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Articles 1 - 15 of 15

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Government Responsiveness In Matters Of Racial Sensitivity, Vickie Carnegie May 2019

Government Responsiveness In Matters Of Racial Sensitivity, Vickie Carnegie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study assesses factors influencing the responsiveness of government officials in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina regarding the public display of the Confederate Flag on state grounds in the aftermath of the Charleston, South Carolina shooting. The purpose of this dissertation research is to understand the factors influencing how government officials make decisions during racially/culturally sensitive events. Two research questions frame this study: 1) What factors are relevant to understanding state government officials' decision- making regarding the display of the Confederate Flag on public grounds? 2) Under what conditions of public decision making regarding the Confederate flag is executive authority, …


Federal, State And Local Law Enforcement Agency Interoperability Capabilities And Cyber Vulnerabilities, Tyrone Trapnell May 2019

Federal, State And Local Law Enforcement Agency Interoperability Capabilities And Cyber Vulnerabilities, Tyrone Trapnell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System is the central informational hub located at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Its purpose is to provide network subscriptions to all Federal, state and local level law enforcement agencies while increasing information collaboration across all domains. The National Data Exchange users must satisfy the Advanced Permission Requirements, confirming the terms of N-DEx information use, and the Verification Requirement (verifying the completeness, timeliness, accuracy, and relevancy of N-DEx information) through coordination with the record-owning agency (Management, 2018). A network infection model is proposed to simulate the spread impact of various cyber-attacks within Federal, state …


Superforecasting Or Snafu: The Forecasting Ability Of The Us Military Officer, David Raugh Jan 2019

Superforecasting Or Snafu: The Forecasting Ability Of The Us Military Officer, David Raugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What is the impact of military institutional tendencies and habits on U.S. Army senior officer forecasting accuracy and how does this forecasting ability shape success in battle? Military leaders plan operations based on the forecasted strengths and vulnerabilities of their adversary. Negative habits, such as limited option development, confirmation bias, doctrinal overreliance, and over-consideration of sunk costs, inhibit effective forecasting. The tempo of the modern battlefield, hierarchical culture, and institutional tendencies of the US Army may promote and reinforce these habits. I surveyed Colonels in US Army War College programs to measure their individual tendencies, levels of education, and accuracy …


Factors Contributing To Victim Employment, Victim Income Status, And Intimate Partner Violence In Jamaica, Marsha Fraser Jan 2019

Factors Contributing To Victim Employment, Victim Income Status, And Intimate Partner Violence In Jamaica, Marsha Fraser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using 166 IPV police reports in Jamaica, this mixed-methods study (a) explored the utility of routine activities theory and control balance theory for explaining the relationship between victim employment and IPV; (b) explored risk factors for IPV; and (c) examined the relationships between victim employment and victim income status with IPV murder and IPV severity in the Jamaica. Content analysis of the narratives of the police reports supported both theories suggesting an integration of the two theories may be most fitting. Estrangement and infidelity emerged as bold themes. Infidelity was identified as an additional risk factor in the Jamaican context. …


The Causes, Dynamics, And Implications Of Child Soldiering, Christopher Faulkner Jan 2019

The Causes, Dynamics, And Implications Of Child Soldiering, Christopher Faulkner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Child soldiers continue to be regular participants in modern conflicts in many different parts of the world. This dissertation addresses several interrelated questions about child soldiering employing large-N statistical analyses, process-tracing, and in-depth interviews. First, it asks how foreign state support and the characteristics of these donors influence rebels' recruitment of child soldiers. An important finding is that rebels supported by democratic states are less likely to employ child soldiers. It then investigates the factors and conditions that lead some groups to diversify their demographics in the types of recruits and others to not. Specifically, it considers why a rebel …


Reconceptualizing Responsiveness For Network Governance: Insights From Cross-Sector Efforts To Assist The Displaced Population From Puerto Rico In Central Florida, Safiya Prysmakova Jan 2019

Reconceptualizing Responsiveness For Network Governance: Insights From Cross-Sector Efforts To Assist The Displaced Population From Puerto Rico In Central Florida, Safiya Prysmakova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study further expands current knowledge on responsiveness in the public administration field and examines factors that contribute to more responsive public service delivery networks. This research reconceptualized the concept of responsiveness under the lens of New Public Governance as a legitimate democratic public value and answered the following research questions: What constructs constitute to the concept of public service responsiveness? How can public service responsiveness be measured at the network level? Does the complexity of public service provision affect perceived public service network responsiveness? How do collaborative processes across network partners, community support, and resource munificence affect the responsiveness …


The Influence Of Radical Environmentalists On Reputation And Communication Practices Of Advocacy/Collaborative Nonprofits, Maria Zhigalina Jan 2019

The Influence Of Radical Environmentalists On Reputation And Communication Practices Of Advocacy/Collaborative Nonprofits, Maria Zhigalina

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

The article focuses on features, activities and communication practices of environmental nonprofits / groups to demonstrate the importance of studying how negative reputation of the environmental sub-sector created by radical environmentalists can influence advocacy / collaborative environmental nonprofits. First, it reviews some relevant literature related to environmental organizations / groups and their external communication. Additionally, it provides some examples of radical environmentalism that have been recently discussed in the news. Finally, it describes directions for future research. It is important to understand the influence of the actions of radical environmentalists on advocacy / collaborative nonprofit organizations because it might impact …


2019 Icrcc Proceedings Table Of Contents, Conference Organizers Jan 2019

2019 Icrcc Proceedings Table Of Contents, Conference Organizers

International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference

These proceedings are a representative sample of the presentations given by professional practitioners and academic scholars at the 2019 International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference (ICRCC) held March 11-13, 2019. The ICRCC is an annual event that takes place the second week in March in beautiful sunny Orlando, Florida. The conference hosts are faculty and staff from the Nicholson School of Communication. The goal of the ICRCC is to bring together prominent professional practitioners and academic scholars that work directly with crisis and risk communication on a daily basis. We define crisis and risk broadly to include, for example, natural …


The Use Of Children's Literature And Reflective Writing As A Means To Help Primary Elementary Students Cope With Natural Disaster, Connie T. Zenz Jan 2019

The Use Of Children's Literature And Reflective Writing As A Means To Help Primary Elementary Students Cope With Natural Disaster, Connie T. Zenz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes frequently happen across the world. Many of these natural disasters bring destruction to homes, loss of loved ones, and emotional or physical trauma. For children who are still developing coping skills, these natural disasters can bring them emotional distress because they are unable to processes their experiences in a healthy way. In a review of literature on the topic of bibliotherapy and reflective writing to help children learn coping skills, I discovered a need for these processes to be introduced in normal settings, such as school and home, to help …


Exogenous Shocks And Political Unrest, Didara Nurmanova Jan 2019

Exogenous Shocks And Political Unrest, Didara Nurmanova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the role of exogenous shocks such as economic shocks and natural disasters in producing political unrest in the form of anti-government protests and ethnic riots. It is integrated by three articles, each covering a different topic. The first article argues that economic shocks play a crucial role in protest mobilization in rentier states conditional on weaker repressive capacity or higher taxation. Empirically, it conducts a cross-national study of high resource-dependent states in the period of 1995-2014. The second article contends that there is a variation in the degree to which a country's regions are exposed to economic …


Community Responses To Mass Casualty Events: A Mixed Method Approach, Jeffrey Payne Jan 2019

Community Responses To Mass Casualty Events: A Mixed Method Approach, Jeffrey Payne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how traits of a mass casualty event and community institutionalization affect how a community demonstrates solidarity after a mass casualty event. A systematic examination of mass casualty events along these lines has not been conducted before. Theoretically, individual helping behaviors like altruism help explain individual involvement in demonstrations of solidarity while solidarity and resilience help in explaining group behaviors. A typology is proposed that breaks up mass casualty events into four different types: terrorism, criminal, weather and accidents. These types of events make up the majority of non-war mass casualty events. Experimentally a sample of students is …


Chemometric Applications In Fire Debris Analysis: Likelihood Ratios From Naive Bayes And Frequency Of Component And Pyrolysis Product Occurrence, Anuradha Akmeemana Jan 2019

Chemometric Applications In Fire Debris Analysis: Likelihood Ratios From Naive Bayes And Frequency Of Component And Pyrolysis Product Occurrence, Anuradha Akmeemana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the major challenges in fire investigation is the determination of the cause of fire. The fire can be accidental or intentional. The determination of ignitable liquid residue (ILR) from fire debris helps the process and this process is called fire debris analysis in forensic science. This is one of the most complex areas in the field of forensics because of the evaporation of the ILR from the debris and the interference of the substrate matrix with the ILR if present. In the present, the final decisions in fire debris analysis are based on categorical statements and it only …


The Evaluation Of Classifier Performance On The Forensic Analysis Of Fire Debris And The Expansion Of The Substrate Database, Alyssa Allen Jan 2019

The Evaluation Of Classifier Performance On The Forensic Analysis Of Fire Debris And The Expansion Of The Substrate Database, Alyssa Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current protocols in fire debris analysis rely on ignitable liquid pattern recognition and the identification of target compounds. These practices allow fire debris analysts to determine whether a sample contains or is absent of ignitable liquid residue and to classify that type of ignitable liquid based upon subjective thresholds. A statistical approach using computationally mixed datasets was devised in this research to generate an objective approach to the classification of fire debris samples and to determine error rates. Quadratic, linear, and partial least squares linear discriminant analysis (QDA, LDA, and PLS-DA) models were developed and evaluated to determine the …


When To Strike: Exploring The Variables That Lead To Successful Decapitation Strikes, Renzo Pierres Jan 2019

When To Strike: Exploring The Variables That Lead To Successful Decapitation Strikes, Renzo Pierres

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how different variables can affect a terrorist group's reaction to a targeted leadership strike, known as a decapitation strike. Decapitation strikes often produce unwanted results, such as a splintering of the terrorist group, or a failure to destroy the group. It is important that we understand which variables can lead to a group's destruction after a decapitation strike, to maximize the decapitation's effectiveness. In my research I have determined that group size, group ideological extremism, and the role of the leader targeted all have a substantial impact on the success of the …


Conceptions About Terrorism: How Fearful Are We And How Does That Affect Us?, Rebecca Jackson Jan 2019

Conceptions About Terrorism: How Fearful Are We And How Does That Affect Us?, Rebecca Jackson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Since the crusades, terrorism has been a form of violence used to promote some kind of agenda, whether political, social, religious or ideological (Martin 2018). With many different definitions of what constitutes terrorism, it is somewhat difficult to measure what exact impact terrorism has had globally. Attacks such as those on 9/11 in the United States and the Manchester bombings have been accepted worldwide as examples of acts of international terrorism. International terrorist attacks have lasting effects on both those directly affected as well as the larger community and beyond. Studies have shown that Americans are overly afraid of terrorism …