Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Summer 2025, Georgia Library Quarterly

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Economic Contribution Of 2023/2024 Averaged Nonresident Travel Spending In Montana Travel Regions And Counties, Kara Grau

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

Nonresidents spend over $5 billion in Montana each year. This report looks at the distribution of spending across Montana’s six travel regions, as well as 20 of the 56 counties with the highest spending based on an average of 2023 and 2024 spending data.

Bystanders Intervening During Acts Of Cyberbullying: Examining The Moderating Influence Of “Likes” And Pleas For Help, Joseph Kallman

Student Theses

Abstract

Cyberbullying research has only recently begun exploring “cyberstanders,” also known as bystanders, and their role in cyberbullying, as well as testing the bystander effect (Barlinska et al., 2013; Machackova et al., 2013; Obermaier et al., 2016; Shultz et al., 2014). In the current study, we aim to deepen our understanding of the bystander effect by manipulating the number of likes, which will indicate the number of bystanders present and the plea for help on social media via Twitter among college students, by examining how participants respond to fictitious cyberbullying incidents. The results of this study did not support our …

Don't Settle For Less: Incorporating Postcolonial And Settler Colonial Perspectives Into The Sociological Canon, Eli Xavier Ornelas

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

For decades now, post-/de-/settler-/ and anticolonial scholars have advanced the argument that sociology has largely failed to incorporate critical insights from theories of empire into the sociological canon. In this dissertation, I argue that introduction to sociology textbooks offer an important vantage point from which to assess conventional sociological knowledge as textbooks are often thought to be “reflections of the discipline.” I analyze the social theory and race chapters of 21 of the most often used introduction to sociology textbooks in the United States to investigate two chapters where insights from theories of empire would be present if indeed incorporated: …

Carrying Light In The Shadows: Four Portraits Of Critical Literacy Teacher Agency In Unlikely Contexts, Cassandra Schroeder

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This qualitative study utilizes portraiture methodology to explore how educators in politically conservative and predominantly White schools enact critical literacy teacher agency. Using a theoretical lens of critical literacy and second-wave Whiteness studies, this research examines the lived experiences and instructional moves of four veteran English/language arts teachers. Through cross-case analysis, the study traces how teacher agency is contextually responsive and dependent on their professional identity, awareness of sociopolitical issues, and traditional school curricular expectations. The findings highlight how educators assess risk, navigate community norms, and maintain critical literacy through dialogic pedagogy and strategic adaptation. The four teachers in the …

Rhetorics Of Encounter: Toward A Biocentric Theory Of Discourse, Matthew D. Whitaker

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Encounters with more-than-human identities are transformative moments that stand to affect dispositional and bodily change in individuals. From close brushes with wild animals in National Parks to everyday interactions with local ecologies, encounters invite us to feel and think differently about the nature of our realities. In Rhetorics of Encounter: Toward a Biocentric Theory of Discourse, I draw from interdisciplinary perspectives to disrupt the idea of rhetoric as a representational medium, arguing that rhetoric occurs not just through textual exchanges of words and symbols, but through embodied moments of contact with other responsive beings. Invoking George Kennedy’s theory …

From Classroom To Content Creator: Leadership Practices And Identities Of Female Science Teachers On Tiktok, Rachel M. Benzoni

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This qualitative multiple case study investigates how four secondary science teachers use TikTok to advocate for science education and how content creation shapes their professional identities as leaders. Using interviews and video content with a framework integrating constructivist leadership, Leader Identity Construction Theory (LICT), and the Social Change Model (SCM), findings show participants enacted leadership outside formal roles through distributed and relational practices leveraging social media's affordances. Five themes emerged from the analysis: (1) Reconceptualizing Teacher Leadership on Social Media, (2) Leadership Through Equity-Driven Practice, (3) Constructing and Leading in Online Professional Learning Communities, (4) Forming and Negotiating Identities in …

From Digital Natives To Ai-Natives: Rethinking Assessment And Instructional Design In The Age Of Autonomous Ai Tools, James Lipuma Ph.D., Cristo Leon Ph.D., Yi Meng Ph.D.

STEM for Success Resources

No abstract provided.

My Performance Over Yours: Earned Entitlement, Performance, Luck, And Deservingness In Giving, Andrej Angelovski, Praveen Kujal, Jose M. Ortiz

ESI Working Papers

We study how three widely discussed cues—source of income (merit vs luck), own performance, and information about others’ work status and performance—shape redistribution. Prior to the dictator game, all 306 dictators and most of the 306 recipients complete the same real-effort matrix task in an online experiment that would yield either $4 or $1 for the dictators. In the Performance treatment the dictator’s payoff is based on their performance; in Luck, it is assigned by a 50-50 draw. We find that: (i) Earned entitlement is prevalent for high-performing dictators: they keep more for themselves; (ii) Earned entitlement is conditional …

Front And Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Listening As An Adaptive Practice To Transform Philanthropy, Nitya Venkateswaran, Kate Szczerbacki, Jay Feldman

The Foundation Review

A growing number of grantmaking institutions (GMIs) recognize that listening to communities in which they invest—especially those to, and most affected by, the challenges being addressed—is crucial to achieve their equity goals. Despite investments and intent to listen, there is a gap in implementation.

Genuine listening for equity requires that foundation leaders view the shift as adaptive and not merely technical. A technical change entails adoption of specified methods whereas adaptive changes require a fundamental shift in values and beliefs. Solely implementing new “listening” techniques without shifting values and beliefs could leave gaps between intention and action. But current resources …

The Black Bombers Of Ghana: Sport, Nation-Building And Pan-Africanism, 1958 To The 21st Century, Kenneth Tagoe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ghana’s Amateur Boxing Team, known as the Black Bombers, has impacted the country’s political and socio-economic development since its formation in 1958. This thesis argues that amateur boxing was one of the sports that Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, used to promote nation-building and, more broadly, a Pan-African agenda. The team’s success in international competitions has widely projected Ghana's sporting reputation and reinforced the Pan-African principles of Black pride and excellence in the global athletics arena, and beyond. This thesis traces the origins of amateur boxing and the formation of the Black Bombers, the squad’s participation in international athletics events …

Exercising Sovereignty In The Theater Of Court: How Performative Punishments Has Substitute Law Implementation In The Islamic Republic Of Iran, Nina Maziar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Legality is a modern infrastructure, but when it is combined with the jurisprudence, which is very interpretive and subjective, an amorphous content is merged, which can be shaped for utilitarian purposes; and this is how the arbitrary legal system of Islamic Republic is staged. This unshaped legal system, courts/trials and penal codes, especially political charges are ambiguous contents, baffling the mindsets. This unclear setting is deterministically vague to scare the victim, and the audience with the stagecraft of the court. Sovereignty is defined both in the international affairs regarding the capability of one state ruling a country, but it …

Exploring The Impact Of Generative Ai To Mitigate Educator Burnout, Katie E. Acevedo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how sixth–12th grade educators at a single-gender public school in West Texas perceived the role of generative AI in reducing workload, minimizing stress, and supporting professional autonomy. The study focused on concerns related to teacher burnout and the time demands of instructional and noninstructional responsibilities, exploring how emerging technologies might offer practical relief. The study aimed to understand how educators use generative AI tools and identify both the benefits and challenges associated with their integration. Framed by job demand-resource theory, connectivism, and heutagogy, the research explored how generative AI can function as a job resource, …

Draining Development: The Changing Nature Of Corruption In Post-Independence India, Chandra Tiwari

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The economic growth of emerging economies, particularly India’s, stands at a crossroads as the fight against corruption intensifies. Corruption poses a significant threat to the overall development of a country, necessitating the convergence of technological advances with national and global initiatives to combat the issue. Despite several ongoing efforts taken by international bodies to enforce regulations, challenges persist in curbing this issue due to the fundamental behavioral and structural factors at play. This dissertation investigates the dynamic evolution of corruption within a cash-based economy, a period of trade openness, and the contemporary digitalized age in India through a comparative case …

Language Barriers In Accessing Healthcare Services For Refugees In The United States, Sadaf Khuram

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Accessing healthcare is a pivotal aspect of refugees' integration into their host countries and significantly impacts their long-term health outcomes. The literature emphasizes the critical role of language proficiency in overcoming communication barriers within healthcare settings. This thesis, however, challenges the assumption that addressing language barriers alone is universally sufficient. It argues that the importance of language solutions is context-dependent, varying with the design of healthcare systems and the diverse needs and backgrounds of refugees. In some cases, focusing primarily on language barriers can divert resources from other critical areas, particularly when healthcare facilities have limited capacities or when services …

Peace Engagement And Non-Negotiable Commitment Through An In-Depth Lens [Pencil Theory]: A Film Perspective On Un’S Conflict Resolution, Edward Moses Sam Selvaraj

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The research addresses the effectiveness of the United Nations concerning conflict resolution and peacekeeping, seen from the perspective of film culture. Applying the "PENCIL Theory" (Peace Engagement through an in-depth lens), the UN study along with its structural dynamics would be considered herein: a pencil comprising the Security Council as its lead, world as the eraser, and filmmakers as the ferrule that is representative of that significant link between public awareness and policy impact, and the UN General Assembly and Secretariat as its body in support of the decision-making processes. It brings to the fore the critical impacts on the …

The Trouble With Community Engagement: From Power Sharing To Power Shifting Through The Community Bill Of Rights, Jessica Lee, Patrick Mcneal, Malikah Garner, Katya Fels Smyth, Tanya Tucker, Shemekka Stewart Isaacs, Jasmaine Shaphon Henry, Miranda Rabuck

The Foundation Review

Reflecting a growing consensus that meaningful change doesn’t come without the involvement of those most impacted, funders have signed on to efforts to “listen,” “get proximate,” and “empower.”

In this article, the authors draw on their lived expertise and research to describe how even well-intentioned community engagement efforts can become extractive, tokenizing, and undermine existing community assets. As a meaningful alternative, the authors suggest “centering community” as an orientation to all philanthropic work and the Community Bill of Rights (CBR) as a tool to guide the required change (Black et al., 2022).

Drawing on case examples from healthcare, urban planning, …

Funder Listening To Shift Power: Definitions And Context, Melinda Tuan, Rick Moyers, Gita Gulati-Partee

The Foundation Review

Listening in the context of philanthropy is a common colloquial term that can have many definitions, ranging from everyday conversations that inform foundation work to more formal opportunities for community engagement. Most foundations say they listen, but all forms of listening are not equally beneficial, and listening alone does not inherently advance equity. Listening, done poorly, can be performative and extractive. Listening well, in ways that advance equity, is done in partnership, requires a response from the listener to acknowledge what’s been heard and what will be done as a result, and ultimately shifts power to the community.

Fund for …

A New Opportunity For Funder-Nonprofit Partnership: Advancing Shared Listening Efforts To Learn From Community, Valerie Threlfall

The Foundation Review

Funders lack scalable tools and processes for advancing their community listening efforts. As foundations explore this work, there is an opportunity to leverage the nonprofit sector’s experience in listening and to partner more actively with grantees to learn from community.

Nonprofits have embraced community listening more rapidly than funders over the past 10 years. Over 40,000 organizations have affirmatively described their listening practices via How We Listen, a feedback self-assessment that is part of Candid and Charity Navigator’s nonprofit profiles, and approximately 1,400 organizations have participated in Listen4Good’s capacity-building programs. This momentum has enabled the development of tools such as …

Listening And Responding Lead To Better Outcomes: Building The Evidence Base For High-Quality Listening Practice, Penelope Huang

The Foundation Review

In 2019, Fund for Shared Insight made grants to six research teams to test the hypothesis that if direct-service organizations gain a deeper understanding of how well their programs are serving clients by listening and actively responding to client feedback, they can increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. This body of research explores the case for incorporating participant voice to improve program effectiveness.

As philanthropy seeks to become more responsive to the people and communities most impacted by their decisions, this research has important implications for philanthropic practice, including the selection of grantees, learning in partnership with grantees and community, …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Tfr 17.2 Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Community Engagement: A Core Practice On The Journey To Power Sharing, Elizabeth Jordan, Tryphena A. Clarke, Raquel R. Robinson

The Foundation Review

In this article, the authors posit that equity and power-sharing are foundational considerations for responsible philanthropy given the inherently unequal balance of wealth. These considerations may be magnified for family and place-based foundations where philanthropy has an outsized impact within a particular community.

Community engagement is a core practice tied to equity and power-sharing that can bring philanthropy into closer alignment with democratic and social equity values. This article examines the 15-year journey of a place-based family foundation as a reflection on how grantmaking organizations may shift their governance, giving priorities, staffing model, and operating practices to support the tenets …

Listening And Participation Prime Funders To Honor And Build Community Ownership, Gita Gulati-Partee, Katy Love

The Foundation Review

Funder listening is an essential complement to community participation to disrupt white dominant culture habits that entrench the status quo of hierarchy and power. Community-centered listening, combined with participatory processes, offers funders an opportunity to shift in deep and sustainable ways from an individualistic, “power over” orientation to interdependent relationships with community partners.

In this article, two practitioners of equity and participatory philanthropy share how funder listening and community participation form a potent combination to help funders confront their own power and use it intentionally to honor and bolster community ownership and agency.

Drawing on the authors’ direct experience, this …

Evaluating Efforts To Shift Power Through Listening: Defining Power And Listening To All Sides, Sarah Stachowiak, Juan Clavijo

The Foundation Review

There are a variety of ways funders and nonprofits are trying to shift the power dynamics between those who typically have held it (i.e., funders and organizations) to those who have unique and important expertise: those most affected by the problems the social sector is trying to solve.

In this article, we share lessons from two evaluations that sought to understand how those who were being listened to experienced the listening process, exploring the degree to which people felt heard and their experiences of how, and in what ways, power shifted for them. One evaluation focused on the experiences of …

The Intersection Of Makeup And Recreation: A 21st Century Overview Of Makeup Participation And Its Recreational Benefits, Jason Morgan

All Dissertations

This dissertation critically reconceptualizes makeup participation as a legitimate, multidimensional form of recreation. Through a comprehensive rapid review using the SPIDER framework of 102 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2025, the research investigates whether and how makeup fulfills the psychological, affective, and symbolic criteria of meaningful leisure. Drawing on the Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP) and broader recreation theory, the study positions makeup not merely as aesthetic behavior or consumer habit, but as a sustained, emotionally generative practice embedded in identity, creativity, personal growth, and well-being.

Findings reveal that makeup is consistently linked to confidence-building, emotional regulation, self-expression, and psychological …

Gesture-Based Icon Messages: Examining The Effects Of A Nonverbal Transparency Strategy For Supporting Situation Awareness In Human-Autonomy Communication, Heather Watkins

All Dissertations

Automated systems continue to transform tasks that were once manual, introducing new challenges for operators to maintain situation awareness (SA). This research examines gesture-based icon messages (GIMs) as a transparency strategy to address challenges present in human-autonomy communication (HAC). Drawing from Endsley’s (1995) three-level model of SA, GIMs were designed to convey different types of information: perception, comprehension, and projection. The goal of this work was to understand whether GIMs could be distinguished by operators, and whether they support SA under conditions that reflect the divided attention demands that are common in operational settings. Study 1 focused on assessing whether …

Three Essays In The Economics Of Disagreements: Incentives, Measurement And Persistence, Mustafa W. Alam

All Dissertations

This dissertation presents three chapters that contribute to the study of economic forces shaping disagreements in society.

In Chapter 1, I demonstrate that political polarization can intensify due to innovations in the information market even if a population's ideological distribution is fixed. Viewership-maximizing news firms cater to a diverse audience who assess source accuracy using noisy private signals that vary in precision and ideological bias. If better-informed consumers disproportionately migrate to newer platforms for news (e.g., the Internet), traditional media firms increase news slant to appeal more to less-informed partisans on both sides of the ideological spectrum. This leads to …