Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Examining Two Structural Equation Models To Determine The Effect Of Parental Practices And Familial Cultural Values On Mexican Adolescents’ Sexual Health, Efren A. Velazquez

Theses and Dissertations

Sexual behavior is a normative part of adolescence and it is important to understand how familial factors influence Latina/o adolescents’ sexual health. The current study examined two structural equation models (SEM) and the associations between familial cultural values (i.e., familismo and filial piety), maternal and paternal monitoring (i.e., disclosure and solicitation) and Latina/o adolescent’s sexual behavior (i.e., intentions to have sex, sexual behavior, sexual responsibility). A hypothesized SEM examined whether paternal/maternal monitoring mediated the relation between familial cultural values and adolescents’ sexual health, while an alternative SEM examined whether familial cultural values mediated the association between paternal/maternal monitoring and adolescents’ …

Penalized Mixed-Effects Ordinal Response Models For High-Dimensional Genomic Data In Twins And Families, Amanda E. Gentry

Theses and Dissertations

The Brisbane Longitudinal Twin Study (BLTS) was being conducted in Australia and was funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Adolescent twins were sampled as a part of this study and surveyed about their substance use as part of the Pathways to Cannabis Use, Abuse and Dependence project. The methods developed in this dissertation were designed for the purpose of analyzing a subset of the Pathways data that includes demographics, cannabis use metrics, personality measures, and imputed genotypes (SNPs) for 493 complete twin pairs (986 subjects.) The primary goal was to determine what combination of SNPs and …

Advancing Understanding Of Dynamic Mechanisms In Onset To Event Models: Discrete Time Survival Mediation With A Time Variant Mediator, Heather Lasky Mcdaniel

Theses and Dissertations

Integrating discrete time survival and mediation analytic approaches, discretetime survival mediation models (DTSM) help researchers elucidate the impact of predictors on the timing of event occurrence. Though application of this model has been gainful in various applied developmental and intervention research contexts, empirical work has yet to consider how DTSM models operate with a mediator that has a varying effect over time. The importance of examining this situation has important impacts for application of the model, given more complex statistical models are required, and subsequent interpretation of model parameters differ from the basic DTSM model. The overarching purpose of this …

Once A Felon….Always A Felon? A Comparative Case Study Of The Experiences Of Convicted African-American Fathers, Douglas Bates

Theses and Dissertations

Currently, African-Americans account for 12.3% of the U.S. population but represent 38% of the prison population (The Sentencing Project, 2016). Of the many African-American males sent to prison each year, there is limited research that explores the impact a conviction has on African-American fathers. Within the literature, researchers (Laakso & Nygaard, 2012; Miller, et. al., 2013, Flouri & Buchanan, 2002; Lee, Sansone, Swanson, & Tatum, 2012; Johnson & Easterling, 2015; Miller, 2006; Lopez & Bhat, 2007; Aaron & Dallaire, 2009) only focus on the effect incarceration has on children and the experiences of fathers while incarcerated (Roy & Dyson, 2005; …

The Emergence Of Early Visual Attention Profiles In Infants At High Risk For Autism Spectrum Disorder, Debra Reisinger

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of two manuscripts focused on early social and nonsocial attention in children at-risk for developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD): infants with fragile X syndrome (FXS) and infants with an older sibling diagnosed with autism (ASIBs). Each manuscript will present original research: the first will consist of a crosssectional and longitudinal examination of attention to objects in infants with FXS and infant ASIBs parsed apart by their ASD diagnostic outcomes in comparison to a group of typically developing (TD) infants, and how developmental trajectories of object attention predict later ASD symptom severity and diagnostic outcomes. The second …

Impacts Of Drainage Systems On Stormwater Hydrology: Rocky Branch Watershed, Columbia, South Carolina, Logan Ress

Theses and Dissertations

The effects of urbanization and associated land use changes, specifically increases in impervious surfaces, have long been the focal point of urban hydrologic research. However, studies and calculations that consider impervious surfaces alone do not encompass all factors that influence urban hydrologic response. Artificial structures such as storm sewer (SS) systems and road networks increase rates of stormwater conveyance, yet these artificial networks are rarely considered in computations of drainage densities and associated hydrologic alterations. This study examines several hydrologically relevant descriptors that can be used to better understand the impact of urbanization on small watersheds. Rainfall and stormflow data …

Ground Truthing: The Politics And Culture Of Soil And Water Conservation In Iowa Agriculture, Brianna Farber

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the complex relationships between people, technologies, and ecologies involved in natural resource conservation and industrial agriculture in Iowa. Specifically I focus on the various efforts to address water pollution affected primarily by agriculture in the state. Using a theoretical framework informed by political ecology, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and posthumanist theory, I draw on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork to discuss what makes conservation culturally salient and practically difficult to achieve. This difficulty around conservation arises in part from the tensions between what I describe as the corn assemblage and the prairie assemblage. I identify these …

Towards A Typographical Linguistics: The Semantics-Pragmatics Of Typographic Emphasis In Discourse, Jefferson Maia

Theses and Dissertations

The standard view of the effects of typographic emphasis in English is that type styles (e.g., capitals, italics) enhance memory for emphasized information to the detriment of reading speed and without contributing semantically or pragmatically meaningful information to the text. Fewer emphasis studies that have concerned themselves with reference questions offer off-line evidence that typography interacts with linguistic variables and, more specifically, that it adds a modulatory or a contrastive layer of meaning to the interpretation of referential expressions. No study to date has investigated, however, whether typographic emphasis can bring a referent into discourse focus and consequently affect the …

Normative Data For Four Neuropsychological Tests In A Sample Of Adults Who Are Illiterate And From Latin America, Alejandra Morlett Paredes

Theses and Dissertations

Neuropsychological tests are standardized tasks used to measure psychological functioning that is associated with a particular brain structure. These tests often are used in diagnosing a cognitive deficiency resulting from brain injuries. Currently, there are a limited number of studies that have focused on standardization of neuropsychological tests in Latin America. Therefore, the vast majority of cognitive tests used in the evaluation of patients with brain damage have no normative parameters adjusted to the cultural characteristics of Latinos and Latinas. As a result, neuropsychological diagnoses among this population may be inadequate, and evaluation of rehabilitation program effectiveness limited. The importance …

Opening The Gates To Ap Equity: A Case Study Of A Central Virginia High School’S Practices, Policies, And Characteristics Toward Proportional Black Student Representation In Advanced Placement Enrollment, Andrew R. Armstrong

Theses and Dissertations

Advanced Placement (AP) courses engage high school students with college curriculum taught by trained high school teachers, with an opportunity for students to earn college credit by passing the end-of-course AP exam. AP has evolved into an indicator of school quality, instructional rigor, and a consideration in the college admissions process. AP enrollment and exam performance outcomes for White students disproportionately surpass those for Black students. This study attempts to inform practice, policy, and programming toward more equitable enrollment outcomes for Black students through a single case study. The selected case school was the only high school among 38 in …

Black Sheep Effects On Juror Verdicts, Maryah E. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the Black Sheep Effect and how an individual’s deviation (becoming a black sheep) from the in-group impacts the groups perception of the black sheep. Participants acted as mock jurors and chose a verdict for the defendant based on a vignette followed by a photo of the defendant. Race, the commonality shared between the defendants and mock jurors, acted as an automatic group divider. Participants analyzed were of either the same or different race from the defendants in the vignettes. One hundred and thirty individuals participated in the study, of which 66 were …

Adult Nursing Students’ Perceptions Of Social Presence In Facilitator-Created Subject- Specific Videos In An Online Nursing Course, Jamie Anne Marcus

Theses and Dissertations

The literature established that online instruction consists of cognitive, teaching, and social presence. Studies on the element of social presence linked text-based delivery of instruction with learners’ feelings of isolation and disengagement. This research findings prompted this facilitator creation of five-to-seven-minute companion videos that aligned and complemented weekly text-based learning modules to ascertain students’ perceptions of these videos as a medium for channeling social presence.

Post-video viewing surveys yielded responses to pragmatic and emotional questions. Pragmatic questions were aimed at the visual impact of professor’s delivery of information. Emotional questions gauged the students’ feelings of connectivity with the facilitator. Triangulated …

Developmental Patterns Of Religiosity In Relation To Criminal Trajectories Among Serious Offenders Across Adolescence And Young Adulthood, Siying Guo

Theses and Dissertations

The knowledge about the relationship between changes in both religiosity and crime over time remains limited. This dissertation aims to add to the existing body of literature and fill the gaps in prior studies by examining the religiosity-crime relationship in a sample of adjudicated adolescents studied in the Pathways to Desistance Study, a seven-year longitudinal dataset. Using Group-Based Trajectory Models and Growth Curve Models, this dissertation identifies distinctive trajectories of religious attendance, religious importance, and spirituality and their dynamic relationships with changes in different types of substance use and criminal behavior. Given the initial level of substance use and criminal …

Family And School Impact On Psychological Functioning From Childhood To Late Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study Of Rural Chinese Youth, Yang Yue

Theses and Dissertations

The transition from childhood to adolescence can be a significant stressor for youth, leading to increases in internalizing problems for those who are vulnerable. Compared to the mounting research conducted on U.S. youth, children and adolescents in China have received less attention on their psychological adjustment. As Chinese youth constitute roughly 15% of the world’s population (World Health Organization, 2010), and the disproportionate quantity of longitudinal investigation on Chinese youth psychological functioning, understanding the influence of risk and protective factors, and their interactive effects on internalizing problems among Chinese youth is critical.

According to Life Course Theory, Ecological Systems Theory, …

Prevalence And Predictors Of Anxiety Disorders In Adolescent And Adult Males With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Fragile X Syndrome, Jordan Ezell

Theses and Dissertations

disorders are the most prevalent disorders in children and adolescents, affecting approximately 15-20% of individuals under the age of 18 (Salum et al, 2013). Clinical subgroups, like autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS), have an elevated risk of a co-occurring anxiety disorder. Despite the elevated risk of anxiety in these groups, few research studies have investigated the rates and predictors of anxiety disorders in adolescents with these ASD and FXS. In the current study, participants included males with FXS (n=31) or ASD (n=20) aged 16 to 24. Measures included the Children’s Interview for Psychiatric Symptoms-Parent Version (P-ChIPS), …

Environmental Links To Ectopic Kidney Diseases, Firas Alhasson

Theses and Dissertations

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disease in the western culture and worldwide. Its morbidity has been raising and it has become a burden on the public health. NAFLD is associated with other metabolic diseases such as Diabetic Mellitus and hypertension. NAFLD is a wide spectrum of symptoms, from an accumulation of fat in the liver (cirrhosis) to production of scar tissue (Fibrosis). The liver along with other distal organs such as the kidney and cardiovascular system can be damaged as ectopic manifestations of NAFLD. Contamination of drinking water with Cyanobacterium toxin (Microcystin) and water disinfection …

The Importance Of Outcome Fairness: Revisiting The Role Of Distributive Justice, Kyle Mclean

Theses and Dissertations

Distributive justice, or the perceived fairness of outcomes, has played a minimal role in research into procedural justice and legitimacy in policing. However, allegations of racial bias that have contributed to the present legitimacy crisis in policing are more consistent with the concept of distributive justice than procedural justice. As such, the present study attempts to re-orient distributive justice within policing research. This study proposes that individuals infer the fairness of outcomes from the treatment that they receive from police officers. These judgments about outcome and treatment then combine to influence individuals’ perceptions of the legitimacy of police. In addition …

Assessing The Strengths And Difficulties Of Typically Developing Siblings Of Persons Born With Lifelong Disabilities, Joseph Joseph Wofford

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, strengths and difficulties of siblings of persons born with disabilities were quantitatively assessed, based on parental perception, in comparison to national norms. Answers of 148 parents to the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997; Youthinmind, n.d.a.) for children four to seven years old who are siblings of persons born with lifelong disabilities (SPBDs) were gathered and analyzed. The causal-comparative design compared each subscale of the SDQ for SBPDs against their respective norms in the USA for females or males. SPBDs were found to have no statistically significant difference from the norm group on emotional problems, and …

Breaking The Silence: Extending Theory To Address The Underutilization Of Mental Health Services Among Chinese Immigrants In The United States, Jo-Yun Queenie Li

Theses and Dissertations

Mental health services underutilization has been a prevalent issue in Chinese immigrant community in the United States. Using a nation wide survey of 445 Chinese immigrants in November 2017, this study investigates the effects of cognitive barriers (i.e., acculturation levels) and affective obstacles (i.e., mental illness stigma) on Chinese immigrants’ perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral responses toward mental health services, by combining situational theory of problem solving and the theory of planned behavior. This study also examines the effects of mainstream and ethnic media use on acculturation and perceived stigma. Findings provide empirical support for the combined model, showing that all …

The Role Of Cohesion In Second Language Reading Comprehension, Alisha Biler

Theses and Dissertations

Reading in a second language (L2) is a critical aspect of language acquisition, yet gaps remain in the literature regarding the extent to which textual factors impact reading difficulty. There is consensus that complex vocabulary and grammar affect L2 comprehension (Koda, 2005), and this is evidenced through the numerous traditional readability formulas, such as Flesch-Kincaid (FKGL). However, critics argue that discourse-level features, such as cohesion, also impact reading difficulty and must be included in difficulty analyses (Carrell, 1987).

One aspect of cohesion is content word overlap, or the number of content words repeated in a text; this measure is included …

Questioning The Modality Of The Occipital Lobe, William J. Brixius

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the occipital lobe’s response to non-visual inputs, and whether this responsivity partitions into separate localization and identification pathways as seen with visual inputs. We hypothesized that occipital areas may merely prefer visual inputs, while maintaining similar task-based sensory recruitment in response to other senses. Our secondary hypothesis was that the robust occipital activation seen in late-blind participants stems at least initially from standard connections present even in the typically sighted, and that these standard connections are functionally utilized by the typically sighted in spatially relevant non-visual analyses. Our initial literature review supported our hypotheses that the occipital …

Creating An Online Social Movement In Socially Conservative Societies: A Case Study Of Manshoor Blog Using Frame Alignment Process, Noura Abdullah Al-Duaijani

Theses and Dissertations

In the last decade, the Arab region has witnessed many political and social changes. Parts of these changes were initiated by millennials seeking social change to elevate the quality of life in their country and themselves. In one particular country, Kuwait, youth have pursued social change by advocating a freer lifestyle and regime change in government and institutions. Manshoor, an Arab language blog launched in November 2016 by two Kuwaiti liberals, Jassim Qamis and Ali Al-Nessif, stimulates an open conversation on a wide range of issues, including controversial ideas in the region such as scrutinizing some practices and beliefs of …

Tweets About Tornado Warnings: A Spatiotemporal And Content Analysis, Raelene C. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the United States, tornadoes frequently occur throughout the entire year. With each tornado there is a tornado warning that the National Weather Service (NWS) issues with a goal of protecting life and property. By using social media, these messages quickly reach the public. By analyzing Twitter data, this study aims to gain a spatiotemporal understanding of tweets, including when and where they most frequently occur. Most tweets occur within the warning time (temporal) and inside the warning polygon (spatial). To gain a better understanding of the information the tweet contains, a content analysis shows key warning characteristics such as …

East Branch Of The Cooper River, 1780-1820: Panopticism And Mobility, Lisa Briggitte Randle

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years historical archaeologists have employed the panoptic plantation approach to examine issues of surveillance and control at plantations. Despite new scholarship in the area of the panoptic plantation, few studies place the enslaved laborer at the center and the planter-elite on the periphery. Failure to broaden the scope of studies that focus on enslaved laborers minimizes the importance of the differences in perception, cognition, and landscape between the planter-elite and the enslaved laborers. The aim of this study is to determine potential enslaved laborer mobility and how cognitive predictive models can aid in identifying potential locations for archaeological …

From Rhetoric To Response: Climate Change, Conflict, And Development In Karamoja, Uganda, Daniel Abrahams

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the broad question: How do the discourses of climate change and conflict travel across time and space to become policy, programming, and ultimately a development initiative that exist on the ground? To answer this question, I broke the research into three separate papers. The first examines how the US policy community approaches, understands and seeks to address the discourses of climatesecurity. The second examines the ways in which climate change affects conflict outcomes in Karamoja, Uganda. And the third, using the efforts of Mercy Corps in Karamoja as a case study, examines the realities and opportunities in …

An Investigation Of Brain Normalization And Lesion Compensation Techniques Applied To Stroke, Taylor Hanayik

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most ubiquitous steps in neuroimaging is the normalization of brain images. The process of normalization attempts to match any given brain to a standardized template image (e.g. the MNI 152 image). However, clinical images such as those from stroke participants present many challenges when we attempt to warp them to the space of template images, which are typically representative of neurologically healthy individuals. Many software packages exist to facilitate normalization of brain images, but most have limited options available to compensate for brain injury, which is often disruptive to these algorithms. Of the injury compensation methods that …

Deepening Democracy: Inclusion, Deliberation, And Voice In The Grassroots South, Annie L. Boiter-Jolley

Theses and Dissertations

Through an exploration of grassroots challenges to shallow democracy in South Carolina, this dissertation offers a model of democratization based on inclusion, deliberation, and empowerment as a remedy for democratic insufficiency. I posit that greater emphasis on inclusive democratic deliberation, both inside and outside formal political structures, will help deepen the South’s shallow democracy, and that inclusive deliberation fostered through grassroots organizing that priorities consciousness raising, empowerment, and activism training will positively affect participants, deliberation, and policy outcomes. Taking a grounded theory approach, I consider case studies of three organizations based in Columbia, South Carolina, and their attending theories of …

Three Essays On The Effects Of Policies On Price Differentials, Eun Son Lim

Theses and Dissertations

Free Trade Agreements and Purchasing Power Parity: Evidence from South Korea

We explore whether a decline in tariffs after the passage of South Korea’s free trade agreements yields evidence more favorable to purchasing power parity between South Korea and its free trade partners. Our data include two aggregated measures of prices – the CPI and the PPI – as well as disaggregated CPI data for six selected, highly tradable items: food, alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic beverages, clothing, footwear and tobacco products. We study nine free trade partners using data for the sample period January 1998-November 2017. Utilizing a battery of conventional …

Evaluative Conditioning Of Product Preferences: An Eye-Tracking Perspective, Christine E. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

In evaluative conditioning, the affective response toward a neutral stimulus is altered by pairing it with a positive or negative stimulus. One behavioral and two eye tracking studies were conducted to investigate how evaluative conditioning operates on consumer preferences by pairing neutral products with valenced music and using multiple product exemplars and test trials in order to test evaluative effects at the individual level. Study 1 showed an overall positive effect of evaluative conditioning on choice and liking ratings, although there were individual differences in the magnitude and direction of the effect. Study 2 found significant results at the individual …

Fatal Force: A Conversation With Journalists Who Cover Deadly, Highly-Publicized Police Shootings, Denetra Walker

Theses and Dissertations

After the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the deaths of unarmed Black teens Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, news about police shootings catapulted into the local and national spotlight through videos and messages on social media. Information about police shootings is usually reported to the public through media sources such as television, online/digital news, and social media. This study examines how television news journalists cover the issue of police shootings in the United States. Through 10 in-depth interviews with television journalists who covered highly-publicized police shootings, the author analyzes how race, journalistic norms, technology, and citizen journalists …