Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Lanthorn, Vol. 46, No. 47, March 1, 2012, Grand Valley State University

Volume 46, July 14, 2011 - June 18, 2012

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Combining Creativity And Civilization: A Natural Experiment In A General Education University Course, Eric C. Dahlin, A. Brent Strong, Scott D. Grimshaw

Faculty Publications

Improving creativity and innovation is viewed as an increasingly important goal for classroom instruction. This paper evaluates whether a change in creativity occurred for students participating in a university “civilizations” course in which the instructional approach focuses on lateral thinking skills, examines characteristics of world civilizations that exhibited high levels of creativity, and encourages students to practice being creative through a class project and exams. Students in the class who took the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) at the beginning and again at the end of the semester experienced a statistically significant change in creativity scores compared with students …

Review Of Modern Music And After, 3rd Edition By Paul Griffiths, Jason S. Ladd

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Mobilizing Mother: From Good Mother To Patriotic Mother In World War I, Ana C. Garner, Karen L. Slattery

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

The American press played a key role in the Wilson administration’s effort to craft an image of the Patriotic Mother of the Great War. The Patriotic Mother of a soldier was encouraged to assume the mantle of the Spartan Mother. This monograph contrasts the Spartan Mother archetype used by the government and the press to another wartime maternal archetype, that of Thetis, the mother of Achilles, who objected to her son’s participation in the Trojan War. U.S. mothers of soldiers were socially and politically positioned to assume the role outlined by the Wilson administration and advocated by the news media.

2012 March, Office Of Communications & Marketing, Morehead State University.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for March of 2012.

Zach's News, Georgia Southern University, Zach S. Henderson Library

Library Publications (1999-2023)

• A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, 1910-1965
• Downloading EBSCOhost E-Books

Asian Religions Aren't That Exotic, Justin K. H. Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Toronto filmmaker Quentin Lee's The People I've Slept With (2009) may seem like a sex-comedy at odds with Asian Canadian religious values. The story is set in California - but the movie is classed as Canadian because of Lee's Torontonian roots - and revolves around the love lives of Angela Yang and her gay best friend Gabriel.

Improbable Art: The Creative Economy And Sustainable Cluster Development In A Hong Kong Industrial District, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia analyzes the emergence and functioning of a unique artistic cluster in Hong Kong's Fotan light industrial district. The objective of the research is to understand how artistic work in the cluster, despite some challenges, has thus far proven sustainable in cultural, social, and economic terms. The findings of this case study permit further clarification of several dimensions of an emerging theory of cultural/creative clusters, which should be considered as distinct from business and industrial clusters. Selective comparisons between the Fotan cluster and the Moganshan Lu cluster in Shanghai demonstrate that cultural/creative …

Civil Society And Local Activism In South Korea's Local Democratization, Yooil Bae, Sunhyuk Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Recent studies on causes of intergovernmental transformation in old and new democracies have found that decentralization is often the outcome of negotiations between national and local political interests. South Korea is commonly believed to be an exception because local elections and institutions introduced in the early 1990s were, by and large, the product of negotiations among political elites at the centre, without significant inclusion of local actors. However, this article attempts to explicate a hitherto ignored aspect of decentralization reform in Korea: the role of civil society and local activism in the politics of decentralization. In the 2000s, several ‘triggering …

Avoiding Russia's Path In Myanmar, Bridget Welsh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The political reforms that have occurred from August 2011 in Myanmar have captured international attention due in part to the overwhelming desire for the pariah of ASEAN to move toward better governance and greater political liberalization. The unexpected changes began in August 2011 when the current president Thein Sein rallied reformers in his Cabinet and sat down with the country’s de facto opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to move the country toward national reconciliation. Over the last seven months, Myanmar’s military leadership has begun a process of liberalization that is unprecedented.

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: 2011, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This data brief summarizes the demographics and trends in veteran employment from 2011.

March 2012: Volume 1 Issue 3, Dacus Library

Dacus Developments

In this Issue:

Summertime, But the Livin' "Ain't" Easy
Dacus Library of Winthrop University
Student Works on Medlin Papers and Efforts on Friends Endowment

A Comparison Of Cardinal Tournaments And Piece Rate Contracts With Liquidity Constrained Agents, Kosmas Marinakis, Theofanis Tsoulouhas

Research Collection School Of Economics

Acelebrated result in the theory of tournaments is that relative performance evaluation (tournaments) is a superior compensation method to absolute performance evaluation (piece rate contracts) when the agents are risk-averse, the principal is risk-neutral or less risk-averse than the agents and production is subject to common shocks that are large relative to the idiosyncratic shocks. This is because tournaments get closer to the first best by filtering common uncertainty. This paper shows that, surprisingly, tournaments are superior even when agents are liquidity constrained so that transfers to them cannot fall short of a predetermined level. The rationale is that, by …

On The Intraday Periodicity Duration Adjustment Of High-Frequency Data, Wu Zhengxiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

In the last decade, intensive studies on modeling high frequency financial data at the transaction level have been conducted. In the analysis of high-frequency duration data, it is often the first step to remove the intraday periodicity. Currently the most popular adjustment procedure is the cubic spline procedure proposed by Engle and Russell (1998). In this article, we first carry out a simulation study and show that the performance of the cubic spline procedure is not entirely satisfactory. Then we define periodicity point processes rigorously and prove a time change theorem. A new intraday periodic adjustment procedure is then proposed …

Facilitating Ict Adoption Among Research Scientists In Ghana, Lucy Dzandu, Perpetua Dadzie

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Introduction

Information in the modern context is considered as a strategic resource parallel in importance to land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship – the traditional economic resources which are vital inputs for national development at all levels. Without information, the very functioning of society would come to a standstill. One institution which plays a vital role in the collection, processing, storage and dissemination of information is the library. Libraries of all types serve as information providers and aim at satisfying the information needs of their clientele.

In the present era new information technologies are used to perform library functions. The librarian …

Is Specialization Desirable In Committee Decision Making?, Ruth Ben-Yashar, Winston T. H. Koh, Shmuel Nitzan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Committee decision making is examined in this study focusing on the role assigned to the committee members. In particular, we are concerned about the comparison between committee performance under specialization and non-specialization of the decision makers. Specialization (in the context of project or public policy selection) means that the decision of each committee member is based on a narrow area, which typically results in the acquirement and use of relatively high expertise in that area. When the committee members’ expertise is already determined, specialization only means that the decision of each committee member is based solely on his/her relatively high …

A Note On Separability And Intra-Household Resource Allocation In A Collective Household Model, Tomoki Fujii, Ryuichiro Ishikawa

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a collective model of a household in which each member has a utility function satisfying the weak separability condition. We show that the separability at the individual level carries over to the household level and that the allocation of private goods in any Pareto-efficient allocation can be supported as a Pareto-efficient allocation of private sub-problem. We also provide the necessary and sufficient condition for the Pareto weight for the private sub-problem to move in the same direction as the household Pareto weight.

Developing Technology Skills For Academic Librarians: A Study Based On The Universities In Kerala, India, Susan K. Mathew, M.D. Baby

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

In the changing information age library professionals have to gain extensive knowledge about developing technologies and improve their skills to manage these technologies. Computers, connectivity, and electronic information have redefined the image of library profession and the services provided through library and information centres. The rapid developments in Information Communication Technologies (ICT) have given a solid foundation for revolutionary changes in the information handling capabilities of academic libraries and information centers all over the world. According to Katz and Macklin (2007) technology is the portal through which we interact with information, but people's ability to handle information to solve problems …

Educators' Perspective On Library Education In Nigeria, Adam Gambo Saleh

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Library education in Nigeria is very much tied up with the general social and political history of the country. As such, those who aspired to become librarians went to Britain to qualify for the Associate of the Library Association (ALA). However, with the attainment of independence in 1960, the country witnessed the establishment of tertiary institutions at various levels. The first library school was established at University College Ibadan in 1960.

Prior to this period, the Carnegie Corporation has sponsored two studies (Margaret Wrong in 1939 and Ethel Fagan in 1940) to survey the library needs of West Africa with …

Improved Estimates Of Using Luminosity As A Proxy For Economic Statistics: New Results And Estimates Of Precision, William D. Nordhaus, Xi Chen

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Previous work has analyzed whether luminosity data contain useful information for estimating economic output and concluded that there was significant promise for regions with poor quality economic statistics. The present paper examines alternative measures of the precision of the estimates using bootstrap and prior estimates of the errors for both the luminosity quality and the national accounts quality. Based on the new results, we conclude: First, for countries with high quality systems, there is no reason to use luminosity data as a supplement to standard data in any context where standard data are available. Second, we find that there is …

Security Awareness For Public Bus Transportation: Case Studies Of Attacks Against The Israeli Public Bus System, Research Report 11-07, Bruce R. Butterworth, Shalom Dolev, Brian Michael Jenkins

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report presents 16 case studies of attacks planned or carried out against Israeli bus targets, along with statistical data on the number, frequency, and lethality of attacks against bus targets that have taken place in Israel since 1970 and during the Second Intifada, which occurred between September 2000 and the end of 2006. The statistical data come from MTI’s Database on Terrorist and Serious Criminal Attacks Against Public Surface Transportation. The report also includes an analysis of the effectiveness of different improvised explosive devices and methods of delivering them and raises questions for future discussion. The case studies of …

2012 Quality Of Life Study - Orleans And Jefferson Parishes, Edward E. Chervernak, Bogdan Mihoc

Survey Research Center Publications

The UNO Survey Research Center began its Quality of Life series in 1986. Since then the quality of life and government services in Jefferson and Orleans parishes has been assessed every other year. The current 2012 survey is the sixteenth in the series, and in this report we pay particular attention to changes in both parishes that have occurred over the last two to ten years.

The 2012 study is a return to the more conventional examination of quality of life in the region. The focus of the study changed immediately after Katrina to identify the key problems and difficulties …

The Significance Of Race For Neighborhood Social Cohesion: Perceived Difficulty Of Collective Action In Majority Black Neighborhoods, Tamara Leech, Tara Hobson-Prater

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

This article explores William Julius Wilson's contentions about community cultural traits by examining racial differences in middle class neighborhoods' levels of social cohesion. Specifically, we explore the perceived difficulty of these actions-as opposed to general pessimism about their outcomes-as a potential explanation for low levels of instrumental collective action in Black middle class neighborhoods. Our results indicate that, regardless of other neighborhood factors, majority Black neighborhoods have low levels of social cohesion. We also find that this racial disparity is statistically explained by shared perceptions about the amount of effort required to engage in group action in different neighborhoods. These …

Best Practices In Professional Distance Education: A Hybrid Social Work Distance Education Program In South Texas, Denise A. Longoria, Héctor Luis Díaz

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

The operation of distance education programs can be quite challenging especially when offering professional programs that require internships, practica and teaching courses that focus on skill development. It is difficult for instance to teach counseling and other skills through the internet. Nevertheless, the department of social work at The University of Texas – Pan American has developed a hybrid distance education program that enables it to effectively deliver a bachelor’s and a master’s in social work in the two remote locations of Laredo and Brownsville, Texas with the assistance of modern educational technology. This program provides access to accredited social …

Spiritual Well-Being And Flow, Joel Simons, Brian Goetsch, Rodger K. Bufford

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

No abstract provided.

Predictors Of Rehospitalization In High-Utilizing Patients In The Va Psychiatric Medical System, Nicholas W. Bowersox, Stephen M. Saunders, Bernard Berger

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

233 high-service-utilizing (HSU) psychiatric patients were recruited during an inpatient psychiatric treatment. They completed a questionnaire related to their treatment beliefs and were tracked via computerized medical records over 2 years. During the follow-up period, 79.8% were readmitted for additional inpatient psychiatric treatment. Survival analysis techniques were used to examine patients’ rates of readmittance during the follow-up period. Number of previous year inpatient psychiatric days served as a significant predictor of readmittance status and time to readmission. The survival plot was split by previous-year inpatient days to examine the effect of this variable on readmission. Implications of findings are discussed.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of Semantic Memory As A Presymptomatic Biomarker Of Alzheimer’S Disease Risk, Michael Sugarman, John L. Woodard, Kristy A. Nielson, Michael Seidenberg, J. Carson Smith, Sally Durgerian, Stephen M. Rao

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Extensive research efforts have been directed toward strategies for predicting risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) prior to the appearance of observable symptoms. Existing approaches for early detection of AD vary in terms of their efficacy, invasiveness, and ease of implementation. Several non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging strategies have been developed for predicting decline in cognitively healthy older adults. This review will survey a number of studies, beginning with the development of a famous name discrimination task used to identify neural regions that participate in semantic memory retrieval and to test predictions of several key theories of the role of the …

Exploring Body Comparison Tendencies: Women Are Self-Critical Whereas Men Are Self-Hopeful, Stephen L. Franzoi, Kris Vasquez, Katherine Frost, Erin Sparapani, Jessica Martin, Megan Aebly

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Our study examined similarities and differences in women’s and men’s comparison tendencies and perfection beliefs when evaluating their face, body shape, and physical abilities, as well as how these tendencies and beliefs relate to their body esteem. College students (90 women and 88 men) completed the Body Esteem Scale (Franzoi & Shields, 1984) and answered questions concerning their social comparison and temporal comparison tendencies related to face, body shape, and physical abilities evaluations as well as personal perfection body beliefs. As predicted, women were more likely than men to compare their face and bodies to other same-sex persons whom they …

What Do Middle School Boys Read? An Observation Of Middle School Boys' Reading Choices, Sheilah Cooper Barnett

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative study investigated what current middle school boys are reading. The purpose of this study was to gain information that would aid educators in providing those reading materials and communicating with male students concerning their reading habits. Six middle school males were chosen for this study, which utilized a phenomenological approach to capture individual experiences. Results showed that boys do read, but they often read materials which educators do not generally accept as valid reading material, such as magazines. Boys often do not view themselves as readers. Males enjoy books with a lot of action and prefer to observe …

Examining Megachurch Growth: Free Riding, Fit, And Faith, Joseph P. Daniels, Marc Von Der Ruhr

Economics Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose – Megachurches are thriving in religious markets at a time when Americans are asserting their ability as consumers of religious products to engage in religious switching. The apparent success of megachurches, which often provide a low cost and low commitment path by which religious refugees may join the church, seems to challenge Iannocconne's theory that high commitment churches will thrive while low commitment churches will atrophy. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs a signaling model to illustrate the strategy and organizational forms megachurches employ to indicate a match between what the church produces …