Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Battle For The Mountains: Restructuring Extractive Production And The Socio-Ecological Crisis In West Virginia's Coalfields, Ben Marley

Geography and the Environment - Theses

The coalfields of southern West Virginia have faced recurring crises linked to its regional political economy. Today's crisis is constituted by the decimation on the United Mine Workers of America and the greater use of mountaintop removal coal mining in conjunction with policies and market conditions. This thesis argues that crisis in southern West Virginia's coalfields, like previous crises, will mean the reorganization of human and extra-human natures in which social movements along with economic conditions play an integral role in transcending the crisis. Tracing the history of crises in southern West Virginia's coalfields and interviewing retired coal miners, community …

Supportive Alignments & Teams In Group Supervision For School Counselors-In-Training, Christopher Sean Perrello

Communication and Rhetorical Studies - Theses

This thesis focuses on the formation of supportive alignments and interactional teams through particular linguistic strategies within the group supervision classroom, especially as participants provide one another with feedback on their professional behaviors. Through discourse analysis of transcripts of a video-recorded group supervision meeting, I illustrate how graduate level school counselors-in-training use language to construct alignments and teams. Discursive features that are identified and explicated include positive assessments of others, repetition, co-narration, constructed dialogue, and matching. In investigating these particular linguistic strategies, I emphasize how some of the major goals of group supervision (including feedback and reflection) are discursively expressed …

Planning For Resilient Coastal Communities: An Analysis Of Coastal Plans In South Carolina, Felicia Boulware

All Theses

Resilience is very important to the longevity of inhabited coastal regions. Sea level rise threatens human systems and exacerbates erosion, saltwater intrusion and flooding in coastal regions. Planning for resilience is one way to ensure that coastal communities are prepared for and able to persist through hazardous events, both ongoing and intermittent. This research amasses resilience policies in four categories: ecological, land uses, social, and economic, which reflect concepts of social-ecological resilience. These policies were selected based on their applicability to coastal regions and academic consensus on best practices to increase resilience. These policies were combined in a matrix that …

The Real Housewives Of The Garden Of Eden, Victoria Hurst

All Theses

This essay focuses on a critical analysis of the reality television program The Real Housewives, using the biblical story of Eve to illuminate the ways in which myths of femininity are perpetuated and reimagined within popular culture. Bridging reality television scholarship with post biblical scholarship surrounding the figure of Eve, this essay seeks to approach how both mythology and spectacle intertwine within the mass consumed genre of reality television to reiterate and recreate notions of the eternal feminine in ways that disarm and disengage audiences' critical thinking and response to these representations. By focusing on conspicuous consumption and bodily alteration …

Lions On The Beach, Whales In The Jungle: A Study Of Social Segmentation And Socialization In Rock Climbers, Christopher Starker

All Theses

Rock climbing, as a sport, began as a definitive style in the pursuit of attaining mountain peaks. However, over time, it has evolved into several different styles with varying rules and different goals, and can be experienced in a variety of settings. The growing popularity of the indoor gym climbing as both a practice space for more serious climbers and as an introductory venue for beginning climbers may have changed the way climbers develop attitudes, skills, and ethics that influence the role of managers of climbing areas. Information on how climbers may or may not be similar in terms of …

What Are Hybrid Vehicle Buyers Really Paying For? An Empirical Analysis, Christa Partridge

All Theses

The increasing popularity of eco-labeled products has given rise to numerous studies showing that consumers will pay more for eco-labeled products than for similar non-labeled products. One such pairing is hybrid vehicles and traditional combustion engine vehicles. This analysis is the first attempt at identifying a willingness to pay for the hybrid vehicle label in excess of the willingness to pay for fuel economy and reduced vehicle emissions. In this analysis I apply a hedonic price model to new vehicle data from 2012, and also analyze county-level vehicle registration data from Oregon. The hedonic price analysis shows that, for given …

Firm Formation And Economic Freedom: A Look At The Effect Of Regulation And Fiscal Power Across States, Cameron Cox

All Theses

This paper looks at the effect of economic freedom, a cost of investment for entrepreneurial action, on the amount of firms established across states and years. My hypothesis is that economic freedom has a positive effect on the number of firms that are established in a given year. My assumption for why this is the case is because greater economic freedom implies that costs of investing in a new firm will decrease thereby increasing the incentive to create new firms. I use data from the Mercatus Institutes Freedom index and the United States Census Bureau for firm formation and economic …

Essays In Economic Growth And Development, Zhen Zhu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring the Solow Residual of the Solow growth model. Two central components of the Solow Residual have been studied in my doctoral dissertation. The first is the structural transformation, an internal adjustment process that helps the economy attain the optimal points on its Production Possibility Frontier by reallocating resources from the low-productivity sectors to the high-productivity sectors. The second is the technology diffusion, a positive externality process that pushes forward the economy's Production Possibility Frontier if it adopts the newer technology.

The first chapter of my dissertation is devoted to a case study of …

Trail Rail Run: 2013, Christine Oschell

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

The purpose of this study was to provide the organizers of the inaugural Trail Rail Run with an understanding of their race participants and the money they spent in the local community of St. Regis. The Trail Rail Run course utilized old railroad grades from both the Northern Pacific Railroad and the Milwaukee Railroad.

The Effects Of Financing Unfunded Social Security With Consumption Taxation When Consumers Are Shortsighted, Michael P. Clagg

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

Using a representative-agent life-cycle model with consumer shortsightedness, I study an unfunded social security program financed via consumption taxation. Compared to financing an unfunded program with payroll taxation, I find that there is only a slight increase in well-being across planning horizons that is generated by a program with a consumption tax.

We suggest that both our data and the available time-series evidence are consistent with Milton Friedman's view that people save to smooth consumption over several years but, because of liquidity constraints, caution, or shortsighted-ness do not seek to smooth consumption over longer horizons. . . . Indeed, Milton …

Longitudinal Analysis Of Resource Competitiveness And Homelessness Among Young Adults, Mathew F. Prante

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Homelessness occurs when individual resources are not enough for the demands of a given environment. It is not an arbitrary state of being, or a class of individual, it is a marker that signals a person has fallen to the extreme low end of a continuum of poverty. Perceiving homelessness as a point on a spectrum versus a discrete state, leads to research and explanations concerning how someone goes from being housed to being homeless, which can lead to more meaningful results than conceptualizing the homeless population as a class of people. It allows for the exploration of identification markers …

Newsletter Catholic Deaf Of Detroit, August 2013

Newsletter Catholic Deaf of Detroit

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Detroit, MI

Newsletter Catholic Deaf of Detroit Finding Aid

The Impact Of Political Uncertainty: A Robust Control Approach, Robert Baumann, Justin Svec

Economics Department Working Papers

In this paper, we examine how candidate uncertainty affects the policy platforms chosen in a uni-dimensional, two candidate Downsian spatial model. The candidates, we assume, do not know the true distribution of voters. Following the robust control literature, candidates respond to this uncertainty by applying a max-min operator to their optimization problem. This approach, consistent with findings within the behavioral economics literature, protects the candidate by ensuring that her expected utility never falls too far, regardless of the true voter distribution. We show that this framework produces policy convergence between the two candidates but there is a multiplicity of possible …

Pundits: The Confidence Trick: Better Confident Than Right?, Ben O. Smith, Jadrian Wooten

Economics Faculty Publications

Media pundits are the supreme example of self-belief and confidence in their own opinions. Through TV, newspapers and blogs they tell us with sublime certainty what will happen. But are they right? And does it matter if they are wrong? Ben Smith and Jadrian Wooten ask what we demand from pundits – accuracy or confidence?

Sex As A Moderator Of The Association Between Childhood Trauma, Impulsivity, And Primary Psychopathy In A Hispanic Undergraduate Sample, Judy D. Sifonte

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The current study investigates the effect that sex as a moderator has on the association between childhood trauma and impulsivity on primary psychopathy in a Hispanic college sample. The online survey obtained 443 responses from undergraduates; however after incomplete responses were removed and the data was cleaned, a sample size of 367 remained for use in primary analysis. The study utilized a hierarchical moderation regression analysis to determine the effect of sex on the association of predictor variables—childhood trauma and impulsivity, to the dependent variable, primary psychopathy. Researchers hypothesized that sex will enhance the association between childhood trauma and psychopathy, …

Love Your Keyboard! Professional Writing For Librarians, Emily Ford, Kim Leeder

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Participants of the session engaged in the inquiry process as focused in 4 areas of librarianship: Public Services & Programming; Teaching & Learning; Leadership & Management; Collections & Technical Services. Additionally, the workshop moderators engaged in the inquiry process regarding Publishing in Librarianship. The following are snapshots of the brainstorming that took place.

Jurors’ Subjective Certainty And Standards Of Proof: The Role Of Emotion And Severity Of Charge In Subjective Probability Judgment, Yimoon Choi

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Recent empirical research suggests that jurors struggle to understand and correctly apply the standard of proof. Many researchers have focused on methods to re-write jury instructions so that standards of proof are clearer and easier for jurors to understand. This dissertation suggests the fundamental cause of jurors’ confusion concerning standards of proof is that jurors may use different decision processes (intuitive decision processing or systematic decision processing) and decision indices (objective probabilistic judgment or subjective confidence) depending upon their transient emotions or the seriousness of charge.

Study 1 assessed whether experiencing particular emotions (sadness or anger) could change mock jurors’ …

Generation And The Google Effect: Transactive Memory System Preference Across Age, Jessica Siler

HIM 1990-2015

A transactive memory system (TMS) is a means by which people may store information externally; in such a system the task of remembering is offloaded by remembering where information is located, rather than remembering the information itself. As Sparrow et al. (2011) suggest in the article Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips, people are beginning to use the internet and computers as a TMS, and this use is changing the way people encounter and treat information. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether preference for TMS type (either with books or with …

Looking In The Mirror: Intra-Party Democracy And Party Politics In Southern Africa, Ty Ryan

HIM 1990-2015

Political parties serve as a link between the state and society. Being so, they have a fundamental role in the consolidation of democratic values. It then becomes important to understand their internal functions and character. The purpose of this thesis is to measure the levels of intra-party democracy within three opposition political parties in Southern Africa. Also, this thesis seeks to show whether authoritarian political culture has an affect on a democratic party's behavior. This thesis will strive to show that as party levels of intra-party democracy decrease, fracturing in the party increases. A qualitative case study was conducted on …

Assessing The Correlation Between Terrorist Attacks And The Limiting Of Muslim Immigration Due To Anti-Islamic Sentiments, Ratna Okhai

HIM 1990-2015

In the last 12 years, since the devastating attack on the United States Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the global community has become increasingly wary. The continuing terrorism on July 7, 2005 on the United Kingdom subway system increased tensions between citizens and immigrants in these countries. I use these two countries to examine the consequences effects that these terrorist attacks have had on, in particular, the Muslim immigrant population. In addition to that, I use Germany as a control, since it has not faced a major terrorist attack, yet has a substantial Muslim immigrant population. In the United …

Exploring Tacit Knowledge In Organizations, Andrea Plazas

HIM 1990-2015

There has been a growing prevalent interest to explore the role of knowledge in organizations. Bhardwaj and Monin (2006) identified the knowledge of individuals' as a valuable source of competitive advantage. An organizations well-rounded institutional memory- the organizations collective experiences (Rothwell & Poduch, 2004), fosters competitive advantage. There is a prevailing need to scrutinize the role of tacit knowledge in organizations and how it's hard to articulate nature makes it difficult for organizations to acquire and preserve institutional memory value. The aim of this review is to illustrate that tacit knowledge contributes significantly to the institutional memory value, expansion and …

High School Dropout: A Study Of Parental Perceptions Of Dropout And Prevention Strategies, Daniel Garcia

HIM 1990-2015

Dropping out from high school is becoming a growing trend that necessitates new and more powerful intervention strategies to be utilized. Large numbers of adolescents between the ages of 16- 24 have been shown to receive no high school diploma or equivalent. The effects of dropping out are far reaching, with many students who dropout facing depression and alienation that may lead to other negative consequences. This research focuses on the need for preventative action against the issue of dropout. One hypothesis to be tested is whether or not current dropout prevention techniques can be applied to students who are …

The Effects Of Bullying And The Mediating Role Of Attachment And Humanity-Esteem On Self-Esteem And Behavioral Outcomes, Lovina Bater

HIM 1990-2015

Any type of bullying can become a traumatic event for a child, leading to lasting negative effects. Specifically, victimization may lead to numerous behavioral problems and lowered self-esteem. Also, the quality of attachment may have a predictive relationship with the victimization and the negative outcomes it may cause. Other research implied that a similar relationship may be found between retrospective bullying and humanity-esteem. Despite the collective research done on these variables, no study, until now, has looked at retrospective bullying, humanity-esteem, attachment, behavior problems, and self-esteem all together. This study not only looked at the relationships among these variables but …

The Influence Of Campaign Contributions On Proportionality Of Representation In The United States Congress, Jamesha Cox

HIM 1990-2015

There are proportionally fewer Hispanic Americans, African Americans and women in Congress than in the United States population. Existing literature prescribes a variety of explanations for this disparity including skewed nominations procedures, differing participation rates, racial gerrymandering, voting biases, and funding inequities. This study revisits one aspect of the underrepresentation issue: campaign contributions. Money has been an integral component of the electoral process since before the American Revolution and its impact on the current composition of Congress ought to be explored to a greater extent. Previous research shows that contributors rarely, if at all, discriminate on the basis of gender. …

Predicting Cognitive Workload With Measures From Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (Fnirs) And Heart Rate, John Duany

HIM 1990-2015

The objective of this study was to assess low to high levels of Cognitive Workload by measuring heart rate and cortical blood flow in real-time. Four conditions were implemented into a within-subjects experimental design. Two conditions of difficulty and two conditions of trial order were used to illicit different levels of workload which will be analyzed with psychophysiological equipment. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) has become more prominent for measuring the blood oxygenation levels in the prefrontal cortex of individuals operating in hazardous work environments, students with learning disabilities, and in research for military training. This is due to the fNIR …

Animal Cruelty: The Nexus Between Admonishable Violence And Sanctionable Criminal Acts, Natalie Donis

HIM 1990-2015

In recent years, animal cruelty has stirred into the limelight as society has given the issue further consideration. State and federal laws as well as the establishment of diverse non-governmental organizations exist to abate animal cruelty, but such institutions have lagged in creating effective control mechanisms in spite of the growth of this modern day pandemic. This thesis will discuss animal cruelty, the types of cruelty, legislative developments, correlation of animal cruelty to violence among humans, and ways to strengthen control mechanisms. Credible findings have indicated a propensity for offenders of animal cruelty to escalate their acts of violence towards …

Breach Of Allegiance: The History Of Treason Charges In The U.S., And Its Rebirth In The Age Of Terrorism, David Lewis

HIM 1990-2015

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a legal history and analysis of how the treason clause has been utilized since the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789. Further, the United States and the United Kingdom share not only a historical parallel of the meaning and use of the charge of treason, but also an abandonment of using the charge today. This thesis will provide an in-depth legal history of treason charges in the United States, along with its close parallels in historical evolution and usage to that of the United Kingdom. Focusing prominently on treason throughout United States …

Dear Repose And Absent Solace: A Classroom Exploration Of U.S. Public Library Lgbt Collecting Behavior, Jennifer Weil Arns, Karen Miller

Faculty Publications

Significant attention has recently been focused on establishing the value of public library services, and in most cases, these efforts have explored their topic using currency-based measures. This paper describes a classroom project that introduces an alternate perspective related to the topic of tolerance as conceptualized by the U.S. Southern Poverty Law Center and UNESCO’s Declaration on Principles on Tolerance. The issue that interested the students was the information needs of people who might be considered different or distinct within some communities, and for this project they focused on children with an interest in LGBT materials, using two related research …

Grammar Enhanced Biliteracy: Naskapi Language Structures For Facilitating Reading In Naskapi, William Joseph Jancewicz

Theses and Dissertations

The Naskapi language is the language of instruction in the early primary grades of the school in the Naskapi community. Only recently have Naskapi-speaking teachers received formal instruction in pedagogy, with a cohort of Naskapi teachers following courses for their Bachelor of Education degree towards careers teaching in the Naskapi language in their local school. These adults are highly motivated to become literate in their mother tongue in order to teach or prepare curriculum materials in the Naskapi language. This thesis explores how basic grammatical structures can be mastered, and provides insight into the form that pedagogical grammatical instruction should …

Surfing Injuries Requiring First Aid In New Zealand, 2007-2012, Kevin Moran, Jonathon Webber

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

In an island nation such as New Zealand with easy access to surf beaches, surfing activities are very popular and, while generally perceived as a healthy form of outdoor recreation, they do have attendant risks. This study reports on nondrowning, surfing-related incidents that required medical first aid on beaches during five summer seasons from 2007-2012. Retrospective descriptive analysis of data from lifeguard first aid reports found that 16% (n = 1,327) of injuries were the consequence of surfing activity. More males than females were treated for surfing injuries (68% male, 31% female). Lacerations (59%) and bruising (15%) accounted for most …