Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Products Of Their Environment? Nuclear Proliferation And The Emerging Multipolar International System, Jonathan David Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The world is shifting from a unipolar system following the end of the Cold War to a multipolar system that is ushered in by "the rise of the rest." This change in the global structure has led some analysts to predict an increase in nuclear weapons proliferation caused by increased uncertainty and a decrease in alliances and security assurances. Nuclear proliferation, however, will not increase because these types of predictions are founded upon realist assumptions that inaccurately predict the characteristics of the emerging multipolar system as well as inaccurately understanding calculations of states with regard to nuclear weapons programs. I …

Specialty Service Lines In The United States Hospital System: Old Wine, New Bottles, Michael Sajovetz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of specialty service lines in the United States health care system presents many significant questions regarding the access to, provision of, and financing of healthcare. In general terms, specialty service lines represent the newest development in several important trends in the American hospital system and reflect important trends in the wider economy. Many claims have been made regarding the effect of physician-owned specialty hospitals, from their exemption from self-referral prohibitions, their diversion of services away from general hospitals that use high profit margins to subsidize the "safety net," and concerns regarding the over-provision of technologically complex treatments in …

Personal Perceptions And Organizational Factors Influencing Police Discretion The Case Of Turkish Patrol Officers' Responsiveness, Hidayet Tasdoven

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Police officers make decisions at the street level in a variety of situations that have direct impact on quality of life, justice in society, and individual freedom. These decisions inherently involve the exercise of discretion, since successfully performed police tasks are linked to the officer‘s choosing among alternative courses of action. Appropriateness of unsupervised decisions taken under street contingencies remains questionable in terms of police-behavior legitimacy. Law enforcement agencies seek ways to control excessive discretion to avoid undesired consequences of police discretion and maintain organizational legitimacy. Traditionally, organizations developed reward and sanction structures that aimed to shape officer behavior on …

Caring Work: Opening A Space Of Possibility For Exploring Transnational Feminist Solidarity Between Privileged And Marginalized Women, Beverly Romero Natividad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neoliberalism, through its emphasis on personal responsibility and individual freedom in accelerating economic development globally, has only pushed women further into the margin of society. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs), which impose state budget cuts on healthcare and welfare programs, particularly have kept poor women and women of color in poverty and generally, have exploited women's labor. However, in this age of neoliberalism, women's solidarity becomes more significant. Because neoliberalism is founded on individualism, its downfall rests on alliance-building. Against this backdrop, I explore the possibility of fostering transnational feminist solidarity between privileged and marginalized women engaged in formal caring work. …

A Communication Approach To Understanding Rapid Responses To Others: The Importance Of Flexibility Across Goal Conditions, Betsy App

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two studies evaluated the communication approach to rapid display responses (RDRs) to others by 1) examining the influence of specific communicative goals on RDRs and, 2) identifying the social outcomes associated with correspondence between communicative goals and responses. Both studies showed that people in general can change the magnitude of their most rapid responses according to communication goals to either respond or suppress responses. For some stimulus-response pairs, the ability to flexibly deploy RDRs to align with goals is associated with positive social outcomes for those who are socially active. In Study 1, individual differences among socially active first-year college …

The Limitations Of Governance Indicators In Relation To Post-Disaster Recovery, Susan C. Paganelli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Catastrophic natural disasters remain a constant and recurring mortal threat to people around the world. Since prevention of the events themselves is impossible, it is important to examine those factors which can reduce the loss of life and enable successful recovery. We intuitively expect good governance to be one of these factors. This paper discusses the concepts of governance and long-term disaster recovery and the difficulties inherent in numerically capturing these qualities. It explores the correlation between governance indicators and three development and economic measurements of recovery. Three case studies are used to qualitatively and anecdotally address the topic.

Living Culture Embodied: Constructing Meaning In The Contra Dance Community, Kathryn E. Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In light of both the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the efforts of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in producing the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, it has become clear that work with intangible cultural heritage in museums necessitates staff to carry out ethnographic fieldwork among heritage communities. In order to illustrate this methodology, an ethnographic study was conducted in the Denver contra dance community to better explore conceptions of value and meaning related to the community by its members. Further, the contra dance findings point to certain issues related to defining …

Aware: Analyzing The Impact Of An Anti-Human Trafficking Advocacy Curriculum Using Sixth Grade Students In Colorado, Alex Kornelius Monroe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human trafficking is an international problem that penetrates every society on the globe. Trafficking in children for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, and domestic servitude occurs in every state of the United States. Education is key in preventing human trafficking and American students lack proper knowledge of the issue. This study seeks to bridge this shortcoming through the creation and implementation of a holistic anti-trafficking advocacy curriculum that not only informs and motivates students and educators toward advocacy, but also meets Colorado state academic standards. Case studies using sixth grade students in Denver show the impact that …

Through My Mother's Eyes: The Lifelong Journey Of Raising Children With And Without Disabilities, Lucie P. Lawrence

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the use of narrative, this study sought to document the life-altering journey of 32 mothers raising children at various stages of development and with a variety of disabilities. The main questions guiding this research study consider the lived experiences of mothers raising children with and without disabilities; what these mothers reveal about the journey with their children; how these mothers define motherhood; and how their definition of motherhood differs for each of their children. To address the research questions and capture the narratives of participants, a two-pronged qualitative methodology was applied, using diaries compiled by participants and in-depth interviews …

Distribution Shifts And Declines In Autonomous Consumption: A Great Recipe For A Great Recession, David Michael Peterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Great Recession has been drawing the attention of many due mainly to its global impact that has been considered very similar to the Great Depression. So have been the root causes. Among the competing explanations, the present study focuses on two of them that were the same factors - among others - to explain the root causes of the Great Depression: the dramatic shift in income distribution and the sudden drop in autonomous (or wealth-based) consumption. Accordingly the present study examines first, the role of income distribution shifts to demonstrate the fact that such a shift placed a significantly …

Modeling Social Participation As Predictive Of Life Satisfaction And Social Support: Scale Or Index?, Anne T. Zelenka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social participation in late adulthood through activities such as volunteering with charities, playing sports, and joining clubs can increase life satisfaction, directly by providing enjoyable engagement and indirectly by increasing a person's sense of social connectedness. When reported levels of different types of activities are used to measure social participation, conventional measure development procedures based on classical test theory lead to a proliferation of small participation subscales that don't show good reliability, don't have theoretical power, and don't match researchers' conceptions of the dimensions of participation. Based on the poor performance of conventional approaches, some researchers have suggested that social …

China And The United States' Recovery From The Global Financial Crisis, Yufei Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Faced with the global financial crisis, which has a large impact on the world's economy, China and the United Stated took different actions to pull the economy out of it, based on the fairly different financial, fiscal, and even political systems they have. This thesis focuses on the comparison of the financial and fiscal systems and trade structures between the two different countries, and how these have impact on their stimulus packages, thus influencing the economic recovery as a whole.

Colorado's Large Snow Events' Impact On Tree Ring Growth And Dillon Reservoir, Katrina Leona Marzetta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Meteorological observations from 1894 through 2010 suggest that 17 historically large snow events occurred in the mountains of Colorado within Denver's water supply region. Of these 16 events, 14 can be identified in precipitation sensitive tree ring records as positive climatic pointer years. If these storms were to occur today, they would have the potential to fill reservoirs in Denver Water's supply system, even after years of sustained drought. These "drought busters" have the potential to refill Dillon Reservoir by increasing average yearly inflow up to 146% of the previous year's inflow. Such drought busters can help Denver recover from …

Structured Finance And Its Effects On Macroeconomic Stability, Brian Charles Fahey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tools and techniques of structured finance have changed banking remarkably over the past twenty years. This area grew to become larger than the sum total of traditional banking deposits in 2007. Despite this, the field is poorly understood and its connection to macroeconomic stability was underestimated until the credit crisis. This paper explores the structured finance market in three phases. First, the market is broken into parts based on the incentives and motivations of each of the three major agents in the field. Next, a critical review of pricing models that are used to justify the valuations of the …

Taking A Deep Breadth: The Rhetorical Construction Of Solidarity In The American Labor Movement, William O'Shannon Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the rhetorical fragments in three case studies of the American Labor Movement constituting movement members in solidarity. Using Kenneth Burke's discussion of rhetorical substance, this project explores the possibilities for developing deep and broad forms of solidarity within the American Labor Movement. Rhetorical fragments of the Industrial Workers of the World, the United Farm Workers, and contingent faculty unionization efforts are explored.

I argue Burke's ideas of substance and identification provide a powerful lens through which we can examine the solidary practices of social movements. Through the examination of the case studies mentioned, I demonstrate that solidarity …

Palestinian Women: Mothers, Martyrs And Agents Of Political Change, Rebecca Ann Otis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand the role of women as political actors in the rise of Islamo-nationalist movement in Palestine. Using a historical and ethnographic approach, it examines the changing opportunity structures available to Palestinian women in the nationalist struggle between 1987 and 2007. It looks into the sites of political engagement of Palestinian women as mothers, organizers and political candidates, suicide bombers, and nonviolent activists with attention paid to the evolution of the Islamist ideology within these four pathways for political participation. The goal of this work is to engage the question of how some Palestinian women who appear …

Instability In The South: The Implications Of Mexican State Failure On U.S. National Security, Shadd Allen Pease

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the implications of Mexican state failure on United States national security. The growing instability in Mexico due to the actions of the various drug trafficking organizations (DTOs), government corruption, possible human rights abuses and Mexican insurgent groups is examined in order to understand why the Mexican state may fail.

This thesis explores the implications of Mexican state failure on U.S. national security by providing possible scenarios such as continued operations into the United States by Mexican drug trafficking organizations, DTO relationships with American street gangs, regional instability, possible exploitation of the Mexican homeland by terrorist organizations, U.S. …

Who's Doing The Dirty Work? Development And Preliminary Validation Of A Measure Of Housework, Jocelyn Nicole Petrella

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study developed a new instrument for measuring couples' attitudes and behaviors regarding housework. This study was conducted in two phases. The first phase focused on developing reliable subscales that would reflect various dimensions of housework. Phase one consisted of 199 individual participants in committed relationships who were working at least 20 hours per week and shared a single home address with their partner. Participants answered questions related to housework through an online survey. An exploratory factors analysis (EFA) revealed eight dominant factors from the housework questionnaire, labeled as: 1) Fairness, 2) Value of Housework, 3) Gender Role Attitudes, …

Global Human Rights In An Age Of Consumerism, Joel Richard Pruce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces the emergence of the global human rights movement, investigates the role of popular culture as a vehicle for mobilization, and critically examines why the movement has failed to adequately politicize its supporters in the process. Beginning in the mid-1970s, a broad shift began to take place in which ordinary people were routinely confronted with human suffering, as conflict and crisis assumed a role as ritualized news events. The public response to these phenomena demonstrated a capacity for solidarity and engagement based on cosmopolitan premises. The inception of a collective ethos of compassion, an awareness of the other …

The Relationship Between Course Syllabi And Participant Evaluation Reactions Across Web-Based And Face-To-Face Courses, David Richard Glerum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A common form of training or education evaluation involves the examination of course participant reactions towards various aspects of the course for summative evaluation purposes. Participant reactions have been examined within the framework of a comparison between online and face to face courses often with a slight positive weight towards online courses (Sitzmann et al., 2006). Past research on this topic has denoted a need for studies examining the relationship between objective course characteristics and participant reactions. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between participant reactions of a sample of geographically disbursed teachers enrolled in a large, national professional …

An Ecological Analysis Of Social And Economic Influences On Black And White Infant Mortality Risk In Orange County, Fl, Littleton, Vanessa Lopez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black health disparities are a salient public health issue with blacks in every socioeconomic level at a greater health disadvantage than their white counterparts. In particular, disparity in infant mortality rates between blacks and whites have widened in recent decades to differentials never before experienced in the United States. Social ecologists investigating the myriad of individual and environmental risk factors have failed to fully account for the persistent differential. This study examines the relationships between individual and environmental influences on the health risk experienced by blacks, whites, as well as the differential between the two populations. This multi-level analysis was …

Does Religiosity Deter Juvenile Delinquency?, Brittany N. Murray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study presented here uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Wave I (Add Health) to examine the association between juvenile delinquency and religiosity. Juvenile delinquency is an area that has received increasing research interest over the last decade; however, much of this research has primarily focused on family, peers, and education as factors that may reduce delinquent involvement. While all of these are influential in the lives of youth, it is possible there are other factors as well. Religiosity has been shown to have influential effects throughout the life course; however, little research has focused specifically …

Financial Cultural Capital: Cultural Capital In The Context Of Higher Education And Federal Student Loans, Joey Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploratory quantitative sociological analysis of the financial knowledge and experience of undergraduate students who have borrostudent loans. It also explores students' feelings about their loans. I surveyed 100 undergraduate students who had contracted student loans to gather information about their knowledge of financial instruments and feelings about their student loan debt. To explore students' knowledge and feelings, I created three indices: knowledge, feelings, and financial cultural capital and tested for racial differences between Blacks and Whites. The knowledge index investigates students' knowledge of the terms of their loans and experience with basic financial instruments. The feelings …

Examining The Sleep Hygiene Behaviors Of Migraineurs In A University Setting, Ashli Brooke Walters

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Migraine is a commonly-occurring primary headache disorder that is often comorbid with many conditions, including depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. Previous research has shown that sleep problems are comamong migraineurs, with insomnia being the most prevalent. Insomnia in migraineurs has many possible causes, including inadequate sleep hygiene, or participating in behaviors that are not conducive to sleep. Modifying sleep hygiene behavior has been shown to be effective in reducing migraine intensity and frequency, but research characterizing the specific sleep hygiene behaviors of migraineurs is limited. The present study sought to identify problematic sleep behaviors and their association with episodic migraine …

Zaftig: A Magazine Prototype And Accompanying Business Plan, Alexandra Wagner Pence

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Currently, there is no voice or home for plus-sized women within the mainstream media. The media industry reflects and promotes an increasingly thin ideal, one that multiple studies have concluded is causing negatiVe self-perception and low self-esteem among young women nationwide. This is especially true for the full-figured woman, whom society tells that she is not skinny enough, and therefore not good enough. This thesis project sets out to prove the host of social benefits that could and would be offered as a result of the instatement of a mainstream women's interest magazine geared specifically towards young plus-sized women. To …

The Implications Of Virtual Environments In Digital Forensic Investigations, Farrah M. Patterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research paper discusses the role of virtual environments in digital forensic investigations. With virtual environments becoming more prevalent as an analysis tool in digital forensic investigations, it’s becoming more important for digital forensic investigators to understand the limitation and strengths of virtual machines. The study aims to expose limitations within commercial closed source virtual machines and open source virtual machines. The study provides a brief overview of history digital forensic investigations and virtual environments, and concludes with an experiment with four common open and closed source virtual machines; the effects of the virtual machines on the host machine as …

A Sense Of Place Ethnographic Reflection On Two Palestinian Life Histories, Patrick H. Barrett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a labyrinth of complex social connections between people and places that deserves careful anthropological reflection. People do not simply occupy places; they experience them, infusing them with life and social meaning. Basso (1996:53) argues that ethnography has reported little about the complex ways in which people are “alive to the world around them.” Anthropology is currently experiencing a resurging emphasis on place that seeks to account for its remarkably social features. Rather than primarily thinking about place when determining a location for fieldwork, emerging anthropological reflection shows the discipline is repositioning itself to explore the complex and often …

Measuring Multilevel Constructs Theoretical And Methodological Features Of Team Behavioral Process Under Compilational Models, Toshio Murase

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since at least the 1950s, researchers interested in studying the dynamics of small groups have struggled with how best to measure interaction processes. Although team process measurement issues are not particularly unique in terms of content, measuring multilevel phenomena presents an interesting problem because structural aspects are integral components of emergence. The elemental content of multilevel phenomena is wholly unique and distinguishable from the elemental content of composite units, and emerges as individual behaviors compile to higher levels of analyses. Analogous to chemical structures, behavioral phenomena manifest at higher levels in different structural patterns as members connect to one another …

Divided Government And Congressional Foreign Policy A Case Study Of The Post-World War Ii Era In American Government, David Eric Feinman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of American federal government, during periods within which these two branches are led by different political parties, to discover whether the legislative branch attempts to independently legislate and enact foreign policy by using “the power of the purse” to either appropriate in support of or refuse to appropriate in opposition to military engagement abroad. The methodology for this research includes the analysis and comparison of certain variables, including public opinion, budgetary constraints, and the relative majority of the party that holds power in one …

The Israeli Military's Key Relationship To Hezbollah Terror, Mazen Kurdy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the establishment and expansion of Hezbollah. It uses a policy perspective in explaining the growth of this organization. Moreover, it focuses on Israel’s disproportionate use of force in Lebanon as a major cause behind the very existence of Hezbollah. The analysis of Israeli policy will be done by examining three separate conflicts as case studies. These events are: the 1982 (Peace for Galilee) invasion of Lebanon that helped to create Hezbollah, the 1996 (Operation Grapes of Wrath) Hezbollah-Israeli conflict which served to bolster Hezbollah in Lebanon, and finally the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war which solidified Hezbollah as a …