Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Essays In Health Economics, Caroline Andressa Welter

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Health outcomes and access to care are shaped by the interaction between public institutions, administrative rules, and responses to health risk. This dissertation investigates how barriers to access, changes in perceived risk, and policy design influence participation in public programs, preventive health behavior, and  treatment continuation. Across three essays in health economics, I examine how individuals respond to disruptions in service delivery, epidemic exposure, and administrative burden, with a focus on vulnerable populations that depend on public systems of care.
The first essay analyzes the impact of Social Security Administration field office closures on participation in federal disability programs during …

Three Essays On Urban Transportation, Daniel Amorim Souza Centuriao

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Urban environments are shaped by dynamic interactions between infrastructure development, policy interventions, and episodic demand shocks, all of which can generate unintended externalities in the form of motor vehicle collisions, injuries, and fatalities. This dissertation investigates the determinants of traffic safety in dense urban settings, with a particular focus on how different sources of urban activity affect collision risk and severity. Using New York City as a case study and leveraging high-resolution spatial and temporal data, I examine three distinct but interconnected mechanisms: construction activity, traffic safety policies, and large-scale events.

The first chapter analyzes the impact of urban development, …

The Bleeding Edge Of Misogyny: How Gender-Based Harassment And Infrastructural Neglect Shape Menstrual Distress, Mackenzie J. Miller

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Despite growing attention to menstrual health, organizational research has largely overlooked how workplace conditions shape menstrual experiences. Dominant perspectives frame menstruation as an individual issue that negatively affects work, neglecting how features of the work environment – such as gender-based harassment and access to menstrual-related infrastructure – contribute to menstrual distress. Addressing this gap, this dissertation adopts a bidirectional perspective, examining how social and material workplace conditions shape menstrual distress, defined as the extent to which menstrual symptoms interfere with daily functioning. Drawing on the transactional model of stress and objectification theory, I hypothesized that gender-based harassment would predict menstrual …

Bringing Patriarchy To Looksmaxxing: Identification And Exploration Of Strategies To Restabilize The Patriarchy In The Looksmaxxing Community, Mackenzie Grace Freeman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Research literature on looksmaxxing is subsumed under the incelosphere, which is acknowledged as a white and male supremacist space. Yet, researchers fail to attend critically to the structure of patriarchy, choosing instead to base their analyses within the mainstream hegemonic masculinity paradigm. Using a Bourdieusian framework, this project fills a gap in the literature by transcending the mainstream paradigm to explain how the looksmaxxing community uses the body as a site of crisis management in response to patriarchal backlash, with the ultimate goal of restabilizing the patriarchy. This project uses a community-led survey from a popular online looksmaxxing community. This …

The Dual-Factor Model (Dfm) Of Mental Among Appalachian Youth, Mawyah Adel Bashatah

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Background. Adolescent mental health is a critical public health concern, particularly in rural Appalachian communities where rates of depression, anxiety, and substance use exceed national averages and access to mental health resources remain severely limited. Traditional mental health frameworks rely predominantly on the identification and reduction of psychopathological symptoms, neglecting the independent contributions of positive well-being to adolescent risk and resilience. The Dual-Factor Model (DFM) of mental health offers a more comprehensive alternative by simultaneously assessing subjective well-being (SWB) and psychopathology, classifying individuals into four distinct groups: Complete mental health, Vulnerable, Symptomatic but content, and Troubled. Despite the DFM’s growing …

Difficult Tasks And Strained Ties: Irritation As A Mediator For Relationship Quality And Caregiver Distress, Payton Elisabeth Radcliffe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Caregiving, defined as providing regular unpaid assistance to individuals with chronic illness or disability, is a widespread role associated with both societal benefit and psychological strain (Berg et al., 2021; Schulz et al., 2020). Prior research indicates that perceived caregiving difficulty is a key predictor of caregiver distress, though the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear (Blom et al., 2024; Gérain & Zech, 2022). Drawing on the Stress Process Model (Pearlin et al., 1990), the present study examined irritation as a mediator linking perceived caregiving difficulty to relationship quality and caregiver distress, while also testing whether caregiver relationship type moderates …

“Black Students Matter”: A Phenomenological Study Of Black Student Experiences At A Predominately White Institution In Appalachia During The Dual Pandemic Of Covid-19 And Systemic Anti-Black Racism, Toni Owens

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As the spread of COVID-19 escalated into a global pandemic in 2020, simultaneously, the nationwide media in the United States (U.S.) highlighted coverage of the country’s ongoing incidents of longstanding systemic anti-Black racism in America, another pandemic. In the Summer of 2020, a collective of Black students at West Virginia University (WVU) signed and publicly submitted a petition to the university’s leadership with a list of demands to address their needs as they were further exacerbated by the dual pandemic. This study is guided by the question, “What are the lived experiences of Black Students at West Virginia University during …

Effects Of Fluency-Based And Percentage-Based Mastery Criteria On Learning, Maintenance, Application, And Learner Experience In Behavior-Analytic Skill Acquisition, Marisela Alicia Aguilar

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In behavior analysis, staff are often trained to percentage-based criteria to demonstrate that they have mastered a skill. However, percentage-based mastery criteria may not result in long-term maintenance of the skill. In other areas of instruction, fluency criteria resulted in multiple positive outcomes such as maintenance, endurance, and application of the skill beyond the training context, but these outcomes have not yet been widely demonstrated in the context of teaching behavior support plan (BSP) content and implementation. Across two experiments, we attempted to evaluate the extent to which training individuals to a fluency-based or percentage-based criterion resulted in maintenance and …

Acts Of Becoming: A Phenomenological Investigation Into The Lived Experiences Of West Virginia Teacher-Activists, 1990 To The Present, Phillip Elias Howard

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This critical phenomenological dissertation explores the lived realities of becoming a West Virginia teacher-activist. Presenting the experiential accounts of three participants, its semi-structured questions Show the lifeworld forces, inherited (factical) self-identities, and occupational, "on-the-ground" classroom experiences that inspired its research collaborators to assert themselves as unionists and natural teacher-organizers. This dissertation utilizes a collection of Marxian, phenomenological, and post-structural interpretation devices to develop robust, sensemaking themes which reveal the meaning of participants’ lived reflections. It also provides thick descriptions of co-researchers' historic and current political, economic, and socio-cultural backdrops amid West Virginia’s right-wing political realignment of the 2010s, the eternal …

Be A Man: Hypermasculinity And Hostile Attribution Bias As Predictors Of Violence, Kaley Nicole Potter

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In recent years, violence has risen to record-high numbers in communities and correctional facilities, with men perpetrating the vast majority of violent crimes. Hypermasculine values (e.g., power, aggression, and domination) have been linked to aggressive and violent behavior. Hostile attribution bias, which leads individuals to attribute hostile intent to neutral or ambiguous stimuli, has also been linked to aggression.

The current study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine hypermasculinity and hostile attribution bias as predictors of proclivity for violence, comprised of aggression and historical violence. The model was iteratively modified to assess changes in model fit and constructs. Male …

Community Resilience Drives Change, Andrew Thomas Solt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The opioid crisis has impacted many Americans. From 1999 to 2023, approximately 800,000 people have died due to opioid overdose (CDC, 2025). What began as overprescriptions of painkillers has quickly evolved into a complex social health issue that is now further worsened by stronger synthetic drugs like fentanyl. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogs (synthetic opioids that are very similar chemically to fentanyl) are often found in illegal drug supplies and in counterfeit pills (CDC, 2025). Thus, individuals who might have been initially overprescribed painkillers might now be pushed towards illegally produced drugs that are significantly more potent than what they were …

Student And Teacher Perceptions Of Confirming Behaviors Across Instructional Modalities, April Nicole Wright

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examined how undergraduate students and instructors evaluate lowinference teacher confirmation behaviors across instructional modalities and identified additional behaviors perceived as confirming in contemporary instructional contexts. Participants included 274 undergraduate students and 104 higher-education instructors who completed a survey measuring four clusters of confirming behaviors (willingness to engage, recognition, acknowledgment, and endorsement) using a 7-point Likert-type scale. Open-ended questions invited participants to describe confirming behaviors not represented in existing measures. Results indicated that both students and instructors rated most behaviors above the midpoint of the scale, with instructional responsiveness and course organization receiving the highest ratings. Instructors rated all …

How Regulatory Focus Shapes Adjustment And Performance In The Return-To-Office Era: The Roles Of Change Appraisal, Perceived Organizational Support, And Psychological Safety, Karen Jean Morris

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly transformed workplace norms and employee expectations, marking a notable shift towards remote work. As organizations increasingly encourage a return to physical offices, understanding employee adaptation during this transition has become essential. This dissertation leverages Regulatory Focus Theory to explore how employees' promotion and prevention focus influences their adjustment and performance upon re-entering traditional office settings.

A parallel mediation model is proposed, in which Change Appraisal, Perceived Organizational Support (POS), and Psychological Safety (PS) are identified as key mechanisms linking regulatory focus to employee outcomes. The findings may provide evidence that individuals who exhibit a …

Data-Driven Methodologies For Mapping Cultural Heritage: The Case Of The National Coal Heritage Area, West Virginia, Usa, Hossain Mohammad Nahyan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this dissertation was to develop a comprehensive, data-driven spatial framework for characterizing the complex cultural landscape of the National Coal Heritage Area (NCHA) in West Virginia. By transitioning away from traditional, heuristic spatial mapping, this research integrates advanced spatial statistics, machine learning, and GIS-based methodologies to objectively quantify the physical, visual, and cultural dimensions of the post-mining environment. The research is structured around three interconnected empirical studies, each addressing a specific scale of the Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) framework to support heritage conservation and sustainable spatial planning. The first paper focused on landform classification, developing an automated …

Three Essays In Cpi Bias And Health Economics, Auderta Amoako-Nuamah

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first essay estimates bias in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for elderly individuals in the United States using Engel curve methodology and household-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1999–2023). The analysis focuses on how well the CPI reflects changes in the cost of living for older Americans, with particular attention to differences by gender and marital status. Results show that from 1999–2011, the CPI overstated the increase in the cost of living for both elderly and non-elderly households. In contrast, from 1999–2023, the CPI understated cost increases, with the bias generally larger for non-elderly households. Within …