Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Indexing And Economic News: Coverage Of The 2009 Economic Stimulus Debate, Portia Levasseur

LSU Master's Theses

Indexing theory predicts that, in certain issue areas, media coverage will index levels of elite debate. Elite controversy, the theory predicts, will embolden the press to include a broader variety of sources and coverage should reflect a more open public debate. This has important implications for public opinion. Proponents of the theory expect that it will operate in a variety of issue areas of news coverage, but support for the theory exists largely in the realm of foreign affairs coverage. This study examines television coverage of the 2009 economic stimulus package to evaluate levels of indexing for a domestic, macroeconomic …

Threat, Violence, And Voters: Race And Context In The 2008 Presidential Election, Matthew Fowler

LSU Master's Theses

The 2008 Presidential Election brought into office the first African-American president in U.S. history. This paper analyzes variations in White support for Barack Obama based on a number of county-level contextual factors, which are hypothesized to influence aggregate White voter support for the Democratic candidate. Based on the well-known racial threat theory, this paper will explore how racial composition and income inequality effect White support for Barack Obama. Another key explanatory variable, violence, is thought to influence White voter support because of the preconceptions some of these voters hold about African-Americans. Violence helps shape the stereotypes White voters hold, and …

Examining Teen Girls' Fashion Behavior In The Virtual And The Real World: An Exploratory Study, Caroline Makena Kobia

LSU Master's Theses

Over the past few years, changes in technology, especially the emergence of virtual worlds, have impacted the landscape of doing business. Many industries, such as retailing and fashion industries have recognized the e-commerce potentials and have engaged in setting up strategic ventures in the virtual worlds to develop products and/or services that are geared towards meeting consumer needs. Previous research has examined consumers’ adoption of innovative products, but there is no known study that has examined consumers’ adoption of virtual fashion. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to shed some light on understanding consumer adoption of virtual fashion. …

The Impact Of Choice On Child Sustained Attention In The Preschool Classroom, Kelly Elizabeth Geary

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine the mean duration of child attention to a self-selected toy and to determine the longest duration under which teaching condition children attend to toy play (child choice, adult choice, or adult presentation). Forty preschool-aged children were observed under each teaching condition and data were collected on the child’s duration of child attention. Results indicate that children’s sustained attention is significantly different across the three teaching conditions, and it was found that children attended for the longest duration of time during the child choice condition. It was also found that children attended for …

Power & Politics In Resettlement: A Case Study Of Bhutanese Refugees, Christie Shrestha

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This thesis examines the complexities in the resettlement of Bhutanese refugees. Using anthropological ethnographic field methods, this thesis explores the power dynamics between the employees of a resettlement organization and the refugees and the intricate webs of power within different institutions, such as local NGOs and healthcare institutions. The study argues that humanitarian actions and interventions are often driven by bureaucratic politics and policies that contradict what humanitarianism stands for as apolitical and value-neutral. These contradictions or paradoxes in humanitarianism also are also present in refugee resettlement. Analyzing these paradoxes that characterize resettlement, this thesis illuminates structural discontinuities or gaps …

Becoming Bodies: How Preadolescent Girls Consume And Produce Media In 21St Century America, Margaret Louise Mcgladrey

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This study investigates preadolescent girls’ interpretations of images of and messages about women’s bodies presented in both traditional and online media in the American cultural context. Using qualitative methods including in-depth interviews, email diaries, and digital photo collages, this study gives voice to girls aged nine to eleven from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds so that they might tell their stories about interacting with media that is relevant to their relationships with their bodies. Employing objectification theory as well as concepts from the cultural studies tradition, the findings suggest that the process of becoming a female body in the 21 …

Ethnic Identity And Perceived Discrimination As Predictors Of Academic Attitudes: The Mediating And Moderating Roles Of Psychological Distress And Self-Regulation, Hui Chu

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The current study addressed the deficiency in research by examining risk factors for immigrant children that may lead to academic disengagement (such as ethnic discrimination by peers and teachers, and psychological distress) and resilience factors that promote academic engagement (such as the development of a positive ethnic identity). Children who had stronger, more positive ethnic identities had more positive academic attitudes. Furthermore, the more the children were teased by their peers and graded unfairly by their teachers because of their ethnicity, the more they thought school was less important, less useful and felt less efficacious about school and valued school …

Factors Affecting Rural Kentucky Patients Hospital Choice And Bypass Behavior, Xiao He

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This study examines the underutilization of rural hospitals in Kentucky. The authors study hospital and patient characteristics to determine why and how rural patients bypass local rural hospitals and how they make their decision in the hospital choice. A Health Care Service Survey conducted in rural Kentucky and hospital data drew from American Hospital Directory are used. A binary probit model and a conditional logit model are applied. The results suggest that the hospital quality, prior experiences and the satisfaction of the local hospital, along with patients’ value of hospital size, reputation and patients’ insurance coverage influence rural patients’ hospital …

Examining Gender Differences In Persistence In Higher Education Among African American Students, Yvonne Townsend

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This Study examined issues related to persistence in higher education among African American students, using the prominent model proposed by Vincent Tinto. The intentions were to examine the growing gender gap among African American students. The study examines factors from the Tinto model such as high school GPA, College GPA, college social integration and academic integration to try and explain the effects of gender among African American students. This research also attempts to elaborate the Tinto model by considering high school extracurricular activities as a pre-entry attribute that has an effect on persistence in higher education. Use of the Tinto …

Analyzing Educational Attainments And Occupational Outcomes Of Tibetan Refugees Living In India, Tenzin Palkyi

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Opportunities of mass education are a relatively new phenomenon in the Tibetan community. Following the incidents of 1959, the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans fled into India. Mass education was implemented and sustained within the Tibetan community for the first time. The goal of this exploratory research is to study the impact of mass education on the first generations of Tibetans who experienced it in exile. This study analyzes the gendered pattern in subjects students choose to pursue, their educational attainment and the kinds of jobs they assume after graduation. The study presents a quantitative analysis of data spanning …

World Production And Trade Of Pistachios: The Role Of The U.S. And Factors Affecting The Export Demand Of U.S. Pistachios, Zijuan Zheng

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of the US in the worldwide production and trade of pistachios, identify and estimate the major factors affecting export demand for US pistachios in 21 major markets, accounting for 78 percent of total US pistachio exports. The study estimated the impacts of US pistachio own price, cross price, importing markets’ GDP, real exchange rates and effect of food safety shocks. A panel data analysis was conducted using data from 1989 to 2009. A Houseman test indicated that the random effects estimator was the chosen estimator. Elasticity analysis indicated that …

Participation In Agricultural Governmental Cost Share Programs In The Kentucky River Watershed, Pedro Miguel Fernandes Da Costa

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to review existing literature of factors that influence farmers’ decision to participate in conservation programs. This study is also intended to collect county data and information on conservation programs and participation in the Kentucky River watershed region, which can be analyzed and used to draw differences in characteristics of the region that would suggest willingness to participate in a trading scheme for improvements in water quality.

The results suggest that more participation in a trading scheme from some counties than others should be expected. Counties with more farms and larger farms will probably have …

“You’Re Surviving But I Don’T See How You’Re Living” Appalachian Women Talk About Tanf And Employment In Their Communities, Pon-Chu Tsou

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This thesis studies qualitative data to examine the lived experiences of Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (K-TAP) recipients in Appalachian Kentucky. This research suggests that PRWORA legislation utilize the importance of place-based analyses to implement and evaluate poverty policy. For women who are attempting to meet PRWORA’s goals, the local services available to the women and the barriers they face to employment highlight the role place has in this national policy discussion. Of the women interviewed, recipients who resided in economically distressed areas had fewer opportunities to participate in employment activities than women in at-risk or transitional areas. While many strived …

Nongovernmental Organizations And Sex Work In Cambodia: Development Perspectives And Feminist Agendas, Jessica Catherine Schmid

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This project focuses on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia that deal, either directly or indirectly, with sex work and sex workers. The NGOs outlined in this study have goals ranging from preventing Cambodian women from entering the commercial sex industry to empowering Cambodian sex workers through the formation of sex worker unions. Through the textual analysis of documents and web materials disseminated by these NGOs and from interviews with representatives from the NGOs, I seek to analyze how underlying assumptions about development and about the commercial sex industry shape the ways in which the personnel leading these NGOs think and …

Perceptions Of Support, Likelihood Of Retention, And Differences Between Places Of Origin Among First-Generation College Students, Teresa Radomski

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

First-generation college students are less likely to attend and complete college than their peers whose parents have completed college. Among the reasons cited for this disparity is lack of parental familiarity of the college admissions process and financial aid opportunities. First-generation youth wishing to pursue a college education must rely on others for this knowledge. This study examines first-generation college students' perceptions of support and whether their places of origin have any bearing on their future plans. The study examines interviews with participants through the lens of Tinto's (1993) model of student departure to examine whether their responses, and whether …

Cultivating Miracle Perceptions: Cultivation Theory And Medical Dramas, Rachael A. Record

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

This thesis reports the results of a study designed to investigate the influence of exposure to televised medical dramas on perceptions of medical miracles. Four hundred and eighty-one college students participated in a survey in which they responded to different questions about their medical drama viewership and their different beliefs with regard to medical miracles. Results found that heavy medical drama viewers perceived belief in medical miracles to be less normal than non-viewers. Similarly, heavy viewers perceived medical miracles to occur less often than non-viewers. Interestingly, heavy viewers perceived medical dramas to be less credible than non-viewers. In addition, this …

Deaf Or Hearing: A Hearing Impaired Individual’S Navigation Between Two Worlds, Brittany Nicole Lash

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

identity play an important role in how they communicate and interact with other individuals. One group in which identity construction and navigation is a difficult process is the hearing impaired population. In an effort to understand how these individuals construct their identity and navigate their hearing impairment, this study utilizes Communication Theory of Identity. Through the use of interactive interviews, the researcher was able to examine how 11 participants manage their identity as hearing impaired individuals. The interviews provided insight into the four layers of identity proposed by CTI – personal, relational, enacted, and communal – in the hearing impaired …

The Effect Of Practice On Eye Movements In The 1/D Paradigm, Will Seidelman

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Previous studies have demonstrated that observers may ignore highly salient feature singletons during a conjunction search task through focusing the attentional window (Belopolsky, Zwaan, Theeuwes, & Kramer, 2007), or by the suppression of bottom-up information (Treisman & Sato, 1990). In the current study, observers’ eye movements were monitored while performing a search task in which a feature singleton was present and corresponded with the target at a chance level. With practice, observers were less likely to make an initial saccade toward the singleton item, but initial saccades directed at the target were likely throughout. Results demonstrate that, in an effort …

Teacher Disclosure: Developing Privacy Rules, Managing Boundaries And Building Relationships, Renee Monique Kaufmann

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The roles and responsibilities of middle school teachers are never ending. From instructing students on state-mandated curriculum to the enrichment of character and inquiry, teachers make daily decisions about how and what to disclose to their students. The current study reexamines Hosek and Thompson’s (2009) study on how teachers develop privacy rules and coordinate boundaries using Petronio’s Communication Privacy Management as the theoretical framework. Studying middle school teachers, in lieu of college instructors, allows for a better understanding of how privacy rules and boundaries are constructed and used within the middle school. This provides a better understanding of the important …

“What’S Happening” @Twitter: A Uses And Gratifications Approach, Corey Leigh Ballard

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

The uses and gratifications approach places power in the hands of the audience and is a helpful perspective when trying to understand media usage, exposure, and effects. However, while the uses and gratifications approach has been applied regularly to traditional media, research explaining why people use new social media networks as well as the gratifications they obtain from them is scarce at best. This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of the uses and gratifications approach as well as the current literature about social media networks. An argument is built within the thesis to study Twitter as one social media network …

Self-Regulation And Liver Function: Expanding An Ecological Model, Tory Anne Eisenlohr-Moul

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

Under conditions of high self-regulatory effort, peripheral organ systems have been found to slow, potentially to rearrange energetic priorities in favor of the brain. The present study tested an expansion of this model by exploring the possibility that alcohol metabolism (i.e., liver function) may slow during self-regulation. We also anticipated that high trait self-control would attenuate the effect of condition on metabolism. Twelve males aged 21-25 completed two conditions in counterbalanced order. During each session, the participant received 0.33 ml/kg of absolute alcohol for a target peak blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.03 g%. Participants then performed tasks (self-regulatory tasks …

Descriptive Representation, Representative Bureaucracy And Bilingual Education Policy: Examining Implementation, Victoria Marie Ibáñez

University of Kentucky Master's Theses

In this study, I examine the factors that influence school districts’ commitment to implement ESL (English as a Second Language) education in compliance with the federal Bilingual Education Act of 1968. To explain variation in implementation effort, I focus on several features of the local implementation environment, including the role of Latino descriptive representation. Utilizing data on all public school districts in Texas, I employ a Heckman two-stage estimation procedure that accounts for factors that influence school districts’ decisions to implement bilingual education programs as well as factors that affect the amount of resources school districts are willing to allocate …

Educational Qualification And Racial Attitudes: Does Educational Qualification Really Matter?, Bonny Ghosh

LSU Master's Theses

Most of the literature on social inequality reports that traditional old-fashioned, overt racism has been transformed into a modern symbolic form of covert racism in contemporary American society. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asserts that “color-blind racism” is the dominant form of racism that persists in the post-Civil Rights period in the USA. A large body of research argues that education may not make too much of a difference in individuals’ racial attitudes. Studies also show that despite the fact that education is a crucial social institution, it cannot make the ills of intolerance and negative racial perceptions cease to exist. Given the …

The Contribution Of Implicit Stereotypes To The Overrepresentation Of African Americans In The Special Education Category Of Emotional Disturbance, Tai A. Collins

LSU Master's Theses

The overrepresentation of African Americans in special education is a problem that has plagued the field since its inception, yet very little progress has been made in alleviating the issue. The problem is especially troubling because of the host of negative outcomes associated with special education in general, as well as placing African American students into special education specifically. The current study sought to examine the contribution of implicit racial stereotypes to the overrepresentation problem. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where they viewed vignettes about either an African American or Caucasian problem student, after which they completed a questionnaire …

The Times-Picayune Coverage Of Three Incidents Resulting In Capital Trials, Sean Seosop Muggivan

LSU Master's Theses

Death penalty cases are truly the most unique cases in the criminal justice system. Much research has been done showing that the death qualification process venripersons must undergo results in jurors un-empathetic to the kind of information used to mitigate the death penalty, as well as creating a jury that is more susceptible to pretrial publicity. This study reviews this research and analyzes the content of a New Orleans’ newspaper’s coverage of three incidents resulting in capital trials. It was found that, similar to a study done in California that was the model for this study’s content analysis, the newspaper …

Celebrity Versus Non-Celebrity: Parasocial Relationships With Characters In Reality-Based Television Programs, Nicole Webb Henry

LSU Master's Theses

Research of parasocial relationships suggests that audiences engage in one-sided relationships with their favorite personae in the media. This study attempts to explore two types of reality stars: those who had fame before being on reality television and those who have fame because of the show. Using the PSR-Processing Scale, I compared levels of parasocial interactions for each, as well how moral disengagement might play a role for each type of reality star. I also explored whether these parasocial relationships are influenced by the frequency with which respondents watch various types of sub-genres of reality-based programs (i.e. game docs, dating …

Test-Driving Interventions To Increase Treatment Integrity And Student Outcomes, Evan Henry Dart

LSU Master's Theses

Behavioral Consultation is typically an effective way for school psychologists to work with teachers to find an appropriate intervention for implementation in the classroom. While some teachers have no difficulty implementing suggested interventions with high integrity, this is not always the case. The present study attempted to develop a “test-drive” procedure by which resistant teachers were able to implement several interventions briefly in the hope that they found one to their liking and implement it with high levels of integrity. The results indicate that teachers resistant to traditional Behavioral Consultation were able to implement their preferred intervention with high rates …

Hospice Organizations On The Social Media Scene: Benchmarking The Uses And Strategies Of Hospice Organizations On The Internet In 2011, Emily Tiller

LSU Master's Theses

As baby boomers age and the hospice industry grows to meet the demands for care, it is important that these organizations reach their consumers in sensitive and responsible ways. Building caring and mutually beneficial relationships with these consumers is important. Social media can give these organizations the platforms to build and maintain these relationships, but most of the hospice organizations in this qualitative study did not make good use of the opportunities online to relate to their publics. Using public relationships and relationship management measurements, this study monitored the online activity of seven hospice organizations. In general, these organizations under …

Assessing Attentional Bias And Cerebral Laterality In Specific Phobia Using A Dichotic Listening Paradigm, Whitney Shay Jenkins

LSU Master's Theses

Researchers have found fear to impact a variety of cognitive variables in individuals with specific phobia. Attentional bias is a cognitive variable that has received considerable attention in the specific phobia literature; however, the existing literature follows only one line of attentional bias—bias as encoded through images, words, or other content presented visually. This study aimed to expand on this area by assessing attention and cerebral laterality in individuals with specific phobia using a dichotic listening paradigm (i.e., via auditory means). Results indicated that participants with specific phobias do not significantly differ from controls in terms of the number of …

Obesity Treatment Alternatives: Foods To Surgery, Brooke Erwin Bayham

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of these studies was to explore the roles of dietary strategies and bariatric surgery in obesity treatment. The breakfast study was a randomized, crossover trial used to evaluate the role of egg proteins, and a retrospective chart review was conducted to obtain comparative information about two different bariatric surgeries. The breakfast study included 20 subjects who were randomized to receive an egg breakfast (EB) or a cereal breakfast (CB) matched for energy density and macronutrient composition but different protein quality for one week. Following a washout period, each subject was crossed over to receive the opposite breakfast for …