Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Emerging Practices, Transition: Services And Service Innovations (Issue Number 6 Of 8), Cady Landa, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

In October 2011, the Administration on Developmental Disabilities awarded grants to lead agencies in six states: California, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, and Wisconsin. Two additional states, Alaska and Tennessee, received grants in October 2012. These states proposed activities to spur improved employment and post-secondary outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The Institute for Community Inclusion and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services are providing training and technical assistance (TA) to the eight state projects through the Partnerships in Employment (PIE) Training and TA Center.

Partnerships project work is framed by the High …

Emerging Practices, Transition: Youth Leadership And Family Engagement (Issue Number 8 Of 8), Cady Landa, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

In October 2011, the Administration on Developmental Disabilities awarded grants to lead agencies in six states: California, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, and Wisconsin. Two additional states, Alaska and Tennessee, received grants in October 2012. These states proposed activities to spur improved employment and post-secondary outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The Institute for Community Inclusion and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services are providing training and technical assistance (TA) to the eight state projects through the Partnerships in Employment (PIE) Training and TA Center.

Partnerships project work is framed by the High …

Emerging Practices, Transition: Performance Measurement And Data Management (Issue Number 4 Of 8), Cady Landa, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

In October 2011, the Administration on Developmental Disabilities awarded grants to lead agencies in six states: California, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, and Wisconsin. Two additional states, Alaska and Tennessee, received grants in October 2012. These states proposed activities to spur improved employment and post-secondary outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The Institute for Community Inclusion and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services are providing training and technical assistance (TA) to the eight state projects through the Partnerships in Employment (PIE) Training and TA Center.

Partnerships project work is framed by the High …

Factors Affecting Child Mortality, Lisa Wheatley

Honors Theses

This study examines the factors that contribute to the rate of child mortality within a country. Through regression analysis, this model attempts to explain the rate of child mortality for a country as a function of factors including the adult female literacy rate, fertility rates, adult female labor force participation, rate of immunization for tuberculosis, access to safe water, income per capita, and prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus. This paper surveys a range of low-income countries from different regions including Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, South Asia, and Latin …

Organizational Study Of Information Technology, Law, And Purchasing Departments : City Of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center For Public Management, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Edward J. Collins Center for Public Management Publications

The Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center for Public Management was hired by the City of Fitchburg to perform organizational studies of three departments, including the Information Technology (IT) Department, the Law Department, and the Purchasing Department. All three of the studies were to review the respective departments’ organizational structures, responsibilities, and practices with a goal of identifying areas of improvement that could result in improved operations and time and cost savings (IT and Purchasing) and areas in need of improvement (Law Department).

The Collins Center project team met with the directors of the three departments under review to understand their …

Environmental Impact Of Conference Realignment, Bradley Farley

Masters Theses

Sports have a large impact on the environment. While leagues and teams are looking at improving their sustainability at stadiums, they also have increased their travel distances. NCAA Division I athletic conferences have recently endured conference realignments. This expanding geographic footprint of these conferences has led to teams having an increased travel distances for all sports. This research investigates the environmental impact of travel distances that conference realignment has had in NCAA Division I athletics, particularly regarding the Power 5 conferences carbon footprint. The research question examined is, based on travel distances, has the carbon footprint of the conferences changed …

Examining The Effects Of Robot-Enacted Guilt Appeals In A Human-Robot Negotiation, Brett Stoll

Masters Theses

Social robotics is a quickly evolving and expanding field in which significant contributions may be made by the communication discipline. Prior research has demonstrated the successful employment of robots throughout varying contexts such as work team decision-making, education, and healthcare. The purpose of this study is to expand upon existing research and generate an understanding of how robots may be used in competitive communication environments. The study highlights face negotiation theory (FNT) and the computers are social actors (CASA) paradigm to frame predictions and understanding of how humans interact with robots in a negotiation context. The researcher uses a 2 …

The Effects Of Perceived Enjoyable Activities On Cognition In Late-Life., Hannah D. Gardner

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Previous research suggests that more involvement in various activities can help delay cognitive decline in older adults. Few studies have examined both the impact of frequency and perceived enjoyment of different types of activities on cognition. This study analyzed the relationship between frequency and pleasure of activities and cognition by running correlations using the five different subscales of the California Older Person’s Pleasant Events Schedule (COPPES) and a battery of cognitive tests (Block Design, Animal Naming, Boston Naming Test, Trails A, Trails B, CVLT-LDFR, & Digit Span). It was hypothesized that higher frequency as well as higher level of enjoyment …

The Consequences For Children Of Incarcerated Parents., Lashawn Ford

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

There have been many controversies within the United States regarding the criminal justice system. One of the most common notions is the lack of support we give to the victims of crime. Generally, we associate the term “victim” with individuals who are directly harmed by the crime; however, we rarely consider the families of incarcerated offenders as victims (Light and Campbell 306). According to the U.S. Department of Justice, over fifty percent of state and federal inmates have at least one child under eighteen years of age (Glaze and Maruschak 1). This paper will focus on the effects incarceration can …

Effects Of Intergroup Anxiety, And Outgroup Tolerance And Trust On Intergroup Contact Quality Among Emerging Adults And Adults In Bosnia And Herzegovina., Carli J. Mosby

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954) holds that positive effects can occur when two or more groups come into contact with one another under specific circumstances. The quality of the contact has been shown to be a better predictor than contact quantity in producing positive results (Schwartz and Simmons, 2001; Viki, Culmer, Eller, & Abrams, 2006). The current study attempted to determine whether Allport's intergroup contact theory could be applied to intergroup anxiety, outgroup tolerance, and outgroup trust; more specifically, whether these three variables would have an effect on intergroup contact quality among the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and whether …

Improving Our Reference Data, Or How We Killed The Hash Mark, Katrina B. Rouan, Graham S. Hukill

Library Scholarly Publications

All responsible academic libraries record their reference transactions. It is good practice to know how many patrons have been helped at your service points. For years we have participated in this record keeping with hash marks on paper, painstaking tallying, and manual spreadsheet entry for the purpose of saying, “we helped X patrons during Y month”. But, like most things academic, reference runs on its own calendar and requires more sophisticated tools to truly investigate and evaluate.

To generate more useful reference statistics, we created a simple, online tool for recording reference interactions. The tool is accessible anywhere reference is …

Estimating The Strength Of An Association Based On A Robust Smoother, Rand Wilcox

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

It is known that the more obvious parametric approaches to fitting a regression line to data are often not flexible enough to provide an adequate approximation of the true regression line. Many nonparametric regression estimators, often called smoothers, have been derived that are aimed at dealing with this problem. The paper deals with the issue of estimating the strength of an association based on the fit obtained by a robust smoother. A simple approach, already known, is to estimate explanatory power in a fairly obvious manner. This approach has been found to perform reasonably well when using the smoother LOESS. …

Per Family Or Familywise Type I Error Control: "Eether, Eyether, Neether, Nyther, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off!", H. J. Keselman

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Frane (2015) pointed out the difference between per-family and familywise Type I error control and how different multiple comparison procedures control one method but not necessarily the other. He then went on to demonstrate in the context of a two group multivariate design containing different numbers of dependent variables and correlations between variables how the per-family rate inflates beyond the level of significance. In this article I reintroduce other newer better methods of Type I error control. These newer methods provide more power to detect effects than the per-family and familywise techniques of control yet maintain the overall rate of …

Comparison Of Bayesian Credible Intervals To Frequentist Confidence Intervals, Kathy Gray, Brittany Hampton, Tony Silveti-Falls, Allison Mcconnell, Casey Bausell

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Frequentist confidence intervals were compared with Bayesian credible intervals under a variety of scenarios to determine when Bayesian credible intervals outperform frequentist confidence intervals. Results indicated that Bayesian interval estimation frequently produces results with precision greater than or equal to the frequentist method.

Special Education Distributions And Analysis, Valerie Felder, Shlomo S. Sawilowsky

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Micceri (1989) examined the distributional characteristics of 440 large sample general education achievement and psychometric measures. All the distributions were found to be statistically significantly different from the normal distribution. In this study, 395 special education datasets were examined. Although there were some normally distributed datasets, most were not, and some were markedly different in shape from those found by Micceri (1989). Implications for statistical testing and making special education policy decisions were given.

Vol. 14, No. 1 (Full Issue), Jmasm Editors

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

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A Comparison Of Semi-Parametric And Nonparametric Methods For Estimating Mean Time To Event For Randomly Left Censored Data, Farzana Chowdhury, Jahida Gulshan, Syed Shahadat Hossain

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The aim of this study was to make a comparison among existing estimation methods (Kaplan-Meier, Nelson-Aalen and Regression on Ordered Statistics (ROS)) for randomly left censored time to event data under selected distributions and for different level of censoring and sample sizes in order to determine the strength of these methods based on simulated data. Comparisons among the methods are made on the basis of unbiasedness and Monte Carlo Standard Error of the summary statistics (mean time to event) obtained by those methods under different conditions.

The Shoulders On Which We Stand, Jan B. Bissett, Margi Heinen

Library Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Snowden Effect: The Conflict In A Free Society, Who Values Privacy Versus Who Values Security?, Matthew C. Blake

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The Obama Administration has come under scrutiny by both the public and Congress, since former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden made known the scope of government surveillance programs being utilized by the U.S. government to gather intelligence on domestic citizens. Snowden’s disclosures about the government’s surveillance practices to the mainstream media began in June 2013. I focus on how public opinion towards the government’s surveillance practices and an individual’s reasonable right to privacy has shifted after revelations made by Edward Snowden on the practices of the NSA. Individuals may show support for more government surveillance in the name …

Brief Motivational Interventions For College Student Drinking May Not Be As Powerful As We Think: An Individual Participant-Level Data Meta-Analysis, David Huh, Eun-Young Mun, Mary E. Larimer, Helene R. White, Anne E. Ray, Isaac C. Rhew, Su-Young Kim, Yang Jiao, David C. Atkins, The Project Integrate Team

Heads Up!

Background

For over two decades, brief motivational interventions (BMIs) have been implemented on college campuses to reduce heavy drinking and related negative consequences. Such interventions include in-person motivational interviews (MIs), often incorporating personalized feedback (PF), and stand-alone PF interventions delivered via mail, computer, or the Web. Both narrative and meta-analytic reviews using aggregate data from published studies suggest at least short-term efficacy of BMIs, although overall effect sizes have been small.

Method

The present study was an individual participant-level data (IPD) meta-analysis of 17 randomized clinical trials evaluating BMIs. Unlike typical meta-analysis based on summary data, IPD meta-analysis allows for …

Thriving, Not Just Surviving, On Food Stamps, Sam L. Mccaughey

Senior Honors Projects

Food insecurity has been a persistent element in the history of the United States. Efforts to address the problem - and the larger issue of poverty - have been wide-ranging, but the debate about how best to respond to hunger has often centered on the relative roles of government and charity. Often that debate has led to hybrid solutions that combine government sponsored welfare such as food stamps and community-based food relief programs such as food banks. Yet, even such complementary approaches leave many people’s needs unmet, and there remains a significant population, both across the country and in Rhode …

Cultivating The Practice Of Missional Hospitality For Small Groups At West Houston Church Of Christ, Kevin Stewart

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project in which I led a team to develop a plan to cultivate the practice of missional hospitality for small groups at West Houston Church of Christ. I used missional theology as a framework to give shape to the practice of hospitality. The project team met for nine weeks in the fall of 2014. The team practiced lectio divina focused on Luke 10, participated in theological reflection on missional hospitality, and fulfilled assignments to practice missional hospitality. These activities helped form the group spiritually and informed the development of a …

Evaluating An Oral Draft Of Luke 8:4-15 In Uduk, Jeremy N. Harrison

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the findings of a project in which I led a group of immigrants from South Sudan through the process of generating and evaluating an oral draft of Luke 8:4-15 in Uduk. The aim of this project was to provide a substantive field test of an oral translation methodology conducted among immigrants living in the United States who speak a language that lacks a translation of the entire Bible. The project involved facilitating basic translation training and conducting an oral drafting process with a team of three Uduk speakers. This project also involved evaluating the …

Rescuing The Missing: A Study Of Prospective Person Memory On Missing Persons, Brandon Spillar

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

An average of 1,700 missing persons cases are filed everyday in the United States (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). With such a large number of people placed in potential danger, their security is the utmost concern to families, communities, and consequently our society (Spilman, 2006). In response to people going missing, police departments often use news teams and photos to exhort the public to be on the lookout for these missing persons (Tarling & Burrows, 2004). As a result, people practice what is called Prospective Person Memory. Prospective person memory is a cognitive process involving people correctly identifying a face …

Social Network Site Usage, Privacy Concerns, And Disclosure Of Autobiographical Memories, Zachary L. Mensch

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Internet usage has become a big part of many people’s lives, and among the many uses Social Networking Sites (SNS) have become very prevalent. How privacy concerns, trust and control are affecting SNS usage and self-disclosure has become an important question for many people. I compiled a questionnaire and analyzed it for reliability. Then it was used to determine the relationship between these constructs and compared to the behavioral data that was collected from participant’s Facebook pages. The results showed that privacy concerns do not affect SNS usage or self-disclosure. Trust and control were significantly correlated with specific autobiographical memories, …

How Threats To Masculinity Affect Social Drinking In Men, John Joseph Molinaro

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examined the effects of how interactions of social anxiety and conformity to Western masculine norms affected men’s drinking behavior after receiving feedback that threatened their perceptions of their own masculinity. Social anxiety has previously been shown to be associated with problem drinking and drinking has been found to be perceived as masculine in Western cultures. Thirty-three male students received randomized false feedback to questions they answered that were relevant to masculinity. The feedback either told them they are not very masculine or that they are masculine. Their drinking behavior on a taste-test task involving beers was subsequently observed. …

Embedding Nationalism: Construction & Effects Of National Narratives In The Xxvii Olympic Games' Opening Ceremony, Rachel Elizabeth Presley

Theses - ALL

This thesis examines the construction and effects of the XXVII Olympic Games’ opening ceremony as a national narrative, scripted by and for the state. The performance’s chronological structure and staging of its characters have profound effects on how Australian bodies are read and remembered as citizens. The ceremony’s narrative features a distorted retelling of colonial history that produces enormous consequences in how Indigenous and non-Indigenous, male and female actors are presented. An analysis of these characters reveals how the national narrative comes to function as a piece of political propaganda that perpetuates idealized forms of citizenship within a hegemonic patriarchal …

Faith-Based Organizations In Disaster Relief: Locally-Based Strategies For A Higher Demand Future, Zach Goldberg

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Due to the effects of climate change, natural disasters are beginning to occur more frequently and are causing greater destruction. The American disaster relief system currently relies on a nationally focused, top-down approach. As resources become more and more limited, it is expected that disaster relief fatigue will occur, required local communities to take a larger role in their disaster relief processes. Right now, major player in both local and national disaster relief are Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs), who provide many crucial services before and after disasters

This paper develops an economic model of the rebuilding stage of disaster relief in …

Planet Of The Celtic Tiger, Alexid Wai Kit Lam

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Due to the vast developments in technology and information sharing, developing countries now have instant access to a library full of articles documenting the growth of various developed countries in the world. As these countries are searching for an economic model and hoping to replicate its result, they often come across Ireland’s economic success during the Celtic Tiger times. During this period, Ireland transformed from the “poorest of the rich” to “one of Europe’s shining lights.” Although Ireland's economic growth seems extremely appealing, how likely is it that another country could follow Ireland’s success by adopting its economic approach?

This …

An Indentured Generation? The Effect Of Student Debt On Entrepreneurship In The United States, Lidia P. Medina

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper discusses the topical issue of rising student debt and the effect it has on employment decisions, particularly entrepreneurship. This paper aims to analyze this relationship using labor economic theories on investing and saving, labor decisions and risk aversion. Additionally, it discusses the role of entrepreneurship on economic growth and globalization using both historical and present-day data gathered from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997—2011), The Kauffman Research Center, and the US Department of Education.