Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Stand-Up Comedy Visualized, Berna Yenidogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Stand-up comedy has become an increasingly popular form of comedy in the recent years and comedians reach audiences beyond the halls they are performing through streaming services, podcasts and social media. While comedic performances are typically judged by how 'funny' they are, which could be proxied by the frequency and intensity of laughs through the performance, comedians also explore untapped social issues and provoke conversation, especially in this age where interaction with artists goes beyond their act. It is easy to see commonalities in the topics addressed in comedians’ work such as relationships, race and politics.This project provides an interactive …

Dendritic Spine Density And Morphology In The Dorsolateral Striatum Following A High Fat Diet, Tikva Nabatian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Obesity rates have been dramatically rising in recent years and in 2017-2018 more than 42% of adults in the United States were obese. Obesity is associated with numerous health problems, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, insulin resistance, and type II diabetes. The prevalence of highly palatable and calorically dense foods high in fats and sugars is a significant factor in the increase in obesity rates. Many suggest that palatable food affects the brain in ways similar to drugs of abuse, reinforcing the consumption of highly palatable foods in the same way drugs reinforce drug use. While numerous weight loss programs and …

A Sentiment Analysis Of "Filipinx" On Twitter Using A Multinomial Naïve Bayes Classification Model, Clarisse Taboy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On social media, the use of “Filipinx” as a gender neutral, inclusive term for “Filipino” tends to generate high user engagement, at times without regard for the original context in which the word appears. This project applies computational methods to collect a large dataset in English/Filipino from Twitter containing “Filipinx”, and to train a Naïve Bayes model to classify tweets into three sentiments: positive, neutral, and negative. My methodology takes inspiration from that of four related studies that similarly conducted sentiment analysis on English/Filipino tweets involving various topics, and whose resulting accuracy scores were compared side-by-side. Conducting sentiment analysis on …

The Effect Of Race On Housing Stratification Among Latinos, Julia T. Gomez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Housing discrimination has been an ethical, social, and economic blight on the American society. Among the negative outcomes of this practice are higher crime rates, lower educational attainment, and concentrated poverty. Beyond the moral injustice of this practice, housing discrimination adversely affects the socio-economic mobility of those victimized and this extends across generations. The research on the intersection of race and Latino identity demonstrates the complexity of the issue and suggests that an examination such as done in this study can add to the current knowledge. The purpose of this study was to determine what, if any, association race has …

Race, Gender, Physical Activity, And Cancer: A Quantitative Investigation, Shawna A. Townsend

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black women are more likely to die from cancer than any other population in the United States. Physical activity is known to be associated with preventing and reducing cancer burden. However, Black women are less physically active than their White counterparts and have a higher prevalence of diseases related to lack of physical activity than any other female group. To better understand these issues, this study employed the self-and-family management framework and intersectionality as theoretical frameworks through a secondary analysis of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) dataset and hierarchical regression modeling to examine the relative impact of (a.) …

The Impact Of Utilitarian Public Policies On Minority Communities: A Comparison Of New York City And New South Wales, Australia., Nicholas Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to highlight and critique the ways in which utilitarianism manifests itself in comparative public policy. While public policy studies tend to focus on national levels, cities, and states can also be major sites of theoretical and policy formulation that are adopted globally. The moral ethics that are involved in public policy are especially important because these policies have a direct impact on society. Utilitarianism encompasses the logic of utility maximization: the ends justify the means and the idea that the moral ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the …

Writing The Unwritten: Politicians, Celebrities And Activists On Lebanese Twitter, May Ahmar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the language and orthographic practices of different social groups on Lebanese Twitter. It draws on a specific event in Lebanon, namely the Lebanese presidential elections of 2016. The data, a collection of tweets from three different social groups (politicians, celebrities, and activists) during the month leading up to the announcement of the Lebanese president, delve into the choices of languages, orthographies and spelling that these groups exhibit on Twitter. My analysis shows that politicians use MSA mostly in alignment with their identity, linguistic hegemony and traditional media practices. Celebrities show more flexibility by choosing different languages and …

Fostering Expertise, Confidence, And Passion In Writing Education: How A Common Sense, Nonbinary Education Policy May Serve To Enrich Teachers’ Writing Lives, Shrink The Divide Between Literacy Educators, And Finally Improve Literacy Among New York City Students, Rebecca I. Wallace-Segall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I examine the ongoing youth literacy crisis in New York City and, along with it, two long-standing, opposing education policies—progressive and traditional—that have sought to address it. I argue that resisting dogmatic adherence to one or the other of these approaches, coupled with teacher-centered professional development opportunities that emphasize educators’ reconnection to the personal experience of writing, will improve classroom writing education goals. Over the course of a decade and a half, I co-designed a new educational framework that combines and elaborates upon the strengths of both approaches; over the past year, I co-designed a teacher-centered professional development opportunity for …

Bearer Negotiable Instruments: Addressing A Financial Intelligence Gap And Identifying Criminogenic Weaknesses, Hollis B. Kegg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bearer Negotiable Instruments (BNI) are a long-standing category of financial instruments used to transfer large amounts of money in ways that may not be subject to regulation, reporting, tracking, review, or oversight. There is limited information available on BNIs, and no evidence that any studies have been undertaken on BNIs alone, much less reported. Increasingly, BNIs are being used for illegal purposes including money laundering. This study gathers information about their characteristics, nature, purpose, legal status, and numbers. It also focuses on the crime risks associated with BNIs, the crime opportunities they facilitate, and the criminal weaknesses in the financial …

Confusion Of Tongues: Translation And Transfers Of Attachment In A Post-Monolingual Condition, Hiji Nam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Confusion of Tongues” proposes an intersubjective, dialogic approach to translation, psycholinguistics, and patient and clinicians’ relationships to the “mother tongue” and secondary languages. By tuning in to linguistic and translational shifts, stutters, and gaps, the study presents a consideration of the challenges and rewards presented by what I call a “post-monolingual clinical condition.” An individual’s self-state in a specific language will be shadowed by the emotional history and associations one brings to that language, which will also ripple into the counter-transferential matrix—we might call this the “transference to language,” or attachment styles that manifest and repeat an individual’s forgotten libidinal …

Essays On Entrepreneurship, Yoshiko Oka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the determinants of successful entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial entry. It consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1 estimates the effect of regional concentrations of related industrial firms and business owners' cognitive and non-cognitive traits on their business survival. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the County Business Patterns, I find that incorporated businesses that operate in a location where similar businesses are clustered together have a significantly higher chance of survival. However, the effect of location appears to be insignificant for unincorporated businesses. On the other hand, the results show that businesses that are …

Investigating Key Risk Factors Across Violent And Non-Violent Extremists In The United States, Leevia Dillon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Problem Statement: This study investigated risk factors commonly highlighted by prior studies and risk assessment tools (e.g., Violent Extremism Risk Assessment Version 2 (VERA-2) and Extremism Risk Guidance 22+ (ERG22+)). It compared the risk factors across and within two groups – violent extremists (i.e., jihadists and far-right extremists) and non-violent extremists (i.e., jihadists and far-right financial/material support crime extremists) in the U.S. Jihadists and far-rightists are the two greatest security threats facing the U.S., and the findings can aid counterterrorism efforts on assessment development, identifying effective risk factors across varying groups, and assessing violence risk. Research Questions/Objectives: This study aimed …

Power And Authority In Karl Marx, Niccoló Machiavelli And Thomas Hobbes, Ekim Kilic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The concepts of power and authority have been fundamental to political philosophy and science from the beginning. However, in much recent thinking, power’s central and defining relationship with the state has been called into question. This thesis studies the understanding of power and authority in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Karl Marx, in the context of the emerging trend around the world today of searching for a new social, economic, and political order. It aims to demonstrate how the works of Marx may open a path to rectify the limitations of the traditional thinking of power and …

Neo-Nazi Postmodern: Right-Wing Terror Tactics, The Intellectual Neue Rechte, And The Destabilization Of Memory In Germany Since 1989, Esther E. Adaire

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that from 1989 onwards an increasingly terroristic neo-Nazi underground in Germany became gradually entangled with the reactionary Neue Rechte, whose crusade against the German culture of remembrance is also a crusade against European integration, increased migration, and the conceits of liberal democracy. This entanglement produced an ideologically coherent extreme-right political movement with a heavily armed and tactical paramilitary faction that has, contrary to what various governments of the Federal Republic have wanted to believe, been developing in Germany since the early 1990s. Moreover, tactics of information warfare initiated by so-called “postmodern” terrorists of the 1990s would, by …

Defining Twice Exceptional Learners: A Study Of Self-Concept, Alyssa D. Landau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2014, the first operational definition of twice exceptional (2e) learners was published in Gifted Child Quarterly to provide a clear and identifiable profile of the population (Reis, Baum, & Burke, 2014). The article defines 2e learners as, “students who demonstrate the potential for high achievement or creative productivity in one or more domains such as math, science, technology, the social arts, the visual, spatial, or performing arts or other areas of human productivity AND who manifest one or more disabilities as defined by federal or state eligibility criteria” (Reis et al., 2014, p. 222-223). Publishing an operational definition of …

Social Identity, Scientific Practice, And The Production Of Social Knowledge: An Ethnographic Investigation Of American Social Psychology Laboratories, Donald V. Brown Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social identity has the ability to permeate a multitude of domains in everyday life. Therefore, the science of social psychology—influential due to its impact in education, social and public policy, and the law—rightfully foregrounds the presence of social identity categories in the theorizing and empirical work of the discipline. Many researchers consider social identities such as race and gender to be socially constructed categories. This allows researchers to understand these identities in light of their history, complexity, and relationships to each other. However, the practical application and use of social identities as socially constructed “objects of study” is uncommon in …

Using Bayesian Generalized Structural Equation Modeling To Analyze Latent Agreement, Sydne T. Mccluskey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rater comparison analysis is commonly necessary in the social sciences. Conventional approaches to the problem generally focus on calculation of agreement statistics, which provide useful but incomplete information about rater agreement. Importantly, one-number agreement statistics give no indication regarding the nature of disagreements, nor do they distinguish between agreement on presence versus absence of a state or trait. Latent variable models can address both problems, as well as overcoming other well-documented limitations of agreement statistics (e.g., sample dependence, inappropriate population assumptions). Whether raters exactly agree is usually not the question of interest – researchers almost never care whether the difference …

The Rent Is Too Damn High:The Spatial And Longitudinal Dimensions Of Housing Affordability, Kasey Zapatka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the housing affordability crisis intensifies, I content that the spatial and longitudinal aspects of housing affordability are important dimensions of affordability. While much has been written about the sources and drivers of this new housing crisis, I investigate the impact of space, gentrification, and the life course on affordability patterns. I specifically address questions about the (1) role of space in shaping affordability patterns, the (2) impact of gentrification on neighborhood and household affordability, and (3) the trajectory of affordability over the life course. Broadly, I find that neighborhoods that are gentrifying in 2013 see increased affordability in 2019, …

A Race-Police Regime: Nypd Technology And Urban Governance In New York City, Elliott Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation draws on three years of ethnographic and archival research to explore the relationship between technology, policing and race at the NYPD. In focusing on the ways problems are constructed and police power enacted, I explore the more-than-human entanglements in the production of race and the governance of cities under racial capitalism. My overarching claim is that urban governance works through contentious techno-political arrangements I call race-police regimes, which sanction and elicit race by enacting forms of exclusion and belonging. Racial capitalism in New York City, I argue, is governed through a technocratic mode of policing which leverages …

The Bracero Program And The Exploitability Of Migrant Workers, Kayla E. Dantona

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the exploitability of migrants working in the United States. Historically, the United States government has emphasized the economic utility of migrant workers, while ignoring their basic human rights. Policymakers have viewed these people as a disposable work force and seek to control them by generating widespread fear of deportation, racialized segregation, discriminatory treatment, and with the help of governing and policing entities willing to turn a blind eye to these injustices, as long as they continue to profit financially.

This thesis will look at the Bracero Program with a historic lens to exemplify the system of exploitation …

Type Of Glossing Affects Cognitive Load And Retrieval Of Meaning During L2 Reading, Camilo Andrés Bonilla Carvajal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The use of translation in language teaching has been a source of controversial debate, nevertheless, glossing—and, specifically, interlinear glossing—remains an understudied type of materials, despite having been used by learners and teachers of foreign languages since at least 1000 C.E. (Bata, Gwara & Porter, 1997). In the absence of a comprehensive literature review tracing the history of interlinear glossing, as well as the absence of enough empirical studies addressing the effect of glossing on cognitive effort in language learning, the present work aims at exploring the role of first language glossing in facilitating reading by describing the results of an …

Women’S Self-Nomination For Leadership Development Programs (Ldps): Gender, Personal Cultural Values, And The Mediating Role Of Leadership Self-Efficacy, Alessa Natale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Organizations are looking for ways to increase representation of women in leadership and leadership development programs (LDPs). Traditionally, individuals are nominated for entry into these programs, which can result in bias against groups generally underrepresented in leadership. In response, firms may consider using a self-nomination model for entry, whereby individuals submit themselves for consideration for an LDP. However, scant research has focused on the implications of utilizing such a process.

The current work provides a first step towards filling this gap by examining gender and cultural differences in LDP self-nomination. Drawing from the proactive behavior literature, the present study examined …

Language And Conjuncture In Populist Strategy: Podemos And Contemporary Spanish Political Thought, Francisco J. Fortuño Bernier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent times, emergent political movements have sought to construct a project of political renewal based upon the search for such a new language, renaming and rewording both the political world and their own traditions. One such is the Spanish political party Podemos, whose sudden rise and success has already made it a referent for contemporary radical politics. This group has articulated a political strategy based upon what I call a politico-linguistic conjecture: the idea that an effective political strategy is dependent on finding the right words for the moment, on an appropriate fit between conjuncture and discourse. The production …

Finding Autonomy Under The Russian Bear: Explaining Central Asia’S Response To The Invasion Of Ukraine, Ryan Hitch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was one of the most important geopolitical events of the 21^st century, which will have lasting effects on the international community. While the responses of the United States and Europe to Russia’s invasion have been extensively covered, the response of Central Asia has received relatively less attention. Russia’s extensive investments in multilateral regional organizations and Central Asia’s heavy reliance on Moscow for security and economic assistance should predict that Central Asian states would bandwagon with Russia. However, the region has thus far remained officially neutral towards the war and certain states are openly antagonizing …

Environmental Drivers Of Dispersal In Black-And-White Ruffed Lemurs (Varecia Variegata), Amanda Mancini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dispersal is a fundamental aspect of primates’ lives, influencing population connectivity through gene flow, driving community structure and assembly, and having important consequences for adaptation and speciation. Primates disperse within an environmental context, with both intervening and local environmental factors affecting the motivation, capacity, timing, and success of dispersal at all phases. Direct evaluations of primate dispersal are challenging given the rarity of dispersal events and the large distances that animals often settle from their departure site, therefore indirect measures– such as the use of population genetic data– are more common.

The field of landscape genetics enables researchers to combine …

The Impact Of Overseas Study Experiences On Chinese Students’ Attitudes Toward The United States, Xufeng Fang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The extent to which overseas study experiences increase Chinese students’ positive attitude toward the United States has triggered debates because of Chinese government’ overwhelming influence on Chinese students studying overseas, the instability of U.S.-China relations and the especially complex characteristics of Chinese students’ attitudes themselves. I will use value theory, belief system theory, and self-categorization theory to explain the unstable character of these attitudes, and the important roles of values and identity that determine attitudes’ change. After making three key hypotheses based on these theories, this paper conducts a survey on three groups of Chinese students both in China and …

Extremism In America: Explaining Variations In Ideologically Motivated Fatal Violence, Celinet Duran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses data from the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) to assess the nature of extremist violence between left-wing, far-right and al-Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) inspired ideological fatal violence. It extends the empirical literature on extremist violence in three significant ways by: (1) expanding an existing database to provide a comparative component that is both timely and policy-relevant and conveys a more complete picture of the nature of domestic extremism in the U.S.; (2) systematically comparing extremist violence across the left-wing, far-right and AQAM ideologies to better assess the nuances of extremist violence; and (3) applying empirical …

Social Impacts Of Robotics On The Labor And Employment Market, Kelvin Espinal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Robotics have been introduced into the workplace to perform tasks that human beings have traditionally fulfilled. Complementing or substituting human labor with robotics eliminates human involvement in functions attributable to hazardous environments, heavy lifting, toxic substances, and repetitive low-level tasks. On the other hand, they are meant to be more efficient and cost-effective, saving money, time, and labor. However, since the introduction of robotics in the workforce, societal opposition has been towards this branch of technology in fear of losing employment, wages, and purpose.

Previous studies have reported an overarching societal fear that adopting robotics in the workplace and industry …

Fostering Student Connection To The Library: Personal Librarians And Fye, Loren Mixon, Tracy Conner

Library Faculty Presentations

Have you considered incorporating a personal librarian program into your First Year Experience Program but are concerned about your small staff size, smaller institution or the process of collaboration between the library and FYE programs? Through the experiences of a staff of two librarians at Kankakee Community College, participants will leave the session with strategies for implementing a personal librarian program in partnership with a required FYE course. Learn how to retain students and reduce library anxiety through a program that values individual student connection over content and centers the library as a supportive space.

Classification Analysis Of Southwest Pacific Tropical Cyclone Intensity Changes Prior To Landfall, Rupsa Bhowmick, Jill C. Trepanier, Alex M. Haberlie

Faculty Publications

This study evaluates the ability of a random forest classifier to identify tropical cyclone (TC) intensification or weakening prior to landfall over the western region of the Southwest Pacific Ocean (SWPO) basin. For both Australia mainland and SWPO island cases, when a TC first crosses land after spending ≥24 h over the ocean, the closest hour prior to the intersection is considered as the landfall hour. If the maximum wind speed (Vmax) at the landfall hour increased or remained the same from the 24-h mark prior to landfall, the TC is labeled as intensifying and if the Vmax at the …