Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Parasitic Oligarchy? The Elites In Trinidad And Tobago, Alison Mc Letchie

Theses and Dissertations

The existence of an elite class within societies is often a topic of research in the study of inequality of power and influence. Researchers, however, acknowledge that the nature and composition of the elite varies. Trinidad and Tobago, with its colonial history and diverse population has had to confront issues surrounding access to power by various groups within the society. One driving force of the 1970s Black Power Revolution was the practice of color discrimination in the banking industry. Informed by Mills' (1956) elite theory and rooted in Beckford's (1972) economic theory, this project surveys the elite of Trinidad and …

The Body As Wartime Terrain: Social Control And Female Sexuality Under Military Occupation, Frances Choe

Theses and Dissertations

This project is a comparative-historical sociological analysis of the informal and formal responses to sexual contact in two WWII period cases: between French women and Nazi troops, and German women and African-American GIs. I focus on the connection between the regulation of women's bodies and cultural expectations of gender, ideas about sexuality, and racial ideology. The results of war and subsequent occupation of the defeated nation - population decline and the acute loss of male life, strained material resources and the daily concern of survival, the social psychological sense of defeat, and intimate relationships between occupiers and the occupied - …

Inequality And Opportunity At Themsa-Level: Investigating Place As A Structure Of Inequality Shaping Mobility And Earnings, Colby R. King

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how the new urban economy has transformed the structures that impact individual earnings opportunities across place. Using data from the 1990 and 2000 Census, this study is based on two multi-level data sets, each reporting characteristics for approximately 2 million individuals nested within more than 200 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). This study examines how inequality varies across MSAs in the US. Associations between MSA-level characteristics, including proportion of employment in new economy sectors, earnings, educational attainment, and inequality, are tested. Strong evidence is found demonstrating strong and statistically significant correlations between new economy indicators and MSA-level inequality, …

Ruminating On Ruminants: Goats And The People Who Raise Them In South Carolina, Brianna Dyan Farber

Theses and Dissertations

In South Carolina, many farmers and homesteaders have utilized goats as an adaptive and versatile resource and component of their diversified farming operations. This thesis addresses the experiences, motivations, difficulties, and successes of people raising goats in South Carolina, in the context of sustainable agricultural practice and landscapes. Goats cohabit insecure but promising ecological, political, economic, and sociocultural landscapes with humans and other nonhuman species. These relationships can undermine and support goats as belonging in South Carolina. My participants cannot simply raise goats as a purely economic choice because they create meaningful emotional relationships with their animals. Goats can become …

Economic Agreements And Interstate Conflict: A Policy Substitution Model Of Coercion, Matthew Daniel-Marion Shaffer

Theses and Dissertations

Economic integration agreements - also called preferential trade agreements or regional trade agreements - have dramatically expanded in scope since World War II. While the proximate goal of economic integration is to increase commercial exchange between member states, there are strong reasons to believe agreements affect security relations as well. In particular, by increasing interdependence between member states through trade and investment, economic agreements increase the opportunity cost of coercion. However, they simultaneously marginalize commercial ties between agreement members and the outside world and exacerbate relative gains concerns through trade diversion. Hence I argue that while conflict between agreement members …

Political Advertising In Kuwait - A Functional Discourse Analysis, Jasem Alqaseer

Theses and Dissertations

Most political advertising studies focus on the U.S. or other western democracies like the U.K. and other European countries. In general, political advertising studies focused on the content of political advertising especially on the subject of issues vs. images in advertising. In addition, many studies of political advertising content focus on the topic of negative advertising. The practice of political advertising has been found to vary depending on the political and media structure within a country as well as cultural and legal elements. Therefore, the gap in the literature about the practice of political advertising in the Middle-East is worth …

Exploring A Paradigm Shift: The New York Times' Framing Of Sub-Saharan Africa In Stories Of Conflict, War And Development During The Cold War And Post-Cold War Eras, 1945-2009, Zadok Opero Ekimwere

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigated The New York Times' framing of sub-Saharan Africa during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. The aim was to determine whether a paradigm shift has taken place in the way Western news media cover Africa following a change in the world view system from the Cold War to the post-Cold War. To look for frames, the research examined how The New York Times portrayed sub-Saharan Africa in stories of conflict, war and development.

.Framing analysis methodology was used to examine the stories and to search for frames. Findings showed that The New York Times used violence …

How Welfare Reform Act Affects Elderly Immigrants' Health And Healthcare Service Utilization: Comparisons Before And After Welfare Reform, Younsook Yeo

Theses and Dissertations

Background: The intended result of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-193: PRWORA) was to conserve public funds while addressing welfare deficits. To achieve this end, the PRWORA (1) requires immigrants who came to the United States after the law took effect to show proof of U.S. citizenship to be eligible for federally funded public benefits, including Medicaid, unless the states where they lived provide state-funded benefits; (2) reinforced the `public charge law,' indicating that once the Immigration and Nationalization Service deems a post-welfare reform immigrant a public charge, this could result in the …

The Westernization Of Advertisements Published In Kuwaiti Newspapers From 1992 To 2012; A Content Analysis, Farah Taleb Alrefai

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the degree of Westernization in advertisements published in major Kuwaiti daily newspapers over the past 21 years (1992-2012). Utilizing a quantitative content analysis, the diffusion of Westernization into the content and form of the advertisements was analyzed. Specifically, a sample of 584 advertisements published on the front pages of AlQabas and AlWatan Kuwaiti dailies from 1992 to 2012 were examined. The advertisements were analyzed to detect the increase and/or decrease of the presence of 12 Westernization attributes. These attributes are: product/ brand origin (Western or local), Western models and or local models, …

Uncovering The Structures In Ecological Networks: Multiple Techniques For Multiple Purposes, Peng Gao

Theses and Dissertations

Ecosystem structure and function are the product of biological and ecological elements and their connections and interactions. Understanding structure and process in ecosystems is critical to ecological studies. Ecological networks, based on simple concepts in which biological and ecological elements are depicted as nodes with relationships between them described as links, have been recognized as a valuable means of clarifying the relationship between structures and process in ecosystems. Ecological network analysis has benefited from the advancement of techniques in social science, computer science, and mathematics, but attention must be paid to whether the designs of these techniques follow ecological principles …

One Too Many: An Exploration Of The Roots Of Literacy Of Older African Americans In South Carolina Before Brown Versus The Board Of Education, Barbara Johnson Montgomery

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing from 1992 data, The National Adult Literacy Survey recently indicated that a large portion of the US population lacks the literacy skills typically required to complete complex tasks and take advantage of a wide range of employment opportunities. This report also indicated that the reading proficiency of African Americans was substantially lower than that of the White population, particularly within the elder population. A similar picture emerges in the more recent report, Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy. As a group, African American adults ages 65 and older had the lowest average …

I Can Be Silent And Be Saying A Lot: Teachers' Racial Literacy In A Southern Elementary School, Kimberly J. Howard

Theses and Dissertations

In order to better understand how teachers make sense of race in schools today, this ethnographic study explores the following research question: How do teachers in this school make sense of race, and how does the spatiality of the school inform this process? The study was conducted over a 14-month period in a southern elementary school and is presented as a poetic, narrative, and thematic analysis of the connections between the geographic location of this particular school and the teachers' practices, pedagogies, and conversations about race both inside their classrooms and in other school spaces. This study demonstrates how teachers' …

Unleashed From The Shackles: Modern Media's Portrayal Of Mental Illness: United States Of Tara, Kayla Brown

Theses and Dissertations

"[With mental illness] you get a real sense of shame, because your friends go, 'Oh come on, show me the lump, show me the x-rays,' and of course you've got nothing to show," stated famous comedian Ruby Wax. A longtime sufferer of depression, Ruby Wax shares her experiences with others by advocating mental health awareness through television shows and support groups. Wax was one of many other speakers included in Technology Entertainment Design's (TED's) All Kinds of Minds segment. Elyn Saks, another speaker within this segment, overcame many challenges in spite of her condition of chronic schizophrenia. A Yale graduate, …

A Prospective Study Of Differential Sources Of School-Related Social Support And Adolescents' Global Life Satisfaction, James D. Siddall

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the cross-sectional and prospective relationships between three sources of school-related social support (parent involvement, peer support for learning, and teacher-student relationships) and early adolescents’ global life satisfaction. The participants were 597 middle school students from one large school in the Southeastern United States who completed measures of school social climate and life satisfaction on two occasions, five months apart. The results revealed that school-related experiences in terms of social support for learning contributed substantial amounts of variance to individual differences in adolescents’ satisfaction with their lives as a whole. Cross-sectional multiple regression analyses of the differential contributions …

The Impact Of Age And Executive Function On Susceptibility To Misinformation, Michelle Phillips-Meek

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the impact of age and executive function on susceptibility to misinformation. A total of 41 healthy young (19-31) and older (59-77) adults were presented with visual misinformation in a paradigm originally used by Okado and Stark (2005). Participants then completed a recognition memory task while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. Participants also completed a series of cognitive measures used to assess executive function. Results showed that age and executive function were both significant predictors of recognition memory accuracy. Activity in brain regions associated with conflict processing was greater for accurate versus false memory …

Longitudinal Effects Of Depression And Sexual Dysfunction On Glycemic Control In Veterans With Diabetes, Adrian Laseter

Theses and Dissertations

Diabetes rates are on the rise, particularly among members of racial and ethnic minority groups. Individuals with diabetes are more vulnerable to developing depressive symptoms when compared to those without diabetes. While there appear to be no racial and ethnic differences in depression prevalence estimates among individuals with diabetes, members of racial and ethnic minority groups are less likely to achieve glycemic control over time, and may be at greater risk for diabetes related health issues. One such health issue is sexual dysfunction, with individuals with diabetes being more vulnerable to sexual dysfunction than those without diabetes. Sexual dysfunction may …

Making Stewardship Meaningful For Nonprofits: Stakeholder Motivations, Attitudes, Loyalty And Behaviors, Geah N. Pressgrove

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ways in which stewardship motivates nonprofit stakeholder attitudes, behaviors and loyalty. Using an online survey of stakeholders from eight local United Ways in one southern state (N=660), this research has three major focuses. First, it seeks to validate a scale to measure perceptions of the relationship cultivation strategies of stewardship. Second, it investigates group differences between nonprofit stakeholder types (donor only versus both donor and volunteer). Third, the study explores opportunities to extend existing relationship management models beyond assessments of perceived relationship quality to include desirable behavioral outcomes.

Findings offer a new conceptualization of stewardship comprised …

Examining The Direct And Interactive Effects Of Positive Coping On Depressive Symptomology In African American Women, Heather Andrea Eaddy

Theses and Dissertations

In the larger stress and coping literature, several studies have examined ethnic differences in stress experiences and coping behaviors (Plummer and Slane, 1996; Slavin et al., 1991; Brantley et al., 2002). However, these studies are often comparative in nature and fail to examine within group variation (Plummer & Slane, 1996; Slavin et al., 1991; Smith, 1985). Similarly, studies have also neglected to examine how African American women cope when confronted with certain stressors and the associated mental health outcomes. With this in mind, the goal of the current study is to close existing gaps by examining the relationship between routine …

Protracted Social Conflict: A Reconceptualization And Case Analysis, Melissa M. C. Beaudoin

Theses and Dissertations

What are the necessary components of protracted social conflict (PSC)? The works of Edward Azar have laid the foundation as to how PSC is approached in modern scholarship by identifying four necessary components: effective participation, security, distinctive identity, and social recognition of identity. However, do these components account for all of the descriptive and sustaining aspects of PSC? How are these components measured? Furthermore, testing and verification of these components has been limited. Of specific interest to this dissertation, then, is how the theory of PSC is organized and what its theoretically necessary components truly are. This dissertation reconceputalizes and …

Race, Class, Gender, And Linked Fate: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of African American Political Partisanship, 1996 And 2004, Sherral Yolanda Brown-Guinyard

Theses and Dissertations

OBJECTIVE: To determine the predominance of linked fate and socio-demographic predictors race, class, and gender in the political partisanship of African Americans, and in the political partisanship of comparison racial and ethnic group populations.

METHODS: Data obtained from the 1996 National Black Election Study panel series were used to examine the political attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs of 824 adult African Americans. In addition, data collected for the 2004 National Politics Study examined 3,087 American adults from comparison racial and ethnic population groups. These groups included 706 African Americans, 868 White Non-Hispanics, 676 Hispanics, 466 Asians, and 371 Black Caribbeans. Multinomial …

Shifting Landscapes: The Social And Economic Development Of Aqaba, Jordan, Kimberly K. Cavanagh

Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, 'Shifting Landscapes: the Social and Economic Development of Aqaba, Jordan', I examine the role of the global in (re)defining the local by considering the anticipated impact of the planned large-scale urban development within Aqaba. I contend that the identities of the citizens change as the city itself undergoes `renovation' through political adjustments, globalization, tourism development, and commercialization. I argue that these transformations provide opportunities of empowerment, albeit often limited, for marginalized populations who attempt to broaden the dominant local identity by taking advantage of new economic opportunities and increasing their agency within the city. This research provides …

Gender And Programming: A Comparison Of Program Availability And Participation In U.S. Prisons For Men And Women, Courtney A. Crittenden

Theses and Dissertations

The current study examines the state of prison programming across the U.S. and whether availability of and participation in prison programs varies by gender and other key factors such as the interaction effects of race and gender, self-identified needs, and facility-level characteristics. Using Morash, Rucker, and Haarr's (1994) study, the last major study comparing prison programming for men and women in U.S. prisons, as a guide, I explore the current state of prison programming using national-level survey data. The results indicate that gender does indeed matter for both prison programming availability and participation with women having more programs available to …

Complexity And Salience: Evaluating The Inter-Scene Variability Of Animated Choropleth Maps, Michael Dubois

Theses and Dissertations

Animated choropleth maps allow for the compilation of potentially massive time-series datasets which can portray space-time change in a congruent manner. They are also becoming increasingly common for data visualization. When users view and interact with these maps, however, there is the likelihood that the human cognitive-perceptual system may be overwhelmed by a large number of simultaneous changes in each scene: this so-called `change blindness' is a common malady when viewing successive scenes, unless scene-to-scene graphical changes are salient enough to attract the fixation of the user. Even then, there may be a limit to the number of simultaneous changes …

An Assessment Of Technology Adoptability In Sugarcane Burning Smoke Plume Mitigation, Sara Flecher

Theses and Dissertations

The adverse health effects of sugarcane burning emissions on surrounding communities are well documented. Sugarcane farmers in Louisiana, a major sugarcane producing state with 385,000 acres dedicated to sugarcane farming throughout, attempt to mitigate the effects of burn emissions by estimating the characteristics of the resultant smoke plume using meteorological variables as parameters. The current mitigation method designed by the LSU AgCenter, the American Sugar Cane League, and the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry is a manual process requiring the tedious look-up of atmospheric variables from multiple sources and physically drawing a predicted smoke plume on a paper map, …

A Geographic Modeling Framework For Assessing Critical Infrastructure Vulnerability: Energy Infrastructure Case Study, Leanne Sulewski

Theses and Dissertations

Vulnerability of critical infrastructure systems is of the utmost importance to a nation's national security interests, especially the electric grid. Despite the importance of these systems, disruptions continue to occur at an alarming rate, thus indicating that there is a fundamental flaw in the way critical infrastructure systems are analyzed for vulnerability.

Critical infrastructure systems are typically analyzed using mathematical approaches such as graph theory, which strip systems of their important geographic information, and only look at their connections to each other. While these relationships and metrics provide useful information, they cannot provide the entire picture. As such, this research …

Congeries In The Backcountry, James Andrew Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

The early 18th century Public Monopoly employed a unique form of labor organization to facilitate an administered deerskin trade. This study examines ethnohistoric and archaeological data as a means to evaluate subaltern laborers' participation in a commercializing colonial economy. It utilizes a practice based political-economic framework to situate their activities within the deerskin commodity chain. Activities identified through ethnohistoric research are evaluated through material and spatial analysis of the Fort Congaree, 38LX30/319, site. This trading factory and garrison played a central part in the articulation of the government deerskin trade. Material correlates of hide production, procurement, and transportation activities contextualize …

The Relevance Of Sarcasm In Resolving Ambiguous References In Spoken Discourse, Sara Ann Peters

Theses and Dissertations

DISS_para>Sarcasm, or sarcastic irony, involves expressing a message that is often opposite of the literal meaning of what is being said, in a way that may sound bitter, or caustic (Gibbs, 1986). In the past, sarcasm has been viewed as a method of introducing the possibility of alternative interpretations of a discourse, by creating ambiguity as to the intended discourse interpretation. The current series of experiments sought to demonstrate that sarcasm could be viewed as beneficial in resolving ambiguity in conversation, by highlighting particular interpretations and thus ease processing, dependent on other available contextual information. Two Visual World studies …

Determining The Differences In Hurricane Perception And Evacuation Behavior In The Elderly Of South Carolina, Gregg C. Bowser

Theses and Dissertations

The United States is becoming a "grayer" nation. U.S. Administration of Aging projections indicate that by 2030 nearly 20 percent of the national population will be aged 65 or older, with a significant portion of this growth occurring along the hurricane-prone Atlantic and Gulf coasts. This demographic shift creates new challenges for emergency management. Previous research shows that the elderly do not perceive risks and warnings the same way as other groups, and as a result may react differently to risk. Disproportionately high fatality rates for the elderly in recent disasters indicate that these differences are a key determinant of …

Motivational Interviewing And School-Based Mentoring To Improve Middle School Students' Academic Performance, John Terry

Theses and Dissertations

The development of effective and feasible interventions that are deliverable within schools are badly needed in order to address high levels of unmet academic and social/emotional need in children and adolescents. In order to address these needs, two interventions were developed, delivered, and tested in this study. One was an eight-session School-based Mentoring (SBM) program based on evidence-based academic enabling activities. The other was a one-session report card coaching program based on Motivational Interviewing (MI). Previous studies of these SBM and MI interventions found mostly small or statistically non-significant effects on academic performance. The current study tests the hypothesis that …

Investigating The Predictive Validity Of A Domain-Specific Versus Global Measure Of Life Satisfaction In The Context Of School, Rachel Long

Theses and Dissertations

This study compared the utility of a global versus a domain-specific measure of life satisfaction in predicting behavioral and achievement outcome variables among a sample of adolescents in the context of school. The sample included 694 middle school students (7th and 8th grade) from a suburban school district located in the Southeastern United States who completed self-report measures of life satisfaction, engagement, behavior, and grades. Actual grade point average (GPA) and standardized MAP test scores were reported by the school. Based on previous research and the guiding principal, specificity matching, this study hypothesized that a measure of school satisfaction would …