Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Factors Influencing Alcohol Use During Covid-19 With College Students, Nikki Davis

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has had adverse mental health implications. Young adults have been identified as a particularly high-risk group for increased alcohol use during the pandemic (Capasso et al., 2021). Psychological distress, motives for drinking, experiential avoidance, COVID-19 related fears, and campus connectedness may all be factors related to drinking in college students; however, many of these factors have not been examined during COVID-19. The current study surveyed a sample of full-time, WMU college students (N = 235) who were 18 years old or older (M = 21.13, SD = 3.33). The majority of the sample identified as women (71.9%) …

The Gamification Of Well-Being, Matthew Barnes

Honors Theses

The rise of the digital era has caused digital domains to become increasingly prevalent and impactful in people’s lives. This thesis explores the threats, as well as possible benefits of one type of digital system: a gamified app. It examines how gamification can impact people and society in positive and negative ways. An experimental model was tested to examine the potential impacts of such apps. The project also considered the ethical implications of gamified systems and suggests that if ethical frameworks are created, gamified systems can have a positive effect on people’s lives and be tools for positive social change.

Friendship In A Pandemic: Test Of An Experimental Intervention To Boost The Protective Effect Of Friendship Quality, Hyewon Hong

Honors Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the decrease of general wellbeing and increase in loneliness for many people. Friendships hold a well-established link to positive physical and mental health outcomes, particularly through the social support given by close, high-quality friendships and the improvement of friendship quality may be a novel way to counteract recent declines of mental health. The current research seeks to establish the efficacy of a created intervention designed to increase the friendship quality of an emerging adult population (N = 116). The theory behind the creation and implementation of such an intervention is discussed. The efficacy of …

College Students’ Opinions On Climate Change: Do Political Views Matter?, Aileen Hull

Honors Theses

Climate change is an ever-impending crisis and the politics surrounding the issue are as contentious as ever, especially in the United States where the political culture is extremely polarized. The polarization of the political parties in the United States makes any environmental policy extremely difficult to pass. Meanwhile, the new generation of young people entering the workforce, voting scene, and public eye are bringing new demands to current climate debates. Youth make up a large share of environmental activism participants and opinion polls show climate change is on the minds of many young people. However, there is a lack of …

Labor Trends In Nuclear Energy And Developmental Obstacles In Nuclear Energy, Ryan D. Greensfelder

Honors Theses

The idiosyncrasies that exist in the United States independent system operator’s structure poses many unique challenges to wholesale energy markets. The array of energy production solutions is one of these challenges to understanding energy markets. Numerous tools have been used to measure the quantitative complexity of energy markets. Few tools and indices exist to track macroeconomic fluctuations in US employment and wage for United States relative to the cost of energy delivery. In modelling the derived labor demand for energy employment, we should be better able to explain markets and allow for predictions in fluctuations in the labor market. This …

Job Diversity And Its Impact On Intergenerational Mobility At The County Level, Derek Olson

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on whether or not the diversity in industries within a county has an impact on the income mobility of children within that county. Data come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to construct variables measuring job diversity and the degree of industry specialization of a county. Building on Chetty (2017a, 2017b), I find that for children with parents at the 25th percentile of the national income distribution, a one standard deviation increase in a county being less diverse in the presence of industries increases a child’s expected rank in the national income distribution by 2.19% while a …

Social Media Usage During Covid-19: Friend Or Foe?, Claudia Dominique

Honors Theses

College students experience more stress and are more vulnerable to mental illness as compared to the general population. Both COVID-19 and social media usage have shown to be stressors that augment this pre-existing issue. The goal of the current study is to highlight the relationship between the social media usage and mental health of college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing a correlational and longitudinal research design, undergraduate students completed self-report mental health and social media usage measures throughout the semester. Researchers found that both social media usage, anxiety, and depression levels were higher post-pandemic as compared to pre-pandemic. However, …

Pro-Understanding: Understanding The Pro-Choice Catholic, Natalie Eilerman

Honors Theses

Abortion is a widely debated and polarizing topic in the United States. While many Catholic leaders and members tend to hold beliefs against abortion, some Catholics are pro-choice. This study explores the perspectives and experiences of this often-under-recognized group. Mixed methods research was conducted to analyze 1) how perspectives towards abortion are changing among Catholics in the United States (using data from the General Social Survey from 1977-2018), and 2) the experiences of college students at a private, predominately white, Catholic university in the Midwest who identify as pro-choice and Catholic. Quantitative analysis shows that Catholics’ attitudes towards abortion are …

Tiktok And The Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, And Two-Spirit People Movement, Meghan Leinhauser

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirited People (MMIWG2S) social movement via content analysis and interviews. The study includes analyzing a sample of 50 videos posted to the social media platform TikTok, and an interview with a user who posts videos about MMIWG2S. TikTok uses a unique algorithm to tailor users’ feeds based on the types of videos with which they watch and interact. This allows for the creation of an online community that shares common interests with one another, especially in a time where communication methods have changed significantly. …

Healthy Eating, Unhealthy Mind: Measuring The Rate Of A Disordered Eating Pattern Among University Student Athletes And Non-Athletes, Erika Moeller

Honors Theses

The present study examined the rates of Orthorexia Nervosa (ON), a disordered eating pattern characterized by an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods, among college athletes and non-athletes at a medium-size, Midwestern university in the U.S. The present study investigated ON using two different tools: the ORTO-15 and the Eating Habits Questionnaire (EHQ). The independent variables were athletic status and hours of exercise per week, and the dependent variables were scores on the EHQ and ORTO-15. Participants reported demographic information, including whether they were an athlete (n = 196 athletes, 105 non-athletes) and how many hours of exercise they perform …

Examining The Impacts Of Flooding On Public Health, Lauren Gibson

Honors Theses

Over the past 10 years, South Carolina has experienced over five major weather events that have led to extreme flooding along the coast. These types of repeated major events have the potential to significantly impact people’s lives and livelihoods. When looking at the issue from a public health perspective, it is known that natural disasters such as flooding can negatively affect community health. However, little research has been done to analyze the impacts on individual health from flooding. This issue inspired a more in-depth research analysis to examine those health impacts from local Horry County residents. This research aims to …

Recessionary Effects On Transfer Fees In European Professional Football, Pierce Snyder

Honors Theses

Association football, most commonly referred to internationally as football, is the world’s most popular sport with billions of fans. Professional football leagues operate in countries all over the globe. While other continents have prominent and successful teams, Europe is the sport’s summit for the club level of competition. Europe boasts the best five leagues in the world, commonly referred to as “the big five”: the Bundesliga (Germany), La Liga (Spain), Ligue 1 (France), Premier League (England), and Serie A (Italy). In the 2016-2017 season, these five leagues accounted for 12.6 billion pounds—57.5 percent—of European football’s revenues of about 21.9 billion …

The Effects Of Story Processing On False Memories, Claudia Eder

Honors Theses

The various levels of processing are critical to understanding memory formation and retention. There is ample research on the levels of processing and their effects on true recall. Yet, there is still a limited understanding on which types of processing have the greatest impact on false memory formation. The purpose of this present study is to provide an investigation into how a particular deep processing task, story processing, influences both true recall and false memory recall rates. More specifically, we sought to determine whether a story processing condition leads to an increase in false memory rates when compared to two …

Adapting, Overcoming, And Connecting: How College Sports Social Media Responded To Covid-19, Jackson Sepko

Honors Theses

This project, inspired by the researcher’s own experience as a digital media marketing assistant for Ole Miss Athletics, investigates how certain NCAA team accounts grew their social media engagement in the 2020-21 seasons despite the challenges and interruptions of COVID-19. First, metrics from data analytics firm SkullSparks were analyzed to determine which accounts increased their engagement metrics the most or performed strongly compared to their peers. Then, those accounts’ posts were analyzed using CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data analytics tool, and using Twitter’s advanced search features to see which posts overperformed compared to each account’s average posts.

From there, with an …

Investigating The Relationship Between Identity Salience And Attitudes Of Groups, Grazia Dipierro

Honors Theses

A person’s political views are largely dependent on who they are, meaning a person’s identities may inform their political attitudes. The extent to which a person is made aware of an identity may influence how they view certain issues. For example, a white woman may view the same issue in two different ways depending on whether her racial or gender identity is activated. It is hypothesized that when participants are made aware of their racial identity, White participants will hold more conservative views, while non-white participants will hold more liberal views. Additionally, when made aware of a gender identity, white …

The Syntax Of Passives And Related Constructions In Mandarin Chinese, Shangyan Pan

Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the Mandarin Chinese passive, a construction that differs in significant ways from its better known, European counterparts. While the passive is one of the most well-studied constructions in syntax, the passive in Chinese remains understudied and not as well understood. The thesis offers an analysis of multiple passive markers in Chinese, focusing on bei and gei. Superficially, the two markers both participate in passive and passive-like constructions. However, upon closer scrutiny, it is demonstrated that only bei qualifies as a true passive marker, while gei is shown to belong to a more general category of Non-Active …

The Role Of Socioeconomic Status In Cognition And Brain Health Across The Lifespan, Erica Chung

Honors Theses

Disparities in cognition are inevitable throughout the lifespan due to socioeconomic gaps. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) may have fewer access to environmental resources, especially with regard to education, than individuals of higher socioeconomic status. Differences in available resources from a young age may affect brain development, leading to detriments in cognition and behavior, further impacting socioeconomic success in adulthood. In the present study, we modeled the development of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and changes in cognitive function throughout the life trajectory in the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research Rockland Sample. The DLPFC volume was predicted to …

Cultivating Family Empowerment In Schools: The Experiences Of Marginalized Families In Special Education, Rachel-Marie F. Sinco

Honors Theses

The provision of special education services to special needs students is largely upheld by federal and state policies and regulations, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) which ensures that children with disabilities have the opportunity to access a free appropriate public education (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2004). However, marginalized families of low-income and linguistically diverse backgrounds continue to face barriers and challenges to effectively participate in their child’s education and secure the necessary and appropriate services for their child. Family Empowerment Centers on Disability (FECs) in California provide a policy solution to assist families navigate …

The Perceptions And Practices Of Japanese Identity In Contemporary France, Sara Gardner

Honors Theses

France is well known for promoting dominant white ideals of “Frenchness” over all others, stemming from the French republican ideal of culture-blind and colorblind universalism.. This universalism, however, is often criticized for glossing over individual heritage and struggles, and studies surrounding this issue often focus on ethnic groups that have made headlines, such as Muslim and North African populations in France. But what about less studied communities, such as the Japanese in France? These less studied populations are worth investigating as we can look at their experiences to further understand the impact of French nationalism. Through a primarily interview-based ethnographic …

Is France Having A Populist Moment?, Emma Gilmore

Honors Theses

The word populism is often thrown around in news media and academic scholarship, but there is a lack of understanding of what it actually means as a political theory. In France, the two presidential candidates that made it to the second round in 2017, Emmanuel Macron and Marine le Pen, were both called populist, despite having vastly different campaign strategies and messages. This study used a computer-based method to analyze Campaign books from 24 candidates beginning in 1981 that determined that Populist language is on the rise, but not as aggressively as news media suggests.

Discrimination Among College Football Head Coaches, Yusuke Fukuda

Honors Theses

Several major sports organizations have come under scrutiny in recent years for alleged discriminatory practices towards minority coaches. In this paper, I analyze whether minority college football head coaches are more likely to be fired and to earn a lower salary. I observe a sample of 300 head coaches from 132 Division-I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools between the years 2006 to 2021. After controlling for performance and experience variables and holding the time and school or conference variables fixed in a Cox hazard regression model, I find statistically significant evidence that minority coaches face a higher likelihood of being …

The Power Of One: Majority Leadership Power In The United States Senate, Andrew Taylor Ordentlich

Honors Theses

The United States Senate has long been heralded as an institution known for its strong reliance upon procedural rules and the leadership that is able to use those rules to their advantage. Recent leaders including Senators Reid, McConnell, and Schumer have attempted to reform the rules of the Senate to its advantage. But why are we seeing this influx in reform now? This thesis utilizes the theory of Conditional Party Government (CPG) to explain the prevalence and lack of reform between 1900 and today. Using roll-call vote data and primary sources such as historical newspapers and the Congressional Record, this …

Understanding The Role Of Race In American Medicine, Fariel C. A. Lamountain

Honors Theses

Long running inequity in health care and outcomes in the United States stem from failure to acknowledge the underlying role of the Transatlantic slave trade as it manifests in all facets of American society and commerce. This paper focuses specifically on the American medical system and its foundations to understand the precursors to generational trends in lack of access to healthcare and poor health for Black communities. This paper uses a three-pronged approach to understand the racist cycle of inequity, highlighting the history and origins of racism in American medicine, personal accounts and statistical evidence of inequity, and community and …

“Green” Marketing In The Apparel Industry: The Spectrum Of Veracity, Stephanie R. Keane

Honors Theses

Apparel companies’ propensity for manipulation in their marketing of environmental initiatives contributes to immense environmental pollution from petrochemical textile material production. Public scrutiny pressures these businesses to adopt “green” initiatives to avoid losing devoted consumers. In some cases, these initiatives disguise the real operations of a company or claim benignity for the company when this is not the reality. Previous business ethics research analyzed the emergence of “greenwashing” in corporations and thus concluded that corporations market themselves as eco-friendly to portray commodification as sustainable. In the form of case studies, this paper scrutinizes four companies: Zara, Patagonia, Lululemon, and Pact. …

Community Interventions To The Food Insecurity Crisis Inuit Currently Face In Nunangat, Alyssia R. Getschow

Honors Theses

Inuit living in Nunangat, a northern territory in Canada, are facing unprecedented rates of food insecurity. The increasing impacts of anthropogenic climate change are rapidly changing the Arctic landscape in Nunangat, posing challenges to Inuit hunters who hunt and live completely self-sufficient off of the land. This lack of access to country foods and the impacts these conditions are having on Inuit communities are forcing Inuit to consider aid propositions from the Canadian government. Due to a long history of conflict with white settlers during the colonization of Canada, there is a feeling of distrust and cultural distaste between Canada …

‘The Making Of Mountains:' The Development Of Chair-Lift Technology In The American Skiing Industry, George M. Eisenhauer

Honors Theses

Skiing is a sport that is entirely reliant on its setting and the elements that occur around it. This paper takes a science, technology, and society approach to one of the few human controls in the sport, chair lifts. By examining the skiing and chair lift industries, lift technology and their role on a mountain, this paper aims to build a foundational understanding of the overall value of a chair lift in the American skiing scene. With knowledge collected from critical analysis, interviews, maps, and firsthand experiences, the dialogue is rooted in a strong understanding of the role that the …

Infill Development: A Contested Solution To California’S Crises, Conrad Hampson

Honors Theses

Infill development has become a contested term regarding California’s ‌perpetual housing crisis, the state’s fight against the ever-important climate emergency, and its efforts toward improving large social injustices. To define the contested term, infill development is the development or redevelopment of land that has been underutilized, in terms of being overlooked, abandoned, or left vacant, compared to the parcels surrounding the property, both directly abutting and within the more general locality. Regarding this concept and its trending nature, state and local governmental agencies, residential real estate developers, researchers, activist groups, and residents have each created their own narratives, taking up …

Impacts Of Profamilia Program Spread On Contraceptive Use And Fertility Rates In Colombia During Its Introduction, Katherine C. Specht

Honors Theses

I examine the effect of the Profamilia program during its beginning years over the 1960s and 1970s as it spread across Colombia. I find that Profamilia effectively delays first birth, intercourse, and age at marriage, and reduces the probability of having had a teen birth. These outcomes were also linked to increased literacy rates, improved educational attainment, and an increase in employment. Birth spacing and contraceptive use increased. These findings support current research that improving access to family planning services is an effective method for decreasing women’s fertility and improving educational and employment opportunities for women. The implication that having …

Characterizing Cellular Stress, Hippocampal Function, And Behavior In A Novel Rat Model Of Alzheimer's Disease, Anne A. Schulman

Honors Theses

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects over 5 million individuals in the United States alone. While AD is primarily thought of as a disease that destroys neural networks required for memory recall and formation, AD also cause impairment in emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and executive function pathways. The cause of AD is unknown; however, the allele ApoE4 has been identified as a risk factor for the onset of AD. ApoE4 provides a valuable opportunity to study AD through animal models. This thesis utilized a human ApoE4 transgenic rat model (hApoE4) to investigate the biological and behavioral …

Municipal Reform In The Progressive Era: Spatial Spread And Fiscal Outcomes Of The Commission Government, Daniel T. Hiller

Honors Theses

The Galveston-Des Moines Plan for commission government, seen as an important municipal reform during the Progressive Era meant to address corruption and inefficiency in many cities, was pitched by business elites and spread like wildfire in the 1910s. Is there a spatial component to the spread of the adoption of the commission form of government? What are the municipal fiscal outcomes of adoption? This paper shows that there was a spatial spread to its adoption using a lagged state adoption proportion variable. This paper also reveals that promises made by business elites such as increased efficiency and projects to improve …