Skill Using A Social Psychology Paradigm, Matthew T. Jameson

Dissertations

For more than 50 years, social psychology has investigated persuasion techniques intended to facilitate influencing the behavior of others. This body of research has identified a variety of effective techniques and principles (see Cialdini, 2007). Over roughly the same period, clinical psychologists developed interventions targeting assertiveness, the ability to influence others in socially appropriate ways (see Long, Long, & Whitson, 2009) and the related construct “interpersonal effectiveness,” the ability to influence others without harming relationships or self-respect (Linehan, 2015, pp. 231-237). A literature review conducted by the author was unable to identify linkages between these two related areas of inquiry. …

Evaluating Sexual Assault Prevention Training Programs For College Women, Eliza S. Mcmanus

Dissertations

Sexual victimization is a frequent and concerning problem for college women. It is estimated that college women are three times more likely to experience sexual assault than women in the general population. Additionally, women with a history of unwanted sexual experiences are at greater risk for future sexual victimization than women without such histories. For these reasons, the examination of college-based sexual assault prevention programs is important given the high rates of unwanted sexual experiences and subsequent negative mental health consequences. Furthermore, the lack of effective skills-based sexual assault prevention programs on college campuses is an important issue to address. …

Learning To Learn And Naming Through Receptive And Expressive Identification, Kelli Perry

Dissertations

Poor or no language skills are typical of most preschool children with autism (American Psychological Association, 2013). Language can be divided into the two components of receptive, or listener, skills and expressive, or speaker, skills. Recommendations for sequencing language instruction vary across the different behavior-analytic instructional models (Lovaas, 1981; Barbara & Rasmussen, 2007; Sundberg & Partington, 1998; Sundberg, 2008). The current study sought to examine those recommendations using young children (three- to four-years-old) with limited vocal repertoires and to explore the acquisition of learning to learn (Harlow, 1949) and naming (Greer & Ross, 2007). This research (1) adds to the …

Impact Of Athletic Identity And Emotional Competence On Athletes’ Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help, Garett V. Weatherhead

Dissertations

Athletes have been found to have more negative attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help than non-athletes (Watson, 2005) despite experiencing comparable amounts of mental illness (Markser, 2011). The purpose of the present study was to examine factors that are associated with athletes’ help-seeking attitudes, including athletic identity and emotional competence. A sample of 144 college student-athletes from a small, private Midwestern college in the United States participated in the study. The athletes competed at the NCAA Division III level. Participants were asked to complete the following measures: Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1993), Attitudes Toward Seeking …

Evaluation Of An Abbreviated Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Intervention In A Pediatric Primary Care Setting, Colleen C. Cullinan

Dissertations

Pediatric primary care providers encounter a substantial number of behavioral health concerns during routine visits. These providers are in a unique position to screen for and identify psychosocial difficulties, offer anticipatory guidance, and provide brief mental health interventions to families. Unfortunately, many pediatricians face barriers in screening for behavioral problems and providing appropriate interventions, particularly regarding externalizing behavior problems. Providing integrated behavioral health services in the primary care setting can reduce barriers to treatment, the stigma associated with mental health settings, and the cost of services (Berkout & Gross, 2013). There is increasing interest in adapting parent training programs for …

The Impact Of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Qualitative Analysis Of Healthy `Couples’ Perceptions, Brian C. Doane

Dissertations

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a problem affecting millions of individuals, with a prevalence rate of 28% to 30% for women (Cobia, Sobansky, & Ingram, 2004) and 14% for men (Breire & Elliott, 2003). Because of the psychological trauma associated with CSA and the potential impact on the survivor’s sexuality, a couple’s relationship satisfaction may be reduced and survivors may experience difficulty in maintaining healthy intimate relationships. How CSA impacts an individual has been studied extensively, but its effect on committed couple relationships has received much less attention in the literature. Additionally, very few studies have incorporated the non-abused partner’s …

Partnering Library Research With Presentation And Writing Services At Western Michigan University’S Hcob Communication Center, Lumarie Guth, Marty Deming Maytnier

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

The development of the learning commons and embedded librarianship are two of the most recent responses to the downward trend in traditional reference statistics for academic libraries. Reference librarians are rethinking how to demonstrate the added value of their services and reach users at their point of need both online and face‐to‐face. Trends in the building of learning commons and service centers have led to the integration of support services such as tutoring, writing assistance, computer access, collaborative study zones, and research help in order to provide a one‐stop shop for students. For the past two years, business librarians for …

July 16, 2015: New Issues 20th Anniversary, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

A special gathering of the Kalamazoo community, writers, and Creative Writing and English alumni to celebrate 20 years of New Issues Poetry & Prose. Featuring music, readings, and an art sale.

Examining The Outcomes Of The Balanced Scorecard (Bsc) As An Integral Tool Of Public Sector: Reform In Selected Sectors Of The Oromia Regional Government, Tolla Berrisso Geda, Daniel Beyera

International Journal of African Development

Over the last two decades Ethiopia has been actively engaged in reforming its public sector in an attempt to make it more responsive, transparent, flexible, and compatible with the demand of its public and its constituencies to ensure good governance. Nevertheless, despite repeated comprehensive reform programs applied and acclaimed success stories by public authorities, the public outcry for responsive public service remains an outstanding challenge. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the application of the Balanced Score Card (BSC) using a blend of survey and case study methods in 12 organizations selected from three major sectors in four major cities. …

Convalescent Serum Therapy As Rapid Advance Treatment For Ebola In West Africa, J Bankole Thompson Md, Phd, Patricia F. Mejabi Msc., Olugbenga O. Mejabi Phd, S Ahmed Tejan-Sie Md

International Journal of African Development

The 2014 public health crisis in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone has brought Ebola Viral Disease (EVD) to everyone’s attention. Discovered in 1976, this deadly disease infrequently struck in remote areas of Africa. This article will critically review the literature and describe the pathobiology, transmission, signs and symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of EVDwhich, was predicted by the Centers for Disease Control to potentially infect 1.4 million persons in Liberia and Sierra Leone by January 2015 (“Questions and Answers”, 2014). Thankfully this worst case scenario did not occur and we may be experiencing natural burn out of the outbreak along …