Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Non-Linear Effect Of Wealth On Crime, Chihiro Muroi, Robert Baumann

Economics Department Working Papers

Although theory suggests the relationship between crime and wealth is ambiguous, most empirical analyses estimate a monotonic relationship and find that wealth has negative effect on crime. Using two proxies for wealth (median income and poverty rate) and two types of crime (property and violent), we find a quadratic relationship is the best fit for our four crime-wealth groups. In general, the expected negative effect of wealth on crime only applies to wealthier counties. In poorer counties, wealth has an unexpected positive effect on crime. This result may be theoretically consistent, or an unintended byproduct of the Uniform Crime Reports …

An Ontological Representation Of Time Series Observations On The Semantic Sensor Web, Cory Andrew Henson, Holger Neuhaus, Amit P. Sheth, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Rajkumar Buyya

Kno.e.sis Publications

Time series observations are a common method of collecting sensor data. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) provides a standard representation for time series observations within the Observations and Measurements language, and therefore is in heavy use on the Sensor Web. By providing a common model, Observations and Measurements (O&M) facilitates syntax-level integration, but lacks the ability to facilitate semantic-level integration. This inability can cause problems with interoperability between disparate sensor networks that may have subtle variations in their sensing methods. An ontological representation of time series observations could provide a more expressive model and resolve problems …

Reference Universe, Sue Polanka

University Libraries' Staff Publications

One of my favorite things about being a reference librarian is me reference collection. I love perusing the subject encyclopedias for unique content and enjoy watching my collection grow, both in prim and e-book formats. However, I find it difficult to keep up with the resources in this valuable collection. Luckily, I found a tool that not only helps me remember these great tides but unlocks them for me, exposing articles and ideas I may not have considered. My tool is Reference Universe, from Paratext, an index for the articles inside the reference collection, providing access points not found in …

The Effects Of Participation In Portland State University’S Mcnair Scholars Program On Undergraduates, Tyanne R. Conner

Dissertations and Theses

Compared with their multi-generation counterparts, first-generation college students face many challenges in the field of higher education. These students experience relatively lower levels of access to college, demonstrate lower rates of persistence through college, and exhibit lower bachelor's degree completion rates than multi-generation students. The results of these cumulative disadvantages are that, compared to multigeneration students, first-generation students do not complete Ph.D.'s at the same rates, have lower subsequent earnings, and are underrepresented as faculty at colleges and universities.

A review of the literature reveals that most studies on McNair programs focus on the instrumental effects of participation, such as …

Working For The "Working River": Willamette River Water Pollution, 1926 To 1962, James Vincent Hillegas

Dissertations and Theses

Efforts to abate Willamette River pollution between 1926 and 1962 centered on a struggle between abatement advocates and the two primary polluters in the watershed, the City of Portland and the pulp and paper industry. Throughout the twentieth century, the Willamette was by far the most heavily populated and industrialized watershed in Oregon. Like many other of the world's rivers, the Willamette was an integral part of municipal and industrial waste removal systems. As such, the main stem of the river carried the combined wastes from sewage outfalls serving hundreds of thousands of people and millions of gallons daily of …

Participation In Victim–Offender Mediation: Lessons Learned From Observations, Patrick M. Gerkin

Peer Reviewed Publications

Victim–offender mediation has grown to establish itself among criminal justice practices as an alternative to traditionally retributive notions of justice. As the number of programs claiming to be restorative in nature continues to grow, victim–offender mediation programs are emerging as one of the state’s preferred delivery methods for restorative justice. Restorative practices, including victim–offender mediation, are inclusive practices. Participation is not only encouraged, it is a necessary element for victim–offender mediation to achieve restorative outcomes. Through the use of observations and content analysis of agreements produced in victim–offender mediation, this research uncovers several impediments to individual participation, including problems in …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Widely Available 3-D Visualization Tools In Support Of Public Participation, Laxmi Ramasubramanian, Jennifer L. Weeks, Tim Case

Publications and Research

There is a persistent need for improved tools and techniques to facilitate public involvement in transportation decision making. Despite continuous improvements in increasing public involvement at all phases of transportation decision making, transportation agencies are still seeking more affordable, accessible, and effective means of communicating with a wide range of stakeholders. The report documents a survey of a wide variety of transportation agencies on their use of interactive 3-D visualization for public involvement using an electronic survey. Supplemental qualitative data was generated through telephone interviews with selected survey participants. It concludes with three case studies illustrating applications of interactive 3-D …

Should You Use It? Tips On Authenticating Online Legal Sources, Emily M. Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Memory For Political Messages: The Role Of Inhibition And Prior Attitudes, Shannon Peterson Callahan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Abstract Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) is a phenomenon wherein repeatedly accessing a portion of information causes decreases in memory for related information that is not practiced (Anderson, Bjork, Bjork, 1994). This study applied the retrieval practice paradigm commonly used in cognitive research to persuasive political statements in order to understand the cognitive implications that selective exposure to political messages may have. This study had a mixed design, with retrieval practice agreement (proattitudinal or counterattitudinal), attitude extremity (neutral, moderate, extreme), gender, and practiced issue (affirmative action or gun control) as between subject variables and item practice status (retrieval practiced, non-practiced/shared stance, non-practiced/shared …

Oregon City School District Enrollment Forecast Update, 2009-10 To 2013-14, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Vivian Siu

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years and forecasts of district-wide and individual school enrollments for the 2009-10 to 2013-14 school years. The Oregon City School District (OCSD) enrolled 7,635 students in Fall 2008, a decrease of 77 students (1.0 percent) from Fall 2007. This was the fourth consecutive year of declining K-12 enrollment, following seven years of enrollment gains. In spite of the overall loss, more students were enrolled in District’s …

Using Robotics To Equip K-12 Teachers: Silicon Prairie Initiative For Robotics In Information Technology (Spirit), Alisa Gilmore, Bing Chen, Neal Grandgenett

Teacher Education Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The Silicon Prairie Initiative for Robotics in Information Technology (SPIRIT) is a unique collaborative effort between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) College of Engineering, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) College of Education, and the local Omaha Public Schools (OPS) system. With funding from an NSF ITEST grant, from 2006 – 2008 the initiative recruited and trained 97 math and science middle school teachers through summer workshops and follow-up sessions during the school year, with the goal of equipping teachers in hands-on engineering design principles and providing curriculum development support for STEM instruction. The centerpiece of the training was …

Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance And Cognition In Pastaza Quechua, Michael A. Uzendoski

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Sounds Like Life: Sound-symbolic Grammar, Performance and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics) by Janis B. Nuckolls. 1996. Oxford University Press [http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/].

The Crisis Of Late Structuralism. Perspectivism And Animism: Rethinking Culture, Nature, Spirit, And Bodiliness, Terry S. Turner

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The paper takes as its point of departure an assessment of the achievements and limitations of structuralism as exemplified by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, with particular attention to its applications to Amazonian ethnographic data. I attempt to identify the original contributions of structuralism, while explaining how it has distorted and misunderstood the Amazonian cultural structures and themes that it has sought to analyze by misapplying its own theoretical and methodological concepts, thus giving rise to what I call the “Crisis of Late Structuralism.” I then suggest how recent developments in Amazonianist anthropology, notably the rethinking of animism by Philippe …

International Police And Societal Response To Juvenile Delinquency & Violence, Angela D. Crews, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

2009 June Newsletter, Nancy Rockey

Human Subject Research Archive

No abstract provided.

Applying Computational Models Of Spatial Prepositions To Visually Situated Dialog, John D. Kelleher, Fintan Costello

Articles

This article describes the application of computational models of spatial prepositions to visually situated dialog systems. In these dialogs, spatial prepositions are important because people often use them to refer to entities in the visual context of a dialog. We first describe a generic architecture for a visually situated dialog system and highlight the interactions between the spatial cognition module, which provides the interface to the models of prepositional semantics, and the other components in the architecture. Following this, we present two new computational models of topological and projective spatial prepositions. The main novelty within these models is the fact …

Implementing A Mastery Model Through Self Quizzing In An Online Learning Environment, Amy E. Scrima

Dissertations

Mastery learning has an extensive and long-standing research base as an efficacious instructional methodology. The use of mastery learning with current technological advances, however, is a new endeavor. The current study evaluated the effects of adding a mastery learning component to an introductory college course by using an online course management system to facilitate frequent, self-given, chapter review quizzes. Thirty-two first- and second-year college students of similar demographic makeup at a midsize community college were the participants for this study. An alternating treatment design was used to assign students to mastery and nonmastery conditions in two sections of an introductory …

Degrees Of Institutionalization: Family Planning Policies And Programs In Senegal, 1980-2005, Yazmine Michelle Watts

Dissertations

Senegal's population growth rate of 2.7% is greater than double that of the world average of 1.16%. The Government of Senegal acknowledges the population problem and has made efforts to address this issue. For over the past two decades the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has served as the predominant donor in Senegal's health sector and has been a strong supporter of Senegal's family planning program. The evolution of family planning in Senegal cannot be understood without considering the roles of culture, religion, decentralization and funding in the institutionalization process. This research addresses important questions concerning factors that …

The Effects Of Rumination On Social Problem-Solving In Depressed And Anxious Mood, Yong W. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if the relationship between rumination and social problem-solving changes based on symptom level, rumination status, type of social problem solving measure used, or type of problem being solved. Specifically, this study examined if rumination impairs social problem-solving by negatively distorting interpretations of problematic situations, promotes an avoidance problem-solving style, and/or impairs rational problem-solving. In the current study, measures of depressive and anxious symptoms, rumination, and social problem-solving were administered to 129 undergraduate students. Three multivariate analysis of variances revealed that the relationship between rumination and social problem-solving was unique to ruminators with …

Catalogue Of Acculturation Constructs: Descriptions Of 126 Taxonomies, 1918-2003, Floyd W. Rudmin

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Acculturation refers to the processes by which individuals, families, communities, and societies react to inter-cultural contact. Advances in communication and transportation technologies, and increasing migration pressures due to demographic, economic, environmental, human rights, and security disparities, make acculturation one of the most important topics for applied research in cross-cultural psychology. However, progress in acculturation research has been frustrated by our inabilities to pit theories against each other in meaningful ways, to summarize results by meta-analytic methods, or to improve constructs and scales all because we have been unaware of the interdisciplinary breadth of acculturation research and its historical depth. This …

Derek Freeman And Margaret Mead: What Did He Know, And When Did He Know It?, Paul Shankman

Pacific Studies

Derek Freeman’s published autobiographical statement and his biographers’ account of his life report that, before he went to Samoa in 1940, Freeman was a cultural determinist strongly influenced by Margaret Mead’s work. While in the islands, Freeman stated that he discovered that Mead was wrong about Samoan culture and felt responsible for refuting her work, thus establishing a linear progression in his critique of Mead from his own first trip to the islands to the eventual publication, some four decades later, of Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (1983). Interviews with Freeman suggest, however, …

Introduction: On Four Anthropologists And Their Histories, Virginia Yans

Pacific Studies

This introduction discusses ten essays concerning Pacific anthropologists Gregory Bateson, Reo Fortune, Margaret Mead, and their colleague, Ruth Benedict. The intellectual and personal engagement of these four social scientists with each other is well known and heavily documented in archival collections: they worked as “before-the-text” collaborators in fieldwork and in formulating culture theory. My Introduction highlights the epistemological and textual strategies the contributors to this special issue employ to describe the “Gang of Four.” These essays demonstrate how a group of contemporary anthropologists think about the past and the history of their discipline. As a remedy for the disruption of …

Clyde Kluckhohn And The New Anthropology: From Culture And Personality To The Scientific Study Of Values, John S. Gilkeson

Pacific Studies

This essay examines Clyde Kluckhohn’s relations with Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson in two contexts: the school of culture and personality, and the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life convened during the Second World War. Kluckhohn strongly identified with the Boasian tradition. Enlisting in the Boasian campaign to make Americans more “culture-conscious,” Kluckhohn joined Benedict and Mead as a public intellectual. In this capacity, Kluckhohn sought to clarify the concept of culture and to widen its currency, emphasized the affinity between anthropology and psychiatry, and, after 1945, searched for …

“More Like Fighting Than Like Waiting”: Mead, Method, And The Proper Object Of Knowledge In Anthropology, Maureen Molloy

Pacific Studies

This paper examines the critical reviews of Margaret Mead’s and Reo Fortune’s early books and Mead’s responses to them. It argues that these reviews demonstrate a consensus about proper anthropological practice and the proper object of anthropological knowledge. Mead’s response was to go the offensive. She demonstrated her competence in the traditional fields of anthropology through her authorship of Kinship in the Admiralty Islands (Mead 1934) and her ability to generate “pure” knowledge and to provide historical context in The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (Mead 1932a). Most significantly, however, Mead challenged the consensus about the proper object of …

The Impacts Of Gentrification On The African American Business Community Of Portland, Oregon, Alexandra Hosford

Anthós

I focus this inquiry on the impact that gentrification has had on black business and entrepreneurship in the Albina District of Portland, Oregon. The Albina district of provides a unique opportunity to measure the effects of gentrification on black business and business development because the area has historically been a residentially segregated black community and has seen dramatic changes due to gentrification in the past decade, including an influx of middle class, white residents. I conduct this examination by subdividing my inquiry into three main sections. First, I provide an outline of the background and evolution of the discourse around …

Cultural Responses To Climate Change In The Holocene, Richard Prentice

Anthós

Variable Holocene climate conditions have caused cultures to thrive, adapt or fail. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals allowed sedentary societies to develop and are the result of the climate becoming warmer after the last glaciation. The subsequent cooling of the Younger Dryas forced humans to concentrate into geographic areas that had an abundant water supply and ultimately favorable conditions for the use of agriculture and widespread domestication of plants and animals. Population densities would have reached a threshold and forced a return to foraging, however the end of the Younger Dryas at 10,000 BP …

The Comparative Efficacy Of Dosed, Enhanced Dosed, Prolonged Exposure, And Mindfulness In The Reduction Of Anxiety, Sophie Rubin

Dissertations

Exposure-based treatments have proven effective in treating a range of fears and phobias and can be accounted for by mechanisms described in behavioral theory. Enhanced dosed and dosed-only exposure are promising new behavioral approaches for treating fears and phobias. Fifty participants with speech anxiety were randomly assigned to a prolonged exposure condition (PE), a dosed-only exposure condition (DE), a positively enhanced dosed exposure condition (PDE), a negatively-supplemented dosed exposure condition (NDE), or a mindfulness enhanced dosed exposure condition (MDE). End of session results for all of the enhanced groups resulted in significantly lower subjective ratings of discomfort than the non-enhanced …

Curriculum-Based Measures In Writing: A School-Based Evaluation Of Predictive Validity, Christina M. Terenzi

Dissertations

Recent research in the area of Curriculum-Based Measures (CBM) in writing has shown that traditionally used metrics, such as total words written and total words correct, may not be the best tools for measuring writing performance, for both secondary and elementary aged children (e.g., Gansle, Noell, VanDerHeyden, Naquin, & Slider, 2002; Tindal & Parker, 1989a; Watkinson & Lee, 1992). Evidence suggests that more advanced measures, such as production-independent measures (e.g., percentage of correct word sequences) may be stronger predictors of student skill level in the area of writing. The present study replicated portions of a recent seminal study and investigated …

African-American Girls And Scientific Argumentation: Lived Experiences, Intersecting Identities And Their Roles In Constructing And Evaluating Claims, Phyllis Haugabook Pennock

Dissertations

Scientific argumentation can be traced back to ancient times; yet has seen a recent upswing over the last decade in the area of science education. This is due to current national education standards that ascribe this practice as a way of promoting scientific literacy for all. Current literature reflects an evolution of scientific argumentation – accommodating emerging research that uses socio-scientific issues. National standards highlight the need to teach argumentation, yet also recognize the urgent demand for educational equity of all students.

The purpose of this research was to narrow the gap dividing argumentation studies from other science discourse research. …

Re(Dis)Covering Organizational Forming: The Case Of Ireland’S Industrial Development Authority, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

Organizational form, as an issue, has been the focus of attention since Weber’s formulation of the ideal-type bureaucracy. For organizational scholars, the very concept of form is at the heart of organization studies, such that “[w]here new organizational forms come from is one of the central questions of organizational theory” (Rao, 1998: 912). The Weberian “ideal type,” with its focus on the ontological possibility of identifying form, represents the inaugural moment in organization theory. Since that moment, and based on the need to say what is “organization” as the condition for having “organization theory,” it is a requirement of organization …