Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“We Went To The Hills": Four Afghan Life Stories, James M. Weir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines four Afghan life stories for prevalent micro-historical perspectives on shared Afghan macro-historical experiences. The introduction explains my background, motivations and objectives for conducting life history research in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005. The first chapter outlines an approach applied to examining life stories that addresses three interrelated questions: first, how the narrator's presentation is related to the memory of the actual events narrated (biographical chronology), second, how a narrative image/s of a person's past is established in relationships to individually significant audience/s (narrative self / audience), and third, how interrelationships between the individual …

The Impact Of Mood Disorders On Cognitive Function In Post-Menopausal Women Undergoing Treatment For Early-Stage Breast Cancer, Margery E. Frosch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

PURPOSE: Many post-menopausal women who are treated for early-stage breast cancer report experiencing cognitive difficulties following adjuvant chemotherapy. However, the generalizability of the results of a number of studies that have attempted to document the association between adjuvant chemotherapy and cognitive dysfunction has been limited due to inconsistencies in the investigative methods used, thus introducing the possibility that other factors are contributing to reports of cognitive problems. The current study examines the possibility that a history of mood disorders in post-menopausal breast cancer patients predisposes them to cognitive difficulties following adjuvant treatment. METHODS: Sixty-five postmenopausal women with non-metastatic breast cancer …

"If You See Something, Say Something": The Power Of The 'War On Terrorism' To Name What We See, Polly Sylvia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to understand the cultural politics of the "war on terrorism" through a case study of the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign within the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority Subway System. Drawing upon literature that focuses on an understanding of the affective transmission of culture, this research seeks to understand this particular campaign as a technique of social control. Through a content analysis of the advertisements of this campaign and a performative methodology that analyzes the performance of security within the subway system, an understanding of the connections this local campaign (as a security campaign) …

Essays In Corporate Finance, Milos Vulanovic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance. In the first essay we test the pecking order theory by examining how firms finance maturing long-term debt. This allows us to accomplish three goals: resolve the issues of debt capacity and the endogeneity of financing deficit; examine the role of internal financing; and generate evidence regarding the order in which different sources of financing are used. We determine that firms use internal funds before they issue new debt to refinance maturing long-term debt. Firms with more cash on hand are less likely to issue new debt to refinance. On average, …

The Gatekeeping Behind Meritocracy: Voices Of Nyc High School Students, Arlene Melody Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Survey and focus group sampling of students in high achieving schools compared to lower achieving schools were used to examine why there are fewer black men graduating from high schools in New York City as well as high schools around the country compared to other groups of students. Race is disaggregated in order to look at the difference in achievement rates for African American, black Hispanic, African, and Afro-Caribbean men. The findings support the contention that foreign-born blacks do better academically than native blacks.

Focus groups consist of black males, females, and staff at six of the 12 schools; field …

Creating Collaborative Partnerships To Support Teacher Growth: Mapping The Partnership Process, Lynda Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The urban setting has tremendous resources for the support of teaching and learning social studies and history but many teachers do not know how to make use of them. Collaborations centered on teacher professional development between cultural institutions such as museums, historical societies, historic houses, libraries, etc., universities and k-12 schools can create wider communities of practice that can support the professional growth of history and social studies teachers from their pre-service education throughout their careers.

This qualitative case study - grounded in the social/historical context of teacher education and a century of history/social studies pedagogy both in school and …

Breach Of Trust: Customary/Commercial Documents And Practices Of Private Law In An Egyptian Port, Christine Hegel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an ethnography of private law in contemporary Port Said, Egypt. Based on extensive fieldwork in 2005 and 2007, it considers how Port Saidians come to possess economic and social entitlements vis-à-vis one another and how concomitant obligations get construed and actualized. As an analysis of quotidian practices of private law and surety, this dissertation is intended to contribute to broader scholarly debates about legal subjectivity and legal consciousness, and to reconsider the intersections between law, custom and morality.

The analysis of contemporary transactional and surety practices is rooted in a discussion of both Egyptian legal reform and …

Are Sisters Doing It (All) For Themselves? Elderly Black Women And Healthcare Decision Making, Carlene Buchanan Turner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the effects of health values on the decisions made by elderly Black women to use self-care methods and homecare services. The research is grounded in the healthicization or wellness promotion paradigm, which prescribes behavioral or lifestyle changes for previously biomedically defined events.

The dissertation consists of both quantitative and qualitative research. The quantitative component focuses on a sample of Black women over 70 years old (N= 642) from the 2000 NHI Second Longitudinal Study on Aging dataset. The qualitative component analyzes ten in-depth interviews with respondents from Southern Maryland used to supplement the quantitative findings.

Although the …

The Outsourcing Of National Defense, Christopher Weimar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The outsourcing of military activities and services has grown dramatically in recent decades. My objective is to understand and explain this phenomenon at work in the United States Department of Defense (DoD) using theoretical frameworks of strategic efficiency, political ideology and organizational theory factors. This study seeks to answer the question, why has the DOD outsourced support activities and functions that contribute to larger national security objectives and were traditionally performed by DoD personnel? I'll use a case-study methodology to examine outsourcing in the DoD between 1970 and 2005, to include an in-depth look at the information technology (IT) networks …

Raising Children The American Way: Court-Mandated Parenting Education In Alameda, California, Nicole D. Laborde

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on ethnographic research in Alameda County, California, this dissertation examines the parenting practices and knowledge that are taught in court-mandated parenting classes along with those of parents enrolled in these classes. In California, two of the primary reasons that parents would be mandated to take classes are because of involvement with Child and Family Services (CFS) or in a custody dispute that reaches the courts. I argue that the different forms of knowledge and the practices advanced in the classes, at times consistent with, at times in conflict with those of the parents, reflect the demands and social responsibility …

Making Up The Difference: Ecuadorian Women Engaged In Direct Selling, Erynn Masi Casanova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As economic globalization progresses, employment is becoming more flexible and informalized in many parts of the world. In some developing countries, direct sales (selling branded products from person to person) is an increasingly attractive type of work, especially for women. Direct sales organizations benefit from cultural norms and structural forces that steer women away from full-time jobs in the formal economy, and also from the material conditions that lead to women's need to earn an income. This study examines the work experiences and social worlds of women affiliated with Ecuador's most successful direct sales company, Yanbal, with a focus on …

Youth In Out-Of-Home Care: The Question Of Psychological Agency, Lauren M. Polvere

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the critical perspectives of formerly institutionalized youth with psychiatric disabilities through the lens of psychological agency. Framed in sociohistorical perspective, a theoretical shift is suggested for understanding the development of youth with mental health placement histories. In contrast to clinical approaches, which focus on psychopathology of youth in placement, this study elucidates the agentic meaning making processes employed by youth as they negotiate various treatment contexts and engage in activism. Participants in the study are 12 youth between the ages of 16-23, who are involved in peer-run groups for young people with out-of-home treatment experience, and 4 …

Memorial Laws: Social And Media Construction Of Personalized Legislation, 1994-2005, Faith H. Leibman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the possibility that certain social, demographic, and political factors have led to the recent adoption by American state legislatures of what are known as Memorial Laws. First enacted in 1994, these laws have become increasingly common. However, there has been little or no formal academic research into them. This investigation aims to provide a preliminary analysis of Memorial Laws and to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics affecting their passage. Specifically, this study examines a variety of demographic traits of victims and the characteristics of the crimes committed against them in an attempt to determine …

"Reconnecting To Resilience" A Historical Study Of Slave Narratives With Implications For Social Work Practice With African American Youth From High Risk Environments, Barbara E. Milton Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The often times high risk environment of African American youth negatively impacts their psychological well being, their family relations and community connections. Many African American youth today are experiencing the vestiges of historical trauma that took root in America in the 17th Century when the first Africans came to America. As a result of generational transmission of historical trauma, many youths today are disproportionately underachieving in education, disproportionately poor, disproportionately monitored by police and incarcerated and disproportionately disrespected by the society at large. In order to reduce the disparity of contemporary problems effecting African American youth, social scientists need to …

Forsaken Generation: Stress, Social Suffering And Strategies Among Working-Class Pensioners In Post-Socialist Moldova, Romania, Gerard A. Weber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the lives of working-class pensioners in post-socialist, Galati, Romania. Its central thesis is that the transformation of Romania from socialism to capitalism beginning in 1989 has led to an "epidemic of stress" among retired, working-class people in the city. Marginalized by their age, class and location in the relatively economically underdeveloped region of Moldova, they have been among the hardest hit by the changes brought about with the introduction of neoliberal capitalism. Long familiar with life in a relatively stable economy, they have faced dramatic changes in this area since the revolution, including massive price instability and …

Essays On The Impacts Of The Great Moderation On Business Cycle Modeling, Andre R. Neveu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The research presented here is a comprehensive analysis of research on the "Great Moderation" and its impact on business cycle modeling. In the presence of a less volatile aggregate economy, the methods of modeling business cycles have fundamentally changed along with the ability to detect turning points in the business cycle using standard algorithms. Chapter One lays out the historical case for modeling the business cycle in a manner placing importance on the ability of a model to replicate features observed in actual GDP data, such as the depth and length of recessions, or the average height of expansions. Chapter …

The Social Construction Of Racial And Ethnic Identity Among Women Of Color From Mixed Ancestry: Psychological Freedoms And Sociological Constraints, Laura Quiros

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the context of the 21st century, when an increasing number of people cannot be classified by an archaic system based on race, an awareness of the complexities of ethnic and racial identity is more important than ever. This study assists in the development of a critical understanding of the complexity of racial and ethnic identity by exploring the construction of racial and ethnic identity among women of color from mixed ancestry. These women are the offspring of parents from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds. As a result, their identities—both internally and externally constructed—belie traditional racial and ethnic categories. This …

The Phenomenon Of Amoralism: An Investigation Of The Cognitive And Emotive Roots, Andrei G. Zavaliy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An amoralist is defined as a person who rejects the claims of moral reasons to special authority, and systematically acts without regard to the generally accepted moral standards. A psychopath can be seen as a paradigm case of an extreme amoralist, although the less severe cases of selective amoralists are considered. The research into the typical behavioral pattern, motivational structure, and the value system of psychopaths can shed light on at least three aspects related to the analysis of the moral agency. First, it can help elucidating the emotive and cognitive conditions necessary for moral performance. Secondly, it can provide …

Hiding Out: Creative Resistance Among Anonymous Workbloggers, Abigail Schoneboom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anonymous workbloggers—employees who write online diaries about their work—are often simultaneously productive workers and savage critics of the corporate cultures in which they toil. Writing under an assumed identity, these workers create satirical portraits of their supervisors and colleagues, rail against management gurus and corporate buzzwords, celebrate time-wasting capers, and daydream about quitting. Their irreverent and fictionalized accounts of work, which are shielded from the gaze of co-workers and supervisors, reveal how office workers critically negotiate a labor process that, increasingly, demands their hearts and minds.

This study, which comprises an overview of media and organizational responses to the phenomenon, …

Turning Space Into Place In The Sprawling “New City”: Shrinking Space, Visions Of Place, Homeowners In Conflict, Lael Leslie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Was there a "real place" to be found in the sprawling "new city" landscape? This interview study considers the categories of sprawl as a placeless, apolitical space, and of the suburban white middle class, to explore how "place" is variously understood by homeowners confronting rapid spatial reconfiguration. The interviewees are residents of a municipality located in one of New Jersey's "growth corridors." Emphasis is on homeowners' experiences, and on what they view as problems related to rapid growth.

Given the long settlement history of this northeastern seaboard region, this study finds that relations among homeowners had changed over time in …

Essays On Dynamics Of Financial Markets, Esin Cakan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this study, the effects of different macroeconomic news on stock markets and different stock market co-movements are investigated. Impacts of good and bad macroeconomic news announcement surprises on the mean and conditional volatility of U.S. daily equity and Treasury bond market returns during economic recessions and expansions are examined. By jointly modeling returns and volatilities using a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models, it is found that surprise in unemployment news has no impact on stock returns during business cycles. On the other hand, the results indicate a significantly positive relation between the short term (long term) bond prices …

L1 Acquisition Of Japanese Particles: A Corpus-Based Study, Mari Fujimoto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a comprehensive examination of L1 Japanese particle acquisition using two sets of corpora of naturalistic speech, JCHAT, longitudinal speech data of three Japanese children and the mothers (Miyata 2004a, b, and c, and MacWhinney 2000), and CHJ, adult-to-adult telephone conversation. The analysis reveals that despite differences in their language environment, all three children complete particle acquisition around MLU (m) 3.00 regardless of differences in the threshold of particle use. Further, none of the three children mimicked their mother's frequency of particle use, even as they all conform to a particular sequence of particle acquisition. The first set …

The Impact Of A Home-Based Intervention Program On Maternal Reflective Functioning In First-Time Mothers, Maia Rebecca Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study investigates the impact of "Minding the Baby," a home-based intervention program, on maternal reflective functioning (RF). It was hypothesized that the reflective capacity of mothers who received the MTB intervention would increase over the course of the study, and that this increase would be reflected in the quality of their responses to clinical interviews administered before and after birth. The guiding premise of the intervention was that helping mothers develop a reflective stance would enable them to become more regulating, sensitive, and autonomy-promoting caregivers and thus positively affect a range of developmental outcomes in their infants.

The …

Employee Ownership And Participation Effects On Firm Outcomes, Brent Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hundreds of firms in the U.S. are majority-owned by their employees through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). This study measures whether employee ownership makes a difference in firm outcomes, looking also at effects of worker participation in management-type decisions. Theorists have suggested that the rarity of employee ownership is prima facie evidence that such firms could not be as efficient as traditional firms. But institutional and financing constraints may be a more realistic explanation for their rarity, and it is important for policy purposes to investigate efficiency objectively.

The author compares sales per employee for a panel of over 300 …

Predicting Within-Source Agreement In Multisource Feedback Ratings: An Examination Of Characteristics Of The Rater Group And The Focal Manager, Christine Schrader Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Multisource feedback (MSF) involves gathering information about a manager's effectiveness from his or her boss, peers, and subordinates. Researchers typically average MSF ratings within rating sources (e.g., peers or subordinates), which assumes that agreement within rating sources is relatively high. However, there is little prior MSF research that has addressed the issue of within-source agreement, and the extant studies have often used inappropriate statistical techniques such as reliability indices. Moreover, this research often focuses on assessing the mean level of agreement or reliability within rating sources but has ignored the variability surrounding these indices. The purpose of the present study …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

An Empirical Test Of Terrie Moffitt’S Developmental Taxonomy Of Delinquency, Jessica M. Saunders

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Terrie Moffitt (1993) hypothesized that there will be three distinct types of juveniles: (1) Life-course-persistent offenders, who begin their antisocial behavior at a young age and continue to offend over their lives; (2) Adolescence-limited offenders, who are involved in criminal behavior only through their adolescent years, and; (3) Abstainers, who do not engage in any delinquent behavior. This study tested both the theory and methodology using general growth mixture modeling.

The methodological results were conclusive whereas the theoretical ones were less clear. The different latent variable variance structures were freed and fixed to test the best model …

“Practicing In Slow Motion”: The Development And Assessment Of An Interprofessional Clinical Education Curriculum For Law And Social Work Students, Lyn K. Slater

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Interprofessional and interagency collaboration are currently considered to be essential features of professional practice for the provision of effective health, education and human services. Most major professional organizations have now acknowledged the importance of working collaboratively with other professions and have advocated that education programs prepare students to collaborate across professions through the development of interprofessional education programs. At this time there is little evidence to show that when professionals learn together that this enables them, in practice and in the future, to work more collaboratively to achieve client goals.

There is a gap in the current evaluation literature that …

A Dream Derailed?: The English-Speaking Caribbean Diaspora In Revolutionary Cuba, Andrea Queeley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation describes and analyzes the evolution of English-speaking Caribbean identity in Cuba. In seeking to explain why Cubans of English-speaking Caribbean descent moved to revitalize their ethnic institutions during the Special Period, it (1) evaluates the characteristics and social position of the English-speaking Caribbean communities prior to the Revolution, (2) explores the impact of the Revolution on individuals and communities, in particular their experience of social mobility and participation in revolutionary struggle, and (3) focuses on their experience during the Special Period in examining the relationship between cultural narratives among black immigrants and their descendants and shifting levels of …

The Romantic Unconscious: Conflict And Compromise In The Research Of Romantic Love, Joseph S. Reynoso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social scientists continue empirically researching the psychology of romantic love. However, there is little attention spent evaluating the direction and nature of this work. In this theoretical study, the author argues that the research literature presents a limited view of romantic relationships. A contributing factor is the relative inattention to the interplay of conscious and unconscious mental processes in empirical models. The author examines the prevalent model of studying relationships for its assumptions about the accessibility of psychological states and the accuracy of participant reports. To support his case, the author reviews research that explores the limits of a psychology …