Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Matrilineal Ethnic Affiliation And Female Empowerment: Investigating Attitudes Towards Female Autonomy And Health In Ivorian Households, Martine Hind Stølan

Master's Theses

Kinship structure is a fundamental aspect of anthropology, however, there is still a gap in literature on its impact on economic research, particularly regarding female autonomy and health. This study aims to address this gap by examining the influence of matrilineal ethnic affiliation on attitudes towards female autonomy and health within Ivorian households. Using data from the 2011 IPUMS Demographic and Health Survey for the Ivory Coast, using female responses, this study investigates the complex dynamics shaping attitudes towards female autonomy and access to health care. Analysis on these aspects is done using ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic estimations. …

Does Endogamous Marriage Impact Women's Fertility Gaps In India?, Natalya Francis Schafer

Master's Theses

This study aimed to measure the possible impact endogamous (within-family) marriage practices could have on women's fertility gaps in India. Fertility gap in this study is defined as the difference between the ideal number of children a woman desires and the total number of children born to a woman at time of interview. In many developing countries ,such as India, it is common for women to be overachieving their fertility - having more children than desired. Data from the CIA.gov (2024) shows total fertility rates to be highest in developing areas across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and India. The …

Secrets Of The Medicine Cabinet: How Big Pharma's Information Monopoly Influences Federal Public Health Regulations, Kyle James

Culture, Society, and Praxis

Pharmaceutical companies are the largest industry contributor to political activities in the United States. Instead of pursuing traditional routes of political influence, these firms concentrate their efforts within federal public health agencies. By directly intervening in the regulatory process, Big Pharma assumes control of the drug approval process, dictating the means by which pharmaceutical products enter the marketplace. This scheme is designed to strip agencies of their public interest mandate. The resulting political phenomenon, known as regulatory capture, creates a symbiotic relationship where federal agencies and industry mutually benefit from the swift commercialization of drugs. This thesis examines "how" Big …

Climate Migration In The United States: The Influence Of Natural Disasters, Resource Scarcity, And Perceived Climate Inhospitality, Sam Minard

Culture, Society, and Praxis

Climate change poses an urgent threat that necessitates adaptive strategies, and migration is an increasingly common choice. “Climate migration,” or migration in response to climate change, has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and popular, but has primarily been considered an issue of the Global South. Climate migration in wealthy, industrialized nations such as the United States has been overlooked despite the rising severity of climate change impacts there. This study used content analysis of Reddit posts and comments to examine how the impacts of climate change are influencing migration decisions in the United States. Results showed that individuals migrated or …

Gender And Social Media: Delving Into Young Adults’ Daily Participation On Facebook, Masa Tantawy

Culture, Society, and Praxis

With the prevalence of social networking platforms, it is crucial to study the role that gender plays in its use, for gender, which is continuously shaped by society, plays a critical role in our identities and daily lives. This paper explores how the social construction of gender affects and is affected by social media through discussing the usage of Facebook by young adults, especially Middle Eastern cisgender males and females, and women’s limited freedom on this social networking site in the Arab countries. It is argued that despite individuals having some freedom online compared to offline, their choices, specifically that …

Between Populism And Settler Colonialism: A Us Case Study, Megan A. Morrell

Culture, Society, and Praxis

United States political history is a uniquely populist and settler one. While there is plenty of scholarship on populism and on settler colonialism separately, there is a significant gap in understanding how the political phenomena are connected. To begin to remedy this gap, I argue that particularly in the US political context, populist and settler colonial sociopolitical logics are both historically and theoretically interconnected. Both political phenomena are central to understanding the foundations of American socio-political life. Working in a theoretical-historical mode, I identify five ways in which settler colonialism and populism have intersected, and in the process produce a …

Transition Skills Lab: A Telehealth Intervention For Improving Healthcare Transition In Youth With Special Health Care Needs, Angela Combs, Alaina Linafelter, Jordan Sevart, Michele H. Maddux

Research Days

The goal of this abstract is to evaluate youth skill-building and confidence across health care tasks through the virtual Transition Skills Lab.

Long-Term Physical And Emotional Functioning In Children Following Intensive Interdisciplinary Pain Treatment For Amplified Pain Syndrome, Sabrina Ung, Jacqueline Pabis Phd, Jenny Scheurich Phd, Dustin Wallace Phd

Research Days

The current study aimed to examine the efficacy of pediatric interdisciplinary pain treatment (IIPT) several years after treatment completion by exploring mean-level changes of physical and mental health functioning pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at follow-up 2 to 6 years after IIPT completion.

Exploring The Role Of Pain On Physical Activity Among Youth With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Using The Biopsychosocial Model, Anna E. Van Asselt, Renee Gilbert, Meghan Tokala, Jacee Weber, Meredith L. Dreyer Gillette, Robert C. Gibler, Carolyn R. Bates, Keith August

Research Days

The Role of Pain on Physical Activity in Pediatric ALL

Keywords: Biopsychosocial model, pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, pain, physical activity

Introduction: Engaging in physical activity (PA) during cancer treatment benefits a child’s physical and mental well-being (McLaughlin et al., 2021). However, engaging in PA may be challenging due to treatment and disease-related pain (Uhl et al., 2020). Pediatric cancer research has primarily focused on management of procedural and chronic pain, with fewer studies examining how pain may interfere with PA during treatment (Clews et al., 2022). The current study qualitatively investigated the impact of pain on PA using a …

Euclidean Coordinates Are The Wrong Prior For Models Of Primate Vision, Garrison W. Cottrell

MODVIS Workshop

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are currently the best models we have of the ventral temporal lobe – the part of cortex engaged in recognizing objects. They have been effective at predicting the firing rates of neurons in monkey cortex, as well as fMRI and MEG responses in human subjects. They are based on several observations concerning the visual world: 1) pixels are most correlated with nearby pixels, leading to local receptive fields; 2) stationary statistics – the statistics of image pixels are relatively invariant across the visual field, leading to replicated features 3) objects do not change identity depending on …

Review Of On The Digital Humanities: Essays And Provocations, By Stephen Ramsay, Michelle Lyons-Mcfarland

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations by Stephen Ramsay.

Extreme Image Transformations Improve Latent Representations In Machines, Girik Malik, Ennio Mingolla

MODVIS Workshop

Shuffling pixels in an image helps machines to learn a more robust object representation. To probe the strategies used by humans and machines for object recognition, we introduce Extreme Image Transformations (EITs). Machines rely heavily on exploiting low-level features like color and texture, so their performance degrades on out-of-distribution and adversarial inputs. Humans depend on high-level features like shapes and contours, making them relatively robust to image distortions. EITs systematically shuffle the pixels in an image, parameterized by the size of grids, probability of shuffle and binary block movement, distorting the structure of objects at both local and global levels. …

The Effectiveness Of The Israeli Digital Diplomacy Targeting The Arab Public On Social Media Platforms, Moeen Koa, Hiba Nassar

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

This study assessed the effectiveness of the Israeli occupation state's digital diplomacy directed at the Arab public according to a three-dimensional framework. The study employed content analysis to analyze a sample of posts from two Israeli official pages on Facebook from October 13 to November 13, 2022, based on three dimensions proposed by Bjola and Jiang (2015): agenda-setting, presence-expansion, and conversation-generating. The results showed that despite the effectiveness of the occupying state's digital diplomacy according to these dimensions, the authors see these dimensions as superficial metrics that do not express the efficacy of this type of diplomacy. The high number …

Effects Of A Character Strengths Intervention On Emerging Adults’ Identity Formation, Self-Efficacy, And Self-Doubt, Wen Pin Wong, Kai-Shuen Pheh, Chee Seng Tan

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

This study aimed to determine the effects of a single-session character strength intervention (CSI) on enhancing identity formation and self-efficacy and decreasing self-doubt of Malaysian emerging adults enrolled in tertiary education. A randomized active-controlled trial with a pretest, a posttest, and a 2-week follow-up was performed. A total of 129 undergraduate students (aged 18–25) were randomly assigned to either the CSI or the control group, who participated in a gatekeeper training for suicide prevention. Data from emerging and perceived adults were analyzed separately through a mixed-design analysis of variance. CSI showed no effects on improving emerging adults’ identity formation, self-efficacy, …

This (Dis)Abled Person: Professional Receptiveness Towards Future Slps With Disabilities, Billy Allen

Theses & Honors Papers

With increasing levels of diversity within the United States, having the field of speech-language pathology better reflect and represent the changing demographic shifts in society is critically important. Little attention has been given toward the prospect of individuals with disabilities serving in the field despite focused efforts to increase the presence of professionals from racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. This study investigated the receptiveness of practicing speech-language pathologists (SLPs) or communication sciences and disorders (CSD) graduate faculty towards the prospect of individuals with disabilities working as SLPs within the field or entering graduate-level CSD programs. A survey collecting quantitative data …

Biodiversity Loss & Urban Heat: A Nature- Based Wildlife Policy For The Las Vegas Metro, Zachary Billot

Student Research

As the population of the Las Vegas Metro continues to grow, new developments expand on the periphery. As Las Vegas continues to increase in size and develop further into wildlife habitat, not only are native animals and plants endangered, but residents are at risk of increasingly dangerous urban heat given the increase in impervious cover that makes Las Vegas the 2nd fastest warming metro in the U.S. This policy brief examines current policy and practice in place to highlight the need for positive human-wildlife interaction that will address the growing threat of biodiversity loss and heat vulnerability. This policy brief …

White Matter Trajectories Over The Lifespan, Stefania Conte, Dabriel Zimmerman, John E. Richards

Faculty Publications

White matter (WM) changes occur throughout the lifespan at a different rate for each developmental period. We aggregated 10879 structural MRIs and 6186 diffusion-weighted MRIs from participants between 2 weeks to 100 years of age. Age-related changes in gray matter and WM partial volumes and microstructural WM properties, both brain-wide and on 29 reconstructed tracts, were investigated as a function of biological sex and hemisphere, when appropriate. We investigated the curve fit that would best explain age-related differences by fitting linear, cubic, quadratic, and exponential models to macro and microstructural WM properties. Following the first steep increase in WM volume …

Driving Oer Sustainability For Student Success: Assessing And Acting On The Equity Dimensions Of Oer, Jennifer Mayer, Liliana Diaz

University Libraries Publications

Equity work and open educational resources may seem like an obvious pairing, but how much do we as OER advocates connect these dots and articulate this relationship? The University of Northern Colorado (UNC) was one of five U.S. institutions to receive a grant to pilot the Equity Through OER Rubric. Members (36 higher education systems in the U.S. and Canada) of the Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS3) created the rubric to help define, unpack, and explain the multiple dimensions of equity and foreground the role of OER in closing equity gaps. The final rubric project portfolio includes a …

Exploring Open Education Advocacy: Stakeholder Strategies To Build A Campus Culture Of “Open”, Nancy A. Henke, Molly Jameson, Ethan Roth

University Libraries Publications

Awareness of OER is essential to understanding and implementing open and equitable pedagogical practices. However, what if a campus requires more education about the “what” and “why” of OER to then spark discussions about open pedagogy? And how does an institution build a campus culture of open education when stakeholders have different degrees of investment in its implementation? OER advocacy efforts may differ significantly depending on an individual’s position within the academic hierarchy and their job responsibilities.

This panel featured three different OER advocates – an undergraduate student, a faculty librarian, and a program administrator – as they shared their …

Forest Service Engineering, Lessons And Opportunities, Joe Totten

PSU Transportation Seminars

Working in the Forest Service Engineering has different challenges and benefits than other common organizations for Civil Engineers or Transportation Planners. This presentation should provide a perspective on how we utilize dynamic tensions to reach consensus, how we apply lessons learned across disciplines and agencies, and share opportunities for growth and learning.

Listener Biases Toward Chinese And Latino Instructor Accents: Their Impact On Subjective Evaluations And Objective Memory Measures, Ka Wai Lau

Student Theses and Dissertations

Many people in the United States speak with a non-native accent that reveals their racial identity. Accent bias and discrimination are prevalent issues in many social interactions, including academic and work environments. Past research has argued that foreign-accented speech is generally more difficult to process. The present study aimed to explore the impact of Chinese and Latino accents compared to standard American accents on subjective evaluations and objective memory in a classroom setting. Participants were asked to evaluate speaker competence, trustworthiness, and warmth in math and Western literature lessons and completed a memory test for them. I found that Chinese-accented …

Going Nuclear: Conflict Transformation In Asia, Hariharan Murugesan

Student Theses and Dissertations

On July 16th, 1945, codenamed “Trinity,” the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated, releasing 18.6 kilotons of energy, morphing the sand in the Alamo Desert into green sheet glass.

International relations and its study were fundamentally changed with the creation of nuclear weapons. Mutually Assured Destruction, aptly shortened to MAD became a prevailing theory that tried to explain why countries would acquire nuclear weapons but would never use them; overtime, through various frameworks and treaties, the world tried to control the spread of nuclear weapons, and since 2006, only nine countries have succeeded in creating nuclear weapons, and yet interestingly …

Rebirth: Investigating Industrial Gentrification And Land Use Policy In Chicago's West Loop, Nick Mcgowan

Library Map Prize

The West Loop has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last forty years, having re-developed from an impoverished and declining industrial area to Chicago’s fastest-growing real estate market, the city’s technology center, and a model mixed-use neighborhood. Focusing on the displacement of the area’s industrial base from the late 1980s to the current day, this thesis investigates the changing relationship between the City of Chicago, real estate developers, and local businesses and stakeholders to contend that this ongoing re-development process is a form of gentrification often overlooked in urbanist literature and within the narrative of its own transformation. The West …

Creating Whole Inclusive Worlds: The Impact Of Social Media Usage On Black Gender Expansive Millennials’ Experiences Of Social Support And Identity Development Processes, Meredith J. Holmes

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study explored the processes of finding community and developing one’s own intersectional racial and gender identity through the social media (SM) experiences of 8 Black gender expansive (GE) adults located around the United States. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology and an intersectional theoretical framework, the research questions guiding the study were: “What is the relationship between Black gender expansive people, social media, and community?” and “What is the relationship between Black gender expansive people, social media, and identity development?” The researcher’s findings from in-depth interviews with participants included three major themes: A) Positive Resilience-Supporting Experiences on SM, …

Women And Water: An Art-Based Academic-Community Partnership, Martina Angela Caretta, Bethani Turley

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Women constitute most volunteer water stewards in West Virginia. After having conducted participatory research on the motivations behind women’s engagement with water preservation and restoration work we carried out two participatory art-based activities. In this Practices and Curations, we reflect on these two art-based activities to facilitate networking between researchers and participants and to communicate to the wider public the role of women water stewards. Together with community partners we first organized an icebreaker for women to share a boundary object that signified their connection with water. These boundary objects were subsequently displayed in an art exhibit highlighting women’s connection …

One Tiger, Many Lions: Uneven Adoption Of China's Political And Economic Investment Among Democracies In Sub-Saharan Africa, Tommy Callan

Dissertations

This dissertation examines how unique qualities of democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa and their foreign policy decision making processes affect their ability to exercise state agency. Specifically, democratic qualities affect a state’s receipt of investment from China and how well those investment projects fare once accepted. It is hypothesized that a strong executive branch leads to decreased or inconsistent Chinese investment while a strong legislature may have the opposite effect. A strong executive may also lead to an increased chance of project success while a strong legislature may have the opposite effect. High levels of party contestation may lead to decreased …

Feasibility Of Fit24, A Digital Diabetes Prevention Program For Hispanic Adolescents: Qualitative Evaluation Study, Erica G Soltero, Salma M Musaad, Teresia M O'Connor, Debbe Thompson, Keith Norris, Bettina M Beech

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Digital health interventions are promising for reaching and engaging high-risk youth in disease prevention opportunities; however, few digital prevention interventions have been developed for Hispanic youth, limiting our knowledge of these strategies among this population.

OBJECTIVE: This study qualitatively assessed the feasibility and acceptability of Fit24, a 12-week goal-setting intervention that uses a Fitbit watch (Fitbit Inc) and theoretically grounded SMS text messages to promote physical activity and sleep among Hispanic adolescents (aged between 14 and 16 years) with obesity.

METHODS: After completing the intervention, a subsample of youth (N=15) participated in an in-depth interview. We categorized the themes …

Resilient Af: Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Women Of Color Psychologists In Forensic Mental Health Settings, Carisse A. Cronquist

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored the lived experiences of women of color psychologists who identify as ethnic-racial minorities. This qualitative study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to understand the narrative experience of the participants from their perspective. A total of four participants took part in this study. All participants identified as cisgender women psychologists currently working in a forensic mental health setting and identified as an ethnic-racial minority. In the lived experiences of the participants, three themes, and several subthemes, emerged: challenges, self-preservation, and strengths / resilience. The results showed that women of color psychologists working within forensic mental health settings face …

Exploring The Evolution Of Altruistic Punishment Using A Pde Model For Multilevel Selection, Daniel Cooney

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Perceptual Grouping With Latent Noise, Ben Lonnqvist, Zhengqing Wu, Michael H. Herzog

MODVIS Workshop

Humans effortlessly group elements into objects and segment them from the background and other objects without supervision. For example, the black and white stripes of a zebra are grouped together despite vastly different colors. A thorough theoretical and empirical account of perceptual grouping is still missing – Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), which are considered leading models of the visual system still regularly fail at simplistic perceptual grouping tasks. Here, we propose a counterintuitive unsupervised computational approach to perceptual grouping and segmentation: that they arise because of neural noise, rather than in spite of it. We show that adding noise in …