Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The African American Family's Influence On Academic Achievement Of Urban Secondary Students, Frank A. Edwards

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

One of the most unyielding challenges of the American Educational System to
date has been determining the unique factors that African American families have on the academic achievement of urban high school students. The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine: (1) what effect does the African American Family’s influence have on urban secondary students achievement; (2) what impact does academic achievement have on the life of an urban African-American student; and (3) what contributing factors stimulate academic achievement in urban secondary students. The African-American family and its influence on student achievement included the following themes: family and familial …

Discoverability Challenges And Collaboration Opportunities Within The Scholarly Communications Ecosystem: A Sage White Paper Update, Mary M. Somerville, Lettie Y. Conrad

University Libraries Librarian and Staff Articles and Papers

The prominence of mainstream search engines and the rise of web-scale, pre-indexed discovery services present new challenges and opportunities for publishers, librarians, vendors, and researchers. With the aim of furthering collaborative conversations, SAGE commissioned a study of opportunities for improving academic discoverability with value chain experts in the scholarly communications ecosystem. Results were released in January 2012 as a white paper titled Improving Discoverability of Scholarly Content in the Twentieth Century: Collaboration Opportunities for Librarians, Publishers, and Vendors. Following the white paper, this article explores the implications for these findings through review of commissioned studies, research reports, journal articles, conference …

Exploring Motivation Through Athlete Communication, Tye G. Davis

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the communication ecology of athlete motivation. Furthermore, gender differences in communication ecologies were evaluated, as were variations in communication tendencies for highly and lowly motivated athletes. Findings suggest that teammates and parents are strong motivators for athletes. Mass media were associated with athlete motivation while social media were not. Gender differences were found with males reporting being more motivated by mass media than females, while females were more strongly motivated by their parents and friends. There were significant differences found in the communication ecologies of highly motivated athletes compared to less motivated athletes. Athletes who were …

Debt Contagion In The Europe: A Panel-Vector Autoregressive (Var) Analysis, Sharmila K. King, Florence Bouvet, Ryan Brady

College of the Pacific Faculty Articles

The European sovereign-debt crisis began in Greece when the government announced in December, 2009, that its debt reached 121% of GDP (or 300 billion euros) and its 2009 budget deficit was 12.7% of GDP, four times the level allowed by the Maastricht Treaty. The Greek crisis soon spread to other Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries, notably Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Using quarterly data for the 2000–2011 period, we implement a panel-vector autoregressive (PVAR) model for 11 EMU countries to examine the extent to which a rise in a country’s bond-yield spread or debt-to-GDP ratio affects another EMU countries’ …

Syllabification Of American English: Evidence From A Large-Scale Experiment. Part I, Dirk Elzinga, David Eddington, Rebecca Treiman

Faculty Publications

4990 bi-syllabic English words were syllabified by about 22 native speakers who choose between different slash divisions (e.g. photon: FOW/TAHN, FOWT/AHN). Results of the regression analyses of the items with one medial consonant are discussed. Consistent with previous studies, consonants were drawn to stressed syllables, and more sonorant consonants were more often placed in the coda. A model in which syllables are made to be as word-like as possible is supported; syllables were often created that begin and end in the same phonemes that are legal word-initially and finally, and syllabifications tended to follow morpho-logical boundaries. Orthographic conventions, such as …

Lessons Learned From Aac Camp, Janet L. Dodd

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Children who benefit from augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) need not only the support of individuals knowledgeable in the technologies themselves, but ones who understand the translation of language intervention principles to AAC.

The Impact Of Colorism On Historically Black Fraternities And Sororities, Patience Denece Bryant

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation study was conducted in order to examine and gain an insight on two topics that are considered to be highly under researched: American historically black fraternities and sororities and colorism within the back American community. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact that colorism has had on black American collegiate Greek letter organizations. Using the qualitative phenomenological approach, 18 graduate or alumni members, two from each of the nine historically black Greek letter organizations that make up the National Pan-Hellanic Council were interviewed using open ended questions to see what impact (if any) colorism has …

Preliminary Validation Of Handheld X-Ray Fluorescence (Hhxrf) Spectrometry: Distinguishing Osseous And Dental Tissue From Non-Bone Material Of Similar Chemical Composition, Heather Zimmerman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Forensic anthropologists normally examine bone from a variety of medicolegal contexts. The skeletal remains may in some cases be highly fragmented or taphonomically modified, making it difficult to sort bone from non-bone material. In these cases, the forensic anthropologist may rely on microscopic or destructive chemical analyses to sort the material. However, these techniques are costly and time-intensive, prompting the use of nondestructive analytical methods in distinguishing bone and teeth from non-bone materials in a limited number of cases. The proposed analytical techniques are limited in that they rely on an examination of the major elements in the material, and …

Evaluating The Utility Of A Virtual Environment For Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder, Nina Sarver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Two significant challenges for the dissemination of social skills training programs are (a) the need to provide sufficient practice opportunities to assure skill consolidation and (b) the need to assure skill generalization (i.e., use of the skills outside the clinic setting). In the case of social anxiety disorder, virtual environments may provide one strategy to address these issues. This investigation describes the development of an interactive skills-oriented virtual school environment and evaluated its utility for the treatment of social anxiety disorder in preadolescent children (Study 1). This environment included both in-clinic and at-home solutions. In addition, a pilot replication/extension …

Parent-Child Dynamics And Emerging Adult Religiosity: Attachment, Parental Beliefs, And Faith Support, Kathleen C. Leonard, Kaye V. Cook, Chris Boyatzis, Cynthia N. Kimball, Kelly S. Flanagan

Faculty Journal Articles

Parental religiosity has been shown to predict child and adolescent religiosity, but the role of parents in emerging adult religiosity is largely unknown. We explored associations among emerging adult religiosity, perceived parental religiosity, perceived similarity to mother's and father's religious beliefs, parental faith support, and parental attachment. Participants were 481 alumni of two Christian colleges and completed surveys online. Emerging adult religiosity (measured by Christian orthodoxy and intrinsic religiosity) was high and similar to parents' religiosity. Perceived similarity to parents' religious beliefs, faith support, and attachment to fathers predicted emerging adult religiosity. However, parental religiosity alone was a weak predictor …

Friendship As A Relationship Infiltration Tactic During Human Mate Poaching, T. Joel Wade

Faculty Journal Articles

Previous research has characterized human mate poaching as a prevalent alternative mating strategy that entails risks and costs typically not present during general romantic courtship and attraction. This study is the first to experimentally investigate friendship between a poacher and his/her target as a risk mitigation tactic. Participants (N = 382) read a vignette that differed by whether the poacher was male/female and whether the poacher and poached were friends/acquaintances. Participants assessed the likelihood of the poacher being successful and incurring costs. They also rated the poacher and poached on several personality and mate characteristics. Results revealed that friendship increased …

Social Construction And Political Decision Making In The American Prison System(S), Jeremiah Olson

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

With over two million inmates, the United States’ prison population is the largest in the world. Nearly one in one hundred Americans are behind bars, either in prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. The rapid growth in incarceration is well-documented. However, social science explanations often stop at the prison gates, with little work on treatment inside prisons. This black box approach ignores important bureaucratic decisions, including the provision of rehabilitative services and the application of punishment.

This dissertation offers a systematic analysis of treatment decisions inside the American prisons. I use a mixed methods approach, combining multiple quantitative datasets with environmental …

Kantian Peace Extended: Liberal Influences And Military Spending, Isaac M. Castellano

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The Kantian Triangle of democratic institutions, IGOs, and economic interdependence has received a great deal of attention by international relations scholars. This project expands on liberal theory by arguing the pacific effects of the Kantian Triangle extend beyond dyadic context, and shapes state decision making on defense spending decisions. This project asserts that as states (1) build democratic institutions, (2) increase the number of memberships in international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and (3) exposes domestic markets to the global economy and subsequent interdependence on foreign markets for both imports and exports, they are less likely to allocate resources toward the military. …

Mediator Impartiality And Mediator Interest, Su-Mi Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

Scholars have debated whether mediator impartiality or mediator interest plays a more vital role in bringing about a successful outcome. This research develops a comprehensive model that accounts for mediation occurrence and medication outcome in terms of an additive model of both mediator impartiality and mediator interest. The two channels through which mediators influence the changes of mediation and occurrence and outcome are hypothesized to be two dimensions of trust, mediator fairness and mediator capacity. This research argues 1) that mediator impartiality contributes to successful mediation outcomes by improving disputants’ trust in mediators’ fairness and 2) that mediator interest increases …

Changing America: The Impact Of Immigration On Welfare Attitudes And Welfare Reform, Jason E. Kehrberg

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The purpose of my dissertation is to further our understanding of why some states restricted immigrant access to welfare in the 1990s while other states granted immigrants access to social programs. With the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), many states diverged from equal access to welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), for immigrants arriving after 1996. Very little scholarly work examines the variance in immigrants’ access to welfare programs. Current research studying welfare attitudes and policy has largely failed to investigate whether and how the influx of immigrants over the last …

Using Web Analytics For Mobile Interface Development, Junior R. Tidal

Publications and Research

Libraries are developing mobile Web sites to keep up with the dynamic landscape of emerging technologies. However, the development of a mobile Web site is not as simple as serving the existing desktop Web site on a handheld device. Library developers can use analytics software to better understand users and to develop a user-centered mobile Web site. This case study explores the use of a library’s traditional desktop Web site’s analytics information in creating a mobile interface. 2 Although Web analytics can provide a great amount of information about users, data should be used as supplementary information. Usability testing, focus …

Newspaper Without The Paper, Jill Patterson

A with Honors Projects

An observation on how the newspaper industry is changing and how it directly relates to the topic of microeconomics.

Gis Prototype Modeling Of Landslide Susceptibility And Risk Perception - Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu Pueblo), Peru: An Exploratory Approach, Alicia Felice Tyson

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Tourism is an increasingly important and developing sector of the Peruvian economy and the country is fast-tracking development to accommodate an influx of tourists, reportedly over 1.8 million/year. Situated in the southwest region of Peru, Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu Pueblo) continues to develop infrastructure to keep pace with this burgeoning tourism industry. Regional geology and hydrology are importation factors influencing the ability to accommodate tourism in Aguas Calientes. Located at the confluence of three rivers, the town is also situated in a watershed with high return intervals for flooding and mass wasting triggered by the sudden, intense rainfall characterizing the …

Law Enforcement Personnel And Lawmaking, Katrina Roberts

A with Honors Projects

Police officers have the difficult job of reconciling two deeply held but conflicting values: our desire to be safe and secure and our strong belief in the right of individuals to be free from government coercion and excessive control. How law enforcement officers and departments handle this conflict has a direct bearing on how the public sees them. As a culture, we expect our police officers to be able to balance these goals, but when they veer off too far we criticize them. At the extreme, too heavy a focus on order and safety may border on police brutality.

Understanding Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years Of Solitude: An Analysis With A Lens For History And Anthropology, John D. Norcross

A with Honors Projects

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a work of fiction, but the
happenings of this novel directly parallel the regional history of the
Caribbean coast of Colombia along with its interactions with Bogotá (the
capitol of Colombia) and the surrounding nation. In an area of the world
where any post-colonial history is remarkably fluid and an accurate precolonial
history is almost non-existent, Garcia Marquez’s account of
historical happenings within the realm of fiction is remarkably
significant.

The Correlation Of Music Preference And Personality, Christopher L. Knowles

A with Honors Projects

The research behind the relationship between one's music preference and personality.

The Clothing Culture Of Parkland College, Abigail Brooks

A with Honors Projects

An ethnography of the clothing choices of students at Parkland College, a community college in Central Illinois.

The Roma And Wall Street/Ceos: Linguistic Construction Of Identity In U.S. And Canadian Crime Reports, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Discriminatory practices against Roma (also known as Romanies) occur on a daily basis in many countries around the world through media discourse. This paper investigates the representation of Romanies in U.S. and Canadian online newspaper crime reports and compares this representation to Wall Street/CEOs in crime reports demonstrating how identity of both groups is constructed through a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic strategies. Drawing on Mayr and Machin’s (2012) critical linguistic analysis of the language of crime, this multimodal study incorporates a variety of tools such as Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics in order to dig below the surface …

Sdrc Update (Volume 5, Issue 1), Connie Jan Maraan

SDRC Publications

No abstract provided.

Four-Stage Dea Efficiency Evaluations: Financial Reforms In Public University Funding, G. Thomas Sav

Economics Faculty Publications

Financial reforms in U.S. public higher education are well underway and are progressively replacing university enrollment based funding formulas with performance based models driven, in part, by graduation rates. Doing so, however, fails to account for the internal resource constraints and managerial efficiencies associated with production. Moreover, graduation rates are affected by external factors beyond the control of university decision-makers. This paper addresses these issues and uses a four-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to evaluate university graduation rate performance. The four-stage DEA efficiencies correct for both environmental and statistical noise effects on university operations. Efficiency estimates control for the …

The Effect Of Context And Self-Esteem On Decision Making Competence And Preferences For Collaborative Decision Making In Older Adults, Christopher Gayer

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Older adults increasingly face difficult decisions in life threatening contexts as they move closer to death, become more likely to be diagnosed with life threatening diseases, and encounter more death within their social network (Greenberg, 2011). The purpose of this research was to understand the effect of a life-threatening decision context centered around cancer, self-esteem, other individual difference factors and cancer experience on older adults’ decision making competence, and preferences for collaborative decision making.

Study participants were recruited through online circulation of the study recruitment flyer and in-person solicitations at meetings and other events at community locations (senior centers, civic …

The Influence Of Widowed Status And Task Complexity On Decision Making, Courtney L. Ortz

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Widowhood is a stressful life event that can impact an individual’s everyday life, including her decision making abilities. The complexity of the decision is also likely to influence the decision making abilities of these widows. The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand widows’ decision making processes, their preferences for collaboration when making decisions, and their satisfaction with the decision outcomes. Data analysis consisted of a series of 3 (widowed status) x 2 (task complexity) ANOVAS and ANCOVAS which found that both complexity and widowed status influence decision making processes. Higher complexity led to less overall satisfaction, but none …

Augmented Realities And Uneven Geographies: Exploring The Geolinguistic Contours Of The Web, Mark Graham, Matthew Zook

Geography Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the digital dimensions of places as represented by online, geocoded references to the economic, social, and political experiences of the city. These digital layers are invisible to the naked eye, but form a central component of the augmentations and mediations of place enabled by hundreds of millions of mobile computing devices and other digital technologies. The analysis highlights how these augmentations of place differ across space and language and highlights both the differences and some of the causal factors behind them. This is performed through a global study of all online content indexed within Google Maps, and …

Public Post-Secondary Experiential Internship: A Qualitative Evaluation Of Wildcat Interest Group’S Student Internship Program At The University Of Kentucky, And Its Benchmark Competitors, Nolan Jackson

Lewis Honors College Capstone Collection

This thesis will identify the early motivation for a program conceived by the Student Government Association at the University of Kentucky to penetrate civic apathy and enhance the politically engaged. This qualitative assessment of “Wildcats in Washington” of the Student Internship Program will detail the conception and implementation of the student-facilitated, student-sponsored experiential internship program reserved for the students of the University of Kentucky.

Additionally, this thesis will measure the uniqueness of the University Student Government’s governmental relations and internship initiative against similar efforts at institutions’ in three measurable populations.

Finally, this thesis will briefly address “Wildcats in Washington’s” current …

Learning Context Matters: Communication Strategy Development Through Spanish Interaction, Sonya Hildebrand

Lewis Honors College Capstone Collection

University studies in the Spanish language are often times confined to the classroom. However, more and more programs have been implementing civic engagement in the Hispanic community into the curriculum to create a service-learning experience. This study sought to determine the effectiveness of service-learning in enhancing communication techniques. Twenty undergraduate students at the University of Kentucky were surveyed at the onset and the conclusion of one semester while simultaneously serving the Hispanic community. The students, on average, increased the frequency of communication techniques after a semester of service-learning. Students who participate in a service-learning program often times see a result …