Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Constructing Urban Life : A Study Of Automobile Dependency In 148 Mid-Size U.S. Cities., Chad Paul Frederick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Automobile-dependent sprawl remains the dominant urban development paradigm in the United States. One reason for this is that the automobile is assumed to be more beneficial to the local economy than it is detrimental to society. Both sides of this assumption are wrong. First, local economies do not benefit much from automobile dependency. On the contrary, multimodal cities have lower unemployment, higher wages for African-Americans, and more efficient property markets. In addition, while it is true that multimodality means slightly higher taxes, the total value of living in multimodal cities far surpasses automobile-dependent cities with a massively improved quality of …

Mitigating Intimate Partner Violence To Promote Safe Linkage To Care For South African Women Who Test Hiv+ During Mobile Counseling And Testing., Leslie Lauren Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sources warn the global HIV/AIDS epidemic will not be halted without significant reductions in Intimate partner violence (IPV). South African women have been hardest hit by the HIV-IPV link, suffering deleterious health outcomes as sequelae of significant barriers to HIV care. Extant literature focuses on HIV prevention, and there is a paucity of effective methods for mitigating IPV-related barriers among women living with HIV. This study was a Phase II trial testing the effectiveness and safety of the HIV IPV Risk and Safety (HIRS) protocol administered to women experiencing IPV and testing HIV+ during mobile HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT). …

Patterns Of Early Lexical And Gestural Development In Children With Williams Syndrome., Angela M. Becerra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addressed the early gestural and lexical development of very young children with Williams syndrome (WS), as measured by the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI, Fenson et al., 2007). Receptive vocabulary (RV), expressive vocabulary (EV), early gesture (EG), late gesture (LG), and total gesture (TG) abilities were considered. Findings from cross-sectional samples of 49 18-month-olds, 56 24-month-olds, and 55 30-month-olds indicated considerable variability within each age group, with almost all children evidencing significant delay as measured by the CDI norms. Strong concurrent correlations were found among RV, EV, EG, LG, and TG for each age group. Longitudinal analyses indicated …

La Minga As A Model Of Food Justice? : A Thesis On The Motivations And Practices Of Immigrant And Native-Citizen Growers At La Minga Cooperative Farm In Prospect, Ky., Tyler Austin Short

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Progressive and radical stakeholders in the local food system call for forms of agricultural production and distribution that dialectically oppose the dominant paradigm of corporate-controlled agribusiness. This ethnographic research engages with the question of whether La Minga is a model of food justice. I collected ethnographic data from May 2015 to March 2016 via informal conversations and semi-structured interviews with members of the farm as well as secondary data gleaned from literature on anarchism, political economy, and food and agriculture. La Minga serves as a small-scale example of immigrants and native-citizens exercising their human right to produce healthy, culturally-appropriate food …

An Evaluation Of Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis Applied To Landsat 8 Oli Images For Mapping Land Cover In Southern Africa's Savanna., Fernando Ferreira Caixeta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mapping land cover in southern Africa’s savannas using traditional pixel based remote sensing techniques can be very challenging due to the heterogeneity of its vegetation structure and the spectral difficulty in separating similar land covers across various land uses. In order to overcome these complications, a Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) provides a potential remote sensing approach to quantify spectral variation in the physical environment at a subpixel level. The MESMA approach was applied in the study area of the Mayuni Conservancy, in Namibia. Results show that 32.3% of the study area is covered by photosynthetic vegetation (PV), 32.0% …

Framing Bottled Water : An Analysis Of The Framing Contest Between The Anti-Bottled Water Movement And The Bottled Water Industry., Eileen Schuhmann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Frame analysis is paired with documentary analysis to analyze the framing techniques of two opposing groups: the Anti-Bottled Water Movement (ABWM) and the bottled water industry. Specifically, this research examines the core framing tasks, frame alignment processes and master frames utilized by two ABWM organizations, Corporate Accountability International and Food & Water Watch, and one bottled water industry group, International Bottled Water Association. The analysis reveals that both groups engage in all three core framing tasks: diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing, however, the bottled water industry was found to prioritize prognostic framing to undermine the frames of the ABWM. Both …

Exploring Differences Between The Health And Wellness Of State Police Officers And Community Corrections Professionals., Rodney Allen Copenhaver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a comparison study of health and wellness outcomes for a sample of law enforcement officers and a sample of community corrections professionals within the same state. As such, it is the first attempt to determine and compare the independent variables which are significant predictors of law enforcement officer and community corrections professionals’ health and wellness for criminal justice employees working in the same context. Data used in the research was gathered from nearly identical health and wellness surveys distributed to the sample of law enforcement officers and the sample of community corrections professionals. Logistic, negative binomial, and …

Global Population Distributions And The Environment : Discerning Observed Global And Regional Patterns., Jeremiah J. Nieves

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Between 1990 to 2015, numerous groups used ancillary data about the environment surrounding populations to more accurately map global populations from standard census data. No comprehensive study has been undertaken to characterize the observed relationships between population density and ancillary data. Better understanding these relationships may produce more accurate population maps, focus resources on new datasets with a high probability of modelling importance, and lead to expanded end-user applications. This study examined these relationships by extracting variable importances from 36 independently run, country-specific population models from the WorldPop project’s population data. Covariate data describing urban/suburban extents were found to be …

Casting Calls On The Hillbilly Highway : A Content Analysis Of Appalachian-Based Reality Television Programming., Dan Thelman Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This analysis examines two contemporary reality television shows set in the Appalachian region of the United States - Appalachian Outlaws and Moonshiners. I contextualized the portrayals by tracing the intertwined social, political and economic factors that influenced the evolution of mediated Appalachian stereotypes since the mid-1800s. Beginning with Cultivation Theory, which holds television to be most powerful and persuasive medium available for most people, I expanded the theoretical base to consider the programs to be part of a complex intertextual phenomenon involving various media. I found stereotypes of the Appalachian region and people to be readily present in both …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Communality In Louisville Community Gardens., Victoria Ann Montgomery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental change and food security issues boost interest in green initiatives, which in turn motivate policy makers and the general public toward the support and maintenance of urban community gardens. In Louisville Kentucky, an urban heat island in the United States, support for community gardens requires greater community support and volunteers. Objectives and organization of community gardens vary, as issues in production and sustainability are not the same for all garden communities and are contributing factors to their degree of success. Community gardens represent elements from both communal living and community but vary in their degree of communality. Using qualitative …

9/11 Memorials : Contested Memory, Competing Narratives, And Healing., Jennifer A. Fraley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I examine the role that monuments and memorials play in our lives including artistically, historically, and culturally. I begin by examining what monuments and memorials are and how these public works should be their own classification of public art. I argue there are many things these works can be (place of mourning, celebration, historical marker, etc.) and should not be (a single source for a historical accounting); yet, memorials do have the necessary condition of creating a referential relationship between the viewer and the memorialized objects. Without this relationship, the work fails as a memorial. Memorials are …

The Evolution And Analysis Of Legal Protection For Medical Conscientious Objectors., John Peter Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conscientious objection has a long tradition of legal and social recognition in America. It evolved as a subset of the constitutional free exercise of religion, and encompassed medical practice as well as the military after Roe v. Wade in 1973. Its constitutional protection abruptly changed with a Supreme Court case in 1990. Thereafter, medical conscientious objection – the exemption from performing certain acts by medical professionals – was regulated largely by legislation. Many of the conflicts arose and were resolved at the state level. Yet there is little study at the state level of why conscientious objection is protected or …

An Exploratory Study Of Existing State Anti-Bullying Statutes., John-Robert Curtin, Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative exploratory study examines the current state of school anti-bullying legislation in the United States by reviewing the 50 state statutes and builds on the work of Sameer Hinduja, and Justin W. Patchin, (2015) and Sacco, D, Silbaugh, K, Corredor, F, Casey, J, Doherty, D. (2013). Their work on comparing state bullying statutes did not address restorative justice/practices, protections for special populations, safe-reporting systems, or stakeholder knowledge. This study addresses these four areas that were not addressed and they are the focus. In addition, this exploratory study addresses the following questions:

• What are the theories that explain youth bullying? …

Exchange Patterns And Relations In Collaborative Governance., Charles Wharton Kaye-Essien

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collaborative governance has received considerable attention in recent years. From environmental resource management to public safety, collaborative governance continues to play a vital role in regional problem solving. In spite of this increasing popularity previous attempts to model the political, economic, and demographic determinants of collaboration have in most cases produced inconsistent results, thereby undermining the ability to generalize from such findings. Additionally, our understanding of the relational patterns that emanate from collaborative agreements remains fairly rudimentary. The main objective of this research is to address some of the gaps in the literature and improve our understanding of collaborative governance …

Applying Situational Crime Prevention To Terrorism Against Airports And Aircrafts., Molly Mae Block

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation identifies the characteristics of terrorism against airports and aircrafts and the appropriate measures to prevent or reduce the damage of this crime. The situational crime prevention framework, incorporating routine activity theory, rational choice theory, and crime pattern theory, is used to identify techniques to reduce the opportunity for terrorism targeting airports and aircrafts. This study is a first attempt to determine which situational characteristics may be relevant in attacks specifically targeting airports or aircrafts. Data for this dissertation comes from the Global Terrorism Database and covers terrorist attacks targeting airports or aircrafts from 2002 to 2014. The sample …

Same-Sex Child Molestation Within The Boy Scouts Of America Initiation And Termination In Victim Narratives., Leah Catherine Jihee Shon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies of child molestation have largely used a sample of either incarcerated or convicted sex offenders. Previous studies have also failed to provide substantial analyses regarding how physical contacts between child victims and adult perpetrators were initiated and terminated at the crime scene; few studies have focused on “what exactly happened” while physical touching was taking place through an analysis of behavioral sequences of both child victims and adult offenders. Although previous literature on interpersonal child abuse used child victims of sexual abuse as their data source, those studies focused on effective victim treatment plans to deal with victims’ …

Collegiate Student-Athlete Perceptions Of The Impact Of Concussion On Academic Performance, Robert H. Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to indicate the experiences of collegiate student-athletes in meeting academic demands when experiencing prolonged recovery from concussion and if they perceive a need for academic accommodations. There is a gap in present concussion and an absence of studies that examine if academic accommodations are helpful during concussion recovery. The study was guided by 3 research questions focused on the return to learn during the recovery process. The study was limited to 9 student-athletes currently enrolled at three postsecondary institutions: Christian Brothers University, Rhodes College, and the University of Memphis. The study participants met …

Psychotherapy Dropout : The Influence Of Ethnic Identity And Stigma On Early Termination., Le'keldric Jawon Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although clients continue to drop out of psychotherapy, researchers have made few inroads into understanding the dropout phenomenon. Clinical studies have reported client dropout rates based on demographic factors (e.g., race, socioeconomic status, educational status). However, few studies have investigated the cultural correlates that may underlie these demographic factors and affect client termination. Furthermore, none have provided an empirically driven explanation as to why some clients drop out more often than others. In two studies, I explore dropout in two settings: a community mental health center and a university counseling center. Guided by current theory and research, I will examine …

Effects Of Video Game Streaming On Consumer Attitudes And Behaviors, Lisa B. Foster

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Video game streaming has introduced to consumers a new method of creating branded content. Popular streaming platforms receive millions of broadcasters and viewers every month, and the current examines the influence of this type user-generated content on consumer attitudes and behaviors. The goal of this study is to understand how video game streams function as a marketing tool. To investigate this, a quantitative survey was designed and measured participants’ video gaming habits and their perceptions of credibility, usefulness of content, group identification, and purchase intention. Heavier gaming habits were found to be positively related to perceived credibility in a user-generated …

Women And Healthcare In Appalachia: Impeding Circumstance And The Role Of Technology, Ashley Cano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For decades, healthcare access and quality in central and southern Appalachia have trailed the rest of the country. Entrenched poverty and low educational attainment compound healthcare problems. This study examines the healthcare obstacles women encounter in southern and central Appalachia and analyzes how technology use, such as Internet searching and social media affect women’s healthcare decisions. Data were analyzed from four focus groups conducted with women from the region. Results indicate that seeing a physician or not did not influence women’s propensity to search the Internet for health-related information or to seek support through social media sites. Additionally, women reported …

Spirituality And Psychological Well-Being Among Als Caregivers: Hope And Perceived Stress As Mediators, Bridget R. Jeter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The empirical study of the salutary relationship between spirituality/religiousness and psychological well-being is burgeoning. However, mechanisms of this association have received less empirical attention. Theory suggests that spirituality/religiousness may lead to positive psychological characteristics such as hope, which may function as a means of coping in the context of a significant stressor or stressful situation. The perceived burden and stress associated with caring for individuals with chronic illnesses such as ALS is significant, and caregivers may be at risk for increased symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety, somatic symptoms, and other deleterious psychological well-being related outcomes. Within the context of …

Elsewhere, Amber Law

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The photographer discusses the work in Elsewhere, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at East Tennessee State University in the Reece Museum, located in Johnson City, Tennessee. The exhibition is displayed from March 1 through March 31, 2016 and consists of 17 color photographs and 3 videos representing a body of work that visually communicates the photographer’s interest in transient lifestyles.

The influence and research regarding the concept is communicated by a focus on artists, literature and art historical knowledge that pertain to Law’s work. The artists included are Rineke Dijkstra, Jocelyn Lee, Lise Sarfati, Stephen Shore, Robert …

A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experience Of Adult Female Sexual Assault Survivors, Ann N. Hellman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sexual assault is an international problem affecting hundreds of thousands of women each year. Significant psychological, physical, and financial consequences result from sexual assault. The prevalence of sexual assault suggests that nurses frequently encounter survivors yet minimal literature exists focusing on how nurses should adjust their care to meet the needs of this population.

The phenomenon of sexual assault has been widely studied from multiple perspectives and across disciplines. Likewise, studies of spiritual and religious beliefs and practices and their impact at the end-of-life and in disease, grief, and loss are extensive in nursing literature. However, a nominal number of …

Divergent Discourse: A Case Study Analyzing The Effects Of Campus Communication About Sexual Assault, Melissa H. Nipper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzes campus discourse at a university in south central Appalachia in an effort to highlight the role of communication in the prevention of sexual assault and its powerful effects on communities and individuals. Using a critical feminist lens, this qualitative case study identifies the communication goals, interpretations, and strategies of two important speech communities who participate in sexual assault discourse on college campuses—campus professionals who communicate about the issue of sexual assault (issue managers) and sexual assault survivors whose identity is shaped by sexual assault (identity managers). While both groups talk about the problem, the parties diverge on …

Exploring Ethnic Stereotypes Through The Production Of Five Short Films, Ines Galiano Torres

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a nontraditional thesis that combines social research in ethnic stereotypes in TV and film with the creative process of film production. This paper contains the formal step of research, in addition to the details on the production and creation of five original short films related to the issue of ethnic representations.

Oregon's Death With Dignity Act: Socially Constructing A Good Death, Erin E. Mauck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As aid-in-dying legislation expands across the United States, this study examines the dynamics influencing participation in Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. In addition to data from secondary sources, this thesis analyzes field research data collected in Oregon, including 14 in-depth interviews with volunteers and employees of two advocacy organizations at the center of legalized physician-assisted death. Themes emerged including the conditions that motivate participation, the importance of both personal and professional autonomy, the significance of a good death, and the growth of open dialogues about end of life choices. This thesis concludes with a discussion of the impact Death with …

Love On - The Life Of A Suicide Survivor: A Performance Autoethnographic Study, Patricia R. Wheeler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Suicide touches the lives of millions of people each year in this country alone, yet conversations about suicide loss and survival after a loss remain taboo and often do not happen. The story I performed for this performance autoethnographic study centers on my life as a survivor of suicide. It provides a starting point for dialog regarding trauma, grief, and suicide loss. The narrative was constructed directly following the sudden death of my father, which had a direct effect on my ability to produce artistic work. The development, staging and performance of the story were altered to account for the …

Middle School And Community Rockford, Illinios, Katera B. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study of 99 middle school students in an urban area examined the relationship between community factors and student outcomes. The community factors that were examined were school violence based on if a student was a victim or witness and also if the student was an offender of school violence, violence and substance use exposure based on student’s home location, and socioeconomic status were also examined. Student outcomes were examined based on academic testing (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers or PARCC), grade point average (GPA), and school suspension (both Out-of-School Suspension or OSS and in-school-suspension/Alternative Learning …

A Case Study: The Factors Associated With Student Homelessness, Brittani Hudspeth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study is to identify the factors associated with student homelessness. There are currently more than 1.5 million children who are living in a homeless family (National Center for Family Homelessness, 2009), and a percentage of that number are homeless students living on their own. This study engages existing literature to identify the causes of student homelessness and the impacts it has on the lives of those students. The study was conducted by using quantitative research through a Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) and qualitative research by utilizing a psychosocial assessment called the home, education and …

The Relationship Of Empathy And Impulsivity To The Dark Tetrad Of Personality, Ashlee Justice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Though relationships between empathy, impulsivity, and personality traits making up the Dark Tetrad of personality have been studied individually, the relationship of empathy and impulsivity to the Dark Tetrad of personality simultaneously has not been studied. The current study examined the relationship of both empathy and impulsivity to the Dark Tetrad simultaneously, and assessed specific combinations of traits, empathy, and impulsivity. Participants from a private university completed online surveys. Correlations and predictions of variables were examined. Individuals who rated high on Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism had significantly lower scores on empathy subscales, and individuals rating high on these as well …