Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Politics And Prayer In West Perrine, Florida : Civic Social Capital And The Black Church, Susan Oltman Fink

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis traces the mechanisms and sources responsible for the generation of civic social capital (a set of shared norms and values that promote cooperation between groups, enabling them to participate in the political process) by black churches in West Perrine, Florida. Data for this thesis includes over fifty interviews and participant observations, archival records, newspaper articles, and scholarly journals.

Despite the institutional racism of the first half of the twentieth century, many blacks and whites in Perrine developed levels of trust significant enough to form an integrated local governing body, evidence of high levels of csc. At mid-century, when …

The International Legal Thought Of Carl Schmitt : Towards A Critique Of The Contemporary International Order, Alex D. Barder

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of the thesis is to develop a critique of current liberal conceptualizations of international order. In order to conduct this critique, this thesis revisits the arguments first put forth by the German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt conceptualizes a tripartite unity between law, order, and place. This unity, established at the constituent moment of land-appropriation, forms a concrete nomos, which subsequently creates the contours of the legal and political order. The establishment of the concrete order is necessarily the construction of a territorial boundary that designates an inside and an outside of the polity. By speaking …

Evaluation Of Field Sampling And Analysis Methods For Fire Investigation Including Electronic Noses And Adsorption Sampling/Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry, Laura Conner

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluates the use of commercially available instruments for locating and collecting accelerants in the field. Electronic noses can be used to scan a fire scene for the possible presence of an accelerant. The TLV Sniffer® was found to be able to detect accelerants at low levels but did alert to some burned matrix alone. When subjected to a proficiency test designed for canines, the TLV Sniffer® was able to locate accelerants in two of the three tests. The tpi®Pocket was found not to be sensitive or selective enough to be useful in locating accelerants. Once the location of …

Oman's Foreign Policy : Foundations And Practice, Majid Al-Khalili

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The object of this dissertation is to record and analyze the foreign policy of the Sultanate of Oman from the early twentieth century until 2004. It challenges the central assumption of the contemporary scholarship on the subject that Muscat's modern foreign policy begins in 1970. It is often presumed that the pre-1970 era does not merit a thorough investigation to understand Muscat's modus operandi today. This study argues that for a comprehensive understanding of Muscat's foreign policy since 1970, the frontier of the historical analysis of Oman's regional and international involvement should be pushed back to the 1930's, when the …

Do Developmental Assessments Impact Parental Stress?, Ivy Campos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is a preliminary exploration of whether parental stress can be influenced by receiving the developmental assessment information about a target child. The study consisted of 25 self-referred families who sought developmental assessments from the Youth and Family Development Program (YFDP) at Florida International University, with children between 4 to 12 years of age. All parents contacting YFDP for developmental assessments completed a pre-test (Parenting Stress Index-Short Form (PSI-SF) over the telephone. Participants (both parent and child) completed an assessment battery during Weeks 1 and 2, and a final feedback session (Week 4) was provided for the parent on …

Evaluating A Participatory Approach To Diversity Training With Multicultural Counseling Trainees, Jenean Brown

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to gain knowledge about the impact and effectiveness of instructional practices used in teaching of multicultural diversity sensitivity courses at the graduate level. A participatory approach termed Transformative Diversity Training (TDT) was evaluated by examining how graduate students (N = 41 evaluated their own change in (a) awareness, knowledge, and skills for working with diverse clients, and (b) efforts to transform themselves, work settings, and/or communities toward more equitable practices. TDT impact was analyzed by examining participants' written responses to questions provided at pretest (start of semester), posttest (end of semester), and follow-up (one …

The Political Party System And Democratic Crisis In Bolivia, Jennifer Marie Cyr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using Kenneth Roberts’ (2002) party-society linkages framework, this study examined the reasons for the decline of the political party system in Bolivia after 2000. The political party system that emerged in 1985 was connected to society primarily through clientelist-based linkages. The economic and political model adopted after the transition to democracy severely debilitated the party system’s capacity to forge linkages with society beyond clientelism.

Using interviews, survey data, and primary and secondary documents, the study demonstrated that prolonged economic recession and social change revealed the weaknesses of the linkages connecting the political party system with Bolivian society. It concluded that …

Autonomy And Authority In The Lives Of Children Who Work As Domestic Servants In Ghana, Cecilia Nana Derby

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Limited literature exists on Ghana's child domestic servants, and researchers have found it difficult to locate and study these children. The research for this dissertation used qualitative research methodologies and non-probabilistic sampling techniques to make it possible to interview child domestic servants, their parents, employers and recruiters in Ghana. The findings from the qualitative analyses informed the second part of this study, which was quantitative and tested hypotheses using crosstabulations and logistic regression analyses that were based on survey data from the Ghana Statistical Service. Explanatory variables in the quantitative analyses included lineage, level of education and relationships to the …

On The Developmental Continuity/Discontinuity Of Early Adolescent Patterns Of Racial Identity Salience : Relations With Later Identities And Psychosocial Adjustment, Anthony L. Burrow

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Given the significant amount of attention placed upon race within our society, racial identity long has been nominated as a meaningful influence upon human development (Cross, 1971; Sellers et al., 1998). Scholars investigating aspects of racial identity have largely pursued one of two lines of research: (a) describing factors and processes that contribute to the development of racial identities, or (b) empirically documenting associations between particular racial identities and key adjustment outcomes. However, few studies have integrated these two approaches to simultaneously evaluate developmental and related adjustment aspects of racial identity among minority youth. Consequently, relations between early racial identity …

How Diagnoses Of Comorbid Disorders Are Associated With Treatment Entry, Treatment Completion And Alcohol Use Severity Among Adolescents In A Substance Abuse Treatment Program, Holly Ann Buss

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined patterns of comorbid diagnoses and their relation to treatment entry, treatment completion and alcohol use severity in a sample of 494 adolescents involved in a substance abuse treatment program. Utilization of other treatment services was also examined.

The results revealed no significant differences among groups with various patterns of comorbid disorders in terms of retention. However, there was a trend suggesting that participants diagnosed with externalizing disorders were less likely to enter into treatment. Adolescents who used alcohol more severely were more likely to read self-help books. Results indicated that adolescents diagnosed with internalizing disorders used alcohol …

An Investigation Of The Effects Of A School-Based Intervention On Feelings Of Personal Expressiveness In Multi-Problem Adolescent Youth, Richard E. Albrecht

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to determine the effects of the Changing Lives Program intervention on troubled adolescents' feelings of personal expressiveness, believed to be one domain of positive identity development. Forty-three intervention and twenty nonintervention comparison control participants were given a battery of pre-, post-, and follow-up assessments including the Personally Expressive Questionnaire (Waterman, 1995), which was used to derive participants' feelings of personal expressiveness scores. Using Repeated Measures Analysis of Multivariate Analysis (RMANOVA), a significant four-way interaction of Time X Condition X Gender X Ethnicity was found relative to the Control, Roy's Ɵ = .166, F(2,47) = 3.899, p < .027 indicating that intervention participants' feelings of personal expressiveness did increase significantly relative to the control group. Furthermore, the results suggest differential outcomes based on ethnicity, suggesting the need for future study with respect to specificity of effects and mechanisms of identity formation in differing ethnic subgroups.