Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Art Show For Parkland Metalwork And Jewelry, Olivia Dimangondayao

A with Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Gender And Society, Kaiden Pope

A with Honors Projects

For this A with Honors project, the student carried out a qualitative study to explore if or how traditional gender roles and identities are changing. For the study interviews were conducted with a small group of members of the LGBTQ community in a small university town, and one individual outside the LGBTQ spectrum and concluded that that to those who find that they have a gendered community, such as the community offered to women, feel less affected by the lack of a gendered community. For those who feel that they do not fit into those strict social communities, the community …

Addressing The Suicide Rate In South Korea, Hye Tae Kim

A with Honors Projects

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rate among all the OECD countries as its three-year average of suicide rate is 31.97 per 100,000 persons. This paper re-identified the suicide rate in South Korea using the OECD database. After the procedure, hypotheses were used to find the certain socio-economic factors that correlate with the rate. Previously published studies and South Korean government databases were analyzed to find the correlations between possible socio-economic factors and changes in suicide rate to check the hypothesis. Certain hypotheses proved true and there were certain socio-economic factors that showed significant correlation with the change …

Composting At Parkland College, Della Jacobs

A with Honors Projects

This essay summarizes the student's efforts to establish a composting program at Parkland College. The student had previously worked to establish a garden plot to supplement the offerings at the College's food pantry and subsequently worked with the cafeteria to collect composting materials for the garden plot.

Reunification Of Koreas: A Hidden Treasure Box For The Global Economy, Hye Tae Kim

A with Honors Projects

In this student work, the author discusses the reunification of North and South Korea. The Republic of Korea’s president Park Geun Hye said “Reunification is the jackpot!” (qtd. in Park, my trans. par. 2). Recently, the global economy and individual countries’ economies are settling, without any major changes in the economies. Also, economic levels of countries are calculated and graded, and there have not been drastic changes for years. However, there are sometimes unexpected events which affect every economy and individual a lot, and the reunification of South Korea and North Korea is one of them. The reunification will recover …

Analysis Of Speeches From Mary Fisher, Steve Jobs, And Barak Obama, Hye Tae Kim

A with Honors Projects

For this honors project, the student viewed three well-known speeches by socially influential people to assess organization, language, materials, analysis, and delivery and found that the speeches have identical characteristics and common delivery skills that made them more persuasive and interesting.

Scott Memorial Library: Academic Year 2015-2016, Liz Mikita

Annual Reports & Administrative Documents

Includes:

• Milestones
• Metrics
• Top Ten Lists

Pricing Discrepancies In The Washington State Cherry Market, Foster L. Peebles

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research is focused on finding a pricing model for Washington State cherries. Each year a significant number of cherries are not sold, or are sold at a price close to or under cost, due to issues with program cherry purchases and pricing models. This research looks at two specific markets: the program fruit business and the wholesale markets. The program fruit business is comprised of companies such as Kroger, Wal-Mart, Costco, and others that “pre-purchase” their fruit at a specific price for delivery at a later date, much like a futures market for other commodities. The wholesale market, also …

Informational Efficiency And The Reaction To Terrorism: A Financial Perspective, Nicholas Roland

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this study is to measure the message terror organizations hope to convey using the financial markets as a proxy of measurement to determine patterns within the marketplace and the effects on the terrorists’ ability to deliver a desired message due to the increased use of digital devices and access to instantaneous news, seen over the past decade. Using death count, geographic location, and event type, this study identified 109 attacks between 1985 and 2015 to be analyzed against 5 market indices and 5 securities. Measuring the effects within a 10-day sample window from the time of the …

The Study Of The Adverse Effects Of Childhood Maltreatment, Katie A. Kennie

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study explores the link between the presence of childhood trauma and adult criminal behavior. In this study, four distinct categories of childhood trauma (physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect) were examined. In addition, this study conducts a comparative analysis of the United States crime rate with that of Switzerland and Japan. This study examines and compares the policies utilized in ensuring the protection of child welfare. The ultimate goal is to provide research which may build a foundation that will assist in creating and improving policies which will ensure a child's psychological health.

Supervisor Expectations, Event Reporting, And Patient Safety Perceptions: Exploring Potential Moderators And Mediators, Claudia Hernandez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Given the high number of errors and negative events committed within medical settings, the emphasis on patient safety culture is becoming more prevalent. Despite this effort, underreporting has been and continues to be an issue in this area. Some research has shown a link between underreporting and lack of management responsiveness, but more work is necessary to identify reasons for underreporting and potential mitigating solutions. The objective of the present research is to answer questions regarding the impact supervisors have on staff’s patient safety perceptions and event reporting, through the use of archival survey data collected with the AHRQ Hospital …

Exploring Attachment Behaviors In Urban Mothers And Their Infants, Brooke G. Rusoff

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Infants enter this world relying on caregivers to nurture and protect them. Through this reliance, infants develop an attachment to their caregivers, thus setting the stage for how a child comes to view the world and the people in it. This study sought to further explore attachment behaviors through observation of a voluntary parent education course offered through the Early Learning Coalition of Orange County. Data were collected three times over the course of the nine week program on four mother-infant dyads. Across the three mothers who were present for at least two observations, negative behaviors decreased between the first …

Intensive Care In Oncology: Admission And Outcomes In Adult Patients With Cancer, Surya John

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Background: Historically, patients with cancer have been perceived as poor candidates for ICU admission. General ICU admission criteria lists cancer patients as low priority in ICU admission depriving them of the care they rightfully deserve. The purpose of this literary synthesis was to examine ICU admission criteria, risk factors, and outcomes of ICU admission in relation to hematological and solid tumor cancers and discuss ways that practitioners and nurses can educate patients with cancer and their families on appropriateness of ICU care.

Methods: A total of 768 articles were found in a literature search including all literature from 2005 to …

Identity Development, Social Support, And Motherhood, Dayanara Rosado

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Adolescent pregnancy creates challenges for this minority population in balancing their motherhood identity with continuing to develop their identity at the adolescent stage, which presents a social problem today. The intent of this thesis is to explore the relationship between identity, adjustment, and social support among college students who were adolescent mothers. The following surveys: Personal Network Matrix (PNM), The Identity Distress Scale (IDS), and The Dimension of Identity Development Scale (DIDS), were administered through the UCF SONA system. Participants were divided into three groups: mothers who had their first child as a teenager (teen mothers; n = 6), mothers …

When People Working In An Office Don't Want To Workout: An Exploration Of Corporate Benefit Use And Correlates To The Big Five Model Of Personality, Dominique T. Harris

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Many corporate offices now offer fitness benefits to their employees. Evidence shows that corporate fitness programs are linked to decreased tardiness, absenteeism, and reduced healthcare costs. These programs also help address the growing obesity crisis threatening one in every three American adults. However, many employees do not participate in corporate fitness plans in spite of the convenience many programs offer. Thus, I wished to explore the personality and lifestyle factors that contribute to older (age 25+) employees’ exercise habits, their use of corporate benefits and correlates to the Big Five model of Personality along with other personality measures. I gathered …

The United Nations: The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Zahra R. Syed

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The main objective of this research paper is to analyze the international effects the Syrian Conflict has had to the global community. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared this conflict to be the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Millions of Syrians have fled their home country to avoid unjust persecution and are looking to not only neighboring countries, but the European Union for assistance in resettlement.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, more than 220,000 people have been massacred, leaving fifty percent of the population in unrest due to home displacement. According …

Case-Specific Counterterrorism Policies For Islamic Fundamentalist Groups, Jessica L. Shoemaker

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Since 9/11, counterterrorism policies have been one of the crucial policy issues facing the United States. After the attacks on the United States, counterterrorism in this country transformed. Fifteen years later, counterterrorism is typically organized as a one-size fits all approach. This approach generalizes all terrorist threats, trying to target terrorism as a whole. This thesis explains how this is an improper approach to counterterrorism. Instead, policies should be case-specific and created in regards to the specific characteristics embodied by each terrorist organization. These characteristics include history and ideology, organizational and leadership structure, finances, and tactics and targets. These characteristics …

Forced Motherhood? An Ethnographic Study On State Gender Expectations In Nicaragua, Mikaela M. Mendoza-Cardenal

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The dominant Sandinista party discourse of Nicaragua designates the family as the country’s base social institution, but the prevailing machismo threatens the family’s structure. Men - fathers - leave, either literally as migrant laborers or in the abandonment of their family responsibilities. In order to counteract the men’s socially sanctioned absence, the state deploys a hegemonic expectation of motherhood in the passage of its complete abortion ban, one of the strictest in the world. All forms of abortion, including saving the life of the mother, are banned in Nicaragua and both doctors and women are heavily penalized if an abortion …

Frameworks For Environmental Policymaking In Brazil And Chile: A Comparative Policymaking Analysis Of The Belo Monte And Hidroaysén Dams, Robert J. Vogan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

A global proliferation of large dam construction since the 1950s has been accompanied by scientific research challenging the benefit of these projects while drawing attention to their numerous negative environmental and social impacts. The institutions that assess the costs and benefits associated with large dam proposals, creating policies either approving, altering, or disapproving them, collectively form what is known as a policymaking framework. Examining these frameworks allows observers to trace policies through outlined decision-making processes and can help to reveal inherent biases within those systems that may impact policy outcomes. Often, divergent policy outcomes, like the those observed in the …

Sexual Content In Music's Relationship With Consumers' Body Image, Sexualization And Objectification, Marika Gilbert

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The current study examined the relationship between sexual content in popular pop, rap, and R&B music videos and female consumers’ body image, self-objectification, the objectification of other women, and self-esteem. The current study had two main hypotheses: (1) exposure to sexual content in music videos would be negatively correlated with women’s body image, self-objectification, and the objectification of other women and (2) Women’s body image and self-objectification would mediate the relationship between exposure to sexual content in music videos and self-esteem. Participants included 308 female college students who answered questions related to the study aims online. Exposure to sexual content …

The Second Amendment In The 21st Century: An In-Depth Examination Of Firearm Freedoms And Their Relationship With Public Safety And Interests, Mathew E. Klein

Honors Undergraduate Theses

One of the most hotly contested topics in the world today revolves around an object. An object that has caused debate among all members of society both in the United States, and all across the globe. But how could an object, something that on its own does nothing, spur such heated argument? This object is the evolution of invention and the product of fighting amongst each other. This object changes the way people think and how they act. This object can be used for both good and bad. This object is a gun.

This research project will explore the Second …

The Effect Of Social Media On Sexual Cognitions And Behaviors, Joshua Duarte

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Pop culture and social media have become a prime source of entertainment and communication. The current study focuses on the potential effects of consuming this form of media and how it affects our sexual cognitions and behaviors. A sample of nine hundred and two university students were given self-reporting questionnaires concerning demographics, sexual cognitions, and exposure to sexual content in music. An analysis of music artist’s posts on social media was also performed. It was hypothesized that artists who have sexual content published in their work will also have the same amount of sexual content on social media. However, there …

The Effect Of Aphasia On Quality Of Life, Coping Style, And Resilience, Nelson J. Hernandez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Approximately one million people in the United States suffer from aphasia. There are multiple types of aphasia, however they are usually placed into two categories: non-fluent or fluent. The psychosocial factors that are impacted due to the type of aphasia has not been systematically investigated. The purpose of this study is to examine how non-fluent and fluent Individuals With Aphasia (IWA) compare or contrast across three psychosocial factors, Quality of Life (QoL), coping style, and resilience. The World Health Quality of Life- BREF (WHOQOL-BREF), Assimilative-Accommodative Coping Scale (AACS), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 item version (CD-RISC-10), were administered once to …

Individual Differences In Eyewitness Testimony, Noel A. Cal

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Eyewitness testimony plays a crucial role in the justice system. Misidentification from eyewitnesses was reported in 70% of 300 DNA exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals (Wixted et al., 2015). Similarly, many convicts can also be set free because of juror’s faulty eyewitness recall during examination. Previous research indicated that females are more reliable in recall than men. However, these findings were not extensively examined with regards to time delay prior to the trial. Thus, it is important to systematically examine the various factors that influence eyewitness testimony.

The present study was designed to empirically examine the effects of gender, interview …

Journalism: How One University Used Virtual Worlds To Tell True Stories, Farooq Kperogi, Leonard Witt, Gwenette Sinclair, Claire Bohrer, Solomon Negash

Faculty Articles

This paper developed from a grant-funded, university-based project that emulated, at least in part, the work of Nonny de la Peña. The research team uses her definition of immersive journalism as a touchstone: "[The] production of news in a form in which people can gain first-person experiences of the events or situations described in news stories" (de la Peña, et al., 2010, p. 291). Our research uses a combination of ethnographic and survey research methods. It is written from the perspectives of the project leaders: a journalism professor who was the Principal Investigator, a virtual world development expert who oversaw …

Department Of Economics Publication List 2015, Penny Stover

Economics Pamphlet Series (1985-2016)

This compilation lists works authored by Department of Economics faculty members and other staff working on projects through the Department of Economics. Publications resulting from their research and academic activities are indexed by author at the end of this pamphlet for easy access by the public. The articles were published between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2015, except for those works printed in italics which have been accepted for publication but not actually printed as of December 31, 2015.

Analysis Of Alternative Convoy Route Patrol Procedures For Countering Improvised Explosive Devices Deployed During Asymmetric Warfare In Afghanistan-Like Rural Settings, Larry Baca

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are the greatest casualty producing and costly weapon system employed by the enemy on the asymmetric battlefield of today. Despite Billions of dollars spent on technological devices to counter the IED threat, IEDs are still responsible for roughly 50% of battlefield casualties. A tremendous amount of effort and resource has and continues to be levied in the pursuit of a technological solution to the IED problem. By contrast, little research has been done on Counter Improvised Explosive Device (CIED) procedures. This paper explores the potential of CIED procedures as a casualty reduction mechanism by comparing two …

The Hammer Or The Anvil: Developing Operational Adaptability Through Simulations At The Tactical Level, Michael Mccarthy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Operational Adaptability is a vital characteristic identified by senior Army leaders in today's military force. The U.S. Army is struggling with the definition and training of operational adaptability at the tactical level. In order to be a critical enhancement to the operational mission, operational adaptability needs to be trained through a training model that supports current U.S. Army doctrine. To develop a base foundation of operational adaptability, Soldiers must train as a collective unit in a simulated operational environment in order to apply characteristics of operational adaptability.

Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact Report 2015, Jeff Stringer, Billy Thomas, Bobby Ammerman, Alison Davis

Kentucky Forestry Economic Impact Reports

Forests cover nearly one-half of Kentucky and provide a wide range of both economic and non-economic benefits to the Commonwealth. The primary economic contributor is derived from the utilization of timber and wood resources. Analysis of Kentucky’s forest and wood industries in 2015 indicated an estimated direct economic impact of $9.1 billion (up 9 percent from 2014). These industries employed over 28,000 individuals. Total economic impacts in 2015 were estimated above $14 billion for the first time ($14.6 billion) with a total employment of 62,445. This increase in both direct and total impacts has been on-going since 2012 with a …

Chronic Pancreatitis, Pain, And Anxiety In An Alcohol And High Fat Mouse Model, Tiffanie Clinkinbeard

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Homeodynamic space (HDS) shrinks as vulnerability increases with aging and repeated damage to the cells. HDS is lost in alcoholic pancreatitis patients due to overconsumption of alcohol, smoking, and high fat diets. Etiologically relevant animal models for study of chronic pancreatitis (CP) are needed. In order to begin filling this gap a central purpose of this dissertation research was to examine relationships between the alcohol and high fat diet (AHF) and pancreatitis with attention to hypersensitivity and anxiety-like behaviors. The AHF diet induced pancreatitis described here etiologically mimics human risk factors of AHF consumption for advancement to alcoholic CP.

In …