Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Adult Perceptions Of The Experience Of Being Identified "Talented And Gifted" As Children: A Phenomenological Study, Bradford Summers

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This is a phenomenological study of adult perceptions of the experience of being identified "talented and gifted" as children. Data were gathered by transcribing the video recordings of adults who were students of the Talented and Gifted (TAG) education program in Fairfield, Ohio during 1978-1983. The phenomenological method was used to discover perceptions of a unique population of adults who shared life experiences during elementary and middle school. Analysis of the data resulted in the identification of four main themes: Growth, Interpersonal, Future, and Thankfulness. Three facilitating and three challenging subthemes were identified under each main theme. These were: Internal …

Mentoring Programs: Key Differences In Support For Beginning Teachers, Virginia Fick

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study explored the issue of mentoring and its problems in aiding in the induction of new teachers into various school systems. Such a study is justified because teacher shortages remain a real threat in many areas of this country. The research sought to demonstrate that a mentor program without clear guidelines and accountability may actually damage new teachers. Some of the goals of a mentoring program were considered: the suitability and selection of mentors, the training of mentors, and program evaluation. A review of the literature included such topics as the high cost of attrition, the needs of new …

The Father's Business Person, The Shift To Tentmaking Missions Strategy, Chris White

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the important place that tentmaking holds or should hold in missions strategy. It is the belief of the author (supported by almost 20 years of ministry experience overseas) that visas and money are often barriers to ministry effectiveness. This paper would like to provide a solution (i.e. tentmaking) to these common tensions that most missionaries encounter. The value of the topic is very personal to the author's ministry: first because I am currently serving on the mission field (needing a visa and money), and second because of the potential tentmaking holds for …

Latent Classes Of Self-Reported Adolescent Depression In A Clinical In-Patient Population, Jonathan F. Doti

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The depressive disorders are among the most common mental health problems with substantial financial and quality-of-life costs. Depression has generated considerable debate as to the underlying structure/taxonomy and continues to be frequently debated. Adolescents who meet diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder often experience anxiety (and vice versa). Therefore, understanding the underlying structure of depression as well as the co-occurrence of anxiety in a population of adolescents adds to our conceptual understanding of these disorders and facilitates treatment clarity.

This investigation sought to investigate the following research questions for adolescents’ self-reported symptoms of depression, and self-reported symptoms of depression and …

Outcomes And Presurgical Correlates Of Lumbar Fusion In Utah Workers' Compensation Patients: A Replication Study, Jessica M. Gundy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Over the past 2 decades, lumbar fusion surgeries performed in the United States have increased dramatically, particularly for compensated workers. Costs for these procedures have also risen substantially in the past decade, primarily due to the use of more sophisticated surgical devices such as interbody fusion cages. While surgical instrumentation and technology may improve the rates of solid bony vertebral fusion, overall improvements in quality of life and pain outcomes related to this new technology are still inconclusive.

In collaboration with the Workers Compensation Fund of Utah (WCFU) and Utah State University (USU), a psychology professor, Dr. M. Scott DeBerard, …

Exploring Aspects Of Strong Remarriages, Marci Campbell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Remarriage is often studied with a focus on the difficulties associated with the complexities of remarriage. The focus of this study was to explore aspects of strong remarriages. Ten couples that had been remarried for 5 years were interviewed separately about their strong remarriage. Prevalent topics were compiled and organized into factors that contribute to a strong remarriage. These factors include: commitment, love, religion/spirituality, communication, compatibility, financial agreement, and physical intimacy. Additionally, expectations of remarriage were explored. The majority of the individuals expressed that their remarriage exceeded their expectations. A discussion of suggestions for future research is included.

A Study Of Mothers’ Perceptions And Practices Of Kindergarten Readiness, Kirsten Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was conducted to understand what mothers with children enrolled in a developmentally appropriate preschool program believe and are actually doing to help prepare their children for kindergarten, something of key importance, as kindergarten success is a foundation for later school success. There is very little research on the topic of parental perceptions and practices in kindergarten readiness and the transition into kindergarten.

A survey was sent home to 60 families who had their child enrolled in the Adele and Dale Young Child Development Laboratory at Utah State University during the 2010-2011 school year. In the survey, parents were …

Do Attitudes About Spoiling Children Affect Attitudes Regarding What Infants Need For Early Social-Emotional Development, Kathleen Westover

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Infants that are raised in a warm loving environment have an increased probability of growing into responsible loving adults. Infants have the ability to make their needs known through different cues such as crying. Many parents do not understand how to respond appropriately to their infant’s cues. For instance many parents believe that if you pick up an infant every time they cry they will become spoiled. Researchers have studied the effects of responding appropriately to an infant. Infants who have their needs met when they demonstrate signs of distress learn that the world is a safe place for exploration. …

Problem Solving In Latino Families, Eliza Torres

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this dissertation is to learn if the quality of problem solving, parent engagement, and child engagement improve as a result of participating in a parenting intervention. The quality of problem solving was coded by independent observers watching a 5-minute videotaped task. Parent and child engagement were also coded by an observer and were evident in behaviors such as making eye contact, using good social skills, using humor, minimizing problems, and showing empathy were also rated by individual coders who were blinded to treatment/control groups. Each parent-child pair had a total of three scores, one for each variable …

Exploring The Reliability And Validity Of The Experiential Discounting Task, Rochelle R. Smits

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Delay discounting is the devaluation of rewards that are delayed in time. This phenomenon was first studied with animals in controlled laboratory environments and later translated to human procedures. Though the decrease in value of outcomes as the delay to receipt increases is the same across species (money for humans, food for animals), a number of methodological concerns have been raised about the procedures used to study delay discounting in humans.

The Experiential Discounting Task (EDT) was recently developed in order to study delay discounting in humans in a way that is more similar to that used with animals. That …

The Intersection Of Multiple Oppressed Identities: Implications For Identity Development, Angela Marie Enno

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Understanding the experiences and identity development of ethnic minority LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning) individuals presents a challenge because the theories of identity development that exist to date may not take into account their unique perspectives. Theories of identity development that are not specific to ethnic minority or LGBTQ identities may not represent their experiences well. At the same time, theories of ethnic identity development may not fit for individuals who are LGBTQ; and theories of LGBTQ identity development may not fit for ethnic minorities. No theory of identity development to date takes into account all …

Exploring A Stable Aspen Niche Within Aspen-Conifer Forests Of Utah, Cody M. Mittanck

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study addresses a critical issue faced by resource managers confronting aspen restoration projects in the Intermountain West. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) forests have received a large amount of popular and academic attention over the last decade due to concerns over decline. As a result, both private and public forest resource managers have focused attention on actively restoring aspen communities through treatments such as prescribed burning, logging, and grazing exclosures to name a few. There is increasing evidence suggesting the existence of "stable" aspen communities. This community type undergoes processes entirely different from successional aspen communities and …

A Multi-Phase, Mixed-Method Regional Analysis Of Lake And Reservoir Based Recreational Opportunities In Utah, William S. Spain

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Managing and planning for human use at lakes and reservoirs creates challenges for land and water management agencies in Utah and the country as a whole. In spite of increased attention and research, management problems such as conflicts, accidents, and site impacts continue to occur. These problems have been exasperated by an 800% increase in the number of registered boats statewide over the past 50 years. As such, developing new strategies to address the broad array of management challenges could be beneficial to the recreation management of lakes and reservoirs. This study, conducted in collaboration with Utah State Parks, considers …

The Development And Exploratory Validation Of The Awareness Of Social Justice For Individuals With Disabilities Scale, Daniel J. Kelsey

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Individuals with disabilities (IWDs) continue to experience stigma, prejudice, and discrimination that result in social injustice. Counselors of all specialties and theoretic orientations provide services to IWDs. However, there is little discussion about disability-related social justice in the counseling and psychology literature. Counselors, psychology professionals, rehabilitation counselors, and society as a whole, must first be aware of the social injustices that IWDs experience and the role that society has in maintaining them; otherwise, counselors risk perpetuating these social injustices. However, there are no instruments that measure the awareness of social justice issues as they relate to IWDs. By creating and …

An Exploration Of Aggregated Patterns Of Student Curriculum-Based-Measurement Outcome Data Within A Response To Intervention Program, Elizabeth Findlay

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Identifying and determining what a student needs in order to progress and succeed in school is an important aspect of education. One proposed model for doing so is called response to intervention (RTI). This model states that the degree to which a student does or does not respond to high-quality interventions can help predict future performance and provide needed insight into what skills a student does and does not have. A student receives more or less services based on his or her level of responding interventions provided. The standard RTI model indicates that 80% of a student population should respond …

Using Script-Fading Procedures To Teach Children With Autism To Initiate During Free Play, Kara Anne Reagon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Children with autism often display deficits in social interaction, communication, and play. Unlike typical peers during free play with a variety of games and toys, they often do not initiate to others or engage in interactive game play for sustained periods of time. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of script-fading procedures in increasing initiations and conversational repertoires for children with autism. However, these procedures were examined in arranged environments using an activity schedule or in structured settings. In addition, the role of the conversation partner has not been studied. The use of activity schedules has also been effective in …

The Effectiveness Of Campaign Contribution Limits In Judicial Elections, Camarie Tanesha Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

State judicial elections are becoming increasingly more expensive in terms of overall spending. The growing visibilities of these elections are expectantly followed with the support of special interest groups as well as individual contributions. This article focuses on judicial campaign contribution limits and there effectiveness in accomplishing their original goals. My research will address a variety of state judicial elections as well as Supreme Court cases involving the effectiveness of judicial campaign contributions have in accomplishing there purpose of reducing overall spending and preventing corruption. My hypothesis states that judicial campaign contributions are not effective in limiting the overall spending …

Hierarchical Structural Organizations Of State Political Parties, Isaac Mckay Higham

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

From August through November of 2011 I worked as an intern for the Utah Democratic state party at their state party headquarters. I started my internship around the same time as the newly elected chair of the state party, Jim Dabakis, assumed his new role as head of the party. Dabakis did not have the traditional resume of a party chair but rather had his background as an international art dealer and businessman. He had always been politically minded and involved in political causes, but he did not have the extensive partisan politics background that previous chairs had. In anticipation …

Estimation Of Beta In A Simple Functional Capital Asset Pricing Model For High Frequency Us Stock Data, Yuzhe (Yan) Zhang

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This project applies the methods of functional data analysis (FDA) to intra-daily returns of US corporations. It focuses on an extension of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to such returns. The CAPM is essentially a linear regression with the slope coefficient β. Returns of an asset are regressed on index return. We compare the estimates of β obtained for the daily and intra-daily returns. The variability of these estimates is assessed by two bootstrap methods. All computations are performed using statistical software R. Customized functions are developed to process the raw data, estimate the parameters and assess their variability. …

The United States Credit Rating Downgrade: European Reaction, Brian Scott Roseman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this paper is to answer the important question of how investors viewed the debt obligations from European countries in reaction to the United States credit rating downgrade by Standard and Poor’s on August 5 2011. During this period there were a handful of countries in Europe that still had AAA ratings. This paper looks at the reaction of investors towards Europe, through the medium of Credit Default Swaps (CDSs). By analyzing the changes in CDS spreads, I am able to determine the perceptions of investors regarding the risk of European Sovereigns during the timeframe surrounding the U.S …

Ethnic Disparities In Prenatal Care Utilization In Vietnam, Ha Ngoc Trinh

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Prenatal care is credited with reducing neonatal, perinatal, and maternal mortality and morbidity. The main purpose of the thesis is to examine the ethnic disparities between majority and ethnic minority women in prenatal care usage. The thesis also analyzes the effects of age, education attainment, female employment, and region on prenatal care utilization in Vietnam. I employ the Demographic and Health Survey 2002 in Vietnam. Descriptive statistic and logistic regression are the two statistical tests employed in this research. Results exhibit evidence of ethnic disparities in type of prenatal care utilization. Although ethnic minority women are likely to enter prenatal …

Is Analyst Over Optimism Creating Price Inefficiency In The Stock Market?, Juan Mauricio Guiliani

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This study aims to uncover the relationship between market frictions, measured by price delay, and consensus analyst recommendations on stocks. Analyst recommendations are publicly available to investors, and under the framework of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, should contribute to the efficiency of a stock’s pricing mechanism by providing information to the market that would otherwise not be available. We find evidence that the more favorable recommended stocks in our sample command a higher price delay than less favorably recommended stocks. In other words, the most optimistically recommended stocks are priced less efficiently than other less favorably recommended stocks. We also …

Opaqueness Of Financial Institutions, Todd G. Griffith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Spectators and professionals have targeted financial institutions as being at the epicenter of recent markets crises The opaqueness of bank holding companies' assets has been assumed to have created additional volatility and inefficiency within the market. It appears that the capital structure of a bank is the actual driving force behind the inefficiency. I conduct multiple empirical analyses to measure whether the lack to financial institutions asset transparency negatively impacts the ability of the firms price to respond to informational innovations in a timely manner. Through additional econometric tests, I explore several economic theories to narrow in on the root …

Options Vs. Futures: Which On Average Will Have The Greater Payoff?, Ryan Silvester

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The use and idea of futures contracts has been around for almost as long as humans have existed. Many of these contracts can be as simple as the shaking of someone’s hand with the agreement to trade an asset for an agreed upon price in the future. These contracts have often been used by farmers to ensure a needed price for an asset, or for a store owner to ensure a needed asset for a given price. The idea of a futures contract is to either buy or sell an asset later on at a specified price. In this paper …

Communicative Language Teaching: The Cornerstone Of Second Language Acquisition, Sierra Fischback

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is comprised of a compilation of papers written by the author while completing the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University. The focus of the portfolio is a teaching philosophy outlining the author’s beliefs on how to foster effective language teaching in the university foreign language classroom. Included as well are artifacts addressing coping with culture shock, effective forms of language learning, and reading in foreign language literature courses. These artifacts were chosen to reflect important areas of language teaching that have affected the author’s teaching philosophy. Finally, the author has incorporated an annotated …

Explaining Energy Resource Cooperation: Shale Gas, Chinese Investment, And The Changing Calculus Of U.S. Energy Security, Douglas B. Atkinson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In June of 2005, the relatively small and generally insignificant energy company Unocal became the focus of a fierce bidding war. China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) made the first move, outbidding the American firm Chevron. Accepting the CNOOC bid looked like an obvious choice for Unocal since it was almost $1.5 billion dollars more. However, as it became increasingly clear that policy makers in Washington would not allow the deal to go through CNOOC withdrew its bid and Unocal had little option but to accept Chevron’s offer.

Washington’s opposition seemed to be an overreaction to a deal that would …

A Multiple Streams Approach To Bioterrorism Policy, Craig Reeder

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Bioterrorism is not a new phenomenon and the issues that surround bioterrorism are complex. This paper focuses on the history of bioterrorism, its current threat in public view, and then applying a theory in which explains how those problems became issues in government. The paper starts by examining a historical account of bioterrorism. The history serves a purpose to discuss the ongoing developments and struggles of drafting legislation for an ongoing problem.

After a discussion of bioterrorism from a historical perspective, the paper examines the current threat or state of bioterrorism. This will lead into a discussion about John Kingdon’s …

Maternal Language During Book-Sharing: Wordless Verses Print, Jessica Nielsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The importance of adult linguistic responsiveness in facilitating language development in young children is well documented (e.g. Cross & Morris, 1980; Snow, 1994; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, & Baumwell, 2001; Yoder, Warren, McCathern, & Leew, 1998). Research has shown that the use of responsive language by parents in the context of play is associated with greater child language productivity (Girolametto, Hoaken, Weitzman, & van Lieshout, 2000). Rocissano and Yatchmink (1983) found that when mother-child dyads utilized more joint attention, the toddlers demonstrated higher language skills and syntax abilities. Research has also shown that parent-child shared book reading contexts can be very beneficial …

Influences Of Disclosure Among Child Sexual Abuse Victims, Michelle Jones

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Child forensic interviews are essential in eliciting disclosures in child abuse cases. Due to the nature of abuse and the child victims, barriers are inevitable to obtaining a full disclosure. This research describes the barriers as well as the factors that increase the likelihood of eliciting a disclosure during child forensic interviews. Previous research has found that factors more likely to induce a disclosure are having a supportive primary caregiver, an investigation which was instigated by the child victim, and if the victim is an older female. Barriers preventing disclosure include threats made by the perpetrator, fear, lack of opportunity …

A Synthesis Of Math Interventions For Elementary Students, Stephanie Toone

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

One major concern when developing a Response to Intervention (RTI) multi-tier program is the procedural elements required to ensure effective instruction. Ten studies were reviewed to gain an understanding of the components that result in positive RTI outcomes in mathematics. Elements analyzed included RTI program procedures , tier administration and tier outcomes . Results suggest that several empirically-based math interventions are being used in RTI programs in the literature and the researchers are implementing options as part of the Classwide , Tier 2 and Tier 3 instructional programs. Intervention progress is monitored primarily using Curriculum Based Measurement procedures to evaluate …