Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Closer Look At Nabataean Burials, Anna Nielsen

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

The ancient city of Petra is famous for monumental rock-cut tombs. These structures contain two little-understood mortuary types: primary burial, in which corpses were interred without alteration, and secondary burial, in which corpses were exposed and defleshed. This research explores the circumstances under which Nabataeans received primary or secondary burial.

Evaluating Fall-Of Curves With Straight-Line Or Least Cost Path Distance, Robert J. Bischoff

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

A fundamental part of interaction is distance. Interaction can be modeled by plotting distance against the frequency of an object. My purpose it to evaluate whether straight-line distance is an acceptable proxy for actual distance or whether using more realistic distance measures is required. In this poster, I use the distribution of San Juan Red Ware in a portion of the southwestern United States to examine the differences between straight-line distance, the length of least cost paths (LCP), and the time to travel the LCP between points. San Juan Red Ware was produced in southeastern Utah between approximately A.D. 750 …

Substitution Of Religiosity For Socioeconomic Status And Its Correlation With Adolescent Drug Use, Jordan Coburn, Mikaela Dufur

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Adolescents with higher socioeconomic status participate in fewer negative activities. Religiosity is correlated with more positive activities. Religiosity can help through socialization: interacting with people who influence pro-social norms.

Social Anxiety Disorder In College Students And Its Differing Treatments, Taylor Hubbert

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

• Approximately one in six College Students report having anxiety or being treated for anxiety
• Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is defined as anxiety that is caused by social experiences, and an individuals fear/ phobia of social situations
• Research available to us on Social Anxiety Disorder is extensive. This review examined the symptomology and prevalence of SAD, and compared both individual therapy and group therapy as treatments for college students.

Family Educational Backgrounds Variations In Student Attitudes And Experiences Using The Sharps Utah Data, 2015, Mandy Chidester

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This research analyzed 150 variables within the SHARPS 2015 data to find the majority of differences that are coming between those grade school students who live with adults who have an education level of high school or less compared to the those who live with an adult who has completed college. The analyzed variables showed three main themes of major differences: monitoring of the student’s actions, neighborhood the student lives in, and student’s perception of drug risk. Also included is those variables who showed significant differences, but did not fall into any particular category. This categories show us areas of …

"Accounting" For Last Names: The Effect Of Surname Initial On Success In Academia, Natalie Wolford, Mason Snow

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

- Academic journals typically follow conventions of ordering authors by surname initial in both the title page as well as the bibliography section.

- Einav and Yariv (2006) find significant effects from the alphabetical placement of an Economics professor’s last name on their likelihood of gaining tenure.

- While the majority of accounting journals follow alphabetical conventions, some order the authors strictly on reported contribution.

Comparison Of Lifestyles Between Married And Unmarried Emerging Adults, Braden Wake, Jessica Hadfield, Makenzie Lewis, Toree Hafen

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Emerging adulthood contains many lifestyle changes such as leaving the comfort of home, working full time, and for some, getting married (Arnett, 2012). To unmarried emerging adults, marriage seems to be an important factor in the changing dynamics of friendship. Married friends seem to no longer attend social gatherings or participate in the same activities they once did. The question that this research team set out to answer is whether or not these observations actually exist or if they are imagined. This study examined areas of lifestyle, such as sociality, financial trends, personal priorities, stress, and religion for unmarried and …

Town Hall Drama: What's All The Gossip About?, Mckay Randall

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

When the new Congress took their seats at the beginning of 2017, Republicans were on a mission to replace Obamacare. To gear up for the legislative struggle, legislators took to the streets and towns of their districts to speak to constituents about Obamacare and other policies. During the first town halls in January and February, Republican legislators found themselves confronted with rowdy and raucous crowds who nearly shouted them down every time they had chance to speak. The News took note of this phenomena in late February and started reporting on the story. The popular headlines from The Washington Post, …

Collision Or Cohesion? Hmong Shamanism And Ontological Holism In France, Madison Harmer, Telisha Pantelakis

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

The Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia who’ve lived as forced migrants and political refugees for the past several hundred years. Current U.S. literature has attributed Hmong difficulties adapting to Western culture, specifically health care from shamanic practices. They claim that traditional and western healing practices are incompatible. (Franzen-Castle & Smith 2013, Fadiman 1997). While living in a small town in central France, we conducted an ethnographic study observing Hmong refugees and their interactions and beliefs between traditional healing practices and Western medicine to explore this claim.

The Benefits Of Culturally Adapted Mental Health Treatments: A Meta-Analysis, Juan Valladares, Madeleine Coenen, Niyeli Herrera, Yoojin Kim

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Cultural values, ideas, beliefs and word views may affect the way a mental intervention is received and therefore how effective it is. Historically, research has not focused on cultural minorities and these groups tend to have poorer success rates in treatments (Gonzalez et al., 2010). The purpose of this meta-analysis is to establish the aggregate effect of those mental health interventions that have been adapted to clients' cultural or ethnic backgrounds.

Second Generation Immigrants: Their Self-Esteem And Educational Aspirations, Anika Price

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Immigrants experience unique stresses & discrimination, which leads to lower levels of self-esteem. (Stets & Burke, 2003; Kao, 1999; Gee et al., 2010). Do Second-Generation Immigrants experience the same thing? If so, will that affect their educational expectations for the future?

Time For A Change: Continuous And Discontinuous Transformation In Highly Religious Families, Ashley Tuft

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

While change is a natural occurrence in marital and family relationships, there is an inadequate amount of literature that discusses how this “spontaneous” change occurs within families independent of professional intervention (Fincham, Stanley, & Beach, 2007). Religion is one instrument through which these changes are facilitated in families. We use life course, as explained in Elder (1994), as the theoretical framework for understanding religiously related transformation, focusing especially on the principles of timing, transitions, and turning points. While some research has used life course to understand religion, most of it does not discuss family-level change (Petts, 2009, 2014). The purpose …

It's No Accident: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Vehicle Safety Inspections, Alex Hoagland, Trevor Woolley

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Traffic fatalities have fallen steadily over the past two decades, particularly those due to car failure. Many have attributed this fall to safer vehicle technology. This trend has led many states to reevaluate mandatory vehicle safety inspection programs. This study sought to answer the question, does the elimination of vehicle safety inspections have an effect on traffic fatalities?

Has Party Identification Changed In Utah?, Devin Johanson

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Three weeks before the 2016 election, Utah was labeled as a swing state by most main-stream media outlets. The offensive rhetoric from both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and the rise of a popular independent candidate increased the potential for changes in the party identity of the Utah electorate. My research question is as follows: How has party identification changed in the state of Utah between the 2012 and 2016 elections?

Do Municipal Officials Represent The Views Of Their Constituents?, Steven Jamieson

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Municipalities make decisions that effect millions of Americans every day. Research has been done to assess the link between citizen’s preferences and municipal policy (Tausanovitchand Warshaw2014). However, the link between the policies and the officials who make them is missing.

Reconciliation In Religious Families, Betsy Hughes Barrow, David C. Dollahite, Loren D. Marks

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

How do religious families resolve conflict and heal relationships? Through an in-depth study of interviews with 198 highly religious families, we explored motivations, processes, and outcomes of reconciliation. Through this analysis we have identified spiritual, relational, personal and practical processes, in the context of everyday family life, that help families strengthen relationships and resolve differences.

Neural Networks Of Eye-Movements During Reading, Trenton D. Jackman, Benjamin Carter, Steven Luke

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Reading is an important part of normal life. We move our eyes 2-4 times per second. Each movement is called a saccade, and each pause is called a fixation. Progress has been made understanding saccade control during deliberate tasks. Not much is known about saccade control during more automatic tasks like reading. Using fMRI concurrently run with eye-tracking we looked at BOLD MRI response compared to amplitude of saccades, for 43 participants performing a simple paragraph reading task.

Literature Review Of Animal Hoarding, Corina L. Schroeder

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This paper reviews the characteristic features, origin, and treatment of animal hoarding. It evaluates the similarities and differences of hoarding disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, showing that it seems to be more closely related to object hoarding. This disorder often originates with a traumatic life event, which triggers a psychological vulnerability to compulsively collect animals. In some cases, the hoarder was neglected by parental figures at a young age, so he or she developed relationships with animals to cope. Other theories for the origin include addiction models, delusional disorders, and dementia models. Several theories are reviewed to explain the characteristic lack …

Sex And Money: Exploring How Sexual And Financial Stressors, Perceptions And Resources Influence Marital Instability For Men And Women, David B. Allsop, E. Jeffrey Hill, Ashley B. Lebaron, Roy A. Bean

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This project explores how finances and sex relate to each other and to marital in-stability for men and women. Data come from the Flourishing Families Project (N = 301 couples) and are organized using the ABC-X model of family stress. Financial stress predicted sexual dissatisfaction for men but not for women. Parenting stress predicted sexual dissatisfaction for women but not for men. Financial dissatisfaction and sexual dissatisfaction predicated marital instability for both men and women. Financial and relational communication fully mediated all significant relationships with marital instability except in the mediational model, couple income still predicted marital instability for men.

Policy Reforms Amidst Corruption: Ukrainian Attitudes Toward Economic Development, Eliza Riley

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This research examines what economic policies Ukrainians think should—and could– work in Ukraine to reform the economic system and combat widespread corruption. This study tests how region specific determinants and corruption perception levels influence attitudes toward democracy and optimism toward future reform possibilities in Ukraine.

Does Ideology Trump Party Loyalty, Soren J. Schmidt

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Party affiliation and political ideology are typically paired together. It’s consequently difficult to disentangle their individual impact on vote choice. Utah’s 2016 election presented a rare exception to this trend with non-conservative Republican nominee (Donald Trump) and conservative independent candidate (Evan McMullin). Do voters prioritize party loyalty or personal ideology when casting a ballot? What are other predictors of party defection?

To Study Or Not To Study: The Influences Of Procrastination, Self-Esteem, And Self-Efficacy On Self-Handicapping Among College Students, Tiatia Filemoni

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

Many college students have ambitions to succeed, graduate, and find a career. Despite their ambitions, many are choosing to replace study time with Netflix, social media, partying, drugs, alcohol, and other non-homework related activities. Approximately 30%-60% of college students report procrastination as a regular interruption of their undergraduate studies.

Sexual Dimorphism In 2d:4d Digit Ratio Is Linked To Anxiety In Rhesus Macaques (Macaca Mulatta), Alexander Baxter, E. K. Wood, J. P. Capitanio, J. D. Higley

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

In humans, administering androgens exogenously reduces anxiety. Because prenatal androgen exposure (PAE) has organizational effects on the brain, and because it is higher in males, this may explain why, on average, females are more likely than males to develop anxiety. To assess PAE, the pointer-to-ring-finger digit ratio (2D:4D ratio) is frequently used. Though this phenotype is sexually dimorphic across primate species, preliminary research in a small number of species indicates that PAE's effect on digit ratio may be in the opposite direction when comparing nonhuman primates and humans. in humans, males typically show lower 2D:4D ratios than do females, whereas …

Exercise After Retirement: The Secret To Productive Aging, Taradita Subiantoro, Erin Kaseda, Tyler C. Graff, Kristina Hall, Maren Wright Voss, Jerry Bounsanga, Lori L. Wadsworth, Man Hung, Wendy C. Birmingham

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

In this study, we interviewed and surveyed participants and attendees of the Huntsman Senior World Games in order to determine factors associated with successful aging post retirement on older adults who are highly active compared to average older adults in physical and psychological well-being.

Scourge On American Society: Are Refugees Increasing Violent Crime In The United States?, Rehtaeh Beers

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

President Trump and many citizens in his wake have called for a decrease in the number of refugees in America. Many claim that refugees are a “Scourge on American Society” and that refugees are “dangerous” and likely to commit violent crimes.

The total number of reported refugees in the world has been growing at an alarming rate since 2006 following the the Lebanese Crisis. Despite the growing number of refugees, the United States of America has kept the number of refugees located in the states relatively stable since 2007.

Consequences Of Transgender Victimization, Zach Reid

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This study reviewed 13 empirical and recent studies dealing with transgender victimization. It details the arc narrative of where bullying begins and what the result is. The study revealed transgender youth and young adults are at higher risk for being bullied which puts them into a statistically more likely category to experience physical harm, sexual harm, and long lasting mental health problems.

Between Citizens And Strangers: On Laïcité And Group Rights Among Hmong In France, Austin Gillett

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

As the school year began in 1989, three Muslim girls, Samira S. and Fatima and Leïla A., started the ninth and tenth grades, insistent upon wearing their Islamic veils (Cardoso 2000). Problems arose when the girls refused to attend class at the beginning of the school year and on Saturdays, citing religious reasons. The girls were suspended from school, and eventually appealed the decision, prompting major upsets across schools in France. Schools began to act independently, issuing bans on the veils. In 1990, Jean-Juarés High School specified that “the wearing of all distinctive symbols, clothing or otherwise, religious, political, or …

Let's Play A Game: A Game Theoretical Analysis Of Conservative Voting In The 2016 Presidential Election In Utah, Devon Tenney

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This study is intended to look at strategic voting behavior among conservatives in the state of Utah in the 2016 Presidential Election. This particular election is important and quite unique in that a third party, conservative candidate competed with the Republican candidate for victory in the state. With a viable third-party candidate to consider, conservative voters had a much more complex choice to make than they usually do in an election. We will model this choice and its outcomes to explain why the vote came out the way it did.

Speaking Of Gender, Generally: Analysis Of Gendered References And Speaking Opportunities In Lds General Conferences, Devon Tenney

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

This study seeks to examine the changing role of women in LDS General Conferences. Through text analysis and an exploration of speaking opportunities at General Conference, we find that women have been discussed more frequently and provided more opportunities to speak over time.

Goal Setting And Goal Achievement In Marathon And Half-Marathon Runners, Adam M. Fulton, Jared Richardson, Kyler Griffith

FHSS Mentored Research Conference

In this study, we looked at how different variables predicted goal specificity, goal achievement, and finish time for marathoners and half-marathoners. These variables had to do with experience, confidence, and motivation for running, as well as goal specificity. Among the results was the finding that goal specificity was predictive of finish time for half-marathoners and close to predictive for marathoners. These findings could help runners prepare better for races.