Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Iberian Origins Of New Mexico's Community Acequias, Jose A. Rivera Ph.D., Thomas F. Glick Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

When Spanish officials first entered the northern region of New Spain in the late sixteenth century, they realized that irrigation would be a necessary development in the establishment of permanent communities. To sustain the early settlements, they built irrigation systems following the Iberian model, itself an extension of Arabo-Berber traditions from north Africa and the Middle East.

Unwarranted Warrants?: An Empirical Analysis Of Judicial Review In Search And Seizure, Brett James Hashimoto, Miguel F.P. De Figueiredo, Dane Thorley

Faculty Publications

Every year, police perform searches governed by the Fourth Amendment on hundreds of thousands of individuals and their property throughout the United States. Many of the academy’s most decorated scholars have focused on the genesis and jurisprudential nature of the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Surprisingly, we know almost nothing about how the Fourth Amendment regulates searches and how searches actually work in practice.

In this Article, we pull back the curtain on the search and seizure process by presenting the largest quantitative study of warrants of any kind. We analyze over 33,000 warrant applications filed through Utah’s “e-Warrants” system over …

Enditnow Impact Study Findings, Shannon M. Trecartin, René Drumm, Petr Cincala, Ellen Nogueira Rodrigues, Yazmik Cantillano, Kayla-Hope Bruno, Lalramliani Ralte

Faculty Publications

In January 2025, researchers at Andrews University (AU) initiated a study to evaluate Seventh-day Adventist churches’ engagement with the 2024 Abuse Prevention or enditnow Sabbath. The purpose of the study was initially to assess visibility and participation through the publicly available digital platforms of the sampled churches. The findings from that investigation were reported to the Departments of Archives and Statistics and Women’s Ministries in June 2025. The study’s scope expanded when researchers received a faculty research grant from Andrews University’s Office of Research to further investigate how Adventist churches across the NAD participate in the enditnow Sabbath. This report …

Six Paths Of Global China: A Genealogy Of A Contested Geographical Imaginary, Jessica Dicarlo, Meredith J. Deboom

Faculty Publications

‘Global China’ has emerged as a shorthand for China's relationship to the global, but its axiomatic uses disguise considerable complexity. This article troubles self-evident uses and tidy categorizations of Global China by approaching it as an emergent, pluralistic geographical imaginary warranting critical analysis. Employing a genealogical approach that privileges indeterminacy and inconsistency over linearity and singularity, we draw on wide-ranging sources to reveal the contested, contextual, and contradictory uses of Global China in the contemporary moment. Our analysis identifies six ‘paths’ of Global China: Other, Integration, Bridge, Status, Threat, and Alternative. Each path facilitates distinct yet interlinked claims about …

The Next Four Years: Geographical Reflections On The Second Trump Administration, Caroline R. Nagel, Peter Hopkins

Faculty Publications

In this introductory essay, we reflect on the significance of the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency in the United States, and we provide some context for interpreting Trump's second term. Two of Trump's early policy moves—the release of billions of gallons of water from reservoirs in California and the granting of refugee status to Afrikaners—portend four years of politics based on alternative facts, conspiracy theories, and racial grievances. Trump's political agenda has received a significant boost from Silicon Valley billionaires, who are keen to eliminate regulatory bureaucracy. Paradoxically, while allied with high-tech futurists, Trump's policies hearken to an …

Stomatal Distribution And Post-Fire Recovery: Intra-And Interspecific Variation In Plants Of The Pyrogenic Florida Scrub, Genevieve Triplett, Aaron S. David

Faculty Publications

Premise

Amphistomy, the presence of stomata on both leaf surfaces, can increase photosynthesis yet is uncommon across vascular plants. The relative infrequency of amphistomy is often attributed to high costs, such as transpirational water loss. The Florida scrub—a hot, dry, shrub-dominated habitat—historically has experienced frequent fire, yet decades of anthropogenic suppression coupled with the reintroduction of prescribed burns has led to varied fire regimes. In this study, we investigated the links between amphistomy and fire with regard to the presence of the trait across species in this pyrogenic habitat and within-species variation before and after experimental fire and across a …

History Internships In The Library: A Multiple Modules Model, Karen Glenn, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Valerie Buck, Nicole Lewis, Katie Yeo

Faculty Publications

The BYU Library became aware of the history department’s need for internship opportunities that were on campus, paid, and relevant to historical research and potential employment opportunities. This presentation outlined how our library team developed internships to meet the needs of the history and family history majors, integrating into their larger, coordinated internship program. Students can select up to three modules to work on during their internship, giving them experience with multiple types of history related work done in libraries. We identified existing projects in our department to meet both the needs and interests of students in the history major …

Pulse Pressure, White Matter Hyperintensities, And Cognition: Mediating Effects Across The Adult Lifespan, Jade Hannan, Sarah Newman-Norlund, Natalie Busby, Sarah C. Wilson, Roger Newman-Norlund, Chris Rorden, Julius Fridriksson Ph.D., Leonardo Bonilha

Faculty Publications

Objectives: To investigate whether pulse pressure or mean arterial pressure mediates the relationship between age and white matter hyperintensity load and to examine the mediating effect of white matter hyperintensities on cognition.

Methods: Demographic information, blood pressure, current medication lists, and Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores for231 stroke- and dementia-free adults were retrospectively obtained from the Aging Brain Cohort study. Total WMH load was determined from T2-FLAIR magnetic resonance scans using the TrUE-Net deep learning tool for white matter segmentation. In separate models, we used mediation analysis to assess whether pulse pressure or MAP mediates the relationship between age and total …

Linking Geographic Distribution And Niche Through Estimation Of Niche Density, Tad Dallas, Cleber Ten Caten

Faculty Publications

1. The availability of suitable niche space constrains where species can occur geographically. This tie between niche space and geographic space is crucial when estimating species geographic distributions in a changing climate. However, specific combinations of climatic conditions may be overrepresented in geographic space, highlighting the potential disconnect between climatic niche area and geographic range size.
2. We develop a niche density estimator that accounts for the geographic availability of climatic niche space, relate this to traditional estimates of niche area and explore how these niche estimates are related to species geographic range size.
3. To do this, we use data on over …

“Let Me Be A Bridge”: Language Brokering Among Emerging Adult Latina Professionals In The Midwest, Elise M. Dubord

Faculty Publications

In immigrant families, bilingual children and adolescents regularly act as translators and interpreters for family and community members who are not fluent in the dominant language. These childhood language brokers later shift the focus of their translation activities as they transition into adulthood and develop professional skills. This research explores narratives of language brokering trajectories of three bilingual Latinas who were emerging adult professionals in three cities in Iowa. Based on a series of interviews collected over a 15 month period, this analysis examines how participants described realigning their family language responsibilities while simultaneously transferring their language brokering skills to …

Immigration Policy In The Second Trump Administration: Restriction, Removal, And The Limits Of Maga Nativism, Caroline R. Nagel

Faculty Publications

Donald Trump's three presidential campaigns have centred on promises to stop unauthorised immigration, whether by ‘building the wall’ or by enacting the largest mass deportation in American history. To deliver on these promises, Trump has appointed Stephen Miller—an anti-immigration hardliner who was responsible for the first Trump administration's draconian border policies – to a key White House position. Trump is often described as breaking from liberal-democratic norms; but when it comes to immigration policy, he is following a well-worn path by hiring Miller. This brief commentary places the Trump/Miller brand of anti-immigration politics in historical context, showing how anxieties over …

Immigration Policy In The Second Trump Administration: Restriction, Removal, And The Limits Of Maga Nativism, Caroline R. Nagel

Faculty Publications

Donald Trump's three presidential campaigns have centred on promises to stop unauthorised immigration, whether by ‘building the wall’ or by enacting the largest mass deportation in American history. To deliver on these promises, Trump has appointed Stephen Miller—an anti-immigration hardliner who was responsible for the first Trump administration's draconian border policies – to a key White House position. Trump is often described as breaking from liberal-democratic norms; but when it comes to immigration policy, he is following a well-worn path by hiring Miller. This brief commentary places the Trump/Miller brand of anti-immigration politics in historical context, showing how anxieties over …

A Slice Of Archives: Developing Focused Internships, Karen Glenn, Rebecca A. Wiederhold

Faculty Publications

In this presentation, Brigham Young University discussed how they have partnered with the campus history department to offer paid internships to students interested in exploring careers in archives. A module approach was developed, allowing students to select up to three projects, giving them experience with multiple types of history-related work done in libraries. We hope that long-term investment in this internship program will encourage students to explore careers in the archives field.

New Hands In China: Frederick And Elizabeth Crook In Asia, Karen Glenn, John Murphy, Hallie Davidson

Faculty Publications

Drawing from the Frederick W. Crook and Elizabeth F. Crook papers in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, this exhibit features photographs, writings, and artifacts that document rural life, agricultural development, and cross-cultural exchange in China from the 1980s through the 2010s. It also highlights the humanitarian and religious contributions of Frederick W. Crook and his wife, Elizabeth Fletcher Crook, including their work with LDS Charities and their service as mission presidents in Taiwan from 1979 to 1980.

Frederick W. Crook was an agricultural economist who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture for over 30 years, specializing in …

Academic And Cerebrovascular Outcomes After Neurodevelopmental Screening In Sickle Cell Disease: A Longitudinal Cohort Study, Sarah E. Bills, Jeffrey Schatz, Elizabeth Gillooly, Julia D. Johnston, A. Lauren Waters, Alyssa M. Schlenz

Faculty Publications

Aim

To assess the predictive validity of neurodevelopmental screening in toddlers and preschool children with sickle cell disease (SCD) using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ). We expected screening in preschool children to predict academic problems in elementary school and future stroke risk.

Method

Using a longitudinal cohort design, academic problems (e.g. grade retention, failing a subject) and increases in stroke risk (e.g. abnormal transcranial Doppler exam) were assessed for a 6-year period after neurodevelopmental screening in 2-year-olds (‘toddlers’) and 4-year-olds (‘preschool children’) using medical record review, which included annual information from parents about school functioning. Biopsychosocial variables were examined …

Trump And The Us Energy Transition, Conor M. Harrison

Faculty Publications

The US electricity grid has seen a rapid increase in the amount of renewable energy over the last decade, with many renewable advocates viewing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 as the catalyst to move the grid towards 100% clean energy. The 2024 elections, however, have significantly muddied the path. In this commentary, I posit what the Trump administration—and related Republican control of both houses of the US Congress—means for the US electricity system. I begin by briefly outlining the contours of federal and state electricity governance, the design of Inflation Reduction Act, the existing drivers of renewable energy growth …

Deportations And Latino Segregation: The Residential Impacts Of Interior Immigration Enforcement, Matthew Hall, Jacob S. Rugh, Hao Liang

Faculty Publications

The shift of immigration enforcement to local jurisdictions has intensified localized patterns of anti-immigrant sentiment, enabling the system of mass deportation to expand at an unprecedented scale. This study examines the effects of 287 (g) agreements, which empower local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws, on Latino residential segregation. Using a quasi-experimental design that compares counties implementing 287 (g) with those that applied but did not implement, we find that these policies significantly slowed declines in Hispanic-white segregation, particularly in early-adopting Southern counties where enforcement was most aggressive. We find no evidence that the program altered patterns of segregation for …

Feature Typology And L2 Proficiency Matter: L3 Acquisition Of Portuguese, Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva, Danielle Fahey

Faculty Publications

To determine the source of transfer in third language acquisition (L3A), we tested the effects of grammatical feature typology and L2 Spanish proficiency on the comprehension and production of grammatical [gender] and [number] in the early stages of L3A of Portuguese. We distinguish between the two features based on their participation in the lexical-conceptual structure of the lemma and its interaction with the morpho-syntactic derivation. L1 English speakers were tested on their knowledge of the features in both their L2 and their L3 through a grammaticality judgment task and an elicited production task. Results show that L3 learners transfer only …

White Matter Integrity Of Hearing And Cognitive Impairments In Healthy Aging, Samaneh Nemati, Meisam Arjmandi M.Sc., Ph.D., Jean Neils-Strunjas Ph.D, Ccc-Slp, Roger Newman-Norlund Ph.D., Sarah Newman-Norlund B.S., M.A., Laura Droege, Leonardo Bonilha, Julius Fridriksson Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Age-Related Hearing Loss (ARHL), or presbycusis, affects two-thirds of U.S. adults over 70 and is linked to cognitive decline and an increased risk of dementia. This study examines associations between white matter integrity and hearing and cognitive function in healthy aging using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). We recruited 126 participants (92 female) aged 20–79 years () from the Aging Brain Cohort Study at the University of South Carolina (ABC@UofSC). Cognitive performance was assessed using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and hearing was evaluated through pure-tone thresholds (PTT) and words-in-noise (WIN) thresholds. White matter integrity was measured with fractional anisotropy (FA) …

Displaced Decarbonization: Climate Necropolitics And The Contested Spatialities Of Green Hydrogen In Namibia, Meredith J. Deboom

Faculty Publications

Green hydrogen is often presented as a transformative solution to the dual challenges of decarbonization and economic development. This article applies the framework of climate necropolitics to interrogate the contested spatialities underlying such “win-win” narratives. It does so through an extended case study of Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, a $10 billion green hydrogen project planned for Lüderitz, Namibia. A remote town of 20,000 in a country with a $12 billion annual GDP, Lüderitz initially appears to be an unlikely host site for the “industrial fuel of the future.” To explain this outcome, I first illustrate how discordant socio-spatial projects—including European energy …

Explaining Youth Driver Licensing Determinants Using Xgboost And Shap, Kailai Wang, Jonas De Vos, Michael Smart, Sicheng Wang

Faculty Publications

This study explores the factors influencing driver's license acquisition among young individuals and examines its broader implications for mobility, safety, and sustainability. Leveraging nationally representative survey data on Millennials and Generation Z, we apply eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and SHapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) to identify key socioeconomic determinants of teenage driver's license attainment. Our findings reveal consistent predictors across both generations, including the percentage of licensed family members, household income per capita, educational attainment, and public transit ridership. We identify meaningful dose-response relationships, such as the increasing influence of licensed household members beyond a 0.75 threshold and the …

A Survey Of Sampling Methods For Hyperspectral Remote Sensing: Addressing Bias Induced By Random Sampling, Kevin T. Decker, Brett J. Borghetti

Faculty Publications

Identified as early as 2000, the challenges involved in developing and assessing remote sensing models with small datasets remain, with one key issue persisting: the misuse of random sampling to generate training and testing data. This practice often introduces a high degree of correlation between the sets, leading to an overestimation of model generalizability. Despite the early recognition of this problem, few researchers have investigated its nuances or developed effective sampling techniques to address it. Our survey highlights that mitigation strategies to reduce this bias remain underutilized in practice, distorting the interpretation and comparison of results across the field. In …

Hedging Energy Transition: Green Hydrogen, Oil, And Low-Carbon Resilience As State Strategy In Namibia, Meredith J. Deboom

Faculty Publications

Policy frameworks increasingly portray energy transition as a mechanism for achieving a range of resilience- related goals, including socio-economic development and energy security. Energy transition is often character ized as a particularly important resilience strategy for lower-income states in the Global South, which face the simultaneous challenges of decarbonization and development. Yet these states, many of which have fossil fuel resources, face distinct constraints and risks in navigating energy transition, including the possibility that promised funding for low-carbon energy projects will never come to fruition or that global decarbonization will be deferred or abandoned completely. This article uses the case …

A Hybrid Type I Randomized Effectiveness-Implementation Trial Of A Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention In The Part C Early Intervention System: Study Protocol, Allison L. Wainer, Sarah Edmunds, Alice S. Carter, Wendy L. Stone, R. Christopher Sheldrick, Sarabeth Broder-Fingert, Yael S. Stern, Ellie Harrington, Lisa V. Ibanez, Brooke Ingersoll

Faculty Publications

Background

Participation in Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBI) is associated with significant improvements in functioning for toddlers with, and showing early signs of, autism spectrum disorder. The Part C Early Intervention (EI) system, which is publicly funded and available in all U.S. states, offers an optimal infrastructure through which toddlers can receive NDBIs. This study seeks to assess the effectiveness and fit of one NDBI, Caregiver Implemented Reciprocal Imitation Teaching (CI-RIT), within the Part C EI system.

Methods

This hybrid type 1 effectiveness/implementation trial uses a multi-site randomized control design to simultaneously test effectiveness and collect implementation data on CI-RIT …

Comparing The Strength Of The Confidence-Accuracy Versus Response Time-Accuracy Relationship For Eyewitness Identification, Curt A. Carlson, Robert F. Lockamyeir, Maria A. Carlson, Charles A. Goodsell

Faculty Publications

Research indicates that eyewitness identification (ID) accuracy increases with faster IDs and those supported with immediate high confidence, but it is not clear which measure, confidence or response time, is the better reflector of accuracy. It is also important to know how well these patterns hold up across important factors affecting eyewitness ID accuracy such as memory strength for the perpetrator’s face. We conducted four pre-registered experiments to investigate these issues across different levels of target memory strength (via encoding time or image quality) and ID procedure (showups vs. lineups of different filler quality). Correct IDs were faster than false …

Fifty Years Of Exponent Ii, Karen Glenn, John Murphy, Bethany Budge

Faculty Publications

Drawing from the Exponent II Records (MSS 1527) in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, this exhibit featured photographs, writings, and records that document the first fifty years of the periodical Exponent II, a publication dedicated to Latter-day Saint women's voices. Display items included letters, original and draft publications, advertising materials, and scrapbook pages.

The exhibit illustrates that Exponent II has played a significant role in preserving and amplifying the voices of Latter-day Saint women for five decades.

Quality Of Life In Caregivers Of Toddlers With Autism Features, Sarah Edmunds, Daina M. Tagavi, Collen M. Harker, Trent Deschamps, Wendy L. Stone

Faculty Publications

Understanding factors that contribute to the quality of life (QoL) of primary caregivers of young autistic children can help researchers and clinicians provide high-quality support to caregivers and families. This study examined whether family demographic factors, parenting stress, and caregivers’ perceptions of family-centered healthcare experiences uniquely predict caregivers’ QoL. Participants were caregivers of toddlers with: features of autism (n = 119), other developmental delays (n = 101), and no developmental concerns (n = 264). We hypothesized that higher levels of perceived family-centered care would moderate (ameliorate) the relation between parenting stress and QoL. Higher levels of perceived family-centered …

Family Risk Classes Predict Longitudinal Parent And Child Outcomes: Understanding The Implications Of Poverty-Related Adversity, Daniel K. Cooper, Benjamin L. Bayly, Brianna Tennie, Francesca Lupini, Martha E. Wadsworth

Faculty Publications

Experiencing poverty and associated risk factors can be detrimental to families’ mental health and well-being. However, it is unclear whether experiencing specific types or patterns of adversity leads to distinct outcomes. Guided by the Family Stress Model, the objective of this study was to (a) identify unique family risk classes based on exposure to various combinations of poverty-related adversity and (b) examine whether the family risk classes differed in their levels of parental coping strategies, couple relationship quality, parenting practices, and child behavior problems. The sample included 301 mother–father–child triads (602 adults and 301 children) with a combined income ≤ …

Exploring Emotion Classification Of Indonesian Tweets Using Large Scale Transfer Learning Via Indobert, Connor Shaw, Phillip M. Lacasse, Lance E. Champagne

Faculty Publications

Business, political, and other social structures create strong motivation to understand the attitudes, motivations, feelings, and emotions of a population of interest. Social media is a rich source of self-disclosed information by individuals from all walks of life about virtually every domain of the human experience, but the vast quantity of data is impossible to effectively analyze without advanced natural language processing algorithms. This research creates a transfer learning based emotion classification model for Indonesian language Twitter data. Transfer learning consists of two steps: pre-training and fine tuning. Three variations of Indonesian Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (IndoBERT) are tested …

Mirrors For Pacific Islander Children: Teaching Resilience Through Culturally Adapted Bibliotherapy, Isabel Medina Hull, Elizabeth Cutrer, Paul H. Ricks, G. E. Kawika Allen, Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon, Lorena Seu, Kristopher J. Urbina, Melia Fonoimoana Garrett

Faculty Publications

Pacific Islander youth face disproportionately high rates of suicide and mental health challenges, yet culturally appropriate interventions remain scarce. This study investigated whether culturally adapted bibliotherapy could effectively promote resilience in American Samoan children by incorporating culturally relevant stories and coping strategies. Through collaboration with on-island Samoan cultural brokers, we developed and implemented culturally adapted stories and lessons designed to resonate with the experiences of children in American Samoa. The study employed a mixed-methods approach with 34 American Samoan children aged 5–13 years, using observations, adapted card sorts, and forced-choice procedures to measure responses to the intervention. The results demonstrated …