Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Multi-Method Exploration Of Health Disparities And Covid-19 Incidence And Mortality In The United States, S M Asger Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The 21^st century experienced several health crises, especially in the form of infectious disease outbreaks such as the SARS outbreak in 2003, the H1N1 in 2009, and Ebola outbreaks in 2013. However, none has produced a worldwide socio-economic and health impact compared to the recent pandemic, known as COVID-19. As of October 4, 2022, more than 614 million cases with 6 million deaths have been reported worldwide. The United States is currently in the leading position with more than 98 million cases and 1 million deaths. The pandemic, however, did not impact the entire region similarly, and the infections …

Examining The Relationship Between Stomiiform Fish Morphology And Their Ecological Traits, Mikayla L. Twiss

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Trait-based ecology characterizes individuals’ functional attributes to better understand and predict their interactions with other species and their environments. Utilizing morphological traits to describe functional groups has helped group species with similar ecological niches that are not necessarily taxonomically related. Within the deep-pelagic fishes, the Order Stomiiformes exhibits high morphological and species diversity, and many species undertake diel vertical migration (DVM). While the morphology and behavior of stomiiform fishes have been extensively studied and described through taxonomic assessments, the connection between their form and function regarding their DVM types, morphotypes, and daytime depth distributions is not well known. Here, three …

New Venture Challenge Raises $4,442 For Entrepreneurship Programs, Missions, Addie Woods, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Five teams of students in Ouachita Baptist University’s entrepreneurship program competed to develop and execute an idea to raise money for the program, which is housed in the university’s Frank D. Hickingbotham School of Business. The competition, called the New Venture Challenge, raised $4,442.40, to be directed back into the entrepreneurship program along with helping fund a student-led mission trip to Honduras in the spring.

Crossing The Gender Chasm For Productive Field Engagement, Raghunandan Reddy

The Qualitative Report

The paper aims to demonstrate that while researcher’s background could be a factor in gaining access to research participants and to the organization, other elements like trustworthiness, reflexivity, and engaged participant listening help in overcoming gender barriers in interviewing the research participants. This paper is a reflexive account of field experience as a part of doctoral research aimed at establishing that not only could gender barriers to access to research participants be overcome, but also that a gender-outsider positionality offers insights into women’s workplace experiences that are shaped through the discourses and practices of managerialism. The field experience highlighted the …

International Teaching Internship: Development Of Pre-Service Teachers’ Competences, Luthfi Auni, Teuku Zulfikar, Saiful Akmal, Alfiatunnur Alfiatunnur, Farah Dina

The Qualitative Report

Teachers’ competences should be shaped from a very early stage of their training (Mâţă, Cmeciu, & Ghiaţău, 2013). For that reason, pre-service teachers are required to get involved in teaching internships and gain professional experience from training programs and workshops. These experiences are assets for these pre-service teachers when they resume teaching positions upon graduation. The present narrative study, therefore, aims to investigate the benefits of international teaching internship, known as South-East Asian Teacher (henceforth SEA-Teacher Program) on Indonesian pre-service English teachers’ identity and competence development. There were four male and four female participants of SEA-Teacher program participated in the …

Distinctive Sans Forgetica Font Does Not Benefit Memory Accuracy In The Drm Paradigm, Mark J. Huff, Nicholas P. Maxwell, Anie Mitchell

Faculty Publications

A common method used by memory scholars to enhance retention is to make materials more challenging to learn—a benefit termed desirable difficulties. Recently, researchers have investigated the efficacy of Sans Forgetica, a perceptually disfluent/distinctive font which may increase processing effort required at study and enhance memory as a result. We examined the effects of Sans Forgetica relative to a standard control font (Arial) on both correct memory and associative memory errors using the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, to evaluate Sans Forgetica effects on overall memory accuracy. Across four experiments, which included nearly 300 participants, Sans Forgetica was found to …

Interview With Lily Benavides, Nhatii Shoulars

Immigrant Leaders

An interview with Lily Benavides, a leader with the Green Party of New Jersey and an activist. The interview covers life before immigrating, arrival and integration, and political participation.

Linguistic And Ontological Concept Formation: The Lion Method, Göran Goldkuhl

The Qualitative Report

Concept formation is a demanding task in social research. A methodological approach (called LION) is presented that emphasizes the clarification of concepts based on linguistic and ontological views. This method originates from a qualitative-pragmatist tradition of studies of work-practices in organizational settings and it is explicitly based on the linguistic turn and the practice turn in social research. It is also based on the articulation of seven conceptualization maxims. Its aim is to bring rigor to the conceptualizing process and clarity to resulting conceptualizations. The method is illustrated through an analysis example from service management. The concepts of “value-in-use” and …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Personal Health Care Challenges Experienced By Iranian Divorcees, Farzaneh Golboni, Zainab Alimoradi, Bengt Fridlund, Liselott Årestedt, Mark Griffiths, Anders Broström, Amir Hajiagha Pakpour Ahp

The Qualitative Report

Divorce, nowadays an increasingly more prevalent life event in Iran, can create poor general health among Iranian women, possibly due to bigger challenges for health-related behaviors. The aim was to explore challenges to achieve health-related behaviors as experienced by divorced Iranian women acting as household-heads. An inductive exploratory design based on qualitative content analysis was utilized. Twenty strategically selected divorced women acting as household-heads in Tehran were interviewed between September 2019 and January 2020. The divorced women experienced individual-centered and social and environmental-centered challenges concerning their health-related behaviors. Lack of competence, lack of personal control, and lack of emotional support …

Effect Of Education On Self-Reported Health, Mai Le '24

Student Research

Human Capital Theory pointed out health as a possible return to education. The question at the center of this research is if education can improve health. Replicating the work of Goesling (2007) on new data from the 2000-2022 Current Population Survey (CPS), a cross-sectional probit analysis shows a positive relationship between educational level and self-reported health. This relationship is robust and significant across age groups.

Ideological Extremism, Conspiratorial Thought, And Support For Authoritarianism In The United States, Sophie N. Martino

Honors Theses

Since the nation’s founding, Americans have tended to take democracy for granted. People see democracy as a given, believing that adherence to democratic values will persist. However, in the past few election cycles, there has been a trend in support for authoritarianism in the United States – not just with political leaders and figures, but also with individuals susceptible to authoritarian values and signals. This thesis seeks to address this apparent threat of authoritarianism in the United States, delving into possible factors that play a role in the growing support for authoritarian attitudes among Americans. I believe that two phenomena …

The Effects Of Survival, Pleasantness, And Storytelling Conditions On True And False Memory Recollection, Rachel Daniels

Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the extent to which various processing scenarios influenced participants' rates of true and false memory recollection. Participants were placed in one of three conditions, storytelling, survival, or pleasantness, and then studied a list of common nouns. They were then instructed to comment on the words in a specific manner depending on the condition to which they were randomly assigned. Following this, participants completed a math distractor task, and were then asked to complete a free recall test for the previously studied words. The results indicated that participants in the storytelling condition …

The Demographic And Socioeconomic Patterns Of New Latino Immigrants In New York City In The 2010s, Qiyao Pan

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines the demographic and socioeconomic patterns of new immigrants that arrived between 2010 and 2019 in New York City. It focuses on the characteristics and shifting dynamics of these newcomers in three time periods: 2010-2012, 2013-2015, and 2016-2019.

Methods: This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public …

International Comparative Education: A Case For Russia, Kirill A. Strakhov

Pepperdine Policy Review

Moscow State University (MSU) in Russia does not have an adequate general education curriculum as part of the undergraduate requirements. The curriculum does not cover classical topics such as the exploration of human nature. At the college level, Russian students are not able to change their specialization even as freshmen. The policy recommendations are going to be grounded on the various philosophical understanding of education and its role in our society. MSU should include more open discussion seminars in order to develop crucial virtues of character. At the same time, MSU should implement a general education curriculum, which would keep …

Utilizing The Private Sector To Address California’S Shortage Of Qualified Public School Teachers, Christopher J. Lacreta

Pepperdine Policy Review

Over the past decade, the State of California has been running a deficit of well-qualified teachers in its public education system. School districts consistently report the need to hire substandard teachers who differ from well-qualified teachers in that they generally have far less schooling and experience and usually receive emergency credentials so that each school can achieve its minimum number of necessary educators to conduct operations. The main reason for this shortage is that California’s public schools are almost exclusively funded by the state budget and they do not receive significant funding from local property taxes. This has contributed to …

The American Space Industry: A History Of Innovation And An Analysis Of Future Policy, Miles J. Pollard

Pepperdine Policy Review

This paper articulates the evolution of US space policy by collating the history of space program developments alongside the international treaties responsible for safe space exploration. As the US shifts from NASA-led ventures to private ventures, the treaties developed both during and after the space race are coming under scrutiny. Private US companies such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Space X are investing in the future realms of space tourism, settlements, and mining that will hopefully provide untold profits for all of mankind. However, there exists the danger of a Kessler Syndrome event blocking access to Earth’s orbits if …

Abortion Pill Reversal And The Inappropriate Censorship Of Google Advertisements, Chloe S. Edwards

Pepperdine Policy Review

Abortion has been a contentious policy issue for nearly as long as United States has existed. From its legalization under the U.S. Constitution’s right to privacy in the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade to the overturn of the decision this year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Healthcare Organization, abortion policy has been on a back and forth swing for generations. The addition of medically advanced forms of abortion, including medical abortions administered via pills, has added another dimension to this already complicated matter. Recent censorship of abortion pill reversal ads by the internet site Google has shown the …

Pushing On In Defense Of Qualitative Research: A Book Review Of Patricia Leavy’S Oral History, Vaso Thomas

The Qualitative Report

The central feature of Patricia Leavy’s book, Oral History: Understanding Qualitative Research, is the legitimization of doing oral history and, generally, qualitative research in the social sciences. Leavy reviews the foundational philosophies that inform the qualitative practice of doing social research and the methodological tools that affirm the scientific nature of oral history (such as reflection, explicitness, proper coding, and congruence). Leavy instructs the reader through each stage of the methodological process from research design to writing up the research findings. Oral History is not only an instructional guide but also a response to the critics of the qualitative …

No Canvas, No Rules, Francisca B. Ugalde

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This presentation activity is a creative exploration of the concept of DIS-EASE, as in the absence of ease, uneasiness, or discomfort.

Conceptually, I am exploring DIS-EASE in three ways:

1. As you can see, I am painting directly onto the gallery wall. As the keeper of these galleries, I can assure you that this is a big no-no. I mean how dare anyone disturb these pristine surfaces?! The rationale behind my discomfort is rooted in the idea that the gallery is a sacred space, and that these walls ought to be kept pristine so that the objects displayed against them …

Webs Of Proximity And Just-In-Time Information, Carrie A. Boettcher, Laurie J. Bonnici, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Disciplinary webs of proximity frequently overlap at the periphery of a topic where interests intersect for problem-solving. Failure to account for disciplinary differences can result in dis-ease – tension that interferes with meaning-making. This can be especially problematic in just-in-time information settings. An unexpected social media case study involving severe weather reporting and algorithm-driven system censorship makes evident the role of a constellation of pragmatic factors that can enhance or hinder just-in-time information delivery. Employing webs of proximity, we probe the severe weather censorship event with complementary bodies of knowledge and disciplinary perspectives. Intersectionalities are discussed through lenses of proximity …

Terminally Ill Documents: The Lasting Impact Of Ephemera, Deama Khader

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Murals and portraits of cultural icons such as George Floyd and Ahed Tamimi are more than aesthetically engaging objects. They can inspire viewers to act, attend protests, and share their own feelings on an issue, whether that be in the form of more street art or something as simple as a social media post. This is often how social and political movements are made.

Street art poses a unique challenge to information professionals since the documents that are created with the intention or expectation of disappearance. They are documents suffering from terminal illness. Their ephemerality is their disease. Per the …

Documents And The Malady Of Truth, Ronald E. Day

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article discusses documents, knowledge, and truth through a conceptual examination and through an examination of Flaubert's 19th century novel Madame Bovary. It argues that the main characters of Madame Bovary deceive themselves by believing that the contents of the fictional and medical texts they read convey truth. In contrast, the article argues that modern knowledge is constituted by documentary evidence operating in knowledge networks and processes where the result of such operations is what can be claimed to be true about the world through such processes. The representational malady that Madame and Doctor Bovary suffer in the novel was …

“Arsip Kacau”: How Messy Records Are Perceived By Indonesians In The Context Of Document Disease, Suprayitno Suprayitno, Rahmi Rahmi, Dian Novita Fitriani

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper examines how the Indonesian people perceive and construct arsip kacau (messy records). Messy records as documents seem to have the power to make humans psychologically ill by becoming uneasy, discomfort, stressed, burnout, and uncomfortable, all of which are diseases. This is similar to documentality introduced by Frohmann that documents can enable, produce, encourage, permit, and influence a person to experience document disease. This paper uses a qualitative approach with data collection in the form of literature and surveys from Indonesian people. The perception of archivists and the general public in Indonesia concerning the cause of the “messy records” …

Document Dimensions Of Imuseum’S Instagram Posts, Ciwuk Musiana Yudhawasthi, Lydia Christiani, Widya Damayanti

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Social media is source of information during a pandemic. Using virtual ethnography methods and cyber media analysis, this article tries to trace digital cultural artifacts on IMERI iMuseum’s Instagram posts. Digital cultural artifacts that emerged were then analyzed using Buckland's concept of physical, mental and social dimensions of document. The results of the analysis show that cultural artifacts in iMuseum’s IG posts have document dimensions, seen from the physical, mental and social aspects and even a combination of dimensions. In the context of infodemic, through its social media, iMuseum seeks to carry out its role in disseminating information on health, …

Be Our Guest Or Welcome Foolish Mortals? Disney’S Invitation To Play And The Delusion/Illusion Of Hyperreal, Immersive Documents, L.P. Coladangelo

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper playfully appropriates the metaphor of delusional states to frame a discussion of hyperreal documents present in Disney theme parks and resorts. A brief overview of the literature on delusion in individuals transitions into the collective formation of positive illusions to introduce the concept of play. The conceptual framework of play culture, or ludics, is presented to understand cultural production and meaning, which is further described in relation to theme park design and the negotiation of theme park experiences. This discussion is situated in document theory to explicate the intentionality of theme park designers and the indexicality of park …

The Boredonomicon: A Document From A Speculative Future, Tim Gorichanaz

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The year is 2222, and boredom has been eradicated. In this paper, I present the Boredonomicon, a document from this speculative future. The Boredonomicon is the Infinite Word of the God of Boredom, produced through a spiritual practice by the monks of the Tedia. Inspiration was drawn from philosophical work on boredom as well as questions of document theory and genre theory.

Public Libraries In Norway And The U.S.: Looking Outside During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Roswitha Skare, Noah Lenstra

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Through this examination of trends in outdoor oriented librarianship in Norway and in the United States we see both similarities and differences. In both countries we see efforts focused on promoting reading outdoors. We also see efforts in both countries to take the library outside, thus perhaps ensuring the library’s continued visibility and relevance to the community served. In both cases, library resources and outdoor spaces are woven together, despite challenges associated with taking these resources and programs outside. We also see differences: Norwegians typically consider themselves to be outdoors-oriented people, and the placement of library resources into outdoor spaces …

Uncovering A Natural History Mystery At The University Of Akron, Gary M. Holliday, Lara Roketenetz

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Students were engaged in a combination of detective work, biology, archives, art, and education/outreach to prepare a collection of taxidermied birds donated to the University of Akron by the Rhodes family in the early 1900s for public access and exhibition. Students had the opportunity to learn from leading experts regarding the historical significance of biological collections, proper preservation protocols, digitizing and archival practices, and the urgency of science education and communication for a public audience. Many campus and community partners were involved, including experts from local museums and nature centers.

Translation Disease: Proximity Gone Awry, Laurie J. Bonnici, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

We present here considerations of three trans-medial translations that have caused dis-ease. We look at novel to film, poem to cantata, and novel to film to television series translations to examine various strains of dis-ease. Upon early consideration, we realized Wilson’s call for a “turn to the functional” provides a means of determining whether a translation is “inadequate” – has gone awry. We then fit the concept of translation into our model of proximity as a way to consider whether a “putative translation really [is] a translation of some text.” Ultimately, we argue that one person’s disease may be another’s …

Adding Equity To Transformative Agreements And Journal Subscriptions –The Read & Let Read Model, Arthur J. Boston

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

The transition towards open access to research articles has become a question of how, rather than why and the rise of transformative agreements has enabled publishers to strike agreements with large institutions and national research organisations to provide open access and authorship to their members. In this post, Arthur J. Boston puts forward an alternative Read & Let Read model, which could extend access beyond these limited groups and create a framework for more collaborative funding for access to open access research.