Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Community College Librarian Needs Assessment: Academic Status And Research Interest, Christine (Mi-Seon) Kim, Stephanie Delano Davis

Publications and Research

This pilot study explores the results of the Spring 2023, “Needs Survey for Community College Librarians” conducted by the Community and Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS).  CJCLS is a section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). One hundred and seventeen individuals participated in the survey. The survey asked community college librarians about their academic employment status and publication requirements, their interest in research, and the support for research available to them at their institutions. The key findings of this research show a broad range of academic status classification among …

Supporting Bibliodiversity And Access Through Library Resource Sharing, J. Silvia Cho

Publications and Research

Librarians, with their core values of access, intellectual freedom, stewardship and democracy, share bibliodiversity advocates’ vision of an eco-social system of diverse cultures and reading as a democratic and emancipatory practice. Librarians bolster bibliodiversity by collecting inclusively, critically reviewing and decolonizing library collections, and centering access. Building on previous discussions on the role of open access in strengthening bibliodiversity, this paper acknowledges and articulates how interlibrary loan and library resource sharing also support bibliodiversity. Doing so is important to augment advocacy and support for these services. Advancing solutions to challenges in resource sharing means also advancing towards bibliodiversity goals, supporting …

The State Of The Unions 2026: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

The 2026 State of the Unions report finds that while union density remains strong in New York, membership rates remain largely unchanged, despite renewed organizing, successful strikes and strong public support for labor. Union density stands at 20.5 percent in New York City and 20.9 percent statewide, more than double the national rate of 10 percent, yet well below levels recorded two decades ago. The report also examines the persistent divide between public- and private-sector unionization, the industries and workers sustaining organized labor, and the forces limiting growth. A special section considers Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s labor-friendly record and the opportunities …

Scientific Uncertainty As Political Aggression: A Manifesto For Those Who Value Science And Want To Save It From State And Corporate Control, Stephen Demeo

Publications and Research

A manifesto is an opportunity to publicly express strongly held beliefs about a topic that is personally important to an author. It is analytical as it is creative. “Scientific Uncertainty as Political Aggression” is a manifesto that intersects science and politics. It urges those interested in science to examine two different but related topics: scientific uncertainty in measurement—what it is, how it is determined, why it’s important— and the magnification of uncertainty through legal and linguistic tactics used by right-wing politicians and politically supported corporations.

For some time now, the Republican Establishment has cast excessive doubt on scientific findings through …

Artificial Intelligence And Social Equities: Navigating The Intersectionalities In A Digital Age (Editorial), Daisuke Akiba, Julie Albright

Publications and Research

This editorial article introduces and synthesizes the Special Issue, “Artificial intelligence and social equities: navigating the intersectionalities in a digital age,” which examines how AI systems intersect with race, ethnicity, and interconnected identity dimensions across global contexts. The eight contributions span healthcare, digital media, higher education, organizational communication, and speculative futures, addressing anti-racist psychiatric algorithms, AI-generated visual disinformation, epistemic injustice between the Global North and South, algorithmically mediated rural–urban divides, culturally untranslated technology transfer, accessibility auditing across the AI lifecycle, and the tension between mechanical objectivity and empathic understanding. Read together, they show that AI is neither inherently …

‘Passing’ The Baton Of Trauma: Queer Failure Of The Women’S Sport Policy Working Group’S Anti-Trans ‘Position’, Meredith M. Bagley, Mary Anne Taylor, Sarah F. Price

Publications and Research

Engaging in critical rhetorical theory and methodology, we interrogate the contemporary landscape of anti-trans backlash in women’s sport. Specifically, we read the ‘TERF wars’ (Pearce et al.) across critiques of biofeminism (Pape) and whiteness (Fischer) while drawing upon critical social science research into trauma-bonding, bullying, and the structural impacts of gender verification policies. Our analysis focuses on the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG), offering a trauma-informed reading of the WSPWG’s ‘Position’ statement to illuminate how lesbian female athletes who were previously slandered for failing to meet femininity norms in sport are unable to overcome that trauma to recognize and …

The Self-Aware Room: A Framework For Operational Self-Awareness In Evolvable Blended Environments, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

The Self-Aware Room (SAR) is a room-scale research environment developed within the larger Balanced Blended Space and Blended Reality Performance System research trajectory. Rather than treating the room as a conventional “smart” environment composed of fixed automation technologies, SAR approaches it as an evolvable blended environment made from physical, virtual, conceptual, sensory, computational, and performative relationships. Its defining feature is not any particular sensor, model, or output device, but the set of transformations through which physical activity becomes structured observation, bounded representation, interpreted state, governed decision, and mediated response.

This paper develops the conceptual and methodological foundations of SAR as …

Trustworthiness As Inferential Accountability In Qualitative Research, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed

Publications and Research

Trustworthiness is a cornerstone of qualitative research rigor, yet it is frequently operationalized as a procedural checklist rather than as a coherent logic for justifying qualitative knowledge claims. As a result, qualitative studies often demonstrate methodological diligence without fully explicating how empirical materials warrant the interpretations advanced or how the scope of those interpretations should be bounded. The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize trustworthiness as inferential accountability, understood as a governing evaluative principle for qualitative inquiry that provides a coherent and contemporary framework for the justification, evaluation, and delimitation of qualitative claims. The paper adopts a conceptual and …

Signal And Substance: Why Methodological Sophistication Fails To Guarantee Inference, Aamir Rashid, Rizwana Rasheed

Publications and Research

Despite increasing analytical sophistication, empirical research in organization studies continues to suffer from fragile inference, uneven theoretical accumulation, and contested credibility. This paper seeks to explain why these problems persist by shifting attention from authors’ methodological choices to the evaluative dynamics of peer review. Adopting a conceptual and theory-analytic approach, the paper theorizes peer review as an inferential gatekeeping system. Drawing on research design, theory evaluation, and philosophy-of-science literatures, this study develops an analytical framework to examine how evaluative routines shape what constitutes empirical rigor during the review process. The analysis identifies five recurring reviewer blind spots: inferential scope inflation, …

Older Adults' Caregiving Expectations For The Future, Smita Ekka Dewan, Derek Tice-Brown, Janna C. Heyman, Henry J. Davis, Colette Phipps, Joanne Mcmahon, Laura Sutter, Ye Feng, Jacqueline Heyde

Publications and Research

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to explore older adults' perception of caregiver stress and their anticipation of becoming a caregiver (N = 723). Bivariate analyses revealed that perceived caregiving stress was higher among older adults who were females, White/Non-Hispanics, with chronic health conditions, who had experienced prior physical and financial caregiving burdens and was lower among those with just a high school degree. Multivariate analyses revealed that perceived caregiving stress levels remained higher only for those with past experience with physical caregiving, those with chronic health conditions, older females and White/Non-Hispanic older adults. The overall model was …

The Double Attraction Paradox, Rem Jaen D. Krafft

Publications and Research

The Double Attraction Paradox is a podcast series that teaches adolescents how to navigate attraction through body language, limerence, and mirroring while understanding the psychology behind emotional connection. It is a manuscript that combines personal experience, observations, and research, inspired by Rem Jaen D. Krafft's high school crush. Not only does it provide a guide for teenagers and young adults, but it also encourages readers to better understand attraction, communication, and emotional development. The final chapter examines how peer pressure, traditional high school cliques, fear of rejection, and fear of intimacy may influence societal norms, emotional contagion, and relationship formation …

Breaking Point: Exploring Side Bets, Support, And Pension Investment As Predictors Of Turnover Intention In Urban Policing, Kenneth M. Quick, Kevin T. Wolff

Publications and Research

Guided by Becker’s side-bet theory, this study examines turnover intentions among officers in the New York City Police Department by assessing pension investment and affective commitment as accumulated organizational “side bets,” alongside job satisfaction, perceived organizational support, and workplace conditions. Data was drawn from an online survey of 1,454 officers. Population weights based on gender, race/ethnicity, and rank were applied to improve representativeness. Weighted multinomial logistic regression models examined predictors of turnover intention, while second-difference tests of average marginal effects (AMEs) assessed whether workplace factors operated differently across tenure groups. Results indicate that perceived organizational attitudes and workplace conditions significantly …

Assessment Of Information Literacy Instruction In Reference: Applying Vanscoy’S Conceptual And Procedural Framework In Practice, Vanessa Arce

Publications and Research

The instructional aspect of reference work has long been acknowledged, especially in academic libraries. The current RUSA guidelines include helping users develop information literacy as a goal of reference. In this context, investigating the presence and nature of information literacy instruction can be used to assess the quality of reference services. This study applied Amy VanScoy’s conceptual/procedural framework for point-of-need instruction to a sample of chat reference transcripts at Lehman College, City University of New York. One of the assessment’s goals was to determine the prevalence of instruction and type of knowledge addressed in reference interactions. Another goal was to …

Chi Meta-Project Ecosystem Overview - Spring 2026, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This paper offers a high-level account of the Center for Holistic Integration’s (CHI) meta-project ecosystem as visualized in the included system map. CHI provides an organizational structure framed around persistent meta-projects that support and extend individual initiatives across curriculum, scholarly and applied research, infrastructure, artistic production, AI development, cultural inquiry, and external partnerships. Rather than presenting the map as a static inventory of projects, the paper examines how its core domains function as living systems through which knowledge, tools, documentation, participants, and collaborations can accumulate over time. It also considers how CHI-mediated connectivity, institutional integration, and external funding allow the …

The Shrinking Caspian Sea: Eco‐Hydrological Responses To Human And Climate Pressures, Jesse Duku, Mohammad J. Tourian, Marzi Azarderakhsh, Rovshan Abbasov, Ali Mehran, Ali Torabi Haghighi, Stefanos Xenarios, Azara Boschee, Salih Babagiray, Mojtaba Sadegh, Nima Shokri, Ali Nazemi, Alireza Farahmand, Samaneh Ashraf, Temur Khujanazarov, Elmira Hassanzadeh, Dalal Najib, Daniel Placht, Shamshagul Mashtayeva, Ekaterina Rets, Hamid Norouzi, Kaveh Madani, Manoochehr Shirzaei, Hossein Shafizadeh-Moghadam, Chiyuan Miao, Ali Mirchi, Shuo Wang, Amir Aghakouchak

Publications and Research

The Caspian Sea, the Earth's largest inland water body, faces water level decline, drawing comparisons to the collapse of the Aral Sea. Unlike the Aral Sea, the relative roles of climatic variability, hydrological changes, and anthropogenic pressures on the Caspian Sea remain poorly understood. Here, we integrate satellite observations, in situ hydrological records and reanalysis data to examine recent drivers of the Caspian water loss. We show that total river inflow to the Caspian Sea has declined significantly, primarily due to reduced discharge from the Volga River. At the same time, precipitation over the basin has remained broadly stable, while …

“I Was Well Informed. It Was A Great Advantage”: Pre-Arrival Information Seeking, Information Intelligence, And Immigrants’ Settlement, Nafiz Z. Shuva, Paulette Rothbauer

Publications and Research

This study reports on the role of pre-arrival information seeking and informed decision making in the settlement experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada. Despite the importance of immigrants in shaping Canada’s future in innovation, economy, and population, this research shows a significant mismatch between immigrants’ expectations and their actual settlement experiences, particularly in terms of their employment. This mismatch can lead to depression, frustration, and anxiety, affecting integration into Canadian society. While there has been a recent increase in immigrants’ settlement information behavior research in LIS, most focus on post-arrival information needs and seeking. Research findings of this study contribute …

Reframing Library Instruction Towards Belonging, Vanessa Arce

Publications and Research

A reflection piece about a small, spontaneous adjustment I made to an introductory library session for first year students. In the essay, I reflect on the potential impact of this relatively minor change in the context of the student population at our college.

Socioeconomic Inequalities In Health-Related Quality Of Life During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Six-Country Comparison Using The Eq-5d-5 L, Joëlle Eijkens, Joshua M. Bonsel, You-Shan Feng, M. F. Bas Janssen, Erica I. Lubetkin, Juanita A. Haagsma

Publications and Research

Purpose

Despite the growing attention to health inequalities, there is no global consensus on how to measure socio-economic status. This study examined inequalities in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic across six countries—China, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US)—using three SES indicators: education level, income, and work status.

Methods

Between April and June 2020, individuals aged 18–75 years old completed a web-based survey. HRQoL was measured using the EQ-5D-5L Level Sum Score (LSS), where higher scores indicate poorer health. Country-specific differences in LSS across SES groups …

Examining Whether The Relationships Between Specific Psychiatric Diagnoses And Both Adolescent Suicide And Reoffending Are Moderated By Sex, Michael T. Baglivio, Katherine Jackowski, Brooke Neupaver, Grayson Black, Bailee Perry, Kevin T. Wolff

Publications and Research

The current study examines the relationships between specific psychiatric diagnoses and both adolescent suicide and reoffending, the implications of adverse childhood experiences on these outcomes, and assesses whether these relationships are moderated by sex. Using a multilayer multiyear statewide sample of 6,515 adolescents who completed juvenile justice residential placements, logistic regression and moderation models were used to examine these relationships. Findings demonstrate that the rate of suicidal ideation was 2.5 times higher for female youth, while the recidivism rate was 1.7 times higher for males. Psychiatric diagnoses prevalence ranged from 65.9% for conduct disorder to less than 1% for personality …

What Is The Skeleton Of Cognition? A Structural Account Of World Reconstruction Through Processing Axes, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper describes how the placement of a single processing axis reorganizes human cognition and generates a reconstructed world.

Most existing psychological and social theories begin from emotion, desire, morality, or social behavior. In doing so, they have discussed what forms on top of the cognitive skeleton without first fixing the skeleton itself. When the skeleton is not fixed, entirely different explanations of the same phenomenon can coexist, and it becomes difficult to identify which constitutes a foundational account.

This paper fixes the skeleton first. That skeleton is the processing axis.

The question is: when a single processing axis organizes …

Climate Anxiety Shapes Career And Parenthood Decisions In College Students, Minha Hossain, Patrycja Sleboda-Sobolev

Publications and Research

This study examined how climate anxiety influences future-oriented decision-making among college students, with particular attention to four decision-making domains: career planning, parenthood decisions, sustainability behaviors, and geographic mobility. Although climate anxiety has become increasingly common among young adults, less research has explored how it shapes long-term life decisions within diverse U.S. college populations or how psychological and contextual factors influence these relationships. A sample of 257 undergraduate students from Baruch College completed a Qualtrics survey measuring climate anxiety, climate-related emotions, hope, self-efficacy, migration background, and future-oriented decision-making domains. Results indicated that climate anxiety significantly predicted career and parenthood decision-making, but …

What History Shows: A Structural Account Of Fixed-Point Theory Formation, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Theory generation has long been subsumed under categories such as creativity, genius, and innovation. These categories do not distinguish assembly-based conceptual synthesis from fixed-point theory generation.

This paper makes that distinction explicit. The termination condition of assembly is external: data, citation, endorsement, usability. The termination condition of fixed-point theory generation is internal: consistency with internally held constraints, resolution of structural contradiction. The two operate under different processing conditions.

The historical record confirms this distinction. What Darwin, Einstein, Spinoza, and Kant produced was not assembly. Their processes involved unresolved branch retention and decomposition necessity, arriving at internally constrained fixed-point termination. Freud …

Propasafe-Hybrid: A Text-Based Hybrid Propaganda Detection Tool, Thomas Kimmeth, Avijit Roy, Vivek Sharma

Publications and Research

Propagandistic content increasingly circulates through online news and social media, where readers often encounter it with limited scrutiny, highlighting the need for reliable and fine-grained detection. This paper introduces Propasafe-Hybrid, a sentence-level system that integrates a fine-tuned transformer classifier with LLM-based technique classification to identify, label, and explain specific propaganda strategies. The pipeline generates actionable outputs, including highlighted sentences, technique assignments, and concise rationales, so users can immediately understand why a sentence was flagged and how each label was determined. To control inference cost, Propasafe-Hybrid employs a cost-aware pre-filtering stage that forwards only high-likelihood sentences to LLMs, reducing token usage …

Propasafe-Hybrid: A Text-Based Hybrid Propaganda Detection Tool (Ila 2026 Presentation), Thomas Kimmeth, Avijit Roy, Vivek Sharma

Publications and Research

This presentation introduces Propasafe-Hybrid, a hybrid system for sentence-level propaganda detection that combines offline transformer-based classification with selective large language model (LLM) explainability. The system employs a two-stage pipeline in which a local BERT-based classifier evaluates all input text and filters non-propagandistic content, while only high-confidence candidates are forwarded to an LLM for rhetorical technique labeling and explanation. This design enables cost-aware, privacy-conscious, and scalable analysis by reducing unnecessary reliance on external models.

Propasafe-Hybrid identifies propagandistic techniques such as loaded language, obfuscation, and appeal to fear, and generates concise natural language rationales that make these techniques interpretable to users. By …

The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up Alma, Kristen Fredericksen

Publications and Research

Is your Alma environment a cluttered attic of outdated records, lingering purchase orders, and expired user accounts? At CUNY, large-scale cleanup is essential for improving discovery, ensuring reliable reporting, and keeping daily workflows running smoothly across multiple Institution Zones and a shared Network Zone. This session shares the central office's practical approaches to identifying and cleaning up bibliographic, holdings, and item records; purchase order lines; electronic portfolios; patron requests; calendars; and user accounts. Drawing on real cleanup projects, we'll explain how we used Alma's advanced searches, jobs, normalization rules, Analytics reports, APIs, and external tools like Excel and MarcEdit to …

Processing Conditions In Narrative Interpretation: A Structural Account Of Cf/Ef Divergence In "The Clerk's Tale”, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper applies the framework established in Paper 19, "Cognition Is Not Content: A Structural Account of Processing Conditions," to re-describe Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales.

The same narrative produces two incompatible interpretations: a record of domestic violence, and a story of genuine love. This divergence does not arise from differences in ethical judgment or emotional response. It arises from structural differences in the conditions under which information is reconstructed.

This paper does three things. First, it analyzes the characters Walter and Griselda in terms of CF (Core-foregrounded) and EF (Modulation-foregrounded) processing conditions. Second, it describes …

Fascism Usa: Class And Identity Politics In The Age Of Trump, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

This essay argues that Trump’s triumph in the 2024 presidential contest represents the consolidation of an oligarchical authoritarian project, backed by a multi-class and (surprisingly, for some) multi-racial electorate. It brought intensified state and freelance attacks on immigrants, labor unions, women, LGBTQ+ people, journalists, civil servants, assorted “political enemies,” and other groups that the MAGA movement targets. It is institutionalizing authoritarian governance structures in ways that will be exceedingly difficult to undo. The paper first addresses the experience of growing up in the shadow of fascism. It analyzes various sectors that supported Trump and the impacts of inflation, incumbency, economic …

Discovery Import Profiles Revisited, Tabitha Marie Ochtera Mlis, Mba

Publications and Research

ELUNA 2026 Presentation.

Molloy University went live with Alma/Primo VE in June 2021. During that time, the option to create a discovery import profile for our institutional repository, Digital Commons, was presented. The initial setup, including the Dublin Core Type to Discovery Type Mapping table, was completed by ExLibris. While this setup was technically functional it never performed to expectations and many issues appeared over the years which directly impacted user experience. Additionally, as the content in the institutional repository changed, the limitations of utilizing one discovery import profile became obvious. This presentation will cover the academic year 2024-2025 and …

Is Less More? An Analysis Of Microblogs Vs. Discussion Forums As Tools For Understanding The Public, Marco Castillo

Publications and Research

Social media platforms offer valuable tools for public administrators seeking to assess public sentiment on policy issues, especially in urban areas with diverse stakeholder interests. This study investigates how public administrators can leverage social media by comparing communications on Reddit’s discussion forum platform with X’s microblogging platform. I hypothesize that Reddit fosters more subjective, nuanced discussions, providing richer insights into public sentiment. To test this, sentiment and regression analyses are conducted on communications about urban cycling on both platforms. Results indicate that while Reddit facilitates deeper exploration of public issues, X also effectively assesses public sentiment. The study concludes by …

Cognition Is Not Content: A Structural Account Of Processing Conditions, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Human cognition has been described in terms of content. This description becomes insufficient once artificial systems make output observable apart from subject attribution, intention, and relational context. Under this contrast condition, what becomes visible is a layered structure in which output, reconstruction, evaluation, and termination do not necessarily coincide. The same input may register as complete under one processing condition while remaining unresolved under another. This separability means that content-based description does not merely omit an additional variable: it can mislocate a processing difference as a difference in meaning, personality, intention, ability, or attitude. This is not a proposal for …