Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Patient Empowerment In Modern Medicine: A Personal Account Of Endometriosis And Being An Equal Partner In My Healthcare, Jacqueline Schlick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work outlines my personal experience with a diagnosis of stage three endometriosis and partial oophorectomy surgery along with the subsequent medical opinions I received by my primary OB/GYN and other doctors. This thesis seeks to discuss the issues surrounding patient empowerment, and specifically, laws that support patients in their exploration of the truths behind their conditions and the importance of self-education in order to be better equipped in conversations with their physicians. The work includes testimonials from women about their levels of knowledge into their own medical needs upon the time of their prescription to pharmaceutical medications, and how …

Analysis Of A Paleoglacier Reconstruction Model For Valley Glaciers Of The Wind River Range, Wyoming, Taylor Rae Garton

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Various approaches, ranging from in-field morphological reconstructions to more technology-based modelling practices allow us to reconstruct and understand the long-term geomorphic evolution of landscapes. The study of paleo-environments by reconstruction can also give us profound insight into paleo-climate. A new model, GlaRe (Glacial Reconstruction), has been introduced into the alpine glacier modeling community to facilitate glacier reconstruction. In this research the mathematical equations representing the basal shear stress parameter are tested to determine the applicability of the GlaRe model to alpine glaciers in the American West. Known ages and extents of past glacier advances were used to test the reconstructions …

Evaluating Livelihood Vulnerability Of Farming Communities To Winter Storms In Iowa, Yiyi Zhang

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Driven by unusually warm air in the Arctic, severe winter weather moves southward to mid-latitude areas, indicating the complexity in the ways that climate change may affect local weather extremes. The vulnerability of farming communities to climate risks and differential response capabilities have drawn much research attention. Winter storms are recognized as one of the common catastrophic events leading to agricultural damage and loss. However, research is notably lacking in understanding the consequences extreme winter weather could bring in farmer livelihood.

This study is concerned with the vulnerability patterns of farming communities shaped under varying climate and socio-physical conditions. Focusing …

Women Creatives And Machismo In Mexican Advertising: Challenging Barriers To Success, Marta Mensa Torra, Jean M. Grow

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This study explores the experiences of women working as creatives in Mexican advertising creative departments. It is based on 22 in-depth interviews and suggests that these women face significant challenges within the machismo culture, which permeates Mexican advertising creative departments. Mexico plays an important role in global advertising, particularly in Latin America, but in this country female workers only represent five per cent of those working in creative departments. This is the first study focused on Mexican women creatives in advertising, highlighting the confluence of advertising women creatives and Mexican culture. Analysis reveals ten subcategories which articulate the horizontal and …

Black Masculinities And The Media: An Interview With Filmmaker And Activist Byron Hurt, Kevin D. Thomas

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

In this interview, Byron Hurt reflects on his career and how he has become a prominent activist, speaker, filmmaker, and writer about media's roles in shaping Black identities and culture, especially constructions of Black masculinity. In addition to detailing his career trajectory, Hurt discusses many important topics: his inspiration to make films, the power of filmmaking to make cultural change, the filmmaker's place within a documentary, changing notions of Black masculinity, the constraints advertising and media place on Black men and boys to define their manhood, Black men's assertion of power over Black women, intersectionality, digital media's possibilities for more …

State License Requirements For Social Workers, Jenifer Van Schuyver, Kyla Woodward, Simona Charles, Kellie Thompson

Buder Center for American Indian Studies Research

State License Requirements for Social Workers

The Diversity Of Interest In Later-Life Entrepreneurship: Results From A Nationally Representative Survey Of Americans Aged 50 To 70, Cal J. Halvorsen, Yu-Chih Chen

Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging

While older entrepreneurs are more likely to be male, white, and have higher levels of human, social, and financial capital, we know less about interest in later-life entrepreneurship. This study estimates entrepreneurial interest in a nationally representative sample of Americans aged 50 to 70 using partial proportional odds modeling. We estimate that more than 31 million older Americans have some interest in entrepreneurship and reveal key predictors of this interest (e.g., younger age). Importantly, the findings indicate that a more diverse group of older adults are interested in entrepreneurship than have become entrepreneurs, suggesting the need for additional research on …

Honoring Missouri's First People: The Native Partnerships And Programming Alliance, Jo Malia Milner, Kellie Thompson

Buder Center for American Indian Studies Research

A new initiative began this year in St. Louis; a group of community organizations united together to advance Native partnerships and programming statewide. This collaborative effort is a product of cooperation between educational and cultural institutions in Missouri.

A Systems And Cost Analysis Of Human Rated Mars Entry, Descent, And Landing Vehicles, Paul Daniel Friz

Doctoral Dissertations

"Cost is one of the biggest obstacles to sending humans to Mars. However, spacecraft costs are typically not taken into consideration until after the preliminary vehicle and mission concepts have been designed. Once costs have been estimated, managers and project teams often lack confidence that the final cost of the mission will match the preliminary estimates. The present work provides a robust methodology for using cost as a valid metric early in the design phase of future human Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) vehicles. This is done in three parts. First, state of the art parametric costing methods are …

The Behavior Of Suas Under Explosive Loading Conditions And Implications For Safe Operating Procedures, Ashok Em Sudhakar

Doctoral Dissertations

"Drones are increasingly being used for tasks previously unimagined and the beneficial uses are evolving. The United States Congress has envisioned the possible uses of drones for both combating and conveying explosive threats and other harmful and destructive activities. Congress' intent is reflected in new laws (2018) and policies (2019).

All civilian available Small Unmanned Aerial Systems sUASs (Drones), weighing less than 55 pounds, in the current market are not designed for operations in explosive environments. This first of a kind research focuses on further understanding of sUASs response to explosive loading and the public policy implications. This research measured …

How College Students Discuss Their Relationships, John R. Domenico

Honors Theses and Capstones

It is a statistically significant fact that individuals who identify as homosexual are more likely to experience intimate partner violence (IPV.) Despite this, statistically, it is less likely for those who identify as homosexual to report IPV to healthcare clinicians or to law enforcement. “How College Students Discuss their Relationships” examines the implications of intimate partner violence in college students who identify as homosexual and the repercussions IPV may have on discussions with healthcare clinicians. By performing semi-structured interviews with individuals who identify as homosexual on the UNH campus, mental health outcomes of emotional intimate partner violence in …

Evaluating The Relationship Between Conditionality And Foreign Aid Reliance, Rory Ann O'Neil

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Student Debt In New England, Alexis A. Gray

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper examines the determinants of average student debt in New England based on financial, institutional and demographic variables. The dataset is derived from CollegeInsight and measures 15 variables across 71 institutions during the 2011-2014 academic school years. Between 2011 and 2014, average student debt increased 7%, tuition and room and board increased 10%, the percentage of Hispanic students increased 20% and the percentage of international students increased 26%. The estimated model, ln(AVDEBT) = 7.401 – 0.090ln(TUITION) – 0.042ln(BOOKS) + 0.433ln(ROOMBOARD) + 0.07ln(ENROLLMENT) – 0.200PUBLIC – 4.106ASIAN – 1.992AFAMERICAN + 0.254HISPANIC + 0.007WHITE + 0.641INTERNATIONAL – 0.676PERCENTFEDDEBT + 1.018PERCENTPELL, indicates …

Storytelling Study, Samantha Irene Pepe

Honors Theses and Capstones

Expressive prosody (i.e., a manner of communication that is characterized by lively rhythm and tempo) and inexpressive prosody (i.e., monotone speech) present different environments for listening to a story during a read-aloud session. This study aims to assess whether there are visual attention differences for preschoolers in these varied prosodic environments and how this affects comprehension.

Less Is More: Beating The Market With Recurrent Reinforcement Learning, Louis Kurt Bernhard Steinmeister

Masters Theses

"Multiple recurrent reinforcement learners were implemented to make trading decisions based on real and freely available macro-economic data. The learning algorithm and different reinforcement functions (the Differential Sharpe Ratio, Differential Downside Deviation Ratio and Returns) were revised and the performances were compared while transaction costs were taken into account. (This is important for practical implementations even though many publications ignore this consideration.) It was assumed that the traders make long-short decisions in the S&P500 with complementary 3-month treasury bill investments. Leveraged positions in the S&P500 were disallowed. Notably, the Differential Sharpe Ratio and the Differential Downside Deviation Ratio are risk …

The Effects Of Ambient Benevolent Sexism And Its Implications In The Workplace, Amanda E. Mosier

Masters Theses

"The purpose of this study was to examine women's reactions to witnessing benevolent sexism (i.e., ambient benevolent sexism). Female participants (n = 59) witnessed another woman being treated with hostile sexism (HS), benevolent sexism (BS), or no sexism and their reactions were examined in respect to a) working memory capacity, b) task-specific self-efficacy, c) mental intrusions of incompetence, and d) negative affect. The study also examined how participants' personal endorsement of BS impacted the relationship between sexism condition and the outcome variables. Results indicate that there were no direct effects of sexism condition on the outcome variables, though there was …

The Effects Of Ses Stereotypes On Hurricane Decision Making, Alexandria D. Booth

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Despite the severe and often costly consequences associated with severe weather instances, there is a continuing problem with noncompliance to weather warnings. This issue is pervasive, and research has shown a number of factors that are related to weather response (Joslyn & LeClerc, 2013). Further, individuals of a low socioeconomic status (SES) are often disproportionately impacted by severe weather instances, such as hurricanes (Elliot & Pais, 2006). Past research has shown that individuals of a low education level do not understand some aspects (e.g., numerical uncertainty) of a weather warning, suggesting that weather warnings may not be accessible for all …

Using Case-Method Pedagogy To Facilitate Audience Awareness, Vincent D. Robles

Faculty Publications

Introduction: Technical and professional communication (TPC) instructors value audience awareness, using peer- and client-based projects to facilitate it. We explore how students’ audience awareness is facilitated by the case method, which presents students with a professional communication task within a workplace scenario.

Situating the case: Case-method research suggests including a detailed audience and situation, multiple genres, and multimedia. Few studies have explored how case materials facilitate students’ audience awareness.

About the case: A 12-week case that was consistent with case-method research asked students to respond to an engineering firm’s internal problem with a proposal and report. How the case was …

Provider-Patient Communication And Transition Readiness Among Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes, Corrine N. Ahrabi-Nejad

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The majority of adolescents with type 1 diabetes do not maintain a glycemic control within the recommended range. Poor diabetes control can yield both short term and long term acute health complications, making it critical for adolescents to achieve diabetes control. During this same time in development, adolescents are preparing for the transition from pediatric to adult diabetes care. Adolescents often transition to adult care based on their age rather than their transition readiness, which may result in a lack of support from their pediatric provider, potentially exacerbating their already poor glycemic control. Transitioning from pediatric care to adult care …

Predictors And Health Outcomes Of Treatment-Resistant Depression Among Adults With Chronic Non-Cancer Pain Conditions And Major Depressive Disorder, Drishti Shah

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Understanding major depressive disorder (MDD) as a comorbidity in patients with chronic non-cancer pain conditions (CNPC) is of importance because of the high prevalence and well documented bi-directional relationship between MDD and pain. Furthermore, presence of CNPC among adults with MDD often reduces benefits of antidepressant therapy, thereby increasing the possibility of treatment resistance. Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) commonly defined as insufficient response to multiple antidepressant trials, often worsens depression and pain symptoms and can amplify the clinical and economic burden among adults with CNPC and MDD. Additionally, long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) may be prescribed at a higher rate to adults …

Service Dogs For Veterans With Ptsd: Taxonomy, Work Stress Reduction, And Matching, Lindsay Parenti

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Research suggests that many veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) struggle with reintegration (Sayer et al., 2010), but are unlikely to seek help or complete treatment (Schottenbauer et al., 2008). To make matters worse, available treatment options are often time consuming, challenging, and/or associated with negative side effects (Carafano & Hutchinson, 2017). Using animals as a treatment modality for veterans with PTSD is an emerging topic of interest and has shown promise (Owen, et al., 2016; Richie et al., 2016). However, several factors have hindered the advancement of this field. Obstacles include a lack of standard terminology and classification system, …

Super-Localizing Food As Tourism Development™: Producing The 30 Mile Meal™ In Athens, Ohio, Jed Debruin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Geographers have played a leading role in the theorization and critique of local food initiatives, raising critical questions about why they are advanced, how they work, and who benefits. Central to geographic critique of local food initiatives is how “the local” is framed, valued, and fetishized. The 30 Mile Meal™ (30MM) is one of these local food initiatives that seeks to rebrand local food in Appalachia through tourism development, as well as expand this model to other communities. In this paper, I explore how the 30MM is distintinctive in relation to other local food initiatives, how the 30MM constructs and …

The Working Public’S Perceptions Of Service Dogs: A Phenomenological Investigation Of Gatekeepers’ Experiences, Angela M. Dial

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to capture the essence of the working public’s experiences with, and perceptions of service dogs. The population for the study was the working public of Kentucky, who through their employment, have experienced first-hand the phenomenon. A phenomenological framework informed the research design. In-depth, unstructured interviews were conducted to obtain data. Interview transcriptions were analyzed according to suggestions from Moustakas (1994) and Hycner (1985) regarding phenomenological research. The results of this research study naturally formed into five themes. Findings showed prevalent misunderstandings, confusion and lack of knowledge regarding service dogs, including how to identify a …

Three Essays On Applied Semiparametric Methods, Qinling Lu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter studies a varying coefficient panel data model with different smoothing variables and fixed effects using a two-step estimation approach. The first-step pilot estimator is constructed by ap- approximating the varying coefficients with B-spline functions. The pilot estimator is then used to perform a one-step backfitting to obtain the second-step efficient estimator with kernel local linear estimation. The second-step estimator is efficient in the sense of being equivalent to a procedure knowing the other components of the varying coefficient. The asymptotic properties of both the pilot and efficient estimators are obtained. A Monte Carlo simulation indicates that the …

Jurors' Perceptions Of Preschoolers And Younger School Aged Children's Memory Errors, Emily Margaret Deming

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to examine jurors’ perceptions of different types of memory errors in the context of a child recalling information about alleged maltreatment. Additionally, this study assessed whether developmental differences in memory errors affect jurors’ perceptions of the child, the external influences that may be affecting the child, and the defendant. Participants (N=372) were randomly assigned to one of eight vignettes that contained three different memory errors (major reconstructive memory error, minor reconstructive memory error, source monitoring error) or a control condition (no memory error), as well as two age groups (4-year-old child and …

Predictors Of Perceived Multicultural Competence Among Neuropsychological Trainees, Hannah K. Greenbaum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Multicultural competence is necessary to provide psychological services to an increasingly diverse population (Sue, 2001). It is established that multicultural competence is important for training in psychology (Bodin et al., 2014; Diaz-Santos & Hill, 2016). Despite increased interest in recent years, multicultural competence in neuropsychology has not progressed in parallel with the focus of multiculturalism in psychology broadly (Rivera Mindt, Byrd, Saez, & Manly, 2010). Little is known about multicultural assessment, and it is not yet known what factors in training contribute to perceived multicultural competence in neuropsychological trainees (Elbulok-Charape, Rabin, Spadaccini, & Barr, 2014). The primary purpose of this …

State Capacity And Terrorism In The Developing World, Coty J. Martin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

What are the most influential factors to the rise of terrorist groups in the developing world? From Nigeria to Indonesia, various groups have conducted devastating attacks, against fellow citizens and international visitors. Hendrix and Young (2014) find military capacity may encourage the use of terrorism while bureaucratic measures depress them. Further investigation into underlying catalysts for mobilization is required before we can explain the rise in activity of terrorist organizations in these regions. I expect as measures of military capacity increase that terrorism increases while increases in administrative capacity reduce terrorist activity. I also expect indirect factors such as repressive …

Supporting The Injured Athlete: Coaches’ Perspectives On Providing Social Support, Stefanee Opal Maurice

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Injury is an inevitable facet of sport participation, and injured athletes require support from coaches. However, research on injured athletes highlights a lack of support from coaches. Building on the conceptual model proposed by Maurice et al., this study uses the International Sport Coaching Framework (ISCF) to examine ways contextual coaching knowledge is used to support athletes throughout rehabilitation. Previous research has focused on the knowledge types but has neither addressed the integration of the knowledges in a single study nor examined them in an injury context. A generic qualitative approach was used to examine 13 NCAA DI coaches’ perception …

Assessing The Reliability Of Physical End Matching And Chemical Comparison Of Pressure Sensitive Tapes, Meghan Nicole Prusinowski

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Pressure sensitive tapes are a common evidence type in a variety of forensic cases, including violent crimes, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Forensic laboratories are often requested to analyze tape samples for composition and potential source identification. Tape samples manufactured from different sources are often distinguishable when using a combination of sensitive analytical techniques. Nonetheless, the interpretation of the data remains challenging due to a lack of standard criteria and guidelines from which examiners can support their conclusions. As a result, there is a need to standardize the protocols of interpretation of physical and chemical comparisons of tape evidence.

The manufacture …

Three Essays In Applied Econometrics, Collin Dean Hodges

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The body of work presented here consists of a collection of research projects developed during my time as a graduate student at West Virginia University. As will soon become apparent, this collection of research topics is quite eclectic. This is, in part, due to the to the nature of the research process itself--where one often begins by asking one question and ends by answering a completely different one--but also due to the fact that my time at West Virginia University has provided me the opportunity to gain insight into a wide variety of economic fields as well as work on …