Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What Is Opposition Good For?, Betul Demirkaya

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Democratically elected governments may sometimes give in to pressures from extreme constituents thereby failing to adopt policies congruent with the median voter's preferences. This situation is exacerbated by the inability or the reluctance of voters to acquire information about the consequences of policy alternatives. Opposition parties, in principle, could help remedy this problem using the prerogatives at their disposal such as participating in legislative debates and proposing bills, amendments or no confidence motions. In practice, however, they may have incentives to mislead the voters for policy or election purposes. Given the critical role of opposition parties to remedy problems of …

Essays In Financial Economics, Jinji Hao

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter of my dissertation, I provide a novel framework – the cumulant generating function (cgf) of the market risk on the positive half real line – for studying the market risk which can be replicated by cross sections of index option prices in a model-free manner. Within this unifying framework, independent of the underlying price process, the VIX index measures the height of the cgf at one while the SVIX index proposed by Martin (2016) measures the convexity of the cgf over the interval [0, 2]. A tail index of the market risk, TIX, is proposed based …

Population Genomics Of A Baboon Hybrid Zone In Zambia, Kenneth Lyu Chiou

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Hybridization is increasingly recognized as a common, important process shaping the evolution of organisms including humans. Across hybrid zones, the genomes of incipient species are mixed and recombined through hybridization and backcrossing, creating conditions ideal for evaluating the actions of natural selection on gene variants in novel genomic contexts. This dissertation aims to increase our understanding of hybridization using a Zambian baboon study system in which two species, Kinda baboons (Papio kindae) and grayfoot baboons (Papio griseipes), hybridize despite exhibiting pronounced differences in body size and behavior. Using genome-wide genotypic data prepared using double-digest RADseq, I scan for genomic regions …

Seeds As Artifacts Of Communities Of Practice: The Domestication Of Erect Knotweed In Eastern North America, Natalie Graham Mueller

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Humans are the ultimate ecosystem engineers, and in transforming ecosystems we also change the selective environment for the plants and animals that live among us. The bodies and behaviors of domesticated plants and animals are thus rich artifacts of traditional ecological knowledge and practice. I study the morphology and behavior of domesticated plants as a proxy for ancient agricultural communities of practice. The transition from food procurement to food production is one of the most significant shifts in human history. I consider this process as the evolution and spread of a knowledge system. Domestication studies are usually focused on differentiating …

Sins Of The Father: An Investigation Into Judgments And Processes Involved In Within-Family Tainting, Stephanie Allison Peak

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The present research focused on a real-world event (i.e., the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks) as a basis for gaining insight about the spread of negativity (i.e., “tainting”) from a guilty father to an innocent son. The nature of the relationship between the son and the father was varied experimentally, a manipulation that allowed for investigation into the subjective importance of genetic versus social relationships. Across three experiments, I examined two types of judgments about the son, including responsibility and general evaluation of the target. Responsibility ratings were, on the average, extremely low. Indeed, many participants explicitly attributed no responsibility to …

The Determinants Of Americans' Attitudes Of Representation, Patrick Delonjay Tucker

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates how citizens approach the representational relationship in a polarized world. How, if at all, do citizens’ perceptions of their legislators change when party identification dominates the political landscape? The answer from this study may be surprising to casual observers of American politics. First, I find that Americans’ views of their legislators are dynamic. Using original, nationally representative panel data, I find that perceptions of legislators move a significant amount on both a non-policy and policy dimension. Second, these levels of affect and congruence are systematically responsive to perceptions of legislators’ public efforts and home styles. Even in …

Building A Theory Of Adaptive Neuroticism, Sara Jo Weston

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Neuroticism is widely believed to be detrimental to health, but the evidence is mixed. Many large-scale studies find null or positive effects of neuroticism on mortality and health. A theory of “healthy neuroticism” was generated to explain these discrepant results. According to this theory, neuroticism can lead an individual down one of two paths: an anxiety and stress-ridden path of maladaptive coping and poor outcomes, or a path of vigilance and proactivity. Trait conscientiousness is thought to be the defining feature of healthy neuroticism, although studies substantiating this claim are few and far between. Meanwhile, other important factors - notably, …

Folding Time, Places That Linger And Other “Queer” Modes Of Representing Sense Of Place, Karen A. Lambert

The Qualitative Report

The notion that place and identity are mutually constitutive suggests that attachments to place forge attachments to self that linger over time. In order to consider the ways in which sexual identities and places influence the development of a “queer sense of place” over time I returned to an autoethnographical experience from 2002 to write about it in 2015. Then something unusual happened - time showed itself and folded to reveal the lingering affect of place, loss and identity. By drawing upon insights from then (2002) and now (2015), with sense making in between, I create an assemblage of moments …

Information Need And Information Seeking Behaviour Of Villagers Of Lucknow, India, Dr. Shilpi Verma, Maneesha Rawat Studnet

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Information seeking is viewed as cognitive exercise and information need is now becoming basic need of the human beings. The papers deals with information needs and information seeking behavior of the villagers who are playing a major role in economic condition of the country, but what resources they are getting for satisfying their information need. The condition of villages is not so good in terms of information gathering. Therefore the paper highlights the status of information need the information behavior of villagers in Mohanlalganj Block, Lucknow City, India.

St. Mark’S Catholic Community Of The Deaf, May 14, 2017

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

St. Francis Of Assisi Catholic Church And Center For The Deaf Sunday Bulletin, May 14, 2017

Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and Center for the Deaf Sunday Bulletin

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Landover Hills, MD

St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and Center for the Deaf Sunday Bulletin Finding Aid

Ua42/3 Commencement Program, Wku Elizabethtown/Ft. Knox

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program for WKU Elizabethtown/Ft. Knox.

The Paradox Of Remarkable/Unremarkable Julian Of Norwich, John P. Fitzgibbons

School of Theology and Seminary Graduate Papers/Theses

No abstract provided.

Understanding Information Use In Online Consumer-Health Support Groups: A Look Into Interactive Health Communications, Naybell Hernandez

Dissertations - ALL

UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION USE IN ONLINE CONSUMER HEALTH SUPPORT GROUPS: A LOOK INTO INTERACTIVE HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS

The exponential growth of the Internet in the past two decades has been accompanied by an increased interest by Internet users in communicating among each other electronically about all sorts of topics, including health-related issues. This increased interest in peer-to-peer communication for health topics raised lots of questions about the potential harmful effects of these communications on those participants who might take some health-related action without consulting with a doctor first. This potential problem has motivated the researcher to investigate how people with certain health …

Essays On Misspecification In High Dimensional Econometrics And Asset Pricing, Jaewoo Oh

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines misspecification issues in two contexts: (i) signal (or equivalently factor) detection in high-dimensional factor models and (ii) the identification of the physical probability distribution of stock returns in the asset pricing literature.

The first essay revisits the panel information criteria (IC) proposed by Bai and Ng (2002), which is a popular estimator for the number of factors in high-dimensional factor models, and studies its over-detection risk in finite samples. First, we analyze the finite sample performance of IC by computing the over-detection probability bound. In particular, we specify the asymptotic over-detection condition of IC in terms of …

Enabling Justice: State Cooperation With The International Criminal Court, Franziska Boehme

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation analyzes state cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC, or the Court). State cooperation is the precondition for the Court to bring perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity to justice. The Court does not have a police force of its own to enforce its arrest warrants and court requests. Consequently, the ICC depends on the cooperation and assistance of states and international organizations to arrest suspects and facilitate the Court’s work in various ways. Through qualitative methods, including case studies, content analysis, and process tracing, I investigate how states support or undermine the Court’s work …

The Roberts Court Constitution Of Freedom Of Speech: Preferences, Principles, And The Study Of Supreme Court Decision-Making, Brandon Metroka

Dissertations - ALL

Since the appointment of Chief Justice G. Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, political scientists and legal scholars have assessed the Court’s behavior in a diverse array of cases and issue areas, including those touching on federalism, reproductive rights, voting rights, and economic liberty (cases involving businesses and corporations). Few issues have proven as vexing as the Court’s constitution of the First Amendment’s command “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”

In light of the Court’s ongoing constitution of the scope and coverage of the First Amendment, a narrative has emerged that paints the Court as distinctly conservative. …

Three Essays On Public Procurement, Zachary Steven Huitink

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

The following dissertation presents three essays on the theory and empirics of public procurement—the process by which government defines its needs for goods and services and acquires them using contracts. The objective of this dissertation is to address three unresolved questions in the literature regarding how the characteristics of products governments procure, and the environments in which they are bought and sold, shape government and non-governmental actors’ decision making at different points in the procurement process.

The first essay develops an expanded theory of government’s decision to directly deliver public services—social welfare, energy utilities, select forms of security provision, …

Guidelines For Submission And Author Instructions

The Southeastern Librarian

Guidelines for article submission to The Southeastern Librarian.

Mcmanus Studies, Teaches International Conflicts., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Sometimes people in academia get their inspiration from unsuspected sources. That is the case with political scientists such as Dr. Roseanne McManus. “While in middle school I started reading novels by Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler. Reading about the strategic interaction of countries in these books made me interested to learn more both about the former Soviet Union and about how countries interact with each other and how they choose their strategies to get what they want,” she says.

This native of Towson, Maryland, went on to obtain a master’s degree in government and politics at the University of Maryland …

Occupational Stress And Health Among Home Health Care Workers, Jeanette M. Zoeckler

Dissertations - ALL

Home health care workers fill an essential role in the daily lives of elderly persons. However, the work is physically and emotionally exhausting. This mixed-methods study explicates sources of stress found in agency-based caregiving in the post-industrial economy. Agencies operate under a highly regulated legal and organizational framework, but little is known about how to reduce sources of job strain to better protect workers’ health. Drawing on existing occupational health stress theories (Karasek; Siegrist; Landsbergis) and sociological stress theory (Pearlin; Fenwick & Tausig), this study explores how workers’ experiences and agency characteristics are related to home health care worker’s occupational …

Using Affirmation Theory To Further Understand The Distinction Between The Individual Self And The Collective Self, Gaven Allen Ehrlich

Dissertations - ALL

Research in social psychology points to a discontinuity between the individual self and the collective self such that operating at the collective level of identity leads one to be more biased, defensive, and hostile than when operating at the individual level of identity. One area of research where this distinction is particularly apparent is that of identity threat and affirmation theory. Although affirming the self has been shown to reduce individual-level biases in the face of threat, affirming the group in response to a collective-level threat has been shown to accentuate biased tendencies. This may be a result of the …

Over The Hurdle: A Quantitative Study Examining The Obstacles Of Achieving Professional Certification And The Perceived Effective Practices For Overcoming Them, John Patrick Stinnett

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this study was to identify the issues that Information Systems (IS) professionals face when pursuing professional certification as well as the perceived effective practices to overcome these issues. I have observed many students seeking professional certification while only a small subset achieves it. This document provides a review of relevant literature on the topic of professional certification and a research study that examined why some IS professionals achieve this certification and what obstacles they overcame to do so. The study has relevance to organizations that offer professional certifications, those firms who offer exam preparation for these certifications, …

Encounters With Authority: Tactics And Negotiations At The Periphery Of Participatory Platforms, Gabriel Mugar

Dissertations - ALL

Digital participatory platforms like Wikipedia are often celebrated as projects that allow anyone to contribute. Any user can sign up and start contributing immediately. Similarly, projects that engage volunteers in the production of scientific knowledge create easy points of entry to make contributions. These low barriers to entry are a hallmark feature in digital participatory labor, limiting the number of hoops a new volunteer has to jump through before they can feel like they are making a difference. Such low barriers to participation at the periphery, or edges of participatory platforms, have presented a problem for organizational scholars as they …

The Presence Of Groove In Online Songwriting Projects, David Lamar James

Dissertations - ALL

Collaboration for groups with members who are disconnected by geography or time is convenient for many reasons, but remains a challenge due to time zone differences, network congestion, and the attenuation of nonverbal communication cues. Virtual collaborators engaging in creative work often deal with these challenges, even more so when tasked with expressing their emotions to distant partners.

This study seeks to determine the social factors and tools that impact the quality of an online creative collaboration. Members of the Kompoz.com music composition community were surveyed to solicit projects that had the potential to be optimal collaborations. Judges listened to …

The Effect Of The Hope Scholarship Program On Interstate Migration, Can Zhou

Dissertations - ALL

The HOPE scholarship program, created by the state of Georgia in 1993, is the first large scale, merit-based higher educational scholarship program in the United States. In this research, I use border analysis and difference-in-differences estimates to test the hypothesis that the HOPE scholarship program attracts interstate education migration from Georgia’s neighboring states. My results support my hypothesis. I find that border areas in Georgia attract high school seniors from the adjacent areas in border states that do not have the HOPE scholarship program. In addition, I use the IPUMS dataset to provide further analysis to the effect of the …

A Functional Analysis Of Three Treatments For Pica In A Naturalistic Play Environment, Jennifer Darrah

Capstone Projects

Pica is an eating disorder involving the ingestion of non-food items. In the current study, a functional analysis (FA) screening was conducted to confirm the pica of two subjects diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was maintained by automatic reinforcement. Subsequently, three behavior-analytic treatments (i.e., verbal reprimand, noncontingent reinforcement [NCR], and functional communication training [FCT]) were systematically evaluated in an unstructured play environment using a multi-element design. Findings showed all three treatments decreased pica compared to pre-treatment levels; however, FCT was observed to consistently reduce the rate of pica for both subjects to near-zero levels. Results of this study support …

Meeting Your Class At The Crossroads: Using Slo/Frame Grids To Tailor Information Literacy Instruction, Patrick Wohlmut

Faculty & Staff Presentations

One of the practical challenges presented by ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education is how to use it to design and assess instruction. By its nature, the framework is less prescriptive and more descriptive; it is more focused on understandings, habits, and general behaviors than on specific skills and practices, which makes it harder to pin down for purposes of instructional design. This workshop introduced a tool for teaching librarians that arose out of the Linfield College Libraries’ efforts to update the student learning outcomes for its information literacy program: The SLO-Frame Grid. Though the tool was still …

Ua45/6 Commencement Program, Wku Registrar

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program listing graduates and a tribute to WKU president Gary Ransdell.

Our Difference Is Our Strength: Collaboration And Creativity In Co-Creating System Wide Information Literacy Learning Outcomes, Tom Adam, Colleen A. Burgess, Kim Mcphee, Christy Sich

Western Libraries Presentations

As instruction librarians, we find ourselves siloed from our fellow teaching librarians and faculty in the design, delivery, and assessment of our instruction. We persevere in adopting a creative lens when asked to teach specific skills within limited time frames, we negotiate for more time with our students to engage in higher order thinking about research and Information Literacy (IL), and we attempt to convince faculty to allow us a sliver of a grade percentage to reinforce the value of the assignments we employ in-session. At Western Libraries we are attempting to switch this reactive stance we’ve often found ourselves …