Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Influence Of Confucianism On Identity Formation Of A Multi-Skilled Migrant: An Autoethnography, Annabella Fung

The Qualitative Report

In this autoethnographical study, I examine how my identities were influenced by Confucianism. Two main Confucian concepts were examined: “selfperfection,” and “filial piety and submissiveness.” As a migrant who left Macau for Australia at fifteen, I have been immersed in diverse cultural climates, experienced gender bias, identity crisis and racial discrimination. I consider all experiences as essential steps of my evolution with ethnographic, interpretative, phenomenological and narrative understandings. This paper introduces the term “seasonal fluctuations” as a way to describe the changing meanings of my lived experiences that were interrogated by my three distinctive personalities: The Writer, The Interpreter and …

Connecting The Dots: A Review Of Norman K. Denzin's Interpretive Autoethnography, Victoria Landu

The Qualitative Report

The interpretive autoethnography by Denzin (2014) described the interpretive autoethnography as a biographical study of life experiences and performance of a person. Using examplars, the author tried to connect the dots between lives, performance, the epiphany and its’ interpretation. It also explained strategies to conducting interpretive autoethnography. The book defined several genealogies of terms which helped to broaden the understanding of the explanation of process and performance in autoethnography. The book presented some of the pitfalls to avoid when conducting interpretive autoethnography. Defining several genealogies of terms, the book explained process and performance in autoethnographic study.

The Relation Between Couple Communication And Work-Family Conflict, Klaudia Konik

Honors Projects

In studies examining work-family conflict, much of the attention has been focused on control at work (Radcliffe & Cassel, 2014). The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between couple communication at home and experienced job satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and overall work-family conflict. Though hypotheses specifically examining communication frequency were not fully supported, post-hoc analyses revealed unique relationships between specific communication patterns and skills and work-family conflict, especially when examining family-to-work influences. Suggestions for future research to examine the benefits of teaching communication skills at work and how they may impact work-family conflict are also discussed.

Elaborating Patient Agency In Breast-Cancer Care: A Grounded Theoretical Analysis Of Patients Asserting Treatment Preferences, Rachel Sofia Erdman

Dissertations and Theses

Successful physician-patient communication is increasingly being acknowledged as a vital aspect of healthcare today. Research in the field has not examined all aspects of patient-centered care and the aspects that have been studied have not been grounded in actual patient action. The research done in the field has largely been studied quantitatively. The present thesis research attempts to contribute to the gap in the field of physician-patient communication by qualitatively examining patient assertiveness. This thesis examines conversations between women in Portland, Oregon recently diagnosed with breast cancer talking to their surgeons about their diagnoses and treatment options. Using grounded qualitative …

The Impact Of Documentation Status On The Educational Attainment Experiences Of Undocumented Hispanic/Latino Students, Brittanie Alexandria Roberts

Dissertations and Theses

The issue of undocumented immigration has recently taken center-stage in the media and national politics in the United States. A large population of undocumented youth grows up with legal access to public education through high school, following the Supreme Court decision of Plyler vs. Doe, but faces legal and economic barriers to post-secondary education. Following high school, undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth legal protections end, greatly limiting chances for upward mobility through traditional post-secondary education pipelines. In some cases, knowledge of future barriers to post-secondary education leads to a decline in educational motivation.

The current political atmosphere makes this study a bit …

Conflicted Union: Culture, Economics And European Union Media Policy, Daphney Pernola Barr

Theses and Dissertations

The constant tension between internal market development and cultural preservation remain within European Union audiovisual media services regulatory policy. While market harmonization and liberalization are key to developing a formidable European media market, the preservation of and promotion of ‘European-ness’ depends upon the protection of cultural diversity, a necessity for a confederation of 27 sovereign nation-states with distinct cultures and languages. It may not currently be possible to reconcile the intrinsic duality of audiovisual media through EU regulatory policy mechanisms. However, a regulatory policy clearly that addresses the potential of cultural harmonization/economic liberalization conflict, that explicitly connects the EU’s audiovisual …

Alterations To Taste Preference In Mc4r Haploinsufficiency Manifest Prior To Dietary Induced Obesity And Are Accompanied By Dendritic Spine Alterations To Medium Spiny Neurons Of The Nucleus Accumbens In Adulthood, Robert Francis Roscoe Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and has become an increasing public health concern for developed nations. Haploinsufficiency of melanocortin receptor 4 has been identified as the single most common monogenetic cause of obesity in humans. Using the MC4R +/- haploinsufficient rat, we sought to determine potential alterations in body weight and morphology, locomotor activity, sucrose concentration preference, and progressive-ratio operant testing in a dietary-induced obesity environment. Rats were placed on four separate diets corresponding to 1.7% saturated fat with 12.2% total kcal/fat, 6% saturated fat with a 40% total kcal/fat, 12% saturated fat with a 40% …

A Theory Of Reward Stability, Justice Evaluations And Group Cooperation, Hyomin Park

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to introduce a theory of the stability of rewards, justice evaluations and group cooperation with the results from three empirical tests of the theory. According to justice theory, rewards from exchange relations produce justice evaluations among individuals, leading to emotional and behavioral reactions. Specifically, unjust rewards cause lower levels of justice evaluations, positive emotions, and cooperative behaviors. Prospect theory and research on negativity bias posit the asymmetry between negative and positive events: negative events have a stronger effect than the same size of positive events on individuals’ perception. Combining the previous arguments, the theory …

Innovation Among Georgian Journalism Educators: A Network Analysis Perspective, Ana Keshelashvili

Theses and Dissertations

Rapid developments in technology in recent years have disrupted the media’s traditional role as a main informer for citizens. The changes have challenged journalism educators worldwide, pushing them to innovate and experiment. One purpose of this dissertation is to examine adoption of innovations by journalism educators in Georgia, a small post-Soviet country with partly free media and lack of professional outlets, that has been and still is a beneficiary of Western aid for media development. Employing innovation diffusion theory and the network analysis perspective, this dissertation uses a census of journalism educators and journalism program leaders in Georgia to understand …

Going Up The Country: A Comparison Of Elite Ceramic Consumption Patterns In Charleston And The Carolina Frontier, Rebecca E. Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations

The 18th century colonial world is characterized by a dramatic increase in the consumption of goods identified as the “consumer revolution.” During this period fashionable material culture and the social performances associated with their use became universally recognized symbols of group membership. This thesis uses archaeological evidence to explore variation in the degree of participation in the consumer revolution between urban and rural settings in late eighteenth-century South Carolina. The data used for this research will be taken from excavated ceramic assemblages of two domestic archaeological sites, both of which were homes owned consecutively by the wealthy Brewton and Motte …

The Influence Of Organizational Climate On The Use And Quality Of Evidence-Based Practices In School Mental Health, Katherine Knies

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational climate is defined as the reflection of workers’ perceptions of, and emotional responses to, the characteristics of their work environment (Glisson & James, 2002). While previous research explored the importance of organization climate for the adoption of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in mental health settings, there is a dearth of organizational climate focused research in school mental health settings (SMH). The current study examines the influence of organizational climate on two separate dependent variables: the extent to which EBPs were used and the quality of clinician delivery for the evidence-based practices used in a quality improvement intervention for SMH practitioners. …

Determinants Of Cross-Country Differences In The Equity Risk Premium: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, William John Arant

Theses and Dissertations

The equity risk premium (ERP) is a critical factor in financial decision-making and allocating capital for the future. The ERP can indicate the aggregate risk in an economy and thereby the price agents attach to that risk. Understanding the factors that determine ERPs across countries is important for understanding investors’ actions in a globalized environment. This study will focus on long-run measures of the ERP across countries while applying four common measures. Variations in the size of the ERP across countries and across measures will be examined. Then, country-specific determinants of the long-run ERP will be investigated. These determinants include …

Essays On Battle Clusters In Internal Armed Conflicts And Insurgencies: Concept, Causes And Consequences, Chifeng Liu

Theses and Dissertations

With the purpose to re-conceptualize the intensity of internal armed conflicts, I argue that the characteristics such as location, scale and duration of “major battlefields,” i.e. the spatio-temporal clusters of combat events are important in the evaluation of impact of modern civil wars and insurgencies. I start with elaborating and constructing a new concept of conflict magnitude with battle clusters using up-to-date geo-referenced data and spatial statistic methods. In the second article, I first explain the location and duration of major battlefields. The findings indicate that an area with multiple non-state armed groups (NSAGs) is more likely to become main …

Understanding Geo-Social Network Patterns: Computation, Visualization, And Usability, Caglar Koylu

Theses and Dissertations

Geo-social networks are formed by flows of physical entities (e.g., humans, vehicles, sensors, animals), and communication (e.g., information, ideas, innovation) that connect places to places and individuals to individuals. Several major problems remain to be addressed for understanding the complex patterns in geo-social networks. This dissertation makes the following contributions to the theory and methodologies that aim at understanding complex geo-social data by integrating methods of computation, visualization and usability evaluation. Chapter 2 introduces a novel network-based smoothing approach that addresses the size-difference and small area problem in calculating and mapping locational (graph) measures in spatial interaction networks. The new …

Task-Specific Human Capital Accumulation And Wage Outcomes Among Young Men: An Empirical Analysis, Morgan Holland

Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature suggests that investment in different kinds of task-specific human capital may have significant effects on wage outcomes and overall economic wellbeing of individuals. To examine this claim, the accumulation of task-specific human capital in young male workers with no college education and its effects on wages is measured. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel data merged with six task-specific human capital measures derived from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles task contents data, fixed effects regression was utilized to measure how workers’ taskspecific human capital develops over time. This process shows that among the task measures used, accumulation …

School-Based Sexuality Education, Gender, And Relationship Self-Efficacy: A Moderated-Mediation Analysis Of Sexual Behavior In First-Year College Students, Sara C. Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

While the effectiveness at abstinence-only versus comprehensive sexuality education in preventing adolescent risky sexual behavior is widely researched, little is known about whether material learned in secondary school sexuality education classes impacts emerging adult sexual behavior in the college environment. Furthermore, research suggests that self-efficacy – or beliefs in one’s abilities to organize and execute actions – may be more critical than knowledge or skills in terms of how individuals enact behavior. We hypothesized a moderated-mediation effect by which the causal impact of type of sexuality education on four different sexual behaviors during the first year in college is transmitted …

Life Satisfaction And Academic Performance In Early Adolescents: Evidence For Reciprocal Relationships, Zi Jia Ng

Theses and Dissertations

Student well-being remains a relatively neglected topic despite its intimate link to positive school outcomes. As academic achievement is the yardstick of student success and school accountability, school-based mental health research and practice have focused primarily on the assessment and treatment of learning and behavioral problems. This shortterm longitudinal study sought to establish the role of student subjective well-being in academic achievement. Based on the engine model of well-being (Jayawickreme, Forgeard, & Seligman, 2012), the study focused on life satisfaction as a process variable and academic performance as an outcome variable. Using two waves (five months apart) of data, the …

Determinants Of Product Upgrading In The Argentine Wine Industry, Lucas Marc Cyr

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the impact that a firm's connections and internal resources has on the firm's ability to develop new products. The capability to make improvements to products is crucial to the long term success and growth of a firm. By using structural equation modeling, I take a different approach to network analysis to analyze data from the Argentine wine industry. While I did not find strong evidence to support the hypothesis that the combination of external networks and internal knowledge are key drivers to product upgrading, there was strong evidence to support each individual determinant’s impact on …

Defining And Supporting Organizational Readiness In The Interactive Systems Framework For Dissemination And Implementaion, Jonathan Peter Scaccia

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction. In the implementation literature, organizational readiness is associated with an increased likelihood of achieving innovation outcomes. Organizational readiness consists of organizational capacity (general and innovation-specific) and organization motivation. Organizations who wish to get results from their innovations have an interest in making sure that certain factors and subcomponents are in place. However, having awareness that certain capacities and factors that influence motivation are linked to improved innovation outcomes does not necessarily help organizations to get “more ready.” There is a need for organizations to know if and how they can effectively put these factors and subcomponents into place. This …

Perception Of Police In Public Housing Communities, Taylor Brickley

Theses and Dissertations

Research on the relationship between police and citizens consistently finds that attitudes toward police (ATP) are least positive among black citizens in areas of concentrated disadvantage. While much of the research in this area focuses specifically on ATP among young black males in low-income communities because they have the most contact with police, there has been relatively little research that has included older and/or female residents. Additionally, research has yet to examine ATP in racial and economic enclaves that may have different social and environmental characteristics than the surrounding community. This study utilizes in-depth interviews with 60 residents of two …

Southern Language, Ideology, And Identity In A High School Sorority, Sara Lide

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the language practices of high school sorority members in a mid-sized city in the U.S. South. Specifically, it describes how economically privileged, white, female youth in the Young Ladies’ Society of Midway (YLSM) used Southern language to position themselves and others in relation to widely and locally circulating ideologies of language, region, gender, and class. Drawing on sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods, this study addresses the issues of how Southern language practices and language ideologies relate and how indexical meanings and social identities emerge through linguistic interaction. As a study that examines the language of a group …

Pattern Extraction From Spatial Data - Statistical And Modeling Approches, Hu Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Exploratory and statistical spatial data analyses are commonly used in a wide range of research fields, such as epidemiology, disease surveillance and crime analysis. Spatial epidemiology, for example, needs to detect significant spatial clusters of disease incidents to help epidemiologists identify environmental factors and spreading patterns associated with certain diseases. Existing spatial analysis approaches mostly focus on the analysis of spatial lattice data, i.e., observations organized by locations such as county or census tract. With the wide spread of location-aware technologies such as GPS and smart phones, spatial interaction data have become increasingly available, e.g., human daily mobility, traveling and …

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And Academic Performance: Student Engagement In The Classroom, Emily B. Mancil

Theses and Dissertations

Youth with Attention/Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have many obstacles to positive development (including difficulties in school settings) and are in need of support. However, few studies have focused on the ways in which positive factors, such as student engagement (SE), may be beneficial for this population to identify strategies for supporting their strengths. Although many studies have examined academic and behavioral aspects of SE, few studies have examined the psychological (i.e., teacher-student relationships, peer support for learning, family support for learning) and cognitive (i.e., control and relevance of school work, future aspirations and goals, extrinsic motivation) sub-components of engagement. The current …

Independence At Large: Contemporary China's Alternative Music Scenes And The Cultural Practices Of Post-Socialist Urban Youth, Shan Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Using contemporary Beijing’s alternative music scenes as a focal point, this ethnographic research seeks to enrich the understanding of China’s post-socialist urban youth by examining their cultural practices. First, this thesis offers an analytical account of the popularizing embrace of “independent cultures,” which is defined as a collection of experienceable objects and activities in musical, filmic, theatric, and other cultural forms that are well recognized yet believed by advocates as having aesthetic and participatory features that are different from those produced in the popular culture industry. While the vogue for independent cultures is substantially conditioned by the socioeconomic attributes of …

Certified 2014 Population Estimates For Oregon And Counties, Portland State University. Population Research Center

Oregon Population Estimates and Reports

Certified Population Estimates for Oregon and Its Counties. This item also contains estimates for Incorporated Cities/Towns.

Mitigating The Effects Of Climate Change With Wind Energy And Gis, Rachael Isphording, Richard Snow, Mary Snow

Publications

The climate is changing, and humans are heavily exacerbating these changes. As the effects of climate change are being felt across the planet, scientists and policy makers are uniting to increase mitigation efforts and are researching renewable, clean energy sources to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere during energy production. Of the different renewable energy technologies, wind energy is one of the most researched and implemented. Over the past twenty years, researchers have been applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to their climate change studies. GIS allows the user to spatially view, manipulate, and analyze data …

The Invention Of Hugo Cabret: A Novel In Words And Pictures, Maggie Mason Smith

Publications

No abstract provided.

Church Bulletin, December 14, 2014

Church Bulletin

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Ottawa, Canada

Church Bulletin Finding Aid

St. Mark’S Catholic Community Of The Deaf, December 14, 2014

Saint Mark's Catholic Community of the Deaf

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Edmonton, Canada

Saint Mark's Catholic Community of the Deaf Finding Aid

Saint John The Evangelist Church, December 14, 2014

Saint John the Evangelist Church

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Green Bay, WI

Saint John the Evangelist Church Finding Aid