Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Containment: A Failed American Foreign Policy And How The Truman Doctrine Led To The Rise In Islamic Extremism In The Muslim World, Christopher Jonathan Gerber

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After World War II the United States, faced with the new Soviet threat of Communism, instituted the foreign policy known as “containment” in order to mitigate the threat to Western European states of Soviet expansionism. After the fall of Communism in the USSR in 1991 that policy was deemed, at once, a success and an anachronism. The power vacuum that the subsequent abandonment of that policy created was most notable in the Islamic states that had served as proxies in the Cold War against Communism. Both the backdrop of containment as well as the withdrawal of that policy served to …

The Effects Of Processing Instruction On Chinese Learners' Acquisition Of Spanish Copulae, Wesley Curtis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Processing instruction (PI) is a language teaching technique based upon the model of input processing developed by VanPatten (1993, 1996, 2002, 2004). The present study investigated the effects of PI as well as two other experimental conditions (traditional instruction and control) on the acquisition of the Spanish copulae ser and estar by 66 Chinese university students enrolled in a blended (partially presential and partially online) fourth-semester language course. The PI treatment condition included non-paradigmatic grammar explanations, processing strategies designed to help learners avoid commiting errors they may be predisposed to make, and structured input activities which eliminate redundant features of …

An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of A Social Skills Application For Children Who Are Homeless, Emily Baton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have found children who are homeless are twice as likely to develop learning disabilities when compared with non-homeless children and three times as likely to develop emotional and behavioral problems (Bessuk et al., 2014). Additionally, homeless children are more likely to have deficits in regards to social skills (DiBiase & Waddell, 1995; National Child Traumatic Stress Network Homelessness and Extreme Poverty Working Group, 2005), however no known research has specifically explored increasing social skill deficits among homeless children. The purpose of the current research was to a) extend the research on using technology to teach social skills to homeless …

Modeling Food Security, Energy, And Climate And Cultural Impacts Of A Process: The Case Study Of Shea Butter In Sub-Saharan Africa, Colleen Claire Naughton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Millions of people in the world, particularly women and people in sub-Saharan Africa, suffer from hunger and poverty. Three of the major 2015-2030 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to eliminate hunger through food security and sustainable agriculture, eradicate poverty, and achieve gender equality through women’s empowerment. Shea trees and their associated fruit and butter can play a major role in each of these three SDGs for women and their families throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Shea trees are located over a wide expanse stretching more than 5,000 kilometers across over eighteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These trees produce fruit that …

Population Dynamics And Vulnerability Reduction: The Role Of Non-Profit Organizations Following The 2011 Earthquake In Christchurch, New Zealand, Nicole Suzanne Hutton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the adoption of neo-liberal policies and the decline in social welfare, non-profit organizations have been increasingly integrated into public service provision. Such changes raise questions regarding formal policies and access for marginalized populations, no more so than in disaster settings as formal disaster management of sexual health services are still vague. This study identifies the role of non-profit organizations in providing public health and social services through the lens of sexual health commitments following the September 2010 Darfield Earthquake and subsequent major aftershock during February 2011 in Christchurch, New Zealand. The primary goals of this study were three fold, …

It’S More Than Just Changing Your Password: Exploring The Nature And Antecedents Of Cyber-Security Behaviors, Rachel Christine Dreibelbis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Organizations have become increasingly concerned with developing and protecting their information security systems. Despite attempts to secure the information infrastructure, employees inside of organizations remain the largest source of threat to information cyber-security. While previous research has focused on behavioral and situational factors that influence cyber-security behaviors, the measurement of cyber behaviors and their relationship to other performance variables is poorly understood. The purpose of the present study is to 1) determine the underlying factor structure of a cyber-security behavior scale, 2) assess if individual personality traits predict four types of cyber-security behaviors: security assurance, security compliance, security risk, and …

Dialectical Behavior Therapy In College Counseling Centers: Practical Applications And Theoretical Considerations, Carla Chugani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Authors over the last two decades have discussed the myriad of challenges present in managing college students with severe mental health disorders. During the same time period, Marsha Linehan developed dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) as an empirically sound intervention for individuals with suicidal and self-injurious behaviors and this treatment grew to be an evidence-based practice for a range of challenging clinical issues. I argue that one solution to continued increases in college students who present for treatment to their college counseling centers with difficult-to-treat mental health issues, including but not limited to, borderline personality disorder (BPD), is to implement DBT …

Neurophysiological Activity Related To Speech Production: An Erp Investigation, Adithya Chandregowda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The event related potential (ERP) technique is enjoying widespread application in neurophysiological research due to its fine temporal resolution. Of relevance to this study are ERPs related to voluntary movements. The precision with which movement related processes could be recorded using the ERP technique was demonstrated by Gilden, Vaughan and Costa (1966) and Kutas and Donchin (1974, 1977, and 1980) who found that the readiness potential (RP) immediately preceding hand movement was larger over the hemisphere contralateral to the responding hand. Given that left hemisphere controls right hand movements and vice versa, their findings confirmed that the lateralized readiness potential …

Multidimensional Waveform Shaping In Multicarrier Systems, Ertugrul Guvenkaya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Constantly increasing demand for wireless communications in various applications has always led to new ways of modulating the radio frequency (RF) carrier signal by advancing waveform structure throughout generations. Although communication data rates are limited by the theoretical capacity, specific signaling designs for the signal that experiences natural and artificial effects in the transmission medium such as multipath fading channel, hardware impairments and multiuser environment promised better solutions in providing improved wireless access to various type of users and networks. Besides communication capacity, broadcasting nature of radio signals poses the information security as another main concern in wireless communications. In …

The Relationship Between Social Networks, Exchange And Kids’ Food In Children’S Peer Culture, Stephanie Tillman Melton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates children’s peer culture, social networks and the role that kids’ food plays in peer exchanges during middle childhood. During this stage children develop social competencies as they join peer groups with other children and become socialized into children’s peer culture. In order to immerse myself within children’s culture, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at two afterschool programs providing care for elementary school children. I investigated friendships, social networks and exchanges among third through fifth grade children at the programs. The study included participant observation and participatory group interviews with a sample of the children at both sites. The …

Risk And Resiliency Factors At School Entry: Relations To Academic And Behavioral Outcomes In Early Adolescence, Krystle Kuzia Preece

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how early academic and behavioral variables in kindergarten (i.e., academic performance, first time kindergarten status, early school-related emotional adaptation, prosocial behavior, externalizing behaviors, and internalizing behaviors) were related to academic and behavioral outcomes in eighth grade (i.e., academic performance, retention, suspension, externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, and having an educational/mental health diagnosis). Archival data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) database that included approximately 5,700 participants from across the U.S., were examined to answer three research questions: (1) How are early academic and behavioral variables related to each other among youth …

Reframing The Academic Research Library In The U.S.: Perceptions Of Change From Library Leaders, Victoria L. Stuart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the past five years (2010-2015), U.S. universities experienced a simultaneous downturn in financial support along with rapid changes in technology and increased demand for accountability. Academic libraries, among the most central and visible units in the university system, were often at the forefront of financial cutbacks and increased pressure to demonstrate both unit effectiveness and closer alignment with the overall institutional mission. Little research existed to document academic libraries’ changes during this volatile period in history, or how the role of the academic library as part of the university system evolved during this period. Through interviews with the library …

Preference Of Chinese Undergraduate Music Majors For Chinese Xi-Qu And Western Opera, Hong Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to explore the preference of the Chinese undergraduate music majors (N = 27) for Chinese Xi-Qu and Western opera audiovisual examples, the reasons for preference, influence of familiarity on preference, and the relationship between preference ratings and the emotions as detected by FaceReader. The mixed research method, convergent parallel design, was used to explore this topic in depth. As Xi-Qu and opera integrate multiple art forms, eight audiovisual examples (Xi-Qu, n = 4, opera, n = 4) were selected as the stimuli to show the characteristics of the two genres. The participants watched …

Engaging Overqualified Employees: The Role Of Job And Nonwork Crafting, Soner Dumani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the relationship between perceived overqualification and work engagement through basic need satisfaction at work and further incorporated job crafting and nonwork crafting to understand the indirect role of need satisfaction. In study 1, a new measure for targeted nonwork crafting was developed and validated. The final scale provided adequate reliability and validity evidence, and predicted life satisfaction and job satisfaction above and beyond the measures of intrinsic motivation and recovery experiences. The main study included a total of 321 full-time employees who had been working in their current job for at least 3 months and represented …

A Comparative Analysis Of Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry And Stable Isotopes In Assessing Ancient Coastal Peruvian Diets, Theresa Jane Gilbertson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores a cross-cultural analysis of the dietary signatures of four coastal cultures of prehistoric Peru. A combination of elemental analysis based on portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), testing trace elements presented in 209 individuals’ skulls representing the Nazca (38), Cañete (33), Lima (40), and Moche (98) valleys and/or cultures of the first millennium AD, is weighed in conjunction with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to analyze human bone collagen and bone apatite derived from a portion of the individuals represented in the Nazca, Cañete, and Lima cranial samples.

Evidence from the results of both tests are weighed using …

A Theoretical And Methodological Framework To Analyze Long Distance Pleasure Travel, Vijayaraghavan Sivaraman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States (US) witnessed remarkable growth in annual long distance travel over the past few decades. Over half of the long distance travel in the US is made for pleasure, including visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and leisure activities. This trend could continue with increased use of information and communication technologies for socialization, and enhanced mobility being achieved using fuel-efficient (electric/hybrid) and technology enhanced vehicles. Despite these developments, and recent interest to implement alternate mass transit options to serve this market, not much exists on the measurement, analysis and modeling of long distance pleasure travel in the U.S.

Statewide …

The Effect Of Colorist Images On Appearance Concerns Of Black Women, Leah Boepple

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

American culture supports a colorist system that values lighter skin tones in women of color, and these norms are communicated in some part by images present in our society. Previous research has not explored the impact that colorist images may have on the psychological health and appearance concerns of women of color. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether exposure to images of Black women who more closely meet colorist beauty standards (i.e., lighter skin) would negatively impact women’s psychological health and general appearance concerns. It was hypothesized that participants exposed to colorist images of Black women …

#Networkedglobe: Making The Connection Between Social Media And Intercultural Technical Communication, Laura Anne Ewing

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Preparing students of technical communication in the twenty-first century means training them to rhetorically utilize a wide variety of online tools. Technical communicators are now required to employ social media applications on a daily basis to communicate with clients, consumers, colleagues, and other organizations. These online modes have also opened the door to global communication wider and continue to present opportunities and challenges to technical communicators worldwide. Using Japan as a model, this dissertation sought to demonstrate a rhetorical exigency for teaching intercultural social media communication strategies to future technical communicators in the United States. The goal of this dissertation …

Exploratory Study Of Counseling Professionals’ Attitudes Toward Distance Clinical Supervision, Brittani Fiore Munchel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many forms of distance clinical supervision (DCS) have been used in the last decade, but a sparse amount of research addressing (DCS) in counselor education exists to date. The author used random and snowball sampling to survey American Counseling Association members, with a analytic sample total of 96 participants. In the sample, 54.2% of participants were licensed counseling professionals and 39.6% were student or post-masters level interns. The average participant age was 43, ranging from 23 to 74 years. Participants had a mean of 8.1 years of experience. A total of 37.5% of participants had used DCS at some point …

An Animal Model Of Flashbulb Memory: Insights Into The Time-Dependent Mechanisms Of Memory Enhancement, Laura Ashley Bullard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The vivid memory of an emotional event, as well as memory for incidental details associated with the arousing event, has been referred to collectively as a “flashbulb memory”. An important aspect of flashbulb memory in people is that an emotional event enhances memory of contextual details, such as the weather, or clothes one was wearing at the time of the event. Therefore, an emotional event not only produces a detailed memory of the event, itself, but also enhances memory for contextual details that would otherwise not be remembered. The first goal of this work is to describe the development of …

Acceptance And Commitment Training To Enhance A Behavioral Parent Training With Parents Of Children With Autism, Jillian Defreitas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) is an effective teaching package that is often used to teach new parenting skills. While BPT has been established as efficacious in teaching parenting skills, performance often returns to baseline levels. There may be myriad reasons for this; however, it is possible that competing contingencies in difficult behavioral interactions, and long histories of practices that solve behavioral issues in the short term, affect parents’ ability to implement what they were taught. This study sought to impact parental treatment integrity of a common set of parent training practices via an Acceptance and Commitment Training protocol. Parents were …

Using Behavioral Skills Training And A Warning Sticker To Teach Children Household Poison Safety Skills, Jackalynne Jean Delong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess if Behavioral Skills Training (BST) can be used to train a sticker to function as a discriminative stimulus (Sᴰ) for engaging in household poison safety skills and assess whether this skill generalized to untrained household chemicals that bear the Sᴰ in the form of a sticker. Three typically developing children ages 3 and 5 and their parents participated in this study which took place in their homes. BST effectively taught children to engage in household poison safety skills when they come into contact with the trained household poison(s) labeled with the sticker …

Development Of Truck Route Choice Data Using Truck Gps, Mohammadreza Kamali

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past few decades, the value and weight of freight shipments have grown steadily in both developed and developing countries. A recent statistic in the U.S. reveals that weight of shipments increased from 18,879 to 19,662 million tons between 2007 and 2012 (1). It is also expected that this amount will increase to 28,520 million tons by 2040 (1). It is worth mentioning that 67 percent of shipments are shipped by truck mode in 2012. The monetary value of freight is expected to escalate even faster than weight. This value is estimated to rise from US$ 882 per ton …

A Study On The Integration Of Multivariate Metocean, Ocean Circulation, And Trajectory Modeling Data With Static Geographic Information Systems For Better Marine Resources Management And Protection During Coastal Oil Spill Response – A Case Study And Gap Analysis On Northeastern Gulf Of Mexico Tidal Inlets, Richard Ray Knudsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires the development of Regional and Area Contingency Plans. For more than 20 years, the State of Florida, under both the Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, has worked closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop these plans for coastal and marine oil spill response. Current plans, developed with local, state and federal stakeholder input, use geographic information systems (GIS) data such as location and extent of sensitive ecological, wildlife, and human-use features (termed Environmental Sensitivity Index data), pre-defined protection priorities, …

Strategic Missile Defense: Russian And U.S. Policies And Their Effects On Future Weapons Proliferation, Diana Marie Nesbitt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to study the effects that Russian, U.S., and NATO policies of deterrence have on strategic missile defense as well as how these policies and strategic missile defense affect future weapons proliferation. The aspects explored are the current Russian strategic forces and quality, Russian policies and strategies, the Phased Adaptive Approach, and U.S. and NATO policies and strategies. Mitigation of this pressing issue may be through open dialogue, a system to limit future U.S. and NATO interceptors and sensors, and a possible joint data exchange center.

Effectiveness Of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy For Behavioral Outcomes In Young Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Kimberly Ann Knap

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the effectiveness of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy in improving the behavioral outcomes in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Using a non-concurrent multiple baseline design with four mother-child dyads, the study determined the impact of PCIT on the frequency and severity of young children’s challenging behaviors, mothers’ positive parenting practices, and mothers’ satisfaction with treatment. Outcome measures included the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory, Child Behavior Checklist, Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System, and Therapy Attitude Inventory. Results from visual analysis and hierarchical linear modeling indicated a treatment effect for mothers’ use of labeled praises (b = 14.79, …

Response To Bullying (Rtb): Behavioral Skills And In Situ Training For Individuals Diagnosed With Intellectual Disabilities, Rebecca Lynn Stannis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bullying is a continuing problem for adults with intellectual disabilities who live in group homes and attend adult day training settings together. Many different intervention approaches have been reviewed. Most research in this area focuses on bullying in schools with typically developing children, and therefore, a need for effective behavioral interventions for adults with intellectual disabilities still remains. Previous research has found success in teaching safety skills to a variety of populations using behavioral skills training (BST) and achieving generalization of these skills using in situ training (IST). This study evaluated BST to teach a response to bullying (RtB) to …

He_Rtland: The Violence Of Neoliberalism, Hector Sotomayor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Perhaps, under the consciousness of today, “neoliberalism” has defined our world during the previous and current centuries more than any other socioeconomic system. But the evolution of this ideology, which initially aimed to enhance, or rather, reinvent capitalism and individual freedom, has, in essence, induced an unrecognized problem. I argue that neoliberalism is the catalyst for much of the hostility in this globalized society where tensions and poverty are casualties of individual and corporate prosperity. Because of this revelation, I argue that neoliberalism inadvertently instills violence that is both unseen and gendered. In order to formulate my argument, I introduce …

The Evaluation Of Tablets To Increase Compliance And Decrease Problem Behaviors In Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Hongchau Vo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to replicate the effects of the study by Neely et al. (2013) and also determine if the tablet served as a reinforcer for three participants with escape maintained behaviors. A multiple baseline with an alternating treatment design was utilized in the first phase in which academic work was completed on either traditional materials or the tablet. The following phases for each participant were dependent on the prior phase, with a final choice phase. All participants showed lower levels of problem behaviors and higher levels of compliance when tablets were introduced contingent upon completing work. …

The Association Between Sexual Harassment And Suicidality Among College Women, Renee Brown Hangartner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The prevalence of sexual harassment among college women has been reported to range from 33% to 97% (Klein, Apple, & Khan, 2011; Yoon, Funk, & Kropf, 2010) across the lifespan. In any one year of college, the prevalence of sexual harassment reported by women ranges from 33% to 57% (Crown & Roberts, 2007; Huerta, Cortina, Pang, Torges, & Magley, 2006). The severity and frequency of sexual harassment has been found to be related to reports of psychological distress (Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012), feelings of shame (Yoon et al., 2010), anxiety and depression symptoms (Murdoch, Pryor, Polusny, & Gackstetter, 2007), and …