Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Predictors Of Self-Esteem In Children Exposed To Potentially Traumatic Events, Colleen Michelle Ray

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Self-esteem is not only important for the well being of a child, but the effects of low levels of self-esteem can continue well into adulthood. Past research identifies many possible predictors of self-esteem including: age, gender, Ethnicity, interpersonal relationships, parenting techniques and locus of control. One downfall of previous literature is the lack of exploration performed with high-risk samples. This study aims to begin to fill this void.

Utilizing data from the INVEST project, the current analysis examines predictors of self esteem among 161 children and adolescents aged 8-17, referred to a hospital based Child Advocacy Center due to exposure …

Governing Bodies: Caster Semenya And The Rhetorical Management Of Sex And Gender Ambiguity In Professional Athletics, Samuel Robert Evans

English Theses & Dissertations

Sport has long been thought of as an "opiate for the masses," where a collective can forget about social, political, racial, or economic differences and unify to compete in the same space or root for a common team (Eitzen and Sage 202). Scholarship in sports communication, sports rhetoric, and sports sociology, however, has shown that this view of sport as an apolitical cultural institution separate from impactful political debate is oversimplified. Rather, sports are key sites in which beliefs about gender, race, class, and politics are made manifest.

This dissertation uses the case of Caster Semenya, a female South African …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of An Interval Estimation And A Visual-Spatial Secondary Task As Measures Of Mental Workload During Laparoscopy, Levi Parker Warvel

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The goal of the present study was to compare two secondary workload tasks, specifically a time interval estimation and visual-spatial task, to determine which of these is most appropriate for the assessment of laparoscopic mental workload. Participants performed a peg transfer task in two conditions: a normal camera angle and a 90° camera angle intended to increase mental workload. Based on multiple resource theory, it was predicted the visual-spatial task would be more sensitive to the workload manipulation than the time estimation task because it draws upon the specific, as opposed to more general, attentional resources required by laparoscopy. Primary …

Motivation, Marital Quality, Maternal Gatekeeping, Breadwinning, And Father Identity: Models Of Biological Fathers’ And Stepfathers’ Involvement In Childcare, Jessica E. Ladage

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Compared to biological fathers, there is far less knowledge about stepfathers in reference to their involvement in childcare. As stepfathers continue to increase in number in the United States, it is important to understand the factors that influence a stepfather to be more or less involved in the care of their stepchildren. Few studies have examined both biological fathers and stepfathers together on multiple sets of parenting variables. Thus, the current study aims to compare biological fathers and stepfathers on a model of paternal involvement.

Participants were 306 biological fathers and 69 stepfathers. In order to participate, fathers had to …

The Effects Of Mental Models And Expertise On Running Memory And Clinical Handoff Effectiveness, Brittany Lee Anderson-Montoya

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The goal of the present study was to examine the effects of mental models and expertise on the ability to process handoffs of information. In addition, the role of active or passive processing was examined. Three groups of participants participated, differing in their level of clinical expertise to represent a novice, intermediate, and expert population. Participants performed an abstract running memory span task and two tasks resembling real world activities, an air traffic control (ATC) handoff task, and a clinical handoff task. For all tasks list length and the amount of information to be recalled was manipulated. Further, in the …

Identities And Interactions In A Transcultural Online Collaboration Project, Zsuzsanna Bacsa Palmer

English Theses & Dissertations

The traditional theoretical frameworks and assumptions about intercultural technical communication are no longer adequate to describe and teach intercultural communication now frequently happening through digital networks. My dissertation proposes to use the theory of cosmopolitanism as it has been recently applied in several social science fields as a framework for pedagogical project design in order to teach intercultural communication skills applicable in the global age.

The dissertation describes a transcultural online pedagogical project between Hungarian and U.S. students that I designed according to the principles of cosmopolitan theory. In this project, students were introduced to the basic tenets of cosmopolitanism …

A Phenomenological Investigation Of Counselors' Perceived Degree Of Preparedness When Working With Suicidal Clients, Heather Danielle Dahl

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Little is known of counselor perspectives of their training and level of preparedness when working with suicidal clients. Although professional standards and guidelines regarding counselor competency in this area exists, training may not be occurring throughout a trainee's program, or is occurring inconsistently. The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to understand the essence of counselors' perceived degree of preparedness working with suicidal clients, and to provide clinical and training recommendations in this subject area. Using individual semi-structured interviews, 10 participants were recruited, using maximum variation and criterion sampling who had previous experience working with suicidal clients. The results of …

Analyzing Driver Behavior And Traffic Flow Breakdowns At The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, Michelle L. Allen

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (HRBT) is a major link for activity in Hampton Roads. The eastbound direction also suffers from congestion during both morning and peak hours. During these periods of congestion, the flow rate varies in regards to the location of the congestion. This study focuses on investigating driver behavior during these different conditions and briefly investigates the cost of delay due to the different capacities. To accomplish this, per vehicle record data (PVR) is used. This data, collected at the exit of the tunnel, provides information on arrival time, speed, lane location, vehicle class, and time headway. …

Playing With Food: Practices Of Consumption Cuisine And Embodiment In Video Games, Zachary Graham Hill

English Theses & Dissertations

The implementation of food in video games is extremely common to the medium, yet its function and placement within the cultural paradigms of video games remain unexamined. The purpose of this thesis is to examine games where culinary practices and foodways are brought to the forefront, making them either a key element to gameplay, or the only element of gameplay. By critically examining the various usages of food in game-spaces, this thesis examines the embodied relationship in video game spaces between players and their avatars through their encounters with food in these spaces. The relationships between player, avatar, and food …

Explaining Legislative Productivity: Evaluating The Effects Of Polarization And Divided Government In A Cross-Sectional Study Of State Legislatures, Mike Kistner

Honors Projects

Despite a wealth of literature on the causes of gridlock in Congress, there is a lack of comparative work at the state level exploring whether lawmaking in state legislatures functions similarly. Operating under a theoretical framework assuming polarization and divided government are the primary obstacles to legislative success, and controlling for majority seat share, I test the determinants of legislative productivity with an original dataset consisting of 31 states. I operationalize legislative productivity using a content analysis of editorials from each state during the 2009-2010 legislative sessions to identify pressing political issues, and then determine how many of these issues …

Do Dogs Experience Cognitive Dissonance?, Ethan Fischer

Honors Projects

The effort justification paradigm - wherein people prefer rewards requiring more effort - is often explained by cognitive dissonance (discomfort experienced when by holding contradictory beliefs and/ or behaviors). Contrast theory provides an alternative by explaining that this preference is due to a greater difference between participant's starting and ending hedonic states. To differentiate these theories, dogs participated in an effort justification paradigm, hearing a severely or mildly annoying noise before receiving one of two differently colored treats. Afterwards, they were given a preference test. Cognitive dissonance and effort justification theories both expect dogs to prefer the treat associated with …

Examining Whether Body Image Dissatisfaction Is A Predictor Of Risky Sexual Behavior, Nikki M. Greenhill

Honors Projects

The present study sought to determine if body image dissatisfaction is a predictor of risky sexual behavior. Participants (n = 146, 54.8% women, 45.2% men, M_age= 19.08 years) included college students from a small Midwestern university. Participants completed self-report measures of the known correlates of risky sexual behavior (i.e., well-being, depressive symptoms, self-esteem, alcohol and drug use, psychological distress), body image, and risky sexual behavior. Contrary to our predictions, the results indicated that body image satisfaction, as opposed to dissatisfaction, is a significant predictor of risky sexual behavior (β = -.25, p =.031 ). Specifically, for those who …

Neural Effects Of Varying Levels Of Social Re-Inclusion After Varying Periods Of Social Exclusion, Jessica M. White

Honors Projects

This thesis studied the effects of social ostracism on individuals. Specifically, how conditions of exclusion and various levels of re-inclusion affect participant's responses in terms of social pain and neural activation due to exclusion. Participants played a Cyberball paradigm (Williams et aI., 2000), developed to include and exclude the participant. Participants were assigned a varying condition of exclusion and then re-inclusion during the computerized social interaction. Event-related brain potentials in response to the game were measured via electroencephalography. It was hypothesized that the degree of exclusion would influence P3b and N2 neural activation elicited in response to the exclusion, and …

Categorizing Fetal Heart Rate Variability With And Without Visual Aids, Amanda Jane Ashdown

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This present study examined the ability of clinicians and novices to correctly categorize fetal heart rate (FHR) variability with and without the use of exemplars. Clinicians and undergraduate students were asked to inspect FHR images and determine into which of four categories they belonged. Each participant took part in three conditions: one in which they were provided exemplars of prototypical FHR variability to use during their categorization task, another in which they were provided exemplars of nonprototypical FHR variability to use in their task, and a control condition in which no exemplars were available. The results showed that experts were …

Review Selection Using Micro-Reviews, Thanh-Son Nguyen, Hady W. Lauw, Panayiotis Tsaparas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given the proliferation of review content, and the fact that reviews are highly diverse and often unnecessarily verbose, users frequently face the problem of selecting the appropriate reviews to consume. Micro-reviews are emerging as a new type of online review content in the social media. Micro-reviews are posted by users of check-in services such as Foursquare. They are concise (up to 200 characters long) and highly focused, in contrast to the comprehensive and verbose reviews. In this paper, we propose a novel mining problem, which brings together these two disparate sources of review content. Specifically, we use coverage of micro-reviews …

Measuring User Influence, Susceptibility And Cynicalness In Sentiment Diffusion, Roy Ka-Wei Lee, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Diffusion in social networks is an important research topic lately due to massive amount of information shared on social media and Web. As information diffuses, users express sentiments which can affect the sentiments of others. In this paper, we analyze how users reinforce or modify sentiment of one another based on a set of inter-dependent latent user factors as they are engaged in diffusion of event information. We introduce these sentiment-based latent user factors, namely influence, susceptibility and cynicalness. We also propose the ISC model to relate the three factors together and develop an iterative computation approach to …

Multi-Roles Affiliation Model For General User Profiling, Lizi Liao, Heyan Huang, Yashen Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online social networks release user attributes, which is important for many applications. Due to the sparsity of such user attributes online, many works focus on profiling user attributes automatically. However, in order to profile a specific user attribute, an unique model is built and such model usually does not fit other profiling tasks. In our work, we design a novel, flexible general user profiling model which naturally models users’ friendships with user attributes. Experiments show that our method simultaneously profile multiple attributes with better performance.

Street-Level Bureaucratic Discretion: An Investigation Of Disproportionality In The Child Welfare And Juvenile Justice Systems, Nina Frola Joyner

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

This study seeks to provide a structural explanation for a poorly understood administrative and policy phenomenon: the problem of minority overrepresentation or disproportionality in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Disproportionality is a pressing policy and practice concern regarding how to halt the continual over representation of African American and other minority youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. It has social and policy implications at the national, state and local level. Disporportionality affects the lives of youth who are unnecessarily removed from their families or adjudicated and detained as well as state and local budgets when …

Texting While Driving: A Test Of Self-Control Theory, Charles R. Gray

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The consequences of texting and driving have never been more pertinent concerns than they are presently. As reports of injuries and death increase and are paralleled by direct and indirect emotional and financial costs, it is important to uncover why, even in the face of such escalations, individuals choose to engage in this behavior. This study examines texting while driving behavior in the context of self-control theory and postulates that low self-control is a significant predictor of the conduct.

An online questionnaire was distributed via email to all enrolled students at Old Dominion University, located in Norfolk Virginia, during the …

Management And Leadership Style: Is Style Influenced By Engineering Education?, Jesse Levi Calloway

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This paper addresses one aspect of the opportunity for corporations to reduce leadership development infrastructure by narrowing the participant pool to candidates that, intuitively, may be multi-skilled and capable of handling diverse roles and assignments within the corporate environment. In particular, the study seeks to determine the effect that engineering education has on leadership style by comparing the leadership style of certified project managers (CPMs), and non-CPM managers with engineering degrees, to the same for CPMs, and non-CPM managers, who do not possess engineering degrees. Engineering degrees may be further defined as mechanical, electrical, industrial and the like. Leadership styles …

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Military Leaders' Operational Adaptability And Knowledge Transfer, Vahap Kavaker

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A variety of research underlines the increasing need for adaptable leaders in the military and enhancing operational adaptability is accepted as one of the crucial factors for achieving success in future military operations. In general terms, operational adaptability is the ability to successfully respond to unforeseen changing situations during military operations. However, this study reveals that operational adaptability is not clearly conceptualized and supporting factors are not investigated in detail in the literature. Among possible factors, knowledge transfer is claimed to be an important practice that increases personal performance and effectiveness.

This research conceptualized operational adaptability and investigated the relationship …

Key Factors Driving Personnel Downsizing In Multinational Military Organizations, Ilksen Gorkem

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Although downsizing has long been a topic of research in traditional organizations, there are very few studies of this phenomenon in military contexts. As a result, we have little understanding of the key factors that drive personnel downsizing in military settings. This study contributes to our understanding of key factors that drive personnel downsizing in military organizations and whether those factors may differ across NATO nations' cultural clusters. The theoretical framework for this study was built from studies in non-military contexts and adapted to fit the military environment.

This research relies on historical data from one of the largest multinational …

Spring 2015, Friends Of Dacus Library

Friends of Dacus Library Newsletter

In this issue:

Beach House Raffle Planned

"The End of the Affair" -- Dean Herring

Note From the Chair: "Reflections on Reading"-- Dr. Jane J. White

Membership Form

Capitalizing On Distinctiveness: Creating West Virginia For A New Economy, Brian A. Hoey

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Research

This paper explores use of images and ideas of place to promote particular social and economic agendas within the regional context of Appalachia. Despite prevailing imageries of backwardness and isolation that adhere to the region, as well as recent history of often-bleak economic conditions, communities such as Huntington, West Virginia, are ideal places to observe inventive forms of community-building, place-making, and place-marketing that borrow from emerging cultural and economic models and stand in sharp contrast to a once-dominant paradigm that encouraged capital investment by relying simply on tax breaks and the provision of cheap land and labor to attract large, …

April 2015: Volume 4 Issue 2, Dacus Library

Dacus Developments

In this Issue:

Making Every Dollar Count

Dacus Library of Winthrop University

Friends News: Raffle & Show-case of Joyce Plyler

Understanding History On Its Own Terms, John J. Pauly

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

News Coverage Of U.S. Mothers Of Soldiers During The Vietnam War, Karen L. Slattery, Ana C. Garner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

The press of World Wars I and II depicted patriotic mothers as Spartan-like in their support of the nation's war effort. During the Vietnam War, another maternal image emerged to share cultural space with the Spartan mother, that of the goddess Thetis who objected to her son's participation in the Trojan War. This alternative maternal symbol more closely resembles the archetypal image of the peacetime good mother, who cares for her children and resists sending them into harm's way. This study documents coverage of maternal opposition to the Vietnam War against the backdrop of coverage of US mothers of soldiers …

Does The Obligation To Obtain The Consent Of A Third Party Extend To Taking Further Steps After Rejection?, Yihan Goh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The question posed in the Court of Appeal case of The One Suites Pte Ltd v Pacific Motor Credit (Pte) Ltd [2015] SGCA 21 (“The One Suites”) was whether an obligation to use all reasonable endeavours to obtain the consent of a third party extends to taking further steps after the third party had refused to give such consent. To this, the Court, with Andrew Phang Boon Leong JA writing its grounds of decision, answered, “it depends but largely no”. More precisely, the Court said that while there almost invariably will be an implied obligation to use all reasonable endeavours …

Free Trade Agreements: Singapore Legal Developments, Locknie Hsu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore has entered into a number of bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with its trading partners. These FTAs vary in scope and commitments. As a result, Singapore’s legal environment and laws have seen some changes. Many of these changes would interest those who do business with or invest in Singapore. While this section does not attempt to provide comprehensive information on all changes resulting from treaty commitments, it highlights salient changes for those trading or investing in Singapore. The developments highlighted here include changes made to Singapore legislation, as well as legal commitments made by Singapore as a result of …

Things Fall Apart? The Political Ecology Of Forest Governance In Southern Nigeria, Prakash Kashwan

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

No abstract provided.