Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2021, Michael W. Clark, James P. Ziliak, Simon Sheather

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission to examine various aspects of Kentucky’s economy as directed by the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS 164.738). The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that range from a discussion of Kentucky’s current economic climate to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.

The report covers numerous dimensions of Kentucky’s economy and COVID-19’s effects are evident across many of these dimensions. The pandemic brought the longest running economic expansion to an abrupt end. By April, Kentucky’s employment declined …

Kentucky's Economic Recovery, Ashli Watts, Michael W. Clark

Kentucky Economic Update

Highlights of this first release of “Kentucky Economic Update” include:

• Kentucky’s GDP bounced back during the 3rd quarter of 2020 but was still below pre-pandemic levels.
• While employment was still down 5.2% in December compared to a year ago, Kentucky has recovered 65% of jobs lost during initial months of the pandemic.
• As of December 2020, Kentucky’s unemployment rate stood at 6%, down from 16.6% in April 2020.
• Kentucky’s labor participation rate, which was 59.6% just before the pandemic dropped to 57.5% in December 2020.

2021 February, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for February of 2021.

Notes For The Stalled, V13n5, February 2021, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

Rod Library newsletter: Notes for the Stalled

Contents:

--Welcome Back!
--Career Readiness
--African American Read-In
--Blind Date with a Book
--Melanin Pillars of Excellence

Translation And Validation Of The Self-Compassion Scale From English To Bahasa Melayu Among Local Students In A Malaysian Public University, Stephenson Ross

Student Works (2020-2029)

Self-compassion is a growing area of research worldwide and has shown promise to be useful in providing insight and intervention against rising mental health issues. Self-compassion has also been linked to psychological well-being as well as negative psychological outcomes, which makes it an ideal measure for mental health. However, the instrument to measure self-compassion has not been comprehensively translated and validated in Malaysia yet. Previous studies are lacking in the psychometric evidence for a valid self-compassion scale in a local context. This study presents the comprehensive translation and validation of the 26-item self-compassion scale (SCS) by Neff (2003) from English …

The Psychosocial Well-Being Of Older Adults In Covid-19 And The 'New Normal', Micah Tan, Paulin T. Straughan, William Tov, Grace Cheong, Wensi Lim

ROSA Research Briefs

Early research into COVID-19 has focused predominantly on the immediate and direct physical health effects of the pandemic, as compared to the wider, indirect effects of the pandemic on general well-being brought about by the various measures put in place to contain the virus. In terms of policies, focus has also been placed largely on containment and broad based policies for the entire population. As experts increasingly recognize that the pandemic will be a protracted event (The Straits Times, 2021), however, there is a need for stakeholders to place greater emphasis on the indirect effects of COVID-19 that will likely …

Japan And The United Kingdom: Island Peoples Coming To Terms With Their Imperial Legacy, Trisha Ann Canessa

Senior Theses

Similar to the United States, other colonial nations such as Japan and the United Kingdom hold prejudicial pasts that have impacted their current social climates. In contrast to the U.S.’s long- time racial hostilities, Japan and Britain’s traditional institutions centered their nationalist campaigns with an anti-foreigner sentiment. The nationalist campaigns within Japan and Britain were prompted by their effort to re-establish their identities after the devastations of World War II. For Japan, conservatives prioritized the preservation of their cultural roots from foreign influence. For the United Kingdom, conservatives used imperial nostalgia to call for a revitalization of the height of …

What Is Past Is Present: How “Forgetting” In Spain And The United States Has Caused Past Problems To Persist, Abigail Grace Conroy

Senior Theses

Historical memory is how we remember the past in association with our group identities. One of the main historical memories that we take part in is the historical memory of the country in which we live. Its social nature can be problematic, leaving gaps in place of horrific events that a country would rather not remember. I argue that gaps are permeated throughout historical memories and that this has allowed for problems of the past to persist in the present, no matter how a country has gone about their process of forgetting. To illustrate my argument I use two case …

Thematic Content Analysis Of Newspaper Coverage Of The Causes Of The Opioid Crisis, Joseph Daniel Eichenlaub, Essma Nasher

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it”[1]. According to the CDC, In 2017 alone, 47,600 people died from opioid-related overdoses [2]. The current opioid epidemic has developed in three distinct waves. Initially there was a sharp rise in opioid overdoses after doctors began prescribing drugs such as Oxycontin, which they were assured by pharmaceutical companies were less addictive than traditional opiates. The second wave began around 2010, when a rapid …

The Pacific Sentinel, February 2021, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Vivian Veidt

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter from the Editor
• Georgia On Everyone’s Mind
• A Minimum Requirement of Neutrality
• An Unspoken Norm
• Pigs Saving Lives
• COVID-19 Affecting the Workplace
• Why Did President Trump Kill Federal Inmates on His Way Out?
• Reconstructing America

Finding (Fictional) Pandemics In The Library: Problems In The Classification Of Fiction, Preston R. Salisbury

The Southeastern Librarian

Libraries have been forced to adjust their services in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has necessitated changes in patron behaviors. With shelf browsing no longer viable, discoverability of materials via the online public access catalog (OPAC) is more important than ever. However, works of fiction often lack subject or genre headings that enable users to locate them in this manner. This article examines a small sample of fictional works that are about epidemics, and looks at whether or not they are discoverable by conducting a subject search for epidemics in ten major southeastern library systems. It examines how the …

College Of Natural Sciences Newsletter, February 2021, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Volume 2. Issue 2

Contents:

[Page] 1 Dean's Message
[Page] 2 Awards and Recognition
[Page] 3 Geography Convention
[Page] 4 Open PRAIRIE Data
[Page] 5 Where did your interest in science begin?
[Page] 6 Research Spotlight: Dr. Lopez-Mosqueda
[Page] 7-8 Fall 2020 Dean's List

Clothing And Fashion In Southern History, Melanie Dunn

The Southeastern Librarian

Ted Ownby and Becca Walton, eds. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020 ISBN: 9781496829511 174 p. $30.00 (Pbk)

Application Of The Breakthrough Research Social And Behavior Change Costing Guidelines To The Rise Ii Project In Niger, Nicole M. Bellows, Lori Bollinger, Rudolph Chandler

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Breakthrough RESEARCH drafted its Guidelines for Costing Social and Behavior Change Health Interventions, in consultation with affiliate Breakthrough ACTION and other programmers, to promote quality social and behavior change program costing studies for a range of uses including budgeting, planning, economic evaluation, and advocacy. In March 2020, Breakthrough RESEARCH began applying the Guidelines to the Resilience in the Sahel (RISE) II program in Niger for a cost-effectiveness analysis through 2022. This report shares findings from application of the Breakthrough Costing Guidelines and provides an example and guidance for social and behavior change researchers and implementers on how these guidelines can …

Incentivizing Injustice: Why No High-Level Executive Prosecutions From The Financial Crisis?, Sari Krieger Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

More than ten years after the financial crisis of 2008, which sparked America’s Great Recession, many citizens are still asking why no high-level bank executives were prosecuted for criminal fraud. This question becomes even more perplexing when they remember that many powerful executives did face jail time during the Enron-era accounting scandals of the early 2000s and the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s. This sense of injustice Americans felt in the wake of the biggest economic disaster of their lifetimes has had reverberating political consequences, such as populist movements like Occupy Wall Street and populist political campaigns …

Constructing Curriculum: Centering Identities In Sex Education, Jozette Belmont

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sex education (sex ed) is a state-by-state and school-by-school issue, and there are no federal laws which mandate medically accurate education. In New York, schools only offer one semester of health education which often happens in the last semester of twelfth grade. Further, LGBTQIA+ people’s sexual health and identities are rarely mentioned. Therefore, this project asks: What are the ways sex ed curricula and policies in New York address the needs of LGBTQIA+ youth? To answer this question, I use a critical policy analysis to compare curriculum from the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and Peer Health Exchange …

Mitigating Resurgence In Functional Communication Training: Teaching Varied And Complex Responses, Charlene N. Agnew

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Functional communication training (FCT) is a commonly used intervention for treating problem behavior wherein the reinforcers contributing to problem behavior are (a) identified through functional analysis and (b) then provided contingent on an alternative communication response. However, following successful teaching of an FCR, resurgence of problem behavior may occur in natural settings when the FCR is exposed to intentional or unintentional extinction conditions. We investigated teaching a second FCR following initial FCT, in one of two forms (varied topography or increased complexity) as a method for reducing resurgence of problem behavior. In order to account for history of reinforcement, we …

Smartphones And Somatizing, Jonathan Berkowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project explores the relationship between smartphone use, somatizing, and mentalized affectivity. The sample consisted of 511 iPhone users who completed an online survey that included scales measuring somatizing, mentalized affectivity, and general symptoms, as well as measures of smartphone engagement and addiction. Participants also provided data from their screentime application, and information about game-playing tendencies. A series of regression models were used to analyze data.

Results showed that smartphone addiction and game playing predicted somatizing, and did not interact with mentalized affectivity. Game-players somatized more than non-game players, and within the game-playing subgroup, those who reported spending more time …

Class Act: Symbolic Revolution And The Meaning Of College In Prison, Ruth E. Delaney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States has gone through two transformations in the meaning of higher education in prison and the value of access for people in prison in the last 50 years and is now moving towards a third. The establishment of Pell grants in 1972 allowed for widespread access to higher education in prison, while the removal of those grants in 1994 effectively ended access. Federal policy makers are now poised to restore access to Pell grants to a broad swath of people in prison (Green, 2019; Krieghbaum, April 22, 2019; Krieghbaum, October 11, 2019). In this paper, I interpret the …

Burden-Sharing, Security, And The International Protection Of Displaced Persons: The United States And Italy As Case Studies, Paul Celentano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Less than 5 percent of those displaced by war and persecution receive permanent sanctuary. This is because the states tasked with protecting them are wary of the “burdens” that they pose, framing them as threats to national economies, budgets, and public safety. Consequently, states seek to share these burdens with other states in order to minimize their own international protection obligations. While the modern norm of “burden-sharing” has existed since at least the mid-twentieth century, it is vague and, therefore, permissive of a wide range of state behavior. When viewed through the lens of “securitization,” states utilize alarmist rhetoric and …

The Impact Of State Violence On Women During The 22 Years Of Dictatorship In The Gambia, Isatou Bittaye-Jobe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the gendered dynamics of dictatorship in The Gambia by exploring the impact of state sanctioned violence on women during former President Yahya Jammeh’s twenty-two years of tyranny in the country. During the two-decade long brutal reign under Jammeh, Gambians from all walks of lives faced gross human rights violations and abuses that inflicted collective national trauma on the population. Therefore, this project examines how Jammeh’s tyrannical rule affected women’s rights, health, and wellbeing. Using a content analysis approach coupled with semi-structured interviews with victims and survivors, I argue that although the dictatorship affected all sectors of the …

Embracing Conflict And Contradiction As A Path To Awareness, Joann Rintel Abreu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this autoethnographic dissertation is the exploration of habitus and how it consciously and unconsciously influences our perceptions, emotions, values, and actions. I describe this dissertation as an autoethnography to highlight my subjective approach to research and to dispel any claims of objectivity. Through my experiences as a daughter, mother, administrator, and teacher-educator, I explore three internal conflicts, highlighted by intense emotional reactions, and deconstruct how my past and present contexts inform my values, beliefs, and actions. In each chapter, I describe several events that led to a greater understanding of my emotional responses and how I adapted …

The One-Armed Viewer: Voyeurism And Masturbation In Nudist Imagery And Film Spectatorship, Benjamin Eleanor Adam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nudist magazines and newsletters were among the first commercial, legal, and widely-available images of nudity which circulated in the late Comstock Era. To evade censorship, producers developed framing strategies that obscured the sexualized nature of these images, even as they also enabled the viewing practices their sales relied upon. This dissertation traces these framing strategies as they evolved through nudist still-imagery, camp films, and nudie cuties, and considers the evolution of spectatorial pleasures associated with Russ Meyer's early nudie cuties.

The Hamite Must Die! The Legacy Of Colonial Ideology In Rwanda, Awa Princess E. Zadi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

April 07, 1994, will forever remain in the history of Rwanda, as it commemorates the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. In 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people, who were overwhelmingly Tutsi, lost their lives at the hand of their neighbors, friends, and families. Although the genocide occurred 26 years ago, there is still much debate surrounding the cause of this tragedy. While some scholars have suggested that the genocide was triggered by contemporary economic and political factors, this thesis is taking a post-colonial approach by bringing into context the colonial history of Rwanda. In the discussion of these colonial roots, …

Influence Of Demographic, Clinical, And Neuroimaging Variables On Neuropsychological Recovery Trajectories After Moderate-To-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury, Elizabeth J. Leif

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is prevalent in people of all ages and all walks of life. Cognitive deficits are common after TBI and the recovery patterns are known to be variable across individuals. The current study investigates diffuse axonal injury (DAI), cerebral blood flow (CBF), and focal lesions, in addition to post-traumatic amnesia (PTA), as possible predictors of cognitive trajectory in moderate-to-severe TBI patients. Cognitive trajectory was evaluated with a battery of neuropsychological tests that were combined into three domains: processing speed, verbal learning, and executive function. Patients (N=44) were tested three times at 3, 6, and 12 months post-injury. …

Smashing Solidarity: Two New York Strikes At The Start Of The Postwar Wave, Joseph D. Parziale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two strikes in New York at the beginning of the massive 1945-46 strike wave—one by elevator operators in commercial buildings and another by dock workers throughout the Port of New York—can help us better understand a moment when workers exhibited a profound sense of themselves as a class, while their rivals in the shop, the corporate boardroom, and the halls of power fought vigorously to dispel the notion that workers divided by geography, industry, race, nationality, and gender were right to see their fates as intertwined. Historians’ focus on the economic issues at stake in the major strikes of the …

Reimagining Post-Secondary Training, Community College, And Welfare Supports, Aaron Azerad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to study the income patterns at the sub-bachelorette level through community colleges and workforce training programs. Using 2018 U.S. Census PUMA microdata, this thesis not only explores which fields of study, industries, and occupations have a sufficient number of observations to determine whether they provide incomes which are commensurate with a middle class livelihood but, also whether these jobs are plentiful in number.

The second goal is to evaluate the effects of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (the Clinton era welfare reform) and how it has influenced Giuliani era ‘work requirement’ initiatives tied …

Mobile Practices And The Production And Curation Of Pottery: A View From The Ancient Southern Russian Steppe Using Portable Methods Of Investigation, Nicole A. Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The southern Russian steppe is located in an intermediary position between the Caucasus, Lower Don and Lower Volga steppe, between which peoples, goods, and technologies often moved throughout prehistory, likely facilitated by small scale seasonal movements and occasional migrations by mobile pastoralists. Conducted in collaboration with the Steppe Archaeological Expedition of the State Historical Museum’s unfolding research on temporary pastoral camps in the Sal-Manych region of the Rostov oblast and Republic of Kalmykia, this dissertation focused on the production and curation of pottery in contexts associated with the emergence and subsequent development of mobile pastoralism from the late fifth millennium …

Spilling The Tea In Bilingual Latinx New York City Department Of Education School Social Workers: Towards Entre Nos, Cindy M. Bautista-Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social workers play an important role in schools. There are about one million children enrolled in the New York City Department of Education(NYCDOE) school system, across 1,843 schools (New York City Department of Education, 2020). Of those students, the largest demographic group is the Latinx population, which has been increasing steadily since 2011. Therefore, there is an urgent need not only to increase the numbers of culturally responsive bilingual Latinx social workers, but also to understand their professional experiences. In order to address this gap in knowledge, the roles of bilingual Latinx school social workers as culturally responsive practitioners in …

School Recess And Changes To Children's Play Opportunities In New York City, Keyonna Hayes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The policy, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 in US public schools was designed to improve how children learn and test in schools, but it has resulted in the decline or removal of recess from most schools. This thesis examines two important issues. The first issue is to assess the play opportunities that public elementary schools offer to children, in terms of both the time available for recess and the quality of the spaces and resources for play during recess. The second issue is to learn, alongside the question of the quality of school recess, how parents’ work …