Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Real-World Large-Scale Iot Systems For Community Eldercare: A Comparative Study On System Dependability, Hwee-Pink Tan, Austin Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paradigm of aging-in-place — where the elderly live and age in their own homes, independently and safely, with care provided by the community — is compelling, especially in societies that face both shortages in institutionalized eldercare resources, and rapidly-aging populations. Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, particularly in-home monitoring solutions, are commercially available, and can be a fundamental enabler of smart community eldercare, if they are dependable. In this paper, we present our findings on system performance of solutions from two vendors, which we have deployed at scale for technology-enabled community care. In particular, we highlight the importance of quantifying actual system …

Well-Being Concepts And Components, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Well-being is a broad, multifaceted construct. This chapter reviews different ways of defining and measuring well-being and the implications this has for understanding the correlates and causes of well-being. Hedonic well-being (HWB), eudaimonic well-being (EWB), and other conceptions of well-being are discussed. Specific components and aspects of HWB are elaborated on. These include the distinction between affective and cognitive well-being. Major aspects of affective well-being include valence, frequency versus intensity, arousal, and interpersonal engagement. Major aspects of cognitive well-being include life satisfaction, life evaluation, and domain satisfaction. Processes underlying the structure of cognitive well-being are discussed including top-down versus bottom-up …

Water Supply Planning In Virginia: The Future Of Groundwater And Surface Water, Jonathon Lubrano, Jeffrey Moore

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

This paper begins by exploring the current state of water resources planning and permitting. Then, considers current water demand in Virginia, as well as future challenges. Next is an examination of management structures from other states and a discussion of potential solutions to the water scarcity issue, including wastewater purification, the Hampton Roads Sanitation District’s (HRSD) Sustainable Water Initiative For Tomorrow (SWIFT) project, and desalination. The paper concludes with various next steps and policy recommendations that the Commonwealth should consider as dwindling water resources could hamper economic growth and threaten drought conditions, such as regional planning to achieve the optimal …

Testing The Impact Of State-Society Relations On Human Security, Ilhan Aydemir

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to provide explanations for why prosperity, peace and development are achieved in some countries but not in others. To do so, this research analyzes how civil society and state capacity effect human security; using an explanatory mixed-method approach. The statistical analysis used in this research is a time series cross-sectional data analysis covering over 160 countries from 1984 to 2014. The statistical findings are further tested by comparative case studies of Slovenia, Lithuania, Russia and Singapore. The results suggest that civil society and state capacity are significant factors for explaining how different levels of …

Voluntary Engagement And College Retention: Does The Type Of Engagement Predict Retention For Different Types Of Students?, Sarah Louise Coley

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The current study examined whether voluntary engagement activities are associated with increased student retention rates at college to a subsequent semester. It was theorized that this association would owe to engagement enhancing the ostensible value of students’ college experience. Additionally, another theoretical idea was examined: Specific activities may be particularly beneficial for specific types of students. For example, students may have certain motivational needs, such as those identified by self-determination theory (SDT; i.e., competency and belongingness). Fulfilling those needs through engagement may promote retention. For the current study, student record data and student self-report data were sampled from a Midwestern …

Occupational Seasonality And Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction At Quebrada Jaguay 280, Stephanie Melissa Gruver

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Quebrada Jaguay 280 (QJ-280) is one of the oldest maritime archaeological sites in the New World. Previous excavations of the southern Peruvian coastal site have dated occupation from ~13,000-8,000 cal yr BP. These excavations also determined that the occupants of the site used preferential maritime resource procurement strategies and had an interzonal connection to the highlands. In 2017 a new excavation was conducted at QJ-280 and the remains of the marine mollusk Mesodesma donacium were recovered. Geochemical examinations on the shell remains informed on the occupational seasonality of the site and reconstructed sea surface temperatures experienced off the coast of …

From Dissent To Democracy? The Promise And Perils Of Civil Resistance Transitions, Jonathan C. Pinckney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Under what conditions will successful nonviolent revolutions be followed by democratization? While the scholarly literature has shown that nonviolent resistance has a positive effect on a country's level of democracy, little research to date has disaggregated this population to explain which cases of successful nonviolent resistance lead to democracy and which do not. In this study I present a theory of democratization in civil resistance transitions in which I argue that political actors' behavior in three strategic challenges: mobilization, maximalism, and holdovers policy, systematically affect the likelihood of democratization. I test this theory using a nested research design that begins …

Cohens On The Move: Jewish Residential Dynamics In Cincinnati, Ohio, 1940-2000, Carmi J. Neiger

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In the 1960s and 1970s, as many large US cities experienced rapid racial and ethnic demographic shifts, the intra-urban residential settlement and migration patterns of American Jews came to the attention of sociologists and urbanists. Although the interest in this population has waned in favor of more recent immigrant groups, patterns of Jewish residential dynamics continue to evolve, reflecting changes over time in both Jewish religious and ethnic identity and assimilation into mainstream American society. The lack of Census data identifying households by religious affiliation requires an alternative approach to the study of this group. In the first section of …

Does Infant Negative Affect Moderate The Impact Of Parenting On Effortful Control? A Test Of The Differential Susceptibility Hypothesis, Anton Petrenko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Parenting and early temperament characteristics have previously been shown to impact development of children’s self-regulation, which is in turn linked to a variety of developmental outcomes. However, few studies have evaluated interactions between difficult temperament and parenting, and only four published studies have specifically tested whether infants’ difficult temperament serves as a maker of differential susceptibility to parenting on self-regulatory development. The current study evaluated whether infant negative affectivity (NA) serves as a marker of differential susceptibility to positive and negative parenting on levels of effortful control (EC) at 18 months, which is at an earlier time point than has …

An Examination Of Teachers' Natural Praise-To-Reprimand Ratios And Teachers' Perceptions Of Self-Efficacy And Stress, Sara Hayn

Masters Theses

The current study examined teachers' natural use of praise and reprimand in middle and high school (sixth through twelfth grade) general education classrooms. In addition, the relations between praise and reprimand and teacher stress and self-efficacy were examined. Praise and reprimand data were collected via 20-minute, direct observation (940 total observation minutes). On average, middle and high school teachers delivered 11.7 total praises per hour and 10.4 total reprimands per hour (1.1 to 1 praise-to-reprimand ratio). Middle school teachers delivered 12.8 total praises per hour and 14.5 total reprimands per hour (0.9 to 1 praise-to-reprimand ratio) and high school teachers …

The Potential Benefits Of Using Humor To Reduce Prejudice And Violence, Ethan Radatz

Masters Theses

In the field of social psychology, there have been multiple sources of research demonstrating the proposed links between prejudice and humor. The breadth of this research appears to hold the common theme of observing how the use of negative humor can disenfranchise different outgroups, or groups that seem to be at the bottom of the social ladder (e.g. the poor, marginalized ethnic/racial groups, sex, gender, and so on). Furthermore, the concepts of prejudice, as well as humor have been rarely observed through any nonviolence framework. The present study examined any relationship between humor (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating), nonviolence (physical …

Why A Negative Body Image? A Study On Gender, Social Media, And Mass Media, Taryn Bland Teeters

Masters Theses

This study was designed to identify the contributors to body image (BI) dissatisfaction. The factors affecting the adult body image and the extent of their consequences were examined. This study attempted to determine the extent to which these individual's peers, the mass media, and social media affect their BI, body shaming, and the individual's shame of others.

An anonymous online questionnaire was utilized and sent to participants by snowballing through the use of Facebook and email. Participants were asked to identify their age, gender, pleasing and displeasing body parts, their use of social media, and an overall rating of their …

The Role Of Contact And Empathy In Stigma Toward Individuals With Mental Illness Among Mental Health And Non-Mental Health Professionals, Quincy A. Knolhoff

Masters Theses

This study was designed to help identify the factors that predict people's stigmatized attitudes toward individuals with mental illness. Corrigan (2002) suggested that stigmatized beliefs about individuals with mental illness may be detrimental to the potential recovery of these individuals, their self-esteem, empowerment, and their integration into society. One factor that has been found to reduce this stigma is personal contact with mentally ill individuals (Corrigan et al., 2002). Additionally, research has shown that empathy and principled moral reasoning are negatively correlated with prejudice, or stigma (McFarland, 2010). The current study examined level of contact, employment in a mental health …

Social Anxiety And Problematic Drinking In College Students: Examining Potential Mediators, Carissa Gutsmiedl

Masters Theses

Social anxiety and problematic drinking are among the most prevalent disorders present in the college population. Having one or both of these disorders while in college can be detrimental to academic performance and can increase dropout rates. Social anxiety has been found to precede problematic drinking in previous research. The purpose of this study was to help determine what variables may explain this relationship (i.e., mediators). The current study tested whether emotion regulation difficulties, drinking motives, alcohol outcome expectancies, and self-discrepancy mediated the relationship between social anxiety and problematic drinking among college undergraduates (N = 135). Results indicated that emotion …

The Impact Of Fiscal Policy On Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence From Four South Asian Countries, Tasnia Symoom

Masters Theses

There is a constant debate about the effectiveness of fiscal policy on economic growth of developing countries. Policy makers in developing countries generally attempt to address socioeconomic issues such as poverty, unemployment, hunger, poor investment, and illiteracy while adjusting the levels of public spending and determining tax rates. This thesis examines the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth in four countries of South Asia. For reasons of data availability I choose four of these countries – Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – for the period 1980 to 2016. I use the Error Correction Model (ECM) and Autoregressive Distributed …

Shocks Pass-Through To Prices In U.S. And Canada: Evidence From Oil And Exchange Rate Markets, Eiman Aiyash

Masters Theses

This paper investigates the degree of exchange rate and oil prices pass-through to import prices, producer prices, and consumer prices in Canada and United States over the period from 1980 to 2017 using a Structural Vector Auto-Regression (SVAR) model. The results indicate a robust evidence of a positive long-run correlation between exchange rate & oil prices and aggregate price levels. Impulse response function reveals a persistent and incomplete pass-through for both exchange rates and oil prices i.e. 0.20 and 0.04 for Canada and 0.27 and 0.25 for the U.S. That is, greater pass-through exist in an economy which has a …

The Meaning Of A Woman's Work: Refugees, Statelessness, Nationality, And The Women's International League For Peace And Freedom, 1918-1931, Monica Burney

Masters Theses

This work analyzes how the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) sought to influence how the League of Nations approached questions of nationality and statelessness between 1918 and 1931. Especially important were the WILPF's efforts to aid women and children who remained in Turkey following the Armenian genocide, as well as the organization's efforts to address the statelessness crisis that arose following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. Their activism helped to pressure the League of Nations into creating the Commission of Enquiry on Deported Women and Children in Turkey and Asia Minor. Their efforts to end statelessness culminated in …

The Relationship Between Peer Accountability Within Social Greek Organizations And Violations Of The Student Conduct Code, Danielle L. Burden

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between violations of the student conduct code and the perception of peer accountability within social Greek organizations. The researcher hypothesized that members of Greek organizations would report high perceptions of peer accountability within their organizations, and because of that there would be an effect on violations of the student conduct code. A quantitative study was conducted, surveying the entire Greek population at a mid-sized, Midwestern, 4-year, public institution. A Likert scale was used to measure questions about perceived peer accountability within organizations, students also provided demographics and self-reported violations of …

Branding & Style Guides: Editing For Usability (A Project For Lake Land College), Baylor D. Gardner

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Construct Validity Of The Learning-To-Learn Scales (Ltls) With A Preschool And Kindergarten Sample, Kassandra Jane Charles

Masters Theses

Learning behaviors, "observable behavior patterns that children display as they approach and undertake school learning tasks" (Yen, Konold, and McDermott, 2004, p. 159) and "the degree to which children adopt beneficial approaches to learning" (Rikoon, McDermott, & Fantuzzo, 2012, p. 273) have been shown to account for a substantial amount of variance in academic achievement and add predictive validity for future academic achievement. Prediction of academic achievement is vital when making individual decisions concerning academic placement, diagnosis, early intervention, and student selection (Yen, Konold, & McDermott, 2004). The current study assessed the concurrent criterion validity of the Learning-to-Learn Scales (LTLS) …

Promoting A Galaxy Far, Far Away: Changes In Promotional Strategies Seen In Star Wars Marketing Campaigns, Michael Fenton

Masters Theses

This piece examines promotional material from the Star Wars campaigns for The Phantom Menace in 1999 and The Force Awakens in 2015 to find differences in promotional strategies with regards to globalization, fandom and fan perception and the use of online spaces. Trailers, tie-in product materials and websites are given visual and textual analysis to find how the films have evolved to accommodate a larger, more culturally diverse audience. In doing so this piece seeks to understand how the changing consumer landscape is impacting the way product are advertised, and how prospective advertisers can maximize their audience through adjusting their …

Student-Instructor Negotiations Of Vulnerability In Higher Education, Kelli A. Halfman

Masters Theses

Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead states, "Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional" (p. 2). The purpose of this study is to examine student-instructor negotiations of vulnerability via acts of self-disclosure both inside and outside of the classroom. For the traditional student, college is a transitional period that prove challenging, leaving one feeling vulnerable. This study offers a unique perspective of vulnerability and expands our limited knowledge on how vulnerable self-expression manifests within …

Ethnic Identity Development Of 1.5 Generation Filipino American Immigrants: A Qualitative Study, Catherine Welsh

Masters Theses

This qualitative study examines ethnic identity development of 1.5 generation Filipino American immigrants in U.S. The survey methods used in the study were a demographic questionnaire, and semi-structured interview. Two Filipino students, one from the Southwest and the other from the Midwest regions of the U.S. participated in the study. Two research questions guided this study; what factors influence the ethnic identity development of the 1.5 generation Filipino American immigrants, and what strategies educators can use to facilitate 1.5 generation Filipino American immigrant student success. The results of the study revealed six themes. Three themes emerged from research question one …

The Relationship Between Stress, Preventive Coping Resources, And Burnout Among Elementary Teachers, Joseph Michael Mooney

Masters Theses

This study explored the relationship between stress outcomes, preventive coping, and burnout in a sample of 68 elementary teachers. Teacher training in behavioral modification was also examined due to its established role in teacher stress. Results showed that teachers who had greater demands relative to coping resources were more likely to experience two aspects of burnout; emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. A significant relationship was not found with the third component of burnout, personal accomplishment. Preventive coping resources were found to be associated in the expected direction with all three components of burnout. Those individuals with fewer preventive coping resources exhibited …

War Spin: How U.S. Politicians, The President And The Media Frame Foreign Intervention, Samantha White

Masters Theses

In this research, I seek to explain how three different foreign policy actors, the President, key Senators, and the media frame intervention policy when determining if intervention is used for human rights versus U.S. interests. I will be looking at four different areas of turmoil (Bosnia (1992-1995), Rwanda (1994), Syria (2011-present) and Iraq (2003-2011)) to see if the Presidents, Senators, and the media framed their intervention around human rights atrocities being committed, or if they framed it around a national security dilemma.

A Photo Illicit Study Of Black Women's Sense Of Belonging At A Predominately White Institution, Kayla Alexandria Slusher

Masters Theses

This qualitative study sought to examine how Black women define and create their sense of belonging while attending a predominately White institution using a photovoice approach. The women took photographs of spaces that they frequently occupy and then engaged in a face-to-face interview to discuss the photographs. The researcher also investigated four Black women, ranging from junior to graduate level, to identify how they developed a sense of belonging at the research site institution. Results of the study showed that a feeling of comfort was most important when identifying belongingness in a space. The participants were able to create a …

Investigating The Impact Of Foreign Direct Investment On Domestic Investment In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study Of Kenya And South Africa, George Anaman

Masters Theses

In the progression towards economic growth, countries consider investment as a critical feature in raising productivity levels by boosting technological progress and reducing the unemployment rate. In recent years, the government of South Africa and Kenya have both enacted policies to entice Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the view of creating more jobs and bolstering the economy. However, in the bid to attract these foreign investors, FDI may either end up complementing or stifling local investments over time. From this perspective, the objective of the study is to investigate the impact of FDI on Domestic Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) …

Women Autonomy In Household Decisionmaking In Nigeria: Analysis Of 2013 Demographic And Health Survey Data, Temiyemi Akinsuyi

Masters Theses

Wealth generated in a household unit is very instrumental to the economy at large through involvement in economic activities. A modest step to improving women's voices and participation in the society is to allow them a full range of choices. Consequences of limiting the rights of women is detrimental to households, communities and the economy at large. The specific objective of this study is to examine the association between women's autonomy and household decision making. I do this by analyzing the data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. The methodology employed in investigating this relationship is the Ordered …

Digit Ratio As A Predictor Of Risk Taking And Sensation Seeking Personality Traits And Behaviors, Hanna Elizabeth Hobson

Masters Theses

Digit ratio is the difference in length between the pointer finger and the ring finger on either hand. Commonly referred to as the 2D:4D ratio, this ratio is determined prior to birth, and serves as an indicator of prenatal hormone exposure. Digit ratio has been found to correlate with fundamental personality and behavior characteristics in adulthood. Digit ratio is also thought to be a determinate of sexual orientation in both men and women, but has been debated in the literature. This study examined multiple 2D:4D relationships. Men who were found to have a more masculinized (ie. lower) digit ratio had …

Is The Relationship Between College Drinking Behaviors And Social Anxiety Mediated By Alcohol Expectancies And Traumatic Life Experiences?, Cortney Lin Kingsmill

Masters Theses

The relationship between alcohol consumption and social anxiety is difficult to understand, as there have been mixed findings in the research. In general, a positive correlation has been found between the two, with a focus on the mediating effect of alcohol outcome expectancies. Both positive expectancies and trauma have been correlated positively with social anxiety and drinking behavior. This paper reviews the literature and examines the relationship between social anxiety and alcohol consumption. A mediated model between these two variables with the mediators being alcohol expectancies and traumatic experiences was proposed, but this model did not fit the date. Specifically, …