Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Enhancing Student Leadership Skills Through Project-Based Learning In The Postgraduate Research Experience, Enung Hasanah, M Ikhsan Al Ghazi, M. Ikhwan Al Badar, Fauzia Fauzia M.A.

The Qualitative Report

Project-based learning (PjBL) is one of the learning models recognized by education experts as an effective method of achieving learning objectives in developing process skills; however, few studies have examined its potential for fostering leadership skills. This study aims to investigate postgraduate teacher students' experiences with project-based learning as a means of developing students leadership skills. The research involved 24 postgraduate students and utilized a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis. The findings reveal that while some aspects of project-based learning were perceived as straightforward, other steps were deemed challenging, particularly those that involved higher order thinking skill and …

The Influence Of The Built Environment On The Community Participation Of Adults Aging With Long-Term Physical Disabilities: A Mixed Methods Approach, Rachel H. Desai

WUSM Theses and Dissertations – All Programs

Adults living with a long-term physical disability experience difficulties living independently and participating in the community as they age. A combination of personal (e.g., fatigue) and environmental (e.g., transportation accessibility) factors influence these restrictions in participation. The impact of the built environment is a key aspect to consider when understanding community participation restrictions for adults aging with long-term physical disabilities (AAwPD) because these factors are often more modifiable. However, the processes by which the built environment impacts AAwPD are not well understood. Interventions targeting these factors to address the community participation needs of AAwPD are limited.

Research informing community-based organizations …

The Association Between Rape Myths And Continued Contact With The Perpetrator Following Sexual Abuse, Jainee Smith

Student Theses

Sexual violence is a widespread phenomenon. The term rape myth was first coined in 1980 by Martha Burt, and she defined it as “prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists” (Burt, 1980 p. 217). These myths, as well as any continued contact after a sexual assault, often lead to victim blaming, making it more difficult for victims to report any sexual assault. While rape myths were developed based on adult sexual assault, some research suggests that they also applied to child sexual abuse. This study will explore and expand the literature on rape myth acceptance and …

Essays On Inheritances And Entrepreneurship, Martina Ivanova

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation lays out new evidence on the relationship between inheritances and entrepreneurship and the dynamics of business formation. While the existing literature is split on whether liquidity constraints pose a real threat to the formation of new businesses, this study contributes to the debate by addressing the endogeneity problem between inherited wealth and entrepreneurship. The main results lend support to the liquidity constraint theory, indicating that receiving an inheritance boosts the likelihood of owning a business by about 3% for the average individual, which translates to a 21% increase in the probability of entrepreneurship over the baseline. Chapter 1 …

Cognitive Explanations Behind The Lack Of Public Support For Climate Action, Jordan Hale Mcallister

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Studies show that the primary barriers to climate action support are cognitive ones, and yet it is not clear how people’s climate perceptions influence their support. Key perceptions’ effects remain either disputed or unidentified in the literature, so there is no established theory explaining the drivers of climate action support. I argue that people’s climate perceptions—including of others’ climate actions, climate change impacts, and climate change severity and timing—have effects that align with conventional assumptions of rational behavior. By running survey experiments and statistical analyses on data from both the US and Europe, I show that perceptions’ effects on support …

Evolutionary History Of Populations Of Pleistocene Homo With A Focus On East Asia, Catherine Mclean

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the evolutionary history of our species is a key objective of paleoanthropology, yet the pattern of hominin evolution in East Asia remains uncertain. This research aimed to evaluate the relationships and evolutionary history of East Asian hominin paleodemes through the Pleistocene. Recent descriptions of Pleistocene East Asian hominins reveal a high degree of morphological variability, mosaics of primitive and derived traits, regionally predominant characteristics, and late surviving archaic morphologies. This study tests two hypotheses explaining the complexity of the East Asian hominin record: 1) Continuity with Hybridization, and 2) the existence of Multiple Hominin Lineages. These models were tested …

Putting Attentional Control On The Map: An Investigation Of Meaningful Boundaries And Context-Specific Control, Jackson Stuart Colvett

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

People can learn and adopt relaxed or focused control settings based on the likelihood of conflict at specific inducer locations, then flexibly retrieve those control settings at nearby unbiased diagnostic locations. Importantly, people can learn that multiple distinct contexts predict conflict, such as specific locations or regions of space (e.g., all locations in the upper left). In realistic visual scenes, meaningful boundaries that demarcate objects or areas of space serve as an important signal that the area inside the boundary is distinct from the area outside the boundary. Recent research (Colvett & Bugg, 2022) indicated a role for meaningful boundaries …

Essays In Finance And Macroeconomics, Yi Chun Lin

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The first and second chapters of my dissertation are about empirical asset pricing, and the third chapter is about international macroeconomics.In the first chapter, we study slope factors (estimated OLS slopes from Fama-Macbeth regressions of firm returns on lagged standardized characteristics) in relation to sorted and ranked factors. We show that slope factors provide significant value if they are pure-play, i.e., purged of the effects of a broad set of characteristics. Starting from 47 characteristics, we show, by a new risk factor discovery method, that the SDF varies by factor construction class. On a large collection of test assets, the …

Discrimination And Health Disparities: Sense Of Purpose As A Mitigating Factor, Megan Elizabeth Wilson

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Racial health disparities exist in the United States, and exist in part due to negative effects of experiencing discrimination on health. Thus, the current work uses subjective and objective health outcomes to document the ill effects of discrimination on aspects of physical and mental health. In addition, as sense of purpose in life has been shown to have a positive impact on one’s health, the current work examines the effect of sense of purpose on the same health outcomes, and assesses the extent to which sense of purpose may help to mitigate some of the harmful effects of discrimination on …

Essays In Sovereign Default And Central Banking, Andrea Paloschi

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The recent phenomenon of debt redemption is posing new challenges in emerging economies, whichare typically characterized by high levels of sovereign default risk. How do sovereign default risk and sovereign debt affect central bank independence? And how does this affect reserve accumulation in these countries? In the first chapter of this dissertation I study how business cycle fluctuations affect sovereign debt and sovereign default risk and how the de facto central bank independence is endogenously determines in emerging economies. I build a sovereign default model in which, period-by- period, the fiscal authority determines the degree of independence of the monetary …

Essays In Transportation Economics And Regional Science, Minsung Park

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises three chapters that attempt to examine the effects of new infrastructure of transportation systems.This first chapter "The Impact of High Speed Rail on Traffic Congestion" examines the impact of high-speed rail systems on highway congestion, using the case of South Korea. I use different strategies to address the endogeneity problem of evaluating the impact of transport infrastructure on traffic congestion. The results indicate that building high-speed rail lowers demand for intercity driving by 7.5\% to 30.9\%. However, the detailed data suggests that the reduction in congestion comes primarily from night time, during which high-speed trains do not …

Essays In International Reserves And Sovereign Risk, Rocio E. Suarez

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1990s, international reserves accumulation has particularly surged in emerging economies. What are the rationals behind this rise and the implications of international reserves accumulation for emerging economies? Chapter 1 of the dissertation, titled The Effects of Reserves Accumulation on Sovereign Default Under Terms of Trade Shocks, studies what is the value of holding international reserves in emerging economies when they experience fluctuations in their terms of trade and the sovereign debt is denominated in foreign currency. Firstly, I document stylized facts regarding a sample of emerging economies over the period 1997-2019 and find that there is a negative …

Essays On Market Reallocation And Economic Growth, Lei Ye

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the causal factors that contribute to the reallocation of economic activity in the product, financial and labor market, and to analyze the implications of these phenomena on the aggregate economic performance.The dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter, "Bank Concentration, Product Market Competition and Firm Dynamics", investigates the concentration trend in the U.S. banking industry since the implementation of the Riegle-Neal Act in 1994 and its impact on product market competition, firm dynamics and aggregate economic performance. Empirically, I document that bank concentration is associated with less competition in product markets. …

Manage Your Money Wisely: How Consumers And Marketers Can Effectively Communicate Money Issues, Alexander Park

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Consumers and marketers find it challenging to communicate money matters. For example, consumers experience discomfort and uneasiness when discussing financial issues with their social relationships. Firms often receive backlash when sharing their good financial deeds (e.g., charitable efforts) with consumers. Because financial matters can be a sensitive topic, in my research, I explore the difficulties consumers and marketers experience when communicating money issues and how they can better navigate these problems.In Chapter One, I investigate a particularly uneasy interaction that consumers often face with their friends and acquaintances: the need to ask for money back. Seven fully preregistered studies (N …

Essays In Entrepreneurship, Mostafa Salari

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation concentrates on the determinants of entrepreneurship and consists of two essays. The first essay develops a dynamic model of occupational choices to capture how big-five personality traits influence entrepreneurial decisions and returns. More importantly, I divide entrepreneurs into incorporated and unincorporated to differentiate between high-growth and lifestyle entrepreneurs. I use the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) data set for this study. My model captures the role of personality traits, cognitive ability, human capital, information accumulation, and non-pecuniary benefits in entrepreneurial dynamics. The estimated model demonstrates that personality traits affect pecuniary and non-pecuniary from incorporated and …

Agricultural Shocks On Household Stability: A Case Study Of Tanzania Maize Farmers, Zimmi Ndlovu

Master's Theses

As the global populations grow, the need for stronger agricultural resilience in areas with high food insecurity like Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is a must. Crop failure due to climate related events has increased substantially over the past decade, raising the risks to vulnerable groups like subsistence farmers. Understanding the effects of climate variability on farmers and their crops is a pivotal step towards increasing resilience and productivity. In this paper I approach this question using a Linear Probability Fixed-effects Model on Tanzanian Panel Survey data with monthly temperature and precipitation for years 2008 to 2013. Results suggest a negative relationship …

From Instability To Civil Liberties: Nonviolent Resistance In Afghanistan, Rachel L. Knowles

Master's Theses

When people have a fundamental issue at stake, giving in is not an option. For these types of conflict, when people’s rights are being violated, when their countries are occupied, or when they are oppressed and humiliated, they need a powerful way to persist and fight back. Oftentimes when people are left with no choice they will use the terrible and destructive nature of violence. For decades nonviolent resistance (NVR) movements have been associated with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but people have been using nonviolent action for years. In fact, NVR has been a part of political life for …

Institutional Repositories For Higher Educational Institutions: A New Opportunity For Academic Libraries, Taher Hussain Khan Mr.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Digital information created for pedagogical and research purposes is gaining traction, and there is a growing interest within academic institutions to gather, archive, and provide value-added services based on this content. The term "institutional repository" refers to a novel system for storing and sharing digital academic works produced by students and teachers at different educational institutions. It was conceived as a solution to the issues plaguing the present model of scholarly communication, which is dominated by for-profit journal publishers and suppliers. Libraries will need to hire librarians with knowledge of digital collection management and the Open Archive Information System (OAIS) …

The Impact Of Continuing Professional Development Programs On Service Delivery At Uganda Christian University Library., Kizito Mayira

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study was about the Impact of Continuing Professional Development programs on service delivery at Uganda Christian University Library. The main objective of the study was to assess how CPD programs have affected librarians’ service delivery at Uganda Christian University Library. The study employed a descriptive survey design. Data was collected through 28 questionnaires distributed physically to library staff. The findings of the study indicated that UCU library staff have attended CPD programs in form of Workshops, internal and external training programs, workshops, conferences, job shadowing, mentoring and focus groups. These have helped them acquire skills in customer care, presentation, …

Creating Commons: Photovoice Philosophy In A Third Space, Jason M. Cox, Lynne Hamer

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Teach Toledo is a program that the authors co-coordinate using community assets to create a third space to confront systemic racism’s impact on teacher education programs and facilitate hybridity (Bhaba, 1994). Diverse student cohort members use their lived experience as the base for their individual and shared urban educational philosophies, coordinated in a first-year horizontally and vertically integrated curriculum including written compositions and a PhotoVoice project. “Creating commons” refers not only to provision of a third space as a common space where private experiences can be combined to create a hybrid, new understanding, but also to the creative act of …

Un País Invertido: The Current Immigration Regime Of Colombia, Magdalena Hendrickson

Honors Theses

Throughout its turbulent history, Colombia has seen drastic changes in structure and administration. From military coups to shaky coalitions, the country’s infamous instability has long forced its citizens to find better prospects elsewhere. However, with the rise of the Maduro administration in Venezuela, Colombia faced a massive new flow of migrants and was forced to rectify current circumstances without properly addressing its internal issues beforehand. Despite its historical status as a nation of emigrants, Colombia marks a new norm for the rest of the globe. As new issues like climate change and increased armed conflict grow worldwide, countries on the …

Sleep Duration Is Associated With Caudate Volume And Executive Function, Nicole Jones

Honors Theses

The ineligible role of the caudate nucleus in sleep has been implicated throughout multiple scientific studies. Previous literature has shown that greater caudate volume is associated with longer habitual sleep duration in older adults- ranging from 55 years of age and up. However, the association between sleep duration and caudate volume remains unknown in the younger population. In this study, we examined the caudate volume in youth to older adults (10 to 85 years old) with a greater sample size (N=464) to increase statistical power. The volumetric size of the caudate nucleus showed significantly positive association with habitual sleep duration, …

Structural Integrity And Stability Of Dna In Ionic Liquid And Near-Infrared Indolizine Squaraine Dye, Ember Yeji Suh

Honors Theses

Luminol, the most common presumptive test for blood at a crime scene, has multiple issues, such as false positive results with chemical agents, no luminescence due to “active oxygen” cleaning agents on bloodstains, and inability to penetrate textile materials. A combination of indolizine squaraine dye and ionic liquid (IL), or Dye Enhanced Textile Emission for Crime Tracking (DETECT), have shown potential to address these issues. The purpose of this study was to assess the binding mechanism of CG (1:1) and SO₃SQ dye to HSA and how the mechanism can explain the W214 fluorescence quenching effect and to determine …

Associations Between Tiktok Use, Mental Health, And Body Image Among College Students, Alexz Carpenter

Honors Theses

Background. Social media use continues to increase globally, and there is a large field of research examining the relationships between social media use with anxiety, depression, and body image. College-aged students are particularly vulnerable to these associations because they are at a unique developmental point of their life. College-aged students also use social media more frequently than almost any other age group, which may put them at increased risk for negative mental health and body image outcomes related to their social media use. TikTok is a relatively new social media app that has exponentially risen in popularity, especially among younger …

Hydropower Development In South Asia: Data Challenges, New Approaches, And Implications For Decision-Making, Thomas Hennig, Tyler Harlan, Bryan Tilt, Darrin Magee

Urban and Environmental Studies Faculty Works

In recent years scholars have advanced our understanding of the biophysical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical impacts of dams and hydropower infrastructure around the globe. Databases and maps have emerged that allow global comparisons between countries and river basins. However, reliable and freely available data do not exist for many regions. As a result, data limitations and quality issues persist, which limit the quality of analyses based on these datasets. This is particularly true in regions where hydropower infrastructure development is proceeding most rapidly, including South Asia's Third Pole region. We identify and describe serious quantitative and qualitative data dilemmas of existing …

Gender Disparities Present Within The Legal Profession, Olivia M. Sanders

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the problem of gender disparities present within the legal profession in order to discover their causes and ways to mitigate them. Currently, there are a variety of gender disparities in the legal profession. Women are paid less than their male counterparts, are exposed to sexual harassment and violence more often, and receive fewer leadership opportunities, to name just a few of these disparities. While these disparities are documented in larger firms, little data exists on the extent of such issues in smaller firms, especially in the southeastern United States. Accordingly, I interviewed eight individuals with their juris …

Hungry For Student Food Security: A Comparative Analysis Of University Food Pantry Policies, Anastasia Jones-Burdick

Honors Theses

This undergraduate research thesis aims to explore the relationship between public institutions of higher education and the operational policies of their university food pantries. The increasing rates of nontraditional students entering public universities correlate to an increasing population of students facing food insecurity, placing strain on institutional interventions, especially university food pantries (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015; Nazmi et al., 2019, p.2). This research conducted a qualitative comparative case analysis of university food pantry policies and semistructured interviews with pantry informants through a USDA-adapted evaluative framework to understand the evolution of public universities’ interventions (Barale et al., 2017). The …

Analyzing The Unique Role Of Repetitive Negative Thinking On Insomnia In College Students, Lara Fair

Honors Theses

Repetitive negative thinking is a transdiagnostic construct that conceptually covers worry and rumination, which are strongly associated with anxiety and depression. Worry is typically future oriented, whereas rumination is past oriented. RNT has been posited as a causal and maintaining factor for multiple disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and insomnia. The current study aimed to further understand the contribution of RNT in insomnia symptoms, after controlling for anxiety and depression. A self-report battery measuring anxiety, depression, RNT and insomnia was administered to 101 college students. In this sample, 52% of participants endorsed clinical levels of insomnia. Bivariate correlations found …

Key Barriers To University-Enrolled Student Parents Enhanced By The Covid-19 Pandemic, Khadeejah Franklin, Alexa Saval

Honors Theses

Student parents, both undergraduate and graduate, already face the difficult task of balancing their studies and raising children. The COVID-19 pandemic enhanced already present issues student parents face, such as virtual-schooling, daycare costs and closings, staying home with sick children, and potentially not having a local support system, among others. Further, students who are performing laboratory research to fulfill their STEM educational requirements had their
research progress come to a halt when the country locked down. This study aims to identify the struggles student parents faced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, what issues the pandemic exacerbated, and what new problems …

Grit Games: Do Incentives Play A Role?, Kaylee Markham

Honors Theses

Grit is a personality trait defined by persistence in reaching long-term goals despite difficulties (Duckworth, 2021). Angela Duckworth introduced the topic through her research and creation of the grit scale. The purpose of this research was to assess the grit levels of athletic groups at a southern university, using Duckworth’s scale. The hypothesis was that NCAA athletes would have higher grit levels because they have more incentives to gain by persevering through difficult times. The three groups surveyed were Club sports, Esports, and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sports, which have a range of included benefits in their programs. These …