Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Detecting And Mapping The Michigan Vegetation Tension Zone Using Ecological Indicators, Janice Marie Fulford

Masters Theses

Ecotones are areas of transition between adjacent ecosystems that exist at various geographic scales, and are useful in measuring climatic changes. Ecotones are defined by their length and breadth and the ability to detect and map an ecotone from a specific period in time would be useful in measuring current and future change.

The study focused on a 1880's vegetation ecotone in the center of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. This was achieved by deriving ecological variables from the U.S. public land survey's tree species data. These variables were then used to ascertain the length of the ecotone by finding the boundary …

Exploring Behavior And Social Relationships Of A Captive Group Of Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes), Crystal E. Anderson

Masters Theses

An observational study was conducted on a captive group of chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes to determine the overall behavior patterns, social organization, grooming relationships, and enclosure usage. Adolescence is a very dynamic time for young males and new group dynamics were expected to occur. The aim of the study was to investigate any shifting of social bonds among the group members and changes in the ranks of the two adolescent males. The two adolescent males (Lu and Mugsy) should have been demonstrating dominance behaviors towards the females, towards each other, and exhibiting sexual behaviors. Due to the unique group composition and …

Biological, Linguistic, And Cultural Variation Among 19Th Century Plains Indians, Brad Jamison

Masters Theses

In this study I have examined relationships between biological, linguistic and cultural patterns of variability among 19^th Century Indian groups of the American Great Plains. Through this research I have sought to address Cavalli-Sforza et al.’s (1994) call for studies regarding cultural and biological correlation and also to partially assess their methodology of equating linguistic relationships with biologically influential, ethnic boundaries. I have constructed biological, linguistic, and cultural distance matrices, based on the Boas database of anthropometric measurements, Ruhlen’s (1976) and Campbell’s (1997) linguistic taxonomies, and Murdock’s (1967) Ethnographic Atlas, respectively. Furthermore, I constructed a geographic distance matrix …

A Differential Analysis Of Factors That Contribute To Kin Support Among Employed African Americans, Jacqueline R. Clay

Masters Theses

The study is an analysis of factors that contribute to kin support and family bonds among a sample of employed African Americans (N=188). The secondary analysis examined differential levels of kin support for female and male respondents, and assessed the comparative influence of other variables, including income level, education level, religious bonds, and family bonds. Findings pointed out that there was a clear contrast between genders in relation to strength of kin support. Female respondents demonstrated higher levels of support for close relatives (m=1.58, SD=.62), as well as stronger family bonds (F(4,153)=4.080, p<.005, R [squared] of .096), based on frequency of contact, proximity of relatives, and so forth. Implications are discussed in relation to social work family intervention in an era of widespread public reductions in income maintenance programs such as Temporary Aid to Needy Families.

The Impact Of Asian Players On The Revenue Of Their Teams And Major League Baseball, Ji-Ho Kim

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Asian players, especially those from South Korea and Japan, on revenue changes of the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers and Major League Baseball (MLB).

To gather data, the directors of Asian baseball operations from the Seattle Mariners, LA Dodgers and MLB were contacted via e-mail and telephone. In addition, two journalists from the sports industry and two experts from the baseball industry were contacted via e-mail. Further, data showing MLB's and teams' revenue sources from Japan and South Korea were collected from several sports websites.

To investigate the impact …

Spatiotemporal Variations In The Fire Regimes Of Whitebark Pine (Pinus Albicaulis Engelm.) Forests, Western Montana, Usa, And Their Management Implications, Evan Reed Larson

Masters Theses

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a long-lived tree species that exists throughout high elevation forest communities of western North America. It is the foundation of a diminishing ecosystem that supports Clark’s nutcrackers, red squirrels, grizzly bears, and black bears. The decline of this species is directly related to mortality from widespread mountain pine beetle outbreaks and infestation by the invasive white pine blister rust, and may be exacerbated by fire suppression. Prescribed fire will be a primary management tool in efforts to preserve whitebark pine on the landscape. My research used dendrochronology to investigate the fire history of …

Framing, Athletics, And Gender: A Study Of Newspapers And The 2004 Olympics, Nathan Lee Kirkham

Masters Theses

This study serves as an extension of previous research focusing on media content and gender portrayal of female athletes, most notably Kinnick’s research of the 1996 Olympics (1998). In particular, this research analyzed newspaper content for the presence of common framing devices traditionally used to inject gender bias into coverage devoted to female Olympians. More specifically, a data set of 210 articles systematically drawn from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times

was manually coded to compare coverage of male and female Olympians during the 2004 Olympic Games.

While there were some notable exceptions, …

A Model Of The Natural Spread Of The Invasive Insect Species Emerald Ash Borer In The Lower Peninsula Of Michigan, Jennifer L. Weller

Masters Theses

More than 8 million ash trees in southeast Michigan have been killed by an infestation of the invasive insect species emerald ash borer (EAB). Since its identification in July 2002, EAB has been found in Ontario (Canada), Ohio, Indiana, and across Michigan. To date, EAB research has concentrated on the entomological classification and no systematic prediction of the pest's diffusion has been made.

This research presents a predictive model for the spread of EAB across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Limited data on ash tree population distribution, ·. infestation distribution, and the dispersal rate of the emerald ash borer required …

Potential Effects Of Aggressive Videogames On Young Adult’S Behavior And Physiology, Kent David Smallwood

Masters Theses

Each year, interactive technology becomes more and more advanced, offering more lifelike environments, immersive experiences, and realistic situations. Additionally, the videogame industry has over doubled in size in less than ten years, now rivaling the box office industry. However, technological advances have quickly outpaced our understanding of the effects of certain types of adult content on the game player. To date, the majority of the research on the topic was conducted before the games themselves were technologically advanced enough to draw meaningful conclusions; the few studies conducted in the last few years, while offering promising methodological advancements from previous work, …

Information-Seeking Behavior Of Social Sciences And Humanities Researchers In The Internet Age, Xuemei Ge

Masters Theses

This study focuses on how Internet technology influences and contributes to the information-seeking process in the social sciences and humanities. The study examines the information-seeking behavior of faculty and doctoral students in these fields and observes and extends Ellis’s model of information-seeking behavior for social scientists, which includes six characteristics: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting.

The study was conducted at Tennessee State University. Thirty active social sciences and humanities faculty and doctoral students were interviewed about their use of Internet resources, their perception of electronic and print materials, and their opinions concerning the Ellis model and how it …

The Effect Of Stuttering And Fluency-Enhancing Conditions On A Manual Movement Task, Mary Rhodes Robbins

Masters Theses

The present study investigated the possibility of finding and quantifying correlates of stuttering behaviors outside of the speech production system. One female and six male adults who stutter (aged 22-49) drew continuous circles on a digital x-y pad under seven conditions: 1) while silent, 2) while reading alone, 3) while reading under choral speech, 4) while reading under frequency altered feedback (FAF) shifted up one-half octave, 5) while reading under FAF shifted down one-half octave, 6) while reading under delayed auditory feedback (DAF) of 100 milliseconds (ms), and 7) while reading under DAF of 200ms. Normalized jerk (NJ), a measure …

Television News Violence And Children’S Fear Reaction, Lin Wang

Masters Theses

Do parents perceive that exposure to violence on television news programs is a problem for their young children? Although considerable research has shown that media violence in other forms (cartoons, movies, television entertainment programs) has several negative effects on children, almost no research or policy attention has been given to children’s exposure to violent events in television news broadcasts. The purpose of this study was to examine the rates of 4-5 years old children’s exposure and fear reaction to television news violence as it relates to several ecological variables, including parental gender, race, education level, household income, family structure and …

The Effects Of Feedback On Hourly Pay And Individual Monetary Incentives, Douglas A. Johnson

Masters Theses

The effects of performance feedback when individuals received fixed or individual incentive pay were examined. A 2 X 2 factorial design was used with approximately 30 college students in each group. Participants attended six experimental sessions. They entered the cash value of simulated bank checks presented on a computer screen. Monetary incentives increased the number of correctly completed checks (p = .000); however feedback had no effect (p = .825). Time spent working and rate of performance correlated strongly with the number of checks completed correctly, suggesting that both influenced the checks completed correctly. The results suggest that incentives increase …

The Journey Of A Social Movement: A Glimpse Into Hizb 'Allah And Its Integration Into The Lebanese Landscape, Lisa L. Peters

Masters Theses

Historically, research in Social Movement Theories has been limited to only certain aspects of a social movement, whether it was the impetus of the movement, explaining the reasons for its mobilization, how they recruit members and money, how social movements are able to function as an organization, or why groups suffer demise after flourishing for a period of time. This research attempts to build a framework of a particular social movement, Hizb'allah, a Shi'a Islamic movement based in Lebanon. This framework is built by extracting various elements from several social movement theories to explain and illustrate this movement's life course …

Gambling On A Simulated Slot Machine Under Conditions Of Repeated Play, Andrew Ellis Brandt

Masters Theses

Three experiments using a parametric, single-subject design investigated gambling behavior in eight adult humans on a slot-machine simulation. Participants were staked with credits exchangeable for money prior to each session. Experiment 1 a was a systematic replication of Weatherly and Brandt (2004), which investigated the effects of percentage payback (the amount of money gained as a proportion of the amount of money bet) on gambling. Percentage payback was varied from 50% to 110% across conditions. Consistent with Weatherly and Brandt, gambling did not vary systematically across percentage-payback conditions. Experiment 1 b replicated Experiment 1 a but also included forced-exposure sessions …

A Comparison Of Human Decomposition In An Indoor And An Outdoor Environment, Genevieve T. Ritchie

Masters Theses

In the medicolegal context, forensic anthropologists assist investigators by gathering information from skeletal remains. While humans decompose in both indoor and outdoor environments, little research has been performed on the differences in the decomposition rate and process between subjects in an indoor environment and subjects in an outdoor environment. Limited accessibility to appropriate facilities for a comparison study between indoor and outdoor decomposition rates has prevented such research from being attempted. Documented through daily notes and photographs, six human subjects were observed from the fresh to the end of the bloat stages of decomposition. Three subjects were placed in an …

Consumers’ Perceptions Of And Responses To Green Cause-Related Marketing, Betsy Suzanne Saylor

Masters Theses

In the last few decades, cause-related marketing has been increasingly refined as a method for companies to go beyond meeting the material needs of consumers (Marconi, p. xi). As cause-related marketing has developed, the variety of tactics, causes, and ethical issues has become more prevalent. The nature of cause-related marketing is conducive to a growing number of approaches, further narrowing and defining target markets through the selection of more specific causes. Competing alongside the marketing campaigns supporting cancer research is cause-related marketing geared toward restoring native species in the county of a company’s headquarters. The purpose of this study is …

Narrating Single Motherhood: What Does It Mean To Be A Single Mother?, Brandee Rutherford Mathews

Masters Theses

Status transitions such as divorce challenge those who undergo them to revise or reformulate identities lined to statuses no longer held. This study focuses on the identity work of recently divorced mothers of dependent children. Participants were solicited from those attending a “singles’ group” designed for adults with children sponsored by a large evangelical church located in the southeast. The women’s identity work occurred within a religious context that emphasized the desirability and sanctity of marriage. The researcher both participated in the group and conducted phone interviews with eleven of the mothers in the group. Identity ambiguity and identity limbo …

Attachment Security: The Genesis Of Parenting Style?, Ian P. Haag

Masters Theses

There is a great deal of literature examining attachment security and parenting styles but little research has considered these topics in relation to each other. This paper examines the nature of this relationship with a particular focus on Baumrind’s (1978) categorical parenting styles and Bowlby’s (1969) attachment theory. Utilizing a clinic population of 20 parents, it was proposed that securely attached parents would evidence authoritative parenting styles, while insecurely attached parents would evidence no-authoritative parenting styles. The Adult Attachment Projective (AAP), the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), and the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS) were utilized in assessing attachment security. The Parental Authority …

A Test Of The Transition Analysis Method For Estimation Of Age-At-Death In Adult Human Skeletal Remains, Jonathan D. Bethard

Masters Theses

Physical anthropologists and bioarchaeologists often seek to generate biological profiles of individuals represented by skeletal remains. One particularly informative component of the biological profile is skeletal age-at-death. Age-at-death estimation is vital to numerous contexts in both paleodemography and forensic anthropology. Throughout the history of the discipline, numerous authors have published methods for adult age-at-death estimation. These methods have proved invaluable, but they are not free from error. As a result, workers have continually worked to improve the methodological toolkit for estimating age-at-death.

In June of 1999, researchers gathered in Rostock, Germany for the sole purpose of evaluating and testing age-at-death …

'It's Not Catching': Hansen Home And The Local Knowledge Of Leprosy In The Federation Of St. Kitts And Nevis, West Indies, Nancy R. Anderson

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to document the ethnohistory of the leprosarium Hansen Home and to examine the local knowledge ofleprosy in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. Kittitians often responded to questions about leprosy in 2000 with the statement "it's not catching." In 2002, the research goal was to address leprosy from a Kittitian vantage point. Through the lens of anthropological inquiry, archival materials were examined and a variety of stories were gathered about Hansen Home and the local knowledge of leprosy. The latter task was accomplished with ethnographic techniques, particularly semi-structured interviews. The accounts collected were …

Patterns Of Traumatic Injury In Historic African And African American Populations, Christina Nicole Brooks

Masters Theses

For my master’s thesis project titled, “Patterns of Traumatic Injury in Historic African and African American Populations,” I examined trauma incidence in American slave and free populations. The objectives of this study were (1) to present frequency and distribution analysis of injuries in each sample, (2) to create cross tabulations to show similarities and differences in each site and compare these results to between, (3) interpret the frequency and distribution of injuries from a cultural aspect, to better understand the violence and physical demands endured by American slaves and freeborn African American. Most of the skeletal samples used in this …

Online Newspapers: Why They Remain Online, Myra H. Ireland

Masters Theses

In order to understand what lies behind the phenomenon of online newspapers, this study takes a qualitative approach through interviews with online newspaper managers. In addition to attempting to determine if online newspapers had become profitable business ventures, this study explored the benefits, other than possible profit, that support the decision to keep the newspapers online and what online newspaper managers see as the next evolutionary steps of online newspapers.

Interviews with thirteen online newspaper managers were conducted by phone. The interview guide consisted of open-ended questions covering eight topic areas. Online managers, recruited from Editor and Publisher Year Books …

Deciphering Dearmond Mound (40re12): The Ceramic Analysis Of An East Tennessee Mississippian Center, Shannon Douglas Koerner

Masters Theses

The DeArmond mound (40RE12) was initially excavated by WPA investigator John Alden and crew between February 1940 and March 1941 before being inundated by the Watts Bar dam in January of 1942. The site included a pyramidal earthen mound with an adjacent village. The mound was excavated in stratigraphic levels, with cultural material separated by building stages.

The ceramic collection from this excavation is used in a study of Mississippian temporal and spatial variation within the eastern Tennessee Valley. The collection is comprised of 22,826 pottery sherds and an additional 22 partial, reconstructed, or whole vessels. Morphological and stylistic analyses …

Adolescent Gender Attitudes: Between And Within Couples Effects, Joseph Warren Dickson

Masters Theses

This study examines gender attitudes in the context of romantic relationships, and explores the relationship between gender attitudes and individual and relational outcomes. Participants (208 couples) were recruited from a previous study of the dating behaviors of 2200 students who attended 17 East Tennessee High Schools (Harper, Welsh, Grello, & Dickson, under review). Multilevel modeling was utilized in order to maximize the reliability of our models as a technique specifically designed to address the non-independence of partner members’ data (Raudenbusch & Bryk, 2002). Our findings indicate an association between gender attitudes and communication, relationship satisfaction, and depressive symptoms in adolescent …

Physiological Response Associated With Select Rorschach Codes, Chad Ryan Sims

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of Rorschach codes that have been theoretically and empirically linked to the experience of affect in the Comprehensive System (Exner, 2003) through the use of skin conductance and heart rate data. Twenty-four university undergraduates (18 females and 6 males) were administered the Rorschach while physiological data were recorded in an adjacent room. It was anticipated that responses yielding particular codes (C, C’, m, T, V, Y, minus form quality, or cognitive special scores) would evidence higher levels of affective arousal as compared to …

Macroscopic Sedimentary Charcoal As A Proxy For Past Fire In Northwestern Costa Rica, Kyle James Schlachter

Masters Theses

Proxy records of fire history offer valuable information on the role fire plays in an ecosystem. Such information can be used to understand the inter-relationships among fire, humans, and the environment. In the past, the forests of Costa Rica were thought to have been spared from significant pre-Columbian forest disturbance; however, paleoecological studies have shown that this notion is false. While the long-term human influence is now recognized in Costa Rica, the nature and extent of human effects in different regions remain poorly documented. Knowledge of pre-Columbian land uses in Costa Rica increases our understanding of the possible impacts of …

The Collaborative Creation Of Alternate Realities And The Use Of Torture: An Analysis Of Abu Ghraib, Denise Margarett Knight

Masters Theses

The abuses at Abu Ghraib, an American-run prison in Iraq, raise the question, how does torture happen in a society whose members for the most part believe that doing harm to others is wrong? Ronald Crelinsten (2003) offers the explanation that people create an alternate reality in which torture is justified. Three types of people, perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, participate in the maintenance of this alternate reality. My study is an instantiation of Crelinsten's framework. It focuses on the perpetrators at Abu Ghraib. I propose that two types of perpetrators participated in the abuses: the soldiers and personnel in the …

Extending The Politeness Theory To Meditation Discourse: Does Facework Make A Difference?, Andrew Craig Tollison

Masters Theses

Previous research has failed to determine which mediator characteristics have the greatest affect on participant satisfaction during the mediation process. The four characteristics being analyzed in this study are politeness, facework, eye contact, and trust. The concept of politeness suggests that mediation participants have an interest in maintaining face (i.e. positive and negative) while in the mediation session. To avoid threatening the participants’ face, the mediator has five facework strategies to choose from. These facework strategies, when articulated by the mediator, have the potential to combat potential face-threatening acts which can occur during the mediation process. The use of eye …

Environmental History At Laguna Yaguarú, Bolivia: Evidence From Pollen, Stable Carbon Isotopes, And An Embedded Mineral Facies, Zachary Paul Taylor

Masters Theses

Lowland eastern Bolivia is an important area for paleoenvironmental research because of its location near the climatically controlled boundary between the Amazon basin rain forest and the seasonally dry savannas to the south. I present a multiple proxy study from Laguna Yaguarú (15˚36’S, 63˚13’W, 195 m) a large (250 ha) lake located in the forest-savanna ecotone. A 2.4 m long core recovered in May 2003 spans approximately in the last 5000 years. Chronological control is based on excess 210Pb sedimentation in the uppermost sediments and three AMS dates on plant macrofossils in deeper sediments. I undertook pollen and microscopic charcoal …