Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Part 4: Death And Dying In Virginia, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

Death and taxes may be inevitable, but where we die is usually not a topic of public policy or discussion. Hospice care is the specialized treatment that provides support and comfort to patients who are terminally ill with a general life expectancy of six months or less. In this chapter, we take a close look at serious disease and hospice care in the United States and Virginia. We examine the demand for hospice care by Medicare beneficiaries as well as the changing nature of hospice care suppliers as now more than two-thirds of hospices nationwide operate as for-profit entities. We …

2023 State Of The Commonwealth Report, Vinod Agarwal, Aliou Ousmane Ba, Barbara Blake, James V. Koch, Ria Kolarao, Feng Lian, Anna Makhorkina, Melody Nguyen, Terry Parker, Mohamed Rahoui, Panagiotis Taoulas, Robert D. Mcnab

State of the Commonwealth Reports

This is Old Dominion University's ninth annual State of the Commonwealth Report. While it represents the work of many people connected in various ways to the University, the report does not constitute an official viewpoint of Old Dominion, its president, Brian Hemphill, Ph.D., the board of Visitors, the Strome College of Business or the generous donors who support the activities of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.

Our work seeks to contribute to the conversation about how Virginia can foster growth across the Commonwealth without glossing over the challenges we face. Instead of retreating into partisan enclaves where …

Information And Communications Technology Within Coastal Resilience Frameworks: A Multi-Phase Model To Guide Cross-Sector Planning, Ren-Neasha Blake Gilmore, Wie Yusuf

College of Business (Strome) Posters

This research examines how information and communications technology (ICT) has bolstered coastal resilience efforts across multiple sectors in coastal areas. Coastal vulnerability can be considered a wicked problem in society. Wicked problems are hard to define and solve and have broad social, economic, and environmental impacts. When dealing with wicked problems, planners have no right to be wrong since the outcomes can be detrimental and far-reaching. A closer look at coastal areas like those in coastal Virginia and the Caribbean highlights the constant need for policy and strategy toward feasible resilience solutions. Cross-sector partnerships and cross-disciplinary efforts are proven effective …

Diving Below The Surface: A Layered Approach To Teaching Online Source Evaluation Through Lateral And Critical Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

As online environments have in many ways changed how information (including misinformation) is created and distributed, many educators have recognized a need for teaching new strategies for evaluating online sources for credibility and potential bias. Educators like Mike Caulfield and research groups like the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) have stressed the need for “lateral reading,” a habit of fact-checking when initially evaluating a source. When reading laterally, a person doesn’t spend extensive time initially examining what a source says about itself; instead, they quickly move off of the site in question to look at what others have said about …

Personalizing A Librarian: Support For A Problem-Based Learning Medical Campus, Mercedes Byrd, Charles J. Greenberg

Libraries Scholarship

Background

The Rowan-Virtua University School of Osteopathic Medicine opened a second campus in Sewell, New Jersey, to serve a planned increase of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) students and integrate them with clinical care at the new campus. In order to better serve the students and faculty, the new librarian researched how to best engage a cohort of 72 new PBL medical students, as well as 1^st and 2^nd year PBL students on the main campus as well.

Objectives

The main objective of ensuring the students, faculty, and staff on campus viewed the library as an integrated resource with their …

Life In Hampton Roads Report: The 14th Annual Life In Hampton Roads Survey, Randy R. Gainey, Jesse Richman, Tancy Vandecar-Burdin, Wendi Wilson-Smith, Mackenzie Kibler, Nana Boateng, Caylin Smith

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[From the Executive Summary]

The Social Science Research Center (SSRC) at Old Dominion University (ODU) is pleased to present the results from the 14th annual Life in Hampton Roads (LIHR) survey. The purpose of the survey was to gain insight into residents’ perceptions of the quality of life in Hampton Roads. Surveys this year were completed over the telephone as they were last year and prior to 2020. Less than two-thirds of respondents rated the quality of life in the region as excellent or good (62.3%). This is lower than last year (69.3%) and is lower than most previous non-COVID …

Quisqueya In Borinquen: A Socioeconomic Profile Of The Dominican Population In Puerto Rico, 2023, Ramona Hernandez, Francisca L. Rivera-Batiz, Sidie S. Sisay

Publications and Research

This research report provides a comprehensive analysis of the current socioeconomic status of the Dominican population in Puerto Rico, examining changes over time using data from the U.S. Census for Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rico Community Survey.

The Grateful Leader: Using Gratitude Mindset To See Victory, Serve In Love And Lead In Peace, Lexus Potts

Doctor of Strategic Leadership (DSL) Capstone Abstracts

The Grateful Leader is a book manuscript. Every leader experiences a particular adversity that tests them to their limits, and it is in that place that they learn who they are and who they want to become. A leader's mindset can help or hinder them as they face adversity. We don't have a choice in what challenges or hardships come to us in life, but we do have a choice in how we respond to them. Gratitude is a tool that can increase resilience to empower leaders to overcome challenges with grace, hope, and confidence.

In The Grateful Leader, I …

Updated Perspectives On Linking School Bullying And Related Youth Violence Research To Effective Prevention Strategies, Dorothy L. Espelage, Susan M. Swearer

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Bullying, a subset of aggression, has been an international focus of scholarship for several decades and has been declared as public health concern globally (Espelage, 2015; Hymel & Espelage, 2018; Kann et al., 2018). An abstract literature search with the terms “adol*” and “bully*” yielded 382 peer-reviewed journal articles from 2001 through 2010, and an astounding 1585 articles from 2011 through 2020.

Within the last decade, there has been a concerted effort among scholars to reach a consensus on how bullying should be defined, operationalized, and assessed, how it differs from other forms of aggression (e.g., dating violence), and how …

Integrated Vs. Specialized Farming Systems For Sustainable Food Production: Comparative Analysis Of Systems’ Technical Efficiency In Nebraska, Maroua Afi, Jay Parsons

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Complementarities between crops and livestock production have the potential to increase input use efficiency and maintain a diversified livelihood. This paper uses non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the technical efficiency (TE) of integrated crop–livestock systems (ICLS) compared to specialized cropping and specialized livestock systems in the state of Nebraska, in the central United States. We classify each county of Nebraska into one of three systems according to their dominant agricultural production revenues. We use DEA to measure the TE of each county compared, first, to a group production frontier (in-system comparison) and second, to a metafrontier (cross-system comparison). …

Nebraska Child Care Market Rate Survey Report 2023, Alexandra Daro, Greg W. Welch, Venessa Bryant

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 was reauthorized with renewed emphasis on the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program, which seeks to provide equal access to quality child care for families. The CCDF program is necessary to ensure children from families with lower income have the opportunity to experience stable, high-quality early experiences while their parents experience a pathway to economic stability. A primary goal of the CCDF program is to ensure that families with lower income receive CCDF funds to help them access quality child care in the same manner as families that …

Profiles Of Well-Being Among Early Childhood Educators, Amy M. Roberts, Alexandra Daro, Kathleen C. Gallagher

Buffet Early Childhood Institute Reports and Publications

Research Findings: This study used a person-centered data analytic approach to identify distinct subgroups of early childhood educators (n= 133) based on their responses to multiple indicators of well-being (psychological, financial, and health indicators). Various fit indices established a two-class solution. Specifically, one group was characterized by more positive well-being and the other by less positive well-being. Subgroup differences were the greatest for indicators of psychological well-being, including self-care and self-compassion. In addition, educators with less than a bachelor’s degree, working as assistant teachers, receiving less pay, with more adverse childhood experiences, were overrepresented in the less positive …

Considering Vaccination Status, Govind C. Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

"This Article examines whether policies—sometimes termed “vaccine mandates” or “vaccine requirements”— that consider vaccination status as a condition of employment, receipt of goods and services, or educational or other activity for participation are legally permitted, and whether such policies may even sometimes be legally required. It does so with particular reference to COVID-19 vaccines.

Part I explains the legality of private actors, such as employers or private universities, considering vaccination status, and concludes that such consideration is almost always legally permissible unless foreclosed by specific state legislation. Part II examines the consideration of vaccination status by state or federal policy. …

E2: Equity And Excellence Framework, Adrienne Coleman, Traci Ellis

Publications & Research

Both the United States and the United Nations have identified, examined, and put out a call to action to address the educational inequities that have disproportionately and negatively affected racially minoritized students, as well as those from a lower socioeconomic background, and poorer countries. Data from the Nations Report Card and the Global Monitoring Report provide evidence of disparities in academic performance and access to equitable educational resources. The outcome of these inequities impacts countries throughout the world, as their residents will not possess the skills and knowledge to thrive in a rapidly evolving global society, nor possess the critical …

Game On!: Creating Community And Engagement Through Team Trivia At The Library, Margaret Mcguire, Jennifer Pate

Collier Library and Information Services

This article details how Collier Library and Information Services at the University of North Alabama developed an engaging and collaborative team trivia program for their campus community. This program, originally planned as a single event, has grown into an almost monthly series of competitive, hilarious, and raucous student trivia throwdowns. The paper details how each event is structured, including registration, advertising, game design, and assessment. Also addressed is the staffing necessary to make the event work smoothly and how they have included student workers in the process, and how collaboration with campus partners has benefited the program as well.

Read, Write, And Publish: Creating Oer For Fye, Jennifer Pate, Derek Malone

Collier Library and Information Services

No abstract provided.

Identifying Always-The-Same-Rating Reviewers On Amazon.Com Using Big Data Analytics, Jikhan Jeong

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study identifies "always-the-same-rating" reviewers (ASRs), that is, reviewers who give the same star rating for all reviewed products and who write many reviews on Amazon. This study identifies ASRs in 29 product categories by analyzing 230 million individual reviews on Amazon. The findings of this study show that: 1) all product categories contain reviews written by ASRs; 2) the majority of ASRs (99.99%) give the same star rating for all reviewed products in all categories; and 3) the rating distribution of ASRs' reviews is extremely skewed toward the five-star rating (98.02%). The digital music category, in particular, shows a …

Are Debt-Holders Effective Monitoring Agents In Strategic Alliance Formations?, Malika Chaudhuri, Jay J. Janney

International Review of Business and Economics

When undertaking strategic alliances, managers face a fundamental choice to pursue alliances that allow them to exploit the value of current firm assets or alliances that allow them to explore new trajectories for the firm. To answer this question, we tested our proposed theoretical framework using 652 US-based publicly traded pharmaceutical firms between 1990 and 2012. Findings suggest that exploitation alliances have higher impact on firm performance in the short and long run than exploration alliances. Consistent with the debt overhang problem presented by Myers (1977), our findings confirm that high-leverage firms have a higher inclination toward exploitation alliance formations …

Building Inclusive Libraries One Step At A Time: Kindness, Equity, And Candidate Experiences In Hiring, Annie Bélanger, Sarah Beaubien, Preethi Gorecki

Presentations

Have you ever wondered if the interview process could be a kinder, more accessible experience anchored in equity that is ultimately meant to develop connections? Would you like to critically examine practices in the hiring process to ensure empathy for applicants going through the process? In taking a closer look at our own practices, we made significant improvements to our processes, which have led to a more positive experience for candidates and our organizational outcomes. Each component of the hiring process can be centered in equity and accessibility. It is key to ensure that each stage contends with bias, both …

Nasis 2023: Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey Questionnaire, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS)

No abstract provided.

Modeling The U.S. Firearms Market, Topher L. Mcdougal, Daniel Montolio, Jurgen Brauer

School of Peace Studies: Faculty Scholarship

We estimate the first econometric model of the national civilian firearms market in the United States (1946–2016), where per capita firearms-related harm is exceptionally high. Solving simultaneous equation models instrumented by natural disasters and steel prices, and employing unique firearms prices and quantities data, we find this market operates normally, except that firearms stocks may generate some new market demand in a positive feedback loop. Save for the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994–2004), federal firearms legislation does not influence firearms sales. We find that violent crime, including homicide and mass shootings, boosts domestic sales.

The Perceptions, Barriers, And Facilitators To Seeking Mental Health Help In College Student-Athletes (Pbas-Mh And Pfas-Mh): A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study, Margaret Hunt

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Through the COVID-19 pandemic, 1 in 10 NCAA student-athletes reported feeling so depressed it has been difficult to function (NCAA, 2020). Despite this, student-athletes are significantly less likely to seek mental-health help than their non-athlete peers. The present study sought to develop and validate the Perceptions of Barriers to Seeking Mental Health Help in Student-Athletes (PBaS-MH) and the Perceptions of Facilitators to Seeking Mental Health Help in Student-Athletes (PFaS-MH) surveys in college student-athletes, as well as determine predominant barriers and facilitators they experience with seeking mental health help. A convergence mixed-methods research design was conducted to triangulate results. The surveys …

My Encounters With Paradise: The Evolution Of Natural Beauty And Luminist Aesthetics In Central Florida, Jeremy Laplanche

Honors Program Theses

Historically, the marshes and swamps of Central Florida have been depicted as a paradise in artwork by naturalists such as William Bartram and Luminist landscape painters like Martin Johnson Heade. Today, the image of Florida’s tourism centers around theme parks and beaches. However, state parks in Central Florida preserve and restore unique ecosystems. This thesis analyzes the effectiveness of Wekiwa Springs State Park and Blue Spring State Park’s management practices for maintaining the Luminist and naturalist aesthetics. Previous research has identified the role of landscape paintings, particularly from the Hudson River School and the American West, in establishing America’s appreciation …

Examining The Effects Of 9/11: How Did This Event Define How We Described And Treated Terrorism?, Kristeana Nevaeh Banks

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

This paper seeks to examine how the American public defined terrorism after the September 11th Attacks. At this time there is much discourse on the response to the September 11th Attacks with the war on terror, and the war’s effect on both American society and the global community Because of that, this paper takes a step back from simply examining policy to see how the definition formed of terrorism influence the American political view of terrorism, and how it compares to the view of terrorism after the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Through the use of qualitative and quantitative data from Congressional …

To Open Or Not To Open: Exploring Factors Influencing Faculty Engagement, Jessica Kirschner, Jose Alcaine, Sergio Chaparro, Nina Exner, Hillary Miller, Preeti Kamat

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Open practices enable increased access to scholarly outputs by removing financial, legal, and technological barriers. However, widespread faculty engagement is still low. Our interdisciplinary team undertook a pilot study to identify those barriers and evaluate their relative influence on faculty decisions to either publish in an open access journal or customize or create an open educational resource (OER). This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed method research design, featuring a web-based survey and follow-up interviews and focus groups to elaborate on responses. The team hopes to use the analyzed data to identify and recommend potential pathways to increase faculty engagement …

Viewing Porn In Academic Libraries: Critiquing Arl Member Library Policies, M. Teresa Doherty, Jennifer Stout

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

We reviewed Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member library policies about viewing legal online pornography in their spaces. In our review of more than 100 policies, we discovered that they were more ambiguous than expected. We discuss how our research can help inform policy review for your library and support library staff.

Moving From Craap To Act Up As A Source Evaluation Tool!, M. Teresa Doherty

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Tired of teaching CRAAP (currency / relevance / authority / accuracy / purpose) as a source evaluation method as part of your information literacy lesson plan? Consider transitioning to ACT UP instead! ACT UP (Author | Currency | Truth | Unbiased | Privilege) incorporates the concept of privilege in publishing into the conversation, and encourages students to discover and share the work of often overlooked researchers in their own work. Includes a variety of links to site where researchers who self-identify as women, Black/POC, or LBGTQ share their publications.

Culturally Responsive One-Shots Flowing From Institutional Data, Hope Y. Kelly Phd

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Explore how aggregated institutional data can inform culturally responsive instructional design and delivery through a case from a public, urban, minority-serving institution.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Office of Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success annually shares a “Freshman Profile” that helps instructors gain insight into the student population we see in our library instruction sessions. This descriptive data paints a general picture of our first year students while maintaining individual privacy. This information is used to design and develop culturally responsive one-shot instruction that is in dialogue with race, gender, economics, family educational experience, academic preparedness and motivation, and social factors. …

A Machine Learning Approach To Deepfake Detection, Delaney Conrad

All Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The ability to manipulate videos has been around for decades but a process that once would take time, money, and professionals, can now be created by anyone due to the rapid advancement of deepfake technology. Deepfakes use deep learning artificial intelligence to make fake digital content, typically in the form of swapping a person’s face in a video or image. This technology could easily threaten and manipulate individuals, corporations, and political organizations, so it is essential to find methods for detecting deepfakes. As the technology for creating deepfakes continues to improve, these manipulated videos are becoming increasingly undetectable. It is …

How Masculinity Beliefs Impact Lgbtqia+ Relationships, Louise Leonard

Holster Scholar Projects

This research study looked at the masculinity beliefs of individuals within the LGBTQIA+ community and whether they were associated with participants’ relationship satisfaction. 85 participants completed questions from the Male Role Norms Inventory-Revised (MRNI-R) to determine their masculinity beliefs and the Couples Satisfaction Index (16-item version) to measure relationship satisfaction. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, correlation, and regression analysis. Our research hypotheses were that LGBTQIA+ individuals will have a low MRNI-R score (indicating less traditional masculinity beliefs) and that a lower score on the MRNI-R would correlate with higher relationship satisfaction. Our hypotheses were partially supported. Participants …