Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Hopeless Heartland: Space And Labor In Virginia, Katrina Hamilton

Theses and Dissertations

In the US, labor market conditions vary by demographics and space. Though space has been shown to be highly related to labor force outcomes, lower-level analyses are under-utilized as statistical workforce analyses tend to rely on national or state-level data. This study addresses variability in labor markets by taking a spatial approach, using cluster analysis and logistic regression to explore variations in labor market variables across census tracts in Virginia. Cluster analysis reveals several hot and cold spots of key labor market indicators: rates of marriage, poverty, educational attainment, and income. In many cases, poor social conditions, such as low …

A Girl Is A Girl Is A Girl, Paige Lizbeth Morris

Theses and Dissertations

It is well known that Western society uses men’s visual pleasure as a means to determine womxn’s value; her success is dependent on her compliance with culturally determined beauty standards. This process turns womxn into commodities and reinforces notions of gender complementarity, perpetuating a lifetime of servitude to patriarchal ideologies. It reminds the non-male that she is incomplete, insufficient, insignificant, and so easily dismissable. It forces her to be dependent, to shut up, to sit down, and to enjoy it.

In an effort to reject these presumed histories and narrow connotations of womxn, I have analyzed my gender performance in …

Orbiting Forward (Thoughts On The Nature Of Conflict - Sighs On The Struggles Of Change), Bushra A. Alsughayer

Theses and Dissertations

Today’s world is a wide open hyper-connected sphere where human societies worldwide exist in a complex crossroads of historical conditions, ideologies, and power structures. A pool of constant confrontations, minor or major, between the traditional and the progressive, the local and the international, the materialistic and the transcendent, the pragmatic and the idealistic, and countless layers of meaning. For an individual who exists in such an intense moment of history, it seems almost inescapable to be exposed to, affected by, or even involved in a major conflict. A situation that makes individuals always in a critical position where every role …

Cultural Placemaking In Washington’S U Street Corridor: A Catch 22, Maya Coleman

Theses and Dissertations

Placemaking is a tool largely employed in gentrifying cities to create social and cultural character in space. However, the informal placemaking that naturally occurs in communities and public space is often left out of the placemaking planning process. Informal placemaking that existed in space before and after gentrification, often by the working class, may find itself the target of policing from class and racial power structures that new residents now making up the majority bring. Alongside gentrification is its use of placemaking as branding for space, which Black American culture is increasingly being operationalized. Using Washington D.C.’s U Street Corridor …

Come And Get Your Capital, Sis: The Use Of Twitter To Compensate For Gendered And Racialized Job Networks Among Creatives, Sasha A. Pierre- Louis

Theses and Dissertations

Due to racialized and gendered exclusion and discrimination, Black and women jobseekers do not have the same access to social ties in the labor market as white men. A number of Black Twitter users, particularly Black women, have cultivated networks on Twitter and elsewhere as explicit alternatives to this old boys’ network. This study aimed to understand how workers in creative industries—which tend to be more reliant on referrals—use Twitter to expand their social networks and gain access to job opportunities, and how their use of Twitter differed by race and gender. Four hashtags were queried through the Twitter application …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Caregiver Goals For Urban Children With And Without Asthma, Megan M. Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric asthma is a major public health concern that disproportionately affects children of color and youth living in low-income, urban areas. The implications for public health, child health, and family functioning necessitates our understanding and addressing experiences by families who are facing barriers within their socio-demographic context in addition to the stressors associated with managing pediatric asthma. The current study applied qualitative methods to interviews with caregivers of children with and without asthma in an effort to more deeply connect with caregivers’ experiences and yield richer information about the intersection of identities as Black caregivers living in an urban setting …

Education Support For Foster Care Youth: The Impact Of Federal Spending On Employment Outcomes, Carlisle C. Bates

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the extent to which supportive services funded through the federal John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program (CFCP) are associated with academic success and employment in foster care youth. Studies suggest that this group experiences poorer employment outcomes (Gypen, Vanderfaeillie, De Maeyer, Belenger, & Van Holen, 2017; Okpych & Courtney, 2014) and earn less money annually (Gypen et al., 2017; Okpych & Courtney, 2014; Pecora, 2012). Despite a 29.4-billion-dollar annual budget for foster care services, individuals with a foster care history struggle after they transition out of care.

The CFCP is intended to help states improve education …

It’S Funny Because It’S True: The Transmission Of Explicit And Implicit Racism In Internet Memes, Tabitha Fairchild

Theses and Dissertations

Video games are traditionally seen as the domain of heteronormative white males. The purpose of this study is to explore how racism is transmitted and reproduced within digital communities, and how humor is being used to frame racist discourse in virtual spaces. Digitally, internet memes are widely used rhetorical vehicles, reaching large and broad audiences. The roles these artifacts play in the reproduction and transmission of racist ideology is often obfuscated by the perception that internet memes are "just jokes." This study analyzes internet memes collected from 16 months of communication between members of Discord servers that self-identify as communities …

The Program, Aaron Douglas Estrada

Theses and Dissertations

In my work, I explore the engineering of identity and socioeconomics that are programed into Black and Brown communities. I refer to this as “The Program”. The Program validates, breaks, codes, and critiques the system that divided us. The Program is identifying with the struggle of growing up in a system that is programmed to see you fail. So if you get caught up in that system it’s a natural death within the program. But you can break and make your own program. If you stick to the program.

The paper's use of language is coded. Text has been written …

Predators And Principles: Think Tank Influence, Media Visibility, And Political Partisanship, Timothy Beryl Bland

Theses and Dissertations

By some measures, the major U.S. political parties have become more extreme in their political positions in recent decades, and scholars have raised concerns about whether the policy expertise provided by today’s think tanks has become similarly partisan and polarized. Furthermore, there is a perception that certain overtly partisan and highly visible think tanks wield considerable and growing influence over the policy platforms of the major U.S. parties, using their media presence to shape public and policymaker views of particular issues. Using publicly accessible tax, media, and congressional data, my proposed study assesses the extent to which media visibility and …

A Meta-Analysis Investigating The Correlation Between Treatment Integrity And Youth Client Outcomes, Ruben G. Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: The relation between treatment integrity and youth client outcomes in psychosocial treatment research has implications for therapist training, study design, and study interpretation. Despite work done in this area, this relation remains unclear. The aim of the current study was to meta-analyze and describe characteristics of investigations of integrity and outcome in youth.

Method and Analytic Plan: A total of N = 30 studies were identified. Conceptual and methodological factors were coded. Pearson’s r represented the magnitude of the integrity-outcome correlation. Robust variance estimation was used to account for dependency of within-study effect sizes. Two models were run with …

Why We Use A New Currency: The Role Of Trust And Control In Explaining The Perception And Usage Of Bitcoin, Joseph B. Walton

Theses and Dissertations

Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers and smartphones allow people to interact, trust, and exchange value across traditional socio-economic control boundaries and over significant distances. Since the creation in 2008 of a new cryptographic currency system called Bitcoin, a financial technology market sector of about 250 billion USD has rapidly emerged, raising questions about the nature of currency in society and whether new types of non-national money are warranted and viable. This debate has pitted heterodox economic interests against orthodox economic interests while it has rekindled interest in theories that view money as a …

The Impact Of Registered Apprenticeships On The Middle-Skills Gap In Virginia, Yolanda Macklin Crewe

Theses and Dissertations

The skills gap debate has raged among scholars and policymakers for the last few decades. The key questions are whether the gap exists, the extent of the gap and how to minimize the gap. Of particular concern is a skills gap for middle-skills occupations. Since 2014, the federal government has invested over $500 million in registered apprenticeships as a strategy to address the skills gap. Likewise, Virginia has invested over $7.5 million and implemented policies such as VA Executive Order 49 (EO49), to expand registered apprenticeships as a workforce strategy to diminish the skills gap.

The goal of this research …

Measuring The Impact Of Perceptions Towards Performance-Based Cash Rewards On Performance In Federal Agencies: Testing The Role Of Public Service Motivation As A Causal Chain, Layla F. Alanazi

Theses and Dissertations

Significant research has demonstrated how public service motivation (PSM) predicts individual outcomes, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and choice of employment sector. Other research has demonstrated how PSM serves as an outcome variable. Between these two strands of PSM research, there is a knowledge gap concerning how PSM acts as a mediator. This study contributes to the growing literature on PSM by proposing and testing a causal model that estimates the direct effect of perceptions towards performance-based cash rewards on performance as well as their indirect effect through their influence on PSM, which then influences individual and organizational performance. …

Psychological Effects Of Reading: The Role Of Nostalgia In Re-Reading Favorite Books, Margaret A. Kneuer

Theses and Dissertations

There are many positive outcomes from feeling nostalgic, including reductions in loneliness and greater meaning and social connectedness. My primary research goal was to investigate whether I could trigger feelings of nostalgia from re-reading an old favorite book, and whether this elicited nostalgia would increase feelings of connectedness and meaning in life and reduce loneliness. I designed a two-study package (one correlational study and one experiment) to assess re-reading novels. Trait nostalgia was positively associated with enjoyment of re-reading books (Study 1). Re-reading a favorite novel, relative to reading a new novel or a set of newspaper articles, elicited nostalgia. …

A Microlongitudinal Study Of Menopause Symptoms And Problematic Eating In Midlife Women, Dana R. Schreiber

Theses and Dissertations

Women in midlife are at risk for engagement in problematic eating behavior which is associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes. Despite this risk, little is known about precipitating factors that may increase risk in this population. One specific, yet unstudied, factor that may increase risk for problematic eating in midlife women is menopause, which is characterized by distinct symptomatology (e.g., vasomotor symptoms, negative mood, sleep). The purpose of the current study was to investigate the associations among psychological, behavioral, and social symptoms of menopause and problematic eating behavior in midlife women using both retrospective and prospective methodologies. As …

An Integrated Exploration Of The Contextual, Relational, And Individual Factors That Impact High School Completion Among African Americans, Lesley B. Winchester

Theses and Dissertations

African American students are consistently reported as having among the lowest high school graduation rates when compared to other races (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). While many studies have sought to explore the potential risks of high school dropout, the intention of this study is to examine the factors that support the exemplary resilience of those students who do complete high school. The present study adopts the framework of García Coll et al.’s, (1996) integrative model of developmental competencies in minority children, as it seeks to identity whether and how contextual (spiritual, educational, cultural); relational (caregiver psychological and physical …

Examining The Role Of Racial Discrimination In Obesity Treatment Disparities Among African American Emerging Adult Women, Kristal Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The overarching goal of the proposed work was to examine how racial discrimination contributes to disparities in adiposity and treatment response between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White emerging adult women, and to identify potential protective and risk factors that might moderate this association—all in service of improving lifestyle interventions for this high-risk population. Project aims were achieved across three studies. In Study 1, we extracted data for emerging adults (N=261, BMI=33.8+4.9 kg/m², age=21.9+2.1 years) who recently completed a BWL program adapted specifically for emerging adults and compared treatment outcomes for non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black women. In Study …

Platform And Place: The Digitization Of Gift Economies, Sara A. Peters

Theses and Dissertations

Especially during times of economic and social upheaval, such as COVID-19, people may consider alternative means of acquiring the resources necessary for survival. These lifestyle shifts, or lifestyle movements, are often associated with economic alternatives to capitalism, such as gift economies. In recent years, many of these economies have shifted to digital platforms where members create and coordinate connections for exchanges. Using a case study of The Buy Nothing Project, an international network of local, digital gift economies, this paper explores the geographic and socioeconomic conditions facilitating the presence and activity of digital Buy Nothing Groups in two US states, …

State Economic Development: Analyzing The Moderating Effects Of Business Climate On Economic Growth, Sean A. Brazier

Theses and Dissertations

States across the country focus intensely on creating jobs, catalyzing capital investment, and stimulating economic output. They pursue different strategies, mixing and matching a variety of tactics in the pursuit of their economic objectives. While scholars have studied the relationship between economic development tactics and economic growth or business climate and economic growth, none to my knowledge have studied the impact of economic development efforts on economic outcomes while accounting for a state’s business climate.

I found economic development spending to be negatively associated with employment growth (other measures, real gross state product and per capita income growth, were not …

Black Women And Body Image: Implications Of The Racialized Beauty Aesthetic, Rachel L. Boutte

Theses and Dissertations

Black women have the highest prevalence of overweight and obesity relative to any other demographic group in the United States, however current weight management interventions appear least effective for them. Although several hypotheses have been proposed to explain these outcomes, few studies have collected data to evaluate how well they fit the lived experiences of Black women. In particular, the potential roles of body image and body dissatisfaction in the development and maintenance of overweight and obesity in Black women are not well understood. Extant literature largely reports that Black women are inoculated from body dissatisfaction due to cultural factors, …

Design Hub: Activating Community By Design, Ed Williams

Theses and Dissertations

MOTIVATION

At the turn of the century, Robert Putnam (2000, 27) wrote “...a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current.” Putnam is describing a loss of “social capital” throughout American society. Research suggests that many of our contemporary issues are the result of a decline in “social capital,” or “community.”

This pervasive lack of community is thought to be detrimental to “educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health …

Adverse Childhood Experiences In Children Presenting To Integrated Pediatric Primary Care, Irene A. Jacobs

Theses and Dissertations

The prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has created a significant public health concern in the United States. A vast body of literature examining adult populations has displayed a dose-response association between cumulative ACEs and chronic illnesses (Chapman et al., 2004; Felitti et al., 1998). ACEs research conducted with children and adolescents has indicated higher ACE scores associated with learning and behavioral problems (Burke et al., 2011), health risk behaviors (Garrido et al., 2018), and mental health challenges (Mackner et al., 1997). However, ACEs research and subsequent interventions have largely relied upon retrospective data retrieved from adults (Felitti et al., …

Effects Of A Self-Advocacy Intervention On The Abilities Of College Students With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities To Request Academic Accommodations, Katherine R. Brendli

Theses and Dissertations

Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are pursuing college at higher rates than ever before. However, many of these students experience barriers to success in college and need to self-advocate for their needs, such as requesting academic accommodations. This study examined the effects of a virtually delivered self-advocacy intervention package on the abilities of college students with IDD to request their academic accommodations. This is the first study to virtually implement a modified version of the Self-Advocacy and Conflict Resolution strategy with college students with IDD. Using a single-subject multiple-probe across participants design, this study was implemented with three …

Western Representation On Twitter In Relation To Orientalism And Framing: A Content Analysis Of #Saudi Arabia And #Saudis, Wedyan A. Kattan

Theses and Dissertations

Based on framing theory, Said’s Orientalism, and Hall’s theory of representation, this dissertation explores how the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is represented on the social media platform Twitter. Specifically, the study aims to identify how Saudi Arabia and Saudis are represented in English-language tweets by Western media in the years after several political incidents in the region, such as the Yemen war, and new political leadership in Saudi Arabia that has introduced many economic and social reforms. Thus, the overarching research question in this study is, how have Saudi Arabia and Saudis been presented on Twitter recently? This study sheds …

Characterizing Patterns Of Cannabis Use And Related Health Effects Among Young Adults Using Ecological Momentary Assessment, Alyssa Rudy

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Rapid changes in cannabis use policy and prevalence, particularly among young adults, and the lack of information regarding cannabis harms warrant investigation regarding the daily use patterns of cannabis users. Little is known regarding how variability in cannabis use frequency and administration method use patterns may be associated with differential acute cannabis-related health effects (i.e., subjective intoxication and respiratory symptoms). The purpose of the study was to characterize daily and weekly cannabis use patterns and associated cannabis-related intoxication and respiratory symptoms and test the interactions of cannabis use frequency and cannabis administration method use on cannabis-related intoxication and respiratory …

Differential Identification Of Hyperacusis And Misophonia: Implications Of Discrete Decreased Sound Tolerance (Dst) Condition Subtypes, Rachel E. Wallace

Theses and Dissertations

Hyperacusis and misophonia are two conditions of decreased sound tolerance (DST) studied in the psychological literature due to their association with psychological symptoms and mechanisms. DSTs are differentiated from normal sound sensitivity due to the reported impairment and distress individuals experience. Researchers suggest that DSTs are differentiated by types of sounds and emotional reactions elicited, such that hyperacusis is a fear and pain response to ordinary environmental sounds perceived as uncomfortably loud, and misophonia is an anger and disgust response to human-made sounds, but these distinctions, and associated characteristics, have not been empirically demonstrated. Undergraduate students (N = 1572) …

The Role Of Receptive Reasoning In The Development Of Intellectual Humility, Cathryn Richmond

Theses and Dissertations

Intellectual humility (IH) develops throughout childhood and adolescence and is critically important for effective learning, particularly with regard to science; however, the research examining the development of IH in children is quite limited. As such, this study utilized an exploratory, mixed methods, community-engaged research design with children ages three to 10 (n = 60; M_age = 5.98; 69.6% female) and their parents/guardians recruited from a public children’s museum.. As the construct of IH is intended to describe adult cognition, I operationalized the set of components that may lead to the development of IH in preschool children as Receptive …

A Longitudinal Test Of Mexican Teen Mothers’ Cultural Characteristics And Children’S Language Skills Via Mothers’ Language, Arlenis A. Santana

Theses and Dissertations

The current study includes 204 Mexican teen mothers and their children from a larger study who were interviewed when children were 3 years old (Wave 4; W4), 4 years old (W5), and 5 years old (W6). The current study is guided by the integrative model of developmental competencies (García Coll et al., 1996), which suggests that parents’ adaptive cultural characteristics and exchanges with their children inform children’s developmental competencies. Thus, the current study examined whether teen mothers’ adaptive cultural characteristics (i.e., familism values, language competency pressures, and involvement in Mexican culture and U.S. mainstream culture) at W4 informed mothers’ Spanish …

Dating Violence Victimization And Posttraumatic Stress Outcomes Among Urban Adolescents: The Moderating And Mediating Role Of Positive Outlook, Carine Leslie

Theses and Dissertations

Adolescent dating violence occurs far too frequently in early adolescence and is related to adverse mental health outcomes, including posttraumatic stress symptoms. One focus within this literature has been to determine and better understand how protective processes may function in influencing relations between risk factors and dating violence victimization. A protective factor that has not been explored in the dating literature is positive outlook. The current short-term longitudinal study investigated whether dating violence victimization at Time 1 predicted posttraumatic stress symptoms at Time 2 among African American middle school students and examine whether positive outlook moderated or mediated this relation. …