Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

China Twenty Years After: Substance Use Under Rapid Social Changes, Xiaozhao Y. Yang

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation discusses how China’s rapid modernization and social transformation over the last twenty years since a series of reforms at the end of 1980s contribute to the changes in substance use behaviors. Specifically, there are three individual empirical chapters in this dissertation, each exploring one dimension of social change and its association with substance use. First, I have demonstrated how substance use can be a protective factor against unemployment over the long term, especially against the background of massive layoffs among former socialist industrial workers and landless peasants during this period. Second, another chapter examines how social mobility (i.e. …

Selective Influences, Mental Architectures, And Contextuality, Ru Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

Given a system with say two external factors α and β and two random outputs A and B in response to the external factors. α forms the context of A and β forms the context of B. When the marginal distribution of A is not affected by the change of β and the marginal distribution of B is not affected by the change of α, we say marginal selectivity present in the system. Can we say there is no context effect then? Our answer is “not yet for interdependent A and B”. If in addition, one can find a …

Breastfeeding Matters : Infant Feeding Decision Making And Mothering Sense Of Competence Among Korean American Mothers, Soo-Bin You

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The current study examined the influence of ecological variables in breastfeeding role expectations on mothers’ sense of competence in infant care, and the mediating effect of breastfeeding experience of mothers on the relationship between breastfeeding role expectations and mothering sense of competence. Thirty nine Korean American mothers who have babies under 18 months old participated in the survey asking about various ecological factors in breastfeeding role expectation, their actual breastfeeding experience, and mothering sense of competence. Findings suggested that each ecological variable (i.e. mother self, baby, family, and community) influencing Korean American mothers’ breastfeeding role expectation was differently related to …

Parents' Intentions To Allow Youth Football Participation : Perceived Concussion Risk And An Augmented Theory Of Planned Behavior, Ashley Morgan Murphy

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Youth football participation numbers have seen a decline in recent years, with many believing that the risk of head injury is to blame for the decrease. One step to reversing the decline in participation is to understand why fewer children are participating in football. Using an augmented version of the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study looked at the predictors of parents' intentions to allow their children to participate in football. It was hypothesized that in addition to attitudes, social norms, and behavioral control, perceived concussion risk would be a predictor of intention to allow football participation. An online survey …

Campus Climate For Lgbtq Students, Rick Brown

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

As institutions of higher education have become increasingly cognizant of the need to ensure a welcoming campus climate for all members of their student populations, they have begun to undertake campus climate studies to assess student experiences and perceptions. While the majority of studies have been quantitative in nature, in-depth qualitative studies have been conducted in recent years. These studies have started to provide institutions with opportunities to really hear and understand the experiences of their students. The purpose of this study was to hear and understand the reported experiences of LGBTQ college students with campus climate at a mid-sized …

Strategic Insights: The Mysterious Case Of The Vanishing Taliban, M. Chris Mason

Articles & Editorials

No abstract provided.

Fear Of Missing Out And Collegiate Alcohol Use: An Examination Of Relationship And Direction, Noah R. Wolkowicz

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Collegiate alcohol abuse is an ongoing problem in the United States (Core Institute, 2014). While there have been numerous investigations into this concern, the precise nature of what motivates alcohol misuse in this population still contains areas of uncertainty. One such area could be the newly identified phenomenon known as Fear of Missing Out (FoMO). Research into FoMO demonstrates it as a motivator for individuals to seek socially rewarding experiences (Przybylski et al., 2013); this characteristic indicates it as a potential risk factor for collegiate alcohol abuse. When considering alcohol’s ubiquitous nature as a social facilitator in college campuses, these …

(Wp 2016-05) Hodgson, Cumulative Causation, And Reflexive Economic Agents, John B. Davis

Economics Working Papers

This paper examines Geoff Hodgson’s interpretation of Veblen in agency-structure terms, and argues it produces a conception of reflexive economic agents. It then sets out an account of cumulative causation processes using this reflexive agent conception, modeling them as a two-part causal process, one part involving a linear causal relation and one part involving a circular causal relation. The paper compares the reflexive agent conception to the standard expected utility conception of economic agents, and argues that on a cumulative causation view of the world the completeness assumption essential to the standard view of rationality cannot be applied. The final …

Educational Technology And Innovation Capacity In Arkansas Public Schools, Allie Nicole Taylor

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We all have high hopes for our educational system. As they stress the need for 21st century learning, governments recognize the importance of innovation and creativity in schools and invest resources to develop learning environments that foster these qualities. This thesis adapts Crosling, Nair, and Vaithilingam’s (2015) model to provide a framework for studying factors that contribute to a creative learning ecosystem (intellectual capital development, 21st century literacies, climate for innovation, and integrity of the system), the quality of the educational system, and the system’s innovation capacity. A survey of 126 Arkansas high school teachers, indicates that two variables, student’s …

Anchoring In Financial Decision-Making: Evidence From The Field, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists no rational reason to do so. More than half of all wagers occur within $500 of the initial dollar value, although the maximum possible wagering value averages $5,914. This anchoring phenomenon remains statistically significant on the one percent level, even after controlling for scores, clue category, time trends, and player-fixed effects.When exploiting within-player variation …

Integrating High-Resolution Datasets To Target Mitigation Efforts For Improving Air Quality And Public Health In Urban Neighborhoods, Vivek Shandas, Jackson Voelkel, Meenakshi Rao, Linda A. George

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reducing exposure to degraded air quality is essential for building healthy cities. Although air quality and population vary at fine spatial scales, current regulatory and public health frameworks assess human exposures using county- or city-scales. We build on a spatial analysis technique, dasymetric mapping, for allocating urban populations that, together with emerging fine-scale measurements of air pollution, addresses three objectives: (1) evaluate the role of spatial scale in estimating exposure; (2) identify urban communities that are disproportionately burdened by poor air quality; and (3) estimate reduction in mobile sources of pollutants due to local tree-planting efforts using nitrogen dioxide. Our …

Still Waiting: An Analysis Of The Permeation Of Racial Stereotypes In Top-Grossing Black Romance Films From The 1960s To The 2000s, Jasmine Boyd-Perry

Honors College Theses

In this study, I compare how films portray relationships involving Black people, over the course of 5 decades. I do this by analyzing the characters and relationships in the top-grossing film from each decade (1960’s through 2000’s), that have a focus on Black love. I started this journey curious about how the silver screen portrayed how Black people loved romantically. As a person who regularly frequents my local major movie theatre, I had become tired of only seeing Black actors in comedies, Black men in drag and buddy dramas. I also grew tired of the sappy love stories featuring White …

Morphological Characteristics Of The Ice Margins Of Antarctic Ice Shelf And Outlet Glacier Extracted From Icesat Laser Altimetry Along-Track Profiles, Jieun Kim, Jaehyung Yu, Lei Wang, Hongxing Liu, Haein Shin

Faculty Publications

The Antarctic ice sheet topography including elevation and slope is a key parameter for understanding ice sheet dynamics because the surface slope is a major controller of the ice flow gravitational driving stress magnitude. This study used Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) laser altimetry data to analyze the ice margin morphological parameters for 20 ice shelves and 12 outlet glaciers distributed over Antarctica. The bottom-up segmentation algorithm application effectively extracted the morphological parameters from the laser altimetry profiles. The ice shelves had an average boundary elevation of 29.5 m and a slope of 7.8°, with a decreasing surface …

The Impact Of Political Oversight In Democratization: The Cases Of Japan And Bangladesh, Andrea K. Griner

Honors Theses

This study seeks to illustrate the importance of oversight in parliamentary democracies. A case study of Japan and Bangladesh is analyzed with a focus on legislative oversight. Results stress the importance of stable institutions and executives, and incentives for parties to consolidate.

Cultivation In An On-Demand Era: Television Consumption, Explicit And Implicit Attitudes Toward Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Individuals, Jasmine M. Labine

Masters Theses

Past research in media effects suggests that the media we consume influences our daily lives. More specifically, Cultivation Theory suggests that television collectively contributes to our worldviews. In this study, cultivation was applied at both macro- and micro-levels. Macrolevel cultivation, or traditional cultivation, involves analysis of television as a collective medium and the way that it affects attitudes. Micro-level cultivation refers to the idea that certain types of programs influence specific attitudes.

Attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals were analyzed in relation to a number of variables. Few statistically significant results were found relating demographics and general television …

Approved For All Audiences: A Longitudinal Content Analysis Of The Portrayal Of Women In Movie Trailers, Brooke S. O’Neil

Masters Theses

Movie trailers are ever present in our society and impactful in the way society constructs views about various aspects of life. Trailers are unique in that they are specifically tailored and edited to entice audiences to buy tickets to the film. Further, prior research has indicated that in various forms of media, women are continuously underrepresented, disproportionately sexualized, stereotyped, and victimized. The present study examines the portrayal of women through a content analysis of 230 of the top grossing trailers across seven decades: 1950-2015. The research focuses on women’s representation, sexualization, gender roles, and violence. The analysis reveals that in …

The Role Of Health Insurance In The Financial Lives Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Mathieu R. Despard, Dana C. Perantie, Jane E. Oliphant, Stephen P. Roll, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Center for Social Development Research

Health insurance is an important resource for enabling access to and use of medical care, and is associated with reduced risk for mortality and poor health outcomes. Health insurance also protects households from incurring major medical expenses and unmanageable levels of medical debt. About a quarter of a sample of low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers have no health insurance, compared to 10% of all individuals in the United States. As of 2014, the proportion of filers without insurance was 11 percentage points higher in states that had not expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) than it was …

Anticipatory And Consummatory Pleasure And Displeasure In Major Depressive Disorder: An Experience Sampling Study, Haijing Wu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Pleasure and displeasure can be parsed into anticipatory and consummatory phases. However, existing research on pleasure and displeasure in major depressive disorder (MDD), a disorder characterized by anhedonia, has largely focused on deficits in the consummatory phase and most studies have been laboratory-based. Using experience sampling, we compared anticipatory and consummatory pleasure and displeasure for activities in the daily lives of adults with MDD (n = 41) and in healthy controls (n = 39). Participants carried electronic devices for one week and were randomly prompted eight times a day to answer questions about activities that they most and …

Rrh Library Newsletter, August 2016, Libraries At Rochester Regional Health

Rochester Regional Health authored publications and proceedings

Newsletter sections include: Immunization; Nursing Reference Center Database Demo; Used Book Sale

The Hub Of Human Innovation: Economic Impacts Of The Utep Paso Del Norte Clean Energy Incubator Program In El Paso, Texas Over January 2016 - June 2016, Manuel L. Reyes Loya, Jesus E. Mendoza, David A. Schauer

Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Uniqueness And Stability Of Equilibrium In Economies With Two Goods, John Geanakoplos, Kieran James Walsh

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We offer new sufficient conditions ensuring demand is downward sloping local to equilibrium. It follows that equilibrium is unique and stable in the sense that rising supply implies falling prices. In our setting, there are two goods, which we interpret as consumption in different time periods, and many impatience types. Agents have the same Bernoulli utility function, but the types differ arbitrarily in time preference. Our main result is that if endowments are identical and utility displays nonincreasing absolute risk aversion, then market demand is strictly downward sloping local to equilibrium. We discuss implications for the Diamond-Dybvig literature.

Longitudinal Student Data And State Education Aid Formulas, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Workforce Innovation And Opportunity Act Implementation: Ethical Considerations For Counseling Practice, Christine Anderson

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

The Vocational Rehabilitation program exists to assist individuals with disabilities to attain, secure and benefit from employment. The purpose of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA), which included the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, is to empower individuals with disabilities to maximize employment. The Act was reauthorized as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014. The Act includes significant changes to rehabilitation service delivery including a stronger emphasis on services to youth and outreach to minority populations. Despite the changes, the Act is vague and does not include methods for implementation. Although the specifics for implementation of WIOA …

Gender Representation And Occupational Portrayals In Primetime Television, Brittany Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined gender representation and occupational portrayals on primetime television, in order to determine if gender-role stereotypes are still present throughout programming, and what progress, if any, has been made in comparison to previous studies. A content analysis was done on primetime programming airing during the fall of 2013 on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW, and analyzed gender, major and minor character, genre, occupation, and marital status. The findings of this study reveal that women are still underrepresented on-screen, as well as in prestigious occupations, especially when compared to their real world representation. This study also examined …

Economic Growth, Natural Mineral Resources And Education In Developing Countries, Kasimu J. Mayundo

Applied Economics Theses

The contributions of education in achieving the modernization of developed countries has attracted much attention. Perhaps, underdeveloped countries have provided a limited contribution toward economic development and growth because educational funding was not a priority. Therefore, some underdeveloped countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, rely heavily on their natural resources for economic development and growth, minimizing the importance of high quality education in economic growth.

The question is: Why has the Democratic Republic of Congo not been able to transform its abundant resources into a blessing for a prosperous nation? And how does education contribute to economic growth and …

Development And Validation Of The Communication Apprehension About Death Scale, Heather J. Carmack, Jocelyn M. Degroot

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Two studies (N=621) were conducted to develop and initially validate the Communication Apprehension About Death Scale (CADS). In Study 1, 302 general public participants completed a preliminary list of 66 items. An exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct dimensions of communication apprehension about death: communication anxiety and communication avoidance. A different group of participants (n=319) participated in Study 2. Participants in Study 2 completed the CADS measure, a fear of death measure, and a general communication apprehension measure. Concurrent validity support was provided through the significant positive correlations between communication apprehension about death and fear of death as well as …

Socio-Emotional Development In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Christiana K. Whitley

Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to determine which lesson from a social skills program would result in the greatest improvement in duration of social interaction for children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) between the ages of five and fifteen. The Superheroes Social Skills Program (Jensen et al., 2011) includes lesson plans that focus directly on helping children with ASD develop communication skills in group settings. The data indicate that one specific lesson, Participation and Joining In, was responsible for the largest mean increase in duration of social interactions of participants. Social skills lessons were introduced …

Review Of A Communication Perspective On The Military: Interactions, Messages, And Discourses, Lynn H. Turner

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Utilizing Multiple-Level Category Information To Enhance Category Learning: Theoretical And Practical Considerations In Application To Authentic Natural Categories, Toshiya Miyatsu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Category learning is ubiquitous in science education. From botany courses teaching to identify different types of plants to geology courses teaching to distinguish various types of rocks, examples of category learning being a core of a course curriculum can be easily found. Using the educationally authentic rock categories, the current project examined whether category learning at a broad level (i.e., distinguishing between Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic rocks) could be enhanced by using category information at a more specific level (e.g., Harzburgite under Igneous, Breccia under Sedimentary, etc.). Both in Experiment 1 (broad- and specific- level information were presented simultaneously) and …

Self “Sensor”Ship: An Interdisciplinary Investigation Of The Persuasiveness, Social Implications, And Ethical Design Of Self-Sensoring Prescriptive Applications, Denise A. Baker

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

This dissertation research investigates the social implications of computing artifacts that make use of sensor driven self-quantification to implicitly or explicitly direct user behaviors. These technologies are referred to here as self-sensoring prescriptive applications (SSPA’s). This genre of technological application has a strong presence in healthcare as a means to monitor health, modify behavior, improve health outcomes, and reduce medical costs. However, the commercial sector is quickly adopting SSPA’s as a means to monitor and/or modify consumer behaviors as well (Swan, 2013). These wearable devices typically monitor factors such as movement, heartrate, and respiration; ostensibly to guide the users to …