Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Debate On Minimum Income In Spain: Charity, Development Or Citizen Right, Arantxa Hernández-Echegaray, Javier Pacheco-Mangas

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The current retrenchment of social protection in capitalist welfare economies has triggered the expansion of aid-based practices in response to vulnerability, far removed from the ideals of social work. This study analyzes the practices and strategies of social workers that take part in regional minimum income systems (MIS) in Spain, using a qualitative approach that makes it possible to demonstrate leading professional discourses. Findings show a limited consolidation of regional policies on minimum income in Spain, resulting in significant regional disparities. Authors emphasize the need to increase social work’s participation in formulating policies aimed at inclusion and consolidation of local …

Class Activist Lens For Teaching About Poverty, Susan Weinger, Linda C. Reeser

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The mission of social work is to serve the poor and oppressed and engage in social reform. This article proposes a conceptual framework, and teaching and practice strategies to equip students to understand poverty from a class perspective. The action component is to politicize practice and become allies with the poor in resisting injustice and promoting their social and economic development.

The Importance Of Social Work In The Latin American Association Movement Of People Affected By Low Prevalence Diseases, Enrique Pastor Seller, Juan Carrión Tudela, M. Bañón Hernández

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article analyses the experiences of the association movement in Latin America that brings together individuals and families with rare (RD) or low prevalence diseases (LPD). It also looks at their needs from global health, social, research and education perspectives. The nature of social work assessments and interventions in rare diseases helps us better understand the needs of people with RDs or LPDs and facilitates the creation of associations. Social work aims at consolidating the social fabric that will lead to the recognition of RDs as a health and social priority at an international level.

Assisting The Most Vulnerable Populations In The Regions Of La Rioja And The Maghreb: The Human Rights-Based Approach And Social Work, Neus Caparrós Civera, Domingo Carbonero Muñoz, Esther Raya Díez

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article examines the evolution of social assistance provided to the most disadvantaged populations in La Rioja, Spain and the Maghreb, going from charity to the human rights-based approach (HRBA). A case-analysis methodology was applied to two social interventions: the ABDEM project, which is part of the EU Tempus program, and the UNICEF program to combat poverty in the Spanish region of La Rioja. In these two cases, the HRBA represents a conceptual leap in the promotion of people’s autonomy and an effective means for sustainable progress in response to the inequality, discrimination and unjust power relations negatively affecting the …

What's Wrong With Being Single: Lowered Relational Value Bias Toward Single People, Darian Farrell

Master's Theses

This study examined the perceived relational value of single individuals (compared to that of coupled individuals). I hypothesized that, participants would be more likely to make the conjunction fallacy in the single condition vs. the coupled condition, when asked whether or not it was more likely that the target person from the condition was a single teacher vs. teacher. The data supported my hypothesis: participants in the single condition were significantly more likely to make the conjunction fallacy than participants in the coupled condition. My study also tested whether or not the need to belong acted as a moderator for …

Entropy, Order, And Agency: The Cognitive Basis Of The Link Between Agents And Order, Adena Schachner, Minju Kim

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

People often believe that orderly structures were created by agents. We examine the cognitive basis of this tendency, asking if learned associations or causal reasoning drives us to link order with agents. Causal reasoning predicts that knowledge of an alternative physical-mechanical cause should ‘explain away’ orderliness, weakening the link with agents. In a preregistered experiment, we manipulated the context to provide (or not provide) a physical-mechanical explanation for orderly outcomes, and participants judged if an object or agent had been present. We compared outcomes differing in (a)levels of orderliness and (b)whether context provided an alternative explanation. We found that environmental …

Improving Teacher Job Satisfaction: The Roles Of Social Capital, Teacher Efficacy, And Support, Suzanne K. Edinger, Matthew J. Edinger

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

In this study, we examine how social capital, teacher efficacy, and organizational support increase teacher job satisfaction. Research suggests that teachers worldwide are exceedingly dissatisfied with their jobs and have significantly higher levels of turnover than their counterparts in other professions. We investigate this phenomenon using a sample of 122 elementary school teachers. We found that teachers’ centrality position, or each teacher’s relationship with every other teacher, in their school’s trust network and the density of a teacher’s academic advice ego-network predicted the development of teacher job satisfaction. Additionally, we found that teacher efficacy mediated the relationship between teacher’s trust …

Performance Pedagogy: Utilizing Alternative Methods In The Classroom, Alexander Paez

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Teaching methods and styles at the collegiate level have not changed all that much: Professors still generally give lectures from the lectern or stand in the front of the class, while writing on the board or pointing to a slide projected on a screen. Some questions and answers can occur with the occasional group activity; however, the focus seems always to come back to the text. Students read the required textbook, listen to a lecture and take tests. There are however alternative methods that engage the students as well as the professor in the learning process. Active learning is one …

From Quiver To Quill, Veteran Transition To Higher Education, Mark Walch

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Veterans do not receive a uniform out-processing in regards to education benefits information. Despite the VA providing ample education benefits to veterans, military branches do not prepare discharging service members for the benefits earned. To discover personal experiences of veterans at University of the Pacific, critical ethnography in expository documentary film methodology was used. The results of the film showed veterans do not receive ample preparation for benefit usage. The veterans in this film also provided advice for future transitioning veterans to avoid common benefit mistakes.

Racial Complexities Of Outdoor Spaces: An Analysis Of African American’S Lived Experiences In Outdoor Recreation, Matthew Charles Goodrid

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the racial power imbalances that exists within the outdoor recreation industry. Despite participation rates being quantified, limited research explores the lived experiences and perspective of people of color. In this study, I explore the socio-historical development of outdoor recreational spaces, existing environmental habitus and African Americans lived experiences in outdoor recreation. To emphasize the voice of the participants, twelve African American millennials were interviewed. Questions in the interviews revolved around their perception of outdoor recreation and personal experiences while participating in outdoor recreation. Three overarching themes emerged from their stories, i) the typology of outdoor recreation, ii) …

The Implementation And Adoptability Of Behavioral Skills Training In A Career Center, Vinthia Wiryananda Wirantana

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

It is unclear if staff at career centers use, or are willing to use, empirically-supported procedures like behavioral skills training (BST) when teaching interview skills to college students. The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which the typical career center training consisted of BST, to evaluate staff-implemented BST, and to measure student performance as a result of both training. Using non-concurrent multiple baseline design, three staff were taught to use BST to teach three students to answer interview questions. First, staff used their typical training procedure, and then, they used BST to teach student interview skills; …

Case Study On Inclusive Design And Operations At One Campus Recreation Center, Kelly Cartner

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The case study highlights the evaluation of one campus recreation center in terms of its inclusive design and operation on the basis of physical disability inclusion. Because of the plethora of barriers in campus recreation centers, those with physical disabilities are limited in their recreation choices and do not take part in recreation as their able-bodied counterparts. This study measures, observers, and evaluates one campus recreation center to determine its level of inclusiveness for those with physical disabilities. The AIMFREE survey was conducted along with observations and extensive interviews with staff that run the campus recreation center and those with …

Online Communication Settings And The Qualitative Research Process: Acclimating Students And Novice Researchers, Katherine Gregory

Publications and Research

In the last 20 years, qualitative research scholars have begun to interrogate methodological and analytic issues concerning online research settings as both data sources and instruments for digital methods. This article examines the adaptation of parts of a qualitative research curriculum for understanding online communication settings. I propose methodological best practices for researchers and educators that I developed while teaching research methods to undergraduate and graduate students across disciplinary departments and discuss obstacles faced during my own research while gathering data from online sources. This article confronts issues concerning the disembodied aspects of applying what in practice should be rooted …

California Creek Quarry: Regional Persepctives And Uas Mapping, David A. Schwab

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Western Montana hosts an abundance of lithic deposits useful for precontact stone tool manufacturing. Lithic sources likely factored prominently into patterns of settlement, trade, subsistence and mobility for past populations in the region. The mining of these lithic resources results in a unique land use area, a prehistoric quarry. Prehistoric quarries in Western Montana have received very little research or spatial documentation. This may be due in part to their abundance and often overwhelming size and extent. Providing even basic spatial documentation for large quarries can be prohibitively time consuming and expensive. One such understudied quarry site is the California …

Impacts Of Elephant Crop-Raiding On Subsistence Farmers And Approaches To Reduce Human-Elephant Farming Conflict In Sagalla, Kenya, Sophia Weinmann

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As human and elephant populations grow in Kenya, elephants increasingly leave parks to eat farmers’ crops while foraging, which creates epicenters of human-elephant conflict (HEC). This conflict compromises farmers’ food and economic security, impedes elephant conservation initiatives, and threatens the safety of humans and elephants. In recent years, the situation has been exacerbated by drought and national-level infrastructure development that bisects key elephant habitat. Although researchers have widely studied elephant populations, few have examined the cultural, economic, and emotional effects of HEC on subsistence farmers. This project utilized a mixed methods approach to address this knowledge gap and understand the …

Exploring Research-Based Yoga Interventions Targeting Underserved Women And Sexual Trauma: A Descriptive Study, Shannon Steele

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

BACKGROUND

Racial/ethnic, minority women of low socioeconomic status are disproportionately affected by sexual assault and are more likely to develop PTSD. Women’s social, economic and environmental circumstance may contribute to this disadvantage. Yoga has shown to reduce symptoms of PTSD in underserved women. However, it is unknown whether yoga interventions for underserved women who have experienced sexual trauma in the research literature are theory-based and whether constructs are consistent across interventions. Furthermore, it is unknown whether existing trauma-based yoga training programs incorporate similar constructs found in yoga interventions for underserved women who have experienced sexual trauma.

METHODS

A descriptive research …

Cruising To Be A Board Gamer: Understanding Socialization Relating To Board Gaming And The Dice Tower, Benjamin Wassink

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Dice Tower consists of 30 professional board gamers and has the largest online following with 60,000 podcast listeners and over 140,000 YouTube subscribers (Dice Tower, 2017a). This study uses Kramer’s Multilevel Communication Model of Voluntary Socialization (MCMVS) to understand how the Dice Tower gains followers and socializes others to become board gamers. This study applies MCMVS to a population with more ambiguous membership boundaries than volunteer organizations, specifically socialization to board game leisure. Through interviews of 18 participants and participant observation during a board gaming cruise hosted by the Dice Tower this study examines the role of the Dice …

Variation Of Tool Mark Characteristics In Frozen Bone As It Relates To Dismemberment, Elena Hughes

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The act of dismembering a body leaves identifiable marks on the bone. These marks, whether they be from knives, saws, axes, or any other tool, can help provide law enforcement with information about the type of tool they should be looking for. While there has been considerable research done on the marks left by different types of weapons, a factor that has not been examined is the differences in tool marks based on the condition of the body at the time of dismemberment. This study will initiate this new avenue of research by analyzing the differences seen in tool mark …

The Effect Of Female Priming On Male Betta Splendens, Susan Greene

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Male betta fish are naturally aggressive to attract a mate and defend a territory. This makes them a good model for studying aggression and choice behavior. This study looked at male Betta splendens aggressive nature when impacted by priming with a female and exposure to the SSRI drug fluoxetine. Males in the study received a prime before each choice trial, and the latency for each choice was measured and analyzed. We found no significant differences for preference for a mirror versus a non-mirror trail, or latency for choice for the mirror. However, a significant effect was found for fighting data, …

Zoning And Complementary Incentives To Protect Farmland: A Case For Missoula County, Kaitlin Mccafferty

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Urban sprawl reflects an inefficient use of land that diminishes both rural landscapes and quality of life turning farms, ranches and open space into siloed suburban communities. This results in less walkable cities with more traffic and air pollution, among other negative consequences. Farmland constitutes a particularly important resource that often faces degradation or loss due to sprawl. Higher quality agricultural soils are particularly desirable for development because they are flat and well-drained. Farmland is also important for urban communities concerning food security, environmental health, and economic well being. As American cities continue to grow, farmland around urban areas has …

Managing Mining Pollution: The Case Of Water Quality Governance In The Transboundary Kootenai/Y, Ashley Juric

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis addresses current water quality management challenges in the transboundary Kootenai/y River Basin, and how these challenges are shaped by historical, economic, political, and social factors. The water quality of this basin, both in the United State and Canada, has been severely affected by coal mining that has occurred in British Columbia over the last hundred years and continues to be threatened by several proposed mining expansion projects. The goals of this research are to uncover the forces shaping water management and to determine the potential for interested and affected parties to participate in crafting water quality protection measures. …

Volunteering For Vegetables: Community Agriculture And The Prospects For Building A More Democratic Food System, Kali Orton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Scholars and activists hold varied ideas about what a more just and equitable food system might look like. Food democracy, one of these alternative food system theories, centers around the idea that all people should have equal opportunity to meaningfully contribute to the shaping of their food systems. Community farms, due to their socially-oriented qualities, present one possibility for people to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to function as food citizens and build food democracy.

This research explores and seeks to inform food democracy theory through case studies of two urban community farms – one in Missoula, Montana, and …

Self-Compassion, Social Connectedness, And Interpersonal Competence, Jacob H. Bloch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Self-compassion has consistently been found to be related to well-being (Barnard & Curry 2011). Most research has focused on the intrapersonal benefits of self-compassion, such as its positive relationships with happiness, optimism, positive affect (Neff & Vonk, 2009), and life satisfaction (Neff, Kirkpatrick, & Rude, 2007). In contrast, little research has addressed how engaging in self-compassion may be beneficial to one’s relationships. There is strong evidence that social connectedness (e.g. Lee, Draper, & Lee, 2001; Lee & Robbins, 1998; Mauss et al., 2011; Neff, 2003b) and interpersonal competence (e.g Fiori, Antonucci, & Cortina, 2006; Berkman & Syme, 1979; Delongis, Folkman, …

40 Years On The International Flathead: An Assessment Of Transboundary River Governance, Jedd Sankar-Gorton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Global population growth, climate change, and industrialization, are putting extreme pressures on worldwide freshwater supplies (Cosens 2010). Of the global freshwater supplies, transboundary water sources play a crucial role in sustaining populations. Over 40% of humans on Earth rely on a transboundary river or lake for access to water, and 90% of the world’s population lives in countries that share bodies of water with at least one other country (UN 2008). Taken together, the motivations for improving governance of transboundary water systems have never been stronger. To meet the challenges associated with transboundary water governance, researchers working at multiple scales …

Nostalgic Restoration: Recovering Washington's Coastal Resources, Carly Vester

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

We have a penchant for assigning value to our resources. In many cases this value makes the recovery of degraded and damaged resources justifiable. But when this value cannot be quantified, when our resources have emotional rather than economic value, the story changes. “Nostalgic Restoration: Recovering Washington’s Coastal Resources” focuses on two editorial pieces and one short film of coastal resource recovery, solely for the relationship between people and resources.

Washington’s only native oyster, the Olympia oyster (ostrea lurida), once covered more than 20,000 acres across the Puget Sound. Due to pollution and overharvesting, only 5% of the …

Understanding The Food Water Nexus: Characterizing The Impact Of Climatological Anomalies On Agrosystems, Patrick M. Wurster Jr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate variability at global and regional scales is escalating with increased atmospheric carbon and is expected to magnify the intensity and duration of meteorological extremes, especially droughts. From the many environmental stresses that diminish crop production (e.g., soil salinity, frost, soil erosion) drought is one of the most prevalent. This study focuses on the sensitivity of three key crops produced in the northwestern United States to climatological anomalies, while controlling for attribution using anomalies in price. The study differs from similar studies in that we focus on variability in production which captures both yield (tonnes/ha) and cropping area (ha), as …

The Empty Cup: Tea, Mythos, And Initiation Through Emergent Ritual, Katherine C. West

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

West, Katherine Church, M.A., Summer 2018

Master of Arts in Fine Arts, Integrated Arts and Education

Abstract

In our increasingly fast paced and busy world, the cultural value placed in ritual and ceremony has been lost. Yet, cultures for centuries have known the importance of such initiations to both usher us into and through important passages that mark a new time in our lives by deepening our awareness of our own lives and an understanding of the collective human experience.

This paper documents a two part project, one is the creation of a Gypsy Caravan, explored through the process of …

Greening Of The Arctic: Plot-Scale Analysis Of Interactions Between Climate, Vegetation, And Permafrost At Toolik Lake, Alaska (1995 - 2017), Brianna Rick

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Air temperatures across the Arctic have increased in recent decades, and through complex feedbacks, vegetation and permafrost (frozen ground) are actively responding as climate warming continues. This study investigates the trends and interactions of observed air, soil-surface temperature (SST), and active-layer thickness (ALT) at Toolik Lake on the Alaskan North Slope between 1995 and 2017, as well as vegetation change over time.

Time series between 1995 and 2017 at CALM site U12B, a 1 ha plot near Toolik Lake, reveal an increase (0.50 °C/decade) in mean summer (Jun-Aug) air temperatures and a decrease (­0.23 °C/decade) in mean summer SST. In …

Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To better grasp the messages Wonder Woman is sending to its audience, a Critical Media Literacy (CML), ideological, and feminist framework is used to examine whether, and if so how, Wonder Woman succumbs to stereotypes that are often portrayed in the media. These theories will be used in the ensuing project to build a curriculum aimed at high school students.The curriculum positions students to examine the hegemonic ideologies that are represented in pop culture, specifically Wonder Woman.

The Octofoil, January/February/March 2018, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.