Public Policy Commons^™

Lincoln Vital Signs, 2022 Report (Version 1.2), Stacey Hoffman, Alyssa Sloane, Taylor Smith

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Executive Summary

Since 2014, Lincoln Vital Signs, authored by the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center, has been a community-wide data resource. The 2022 Lincoln Vital Signs report is sponsored by Lincoln’s and Nebraska’s largest public and private charitable organizations. Lincoln Vital Signs 2022 continues the tradition of providing credible, reliable information about Lincoln, compared to its recent past and to other communities in the United States. Data from the report are used by organizations and individuals to inform decisions, spark connections, and spur collaboration. You can view the report, along with new interactive graphs, at https://www.lincolnvitalsigns.org. Lincoln Vital …

Resource Development For Mission Achievement In Tanzania’S Rural Ngos, Aine Onesmo Robert Mushi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Failure of most rural-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Tanzania to accomplish their mission objectives effectively is a challenge that impacts most of the rural population. Researchers have yet been able to establish what resource development strategies could help rural-based NGOs accomplish their mission objectives. The purpose of this study was to examine resource development measures and management activities currently implemented by local NGOs in a rural district of Tanzania for mission achievement. The resource dependence perspective was applied to frame the research questions on what resource development measures and management activities support the local rural-based NGOs to achieve their mission …

An Examination Of Small And Midsize Defense Business Corporate Lobbying, Gene Moran

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Large companies lobby U.S. Congress in more significant numbers than small companies and gain a clear advantage in funding acquisitions. But little is known about what conditions influence or disincentivize small and midsize businesses, those with revenues of $5 million to $1 billion, from participating in congressional lobbying. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the gap in the research literature by focusing on small and midsize defense company executives who address the conditions surrounding congressional lobbying. The study’s theoretical framework was Benet’s polarities of democracy, emphasizing polarity relationships of participation and representation and diversity and equality. The …

What Are The Barriers Experienced By Self-Represented Litigants In Civil Court?, Darwin Fitzgerald Rice

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Judiciary Act of 1789 permits parties to plead and manage their cases personally or by a defense counsel. The legal provision laid the foundation for self-representation guidelines adopted by the courts. Despite self-representation becoming widely accepted in the legal system, there is limited understanding of the barriers faced by litigants. John Rawls’ theory of Justice written in 1971 guided an in-depth analysis of these experiences. The theory states that with the subject of justice things are just or unjust. With the need to answer the research questions that sought to explore the lived experiences of self-represented litigants, attorneys, and …

Cosponsorship Networks In The U.S. Congress: Measuring The Success Of Female Legislators, Brian Jewett

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Previous scholarship has demonstrated that minority group members in the United States Congress generally are more supportive and collaborative within and beyond their respective groups compared to their majority group counterparts (Craig et al., 2015; Rouse, Swers and Parrott, 2013). In some cases, increased levels of collaboration positively influence legislative success and in others they do not, the results often depending on the characteristic of the group itself and the institutional setting within which the group operates. Additionally, prior studies within the domains of social network analysis and legislative behavior have shown that certain social network measures within a legislative …

Climate Trailblazer Or Corporate Giveaway: An Economic And Political Evaluation Of Cap-And-Trade In California, Benjamin Reicher

Pomona Senior Theses

In this thesis, I conduct an economic and political analysis of California’s cap-and-trade program, the leading national (and international) example of a market-based strategy to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. I evaluate the program on several economic and political measures of success, especially as contrasted with the performance of various regulatory policies that California also relies on to meet its emissions reduction targets. These regulations exemplify a command and control approach to emissions mitigation as opposed to a market-based approach, and indeed tend to be favored by grassroots activists who may be skeptical about market-friendly policies; my thesis seeks to …

Looking To The Future Of Wildlife Conservation: Durable Wildlife Policy For The 21st Century, Charlie R. Booher

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildlife conservation in the United States was built by the dollars of consumptive users. Monies from the sale of hunting licenses, as well as excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery tackle through the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (PR), currently fuel a complex system of wildlife conservation via multiple levels of government. However, the number of hunters in this country is rapidly declining, the sale of firearms and ammunition is increasingly unrelated to hunting, and contemporary consumers tend to express different values than traditional hunters. These changes pose significant challenges of relevancy and funding to state and …

Mitigating And Adapting To Climate Change: Solutions For The Tourism Sector In Egypt/ التخفيف والتكيف مع تغير المناخ: حلول لقطاع السياحة في مصر, Marwa Elghoubashy, Saleh Elghamrawi, Noha Elbalky, Asma Salama, Mohamed Elshazly

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

Climate change is soon becoming an unescapable challenge for many countries, Egypt included. Severe weather events are becoming more and more frequent and developing countries are expected to be more vulnerable to their effects. Tourism is considered one of the most vulnerable sectors affected by climate change, not only due to risks to marine life coastal communities, but also because changes in temperatures are expected to affect tourists preferred destinations. This is especially challenging for Egypt given that Tourism contributes up to 15% of GDP, is one of the countries’ main sources of foreign currency, and employs more than 10% …

Mitigating The Impact Of Climate Change On Egyptian Cities: Sustainable Building And Construction As A Strategy/ التخفيف من أثر تغير المناخ في المدن المصرية: استراتيجية البناء والتشييد المستدام, Mina Abdelmelek, Sahar El Ghandour, Sahar Ibrahiem, Tasneem H. Madi, Zeinab Nadeem

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

Egypt faces a wide range of challenges, including the high increase in population, the Nile water crisis, desertification and the issue of solid waste and encroachment on agricultural lands, and the current negative impacts of the natural and built environments. The construction sector consumes 28% of the total energy produced in Egypt. The high energy consumption and rise in energy prices along with the aforementioned issues are few of several key factors that urge the need to study how consumed energy could be reduced in the construction sector and consequently limit the sector’s impact on the environment (Navigant Energy Germany …

African American Men’S Experiences With Reentry Programs With Employment And Wraparound Services, Trelles Evans

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem that was addressed in this study is the high cost that communities pay when African American men returning home from prison do not receive proper resources to prepare them for returning to the community and then end up reincarcerated due to criminal behavior and violations of parole or probation. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the daily lived experiences of African American men between the ages of 30 and 50 who receive real-life transitional employment with wrap-around service opportunities through reentry programs. No research was found that explored the daily experiences of those individuals …

Job Demands That Influence Organizational Commitment Of Public Safety Telecommunicators, Andre Jones

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

High job demands mean high turnover for public safety telecommunicators (also known as “9-1-1 call operators” or “emergency dispatch”). Personnel turnover place 9-1-1 call centers in an understaffed situation, which reduces operational effectiveness and increases risk to communities. Though public safety telecommunicators experience work-related stress due to job demands, organizational commitment, and operational impacts, the impact of job demands and its influence on organizational commitment is under-researched. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand job demands and the resources that influence organizational commitment of public safety telecommunicators. The classical organizational theory of scientific management, or Taylorism, was theoretical …

The Isolated As The Revolutionary: How “Leftover” Men In China Challenge Heteronormativity, Ruwen Chang

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

In contemporary China, demographers estimate that 30 million men are single because there are simply not enough women in the Chinese population, and the 2020 Chinese census shows that there are 34.9 million more men than women. These men are called guanggun, which can be directly translated to “bare sticks/branches,” a slur that indicates a lack of marriage and sex. In this project, I demonstrate that guanggun’s singlehood marks them as the marginalized at the intersection of heteronormativity, patriarchy, globalizing capitalism, and pronatalist governmentality. In a highly heteronormative and patrilineal culture, guanggun are branded as abnormal/incomplete. However, because …

Public Policy Syllabus, Duran A. Fiack

Open Educational Resources

The syllabus is designed for an introductory course that focuses on the basics of public policy. The course is composed of three modules. In Module I, The Study of Public Policy, the basics of public policy and the key actors and institutions involved in the policymaking process are introduced and discussed. In Module II, Public Policy Analysis, students are introduced to theories concerning the process through which policy is developed, implemented, and changed, a framework for analyzing and assessing public policy decision-making, and the tools that are used to address policy problems. In Module III, Substantive Areas …

A Culture Of Institutional Racism: Housing Policies During The New Deal, Breyonna J. Bowen

Capstone Showcase

There currently exists a distressed relationship between African Americans and housing due to previously enacted policies. In looking at this issue, I aim to use the theory of institutional racism to explain how past housing policies that enforce and perpetuate discrimination have impacted this current relationship. Through the method of policy analysis, I attempt to pinpoint where past housing policies have failed to provide housing to many African Americans. I find that there are several policies that were enacted during 1930s and 40s, specifically the New Deal Era, that inflicted discriminatory housing policies on African Americans. The findings indicate that …

The Program To Reduce Implicit Bias In Carroll Hospital Center Using The Implicit Association Test, Katherine E. Traynor

Capstone Showcase

Natural brain processes make all individuals susceptible to unconscious bias; however, stressful, fearful, or anger-evoking situations as well as the negative influence of media and social surroundings increase the risk of holding obstructive bias, and there is a greater risk of being negatively impacted by this phenomenon when belonging to a minority population (Rose & Flores, 2020). As a result, high rates of infant mortality (10.2 deaths per 1,000 live births for the Non-Hispanic Black population compared to 4.1 in the White population) and cardiovascular related diseases (190.0 cases per 1,000 in the Non-Hispanic Black population compared to 161.3 in …

The Political Implications Of The Evangelical Right’S Anti-Critical Race Theory Rhetoric, Elizabeth Howell-Egan

Scripps Senior Theses

Critical Race Theory (CRT), once an abstract principle used in academic circles, has exploded onto the national stage as parents fight against their children supposedly being taught its tenets. Through an analysis of key political and religious leaders, I discuss the right’s obsession with CRT in schools, where it came from, and its political implications.

Covid, Care, And The Carceral State: American Disposability Politics And The Selective Weaponization Of Public Health Guidelines During Covid-19, Uma Nagarajan-Swenson

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the American state's role in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on marginalized communities, arguing that the state used the frame of disposability politics to justify expanding its carceral capacities and withdrawing as a provider of welfare during the pandemic.

African American Women And Tenant Management Of Public Housing: A Case Study Of Stella Wright, Ari Ahmad Mccaskill

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis explores the theories and praxis of struggles for community-control of public housing in the era of Black Power through a case study of the Stella Wright Rent Strike. From 1970 to 1974, tenants of the Stella Windsor Wright Homes in Newark, NJ, waged the longest rent strike in the history of public housing in the United States. Following in the wake of the 1967 Rebellion and the election of Kenneth A. Gibson as the city’s first Black mayor in 1970, Newark’s poor and working-class Black tenants blended grassroots militancy with political savvy as they successfully fought for community …

An Index Of Community Priorities To Inform Local Governance In New Haven, Max E. Teirstein

Library Map Prize

Environmental justice screening and mapping tools visually depict the distribution of environmental justice burden across a geographic area. How that burden is measured varies according to location—different communities face different challenges, and a mapping tool that represents the landscape of environmental justice in one community may not adequately capture the distribution of EJ burden in another area. Who decides what “burden” means for each community? In this study of environmental justice in New Haven, CT, I argue that it is residents and local community leaders whose perspectives are most critical to how environmental justice is defined. I create a census …

Understanding Police Decision-Making With Firearms: From Training To Real-Life Deployment, Alex S. Kondos

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Modern efforts involving police reform have created a need for police administrators and policymakers to address various elements of policing. Administrative and punitive policy reforms have had little effect on decreasing police shootings. The purpose of this phenomenological study is to understand the experiences of officers who have been involved in deadly force encounters in order to identify where their past training methods led to success or failures in real-life situations. The theoretical framework for this study was Janis and Mann’s conflict model of decision-making. This study involved answering the question: From the perspectives of police officers involved in shootings, …

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

Exploring The Impact Of Student Conduct Models On Student Development At Hbcus, Deona Cureton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The effectiveness of the student conduct approaches of the mixed method model, a mixture of restorative justice and traditional sanctioning, and traditional sanctioning, known as the “model code,” in student learning at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) has been largely unexamined in existing literature. This quantitative study examined whether the model code process or a mixed method model process is more effective and efficient in producing learning and accountability. The present study utilized the 28-item questionnaire from the Student Accountability and Restorative Research (STARR) Project, a multicampus study conducted in 2011 in the United States. In the current study, …

Rising Cost Of Medicare And Its Effect On Recipients 65 And Older, Williesa Toomer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The rising cost of Medicare is a growing concern for recipients. Beneficiaries are often forced to implement a host of strategies to meet rising out-of-pocket expenses. This qualitative study was conducted to address a research gap in methods used by senior citizens to manage rising Medicare coverage costs. Garmezy’s resilience theory was used to contextualize the rising costs of Medicare premiums and copays and strategies used to manage healthcare needs. The purposive sample of 12 socioeconomically diverse respondents included eight women and four men ranging in age between 65 and 77, for an average age of 70.2 years. Participants completed …

Implementing The Sponge City Concept On North Carolina’S Federal Emergency Management Agency’S Acquired Properties, Artriel Askew Kirchner

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In North Carolina, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers a grant program to assist communities with purchasing flood–prone, private properties to decrease the effects of flooding within flood–prone communities. In flood management, incorporating the Sponge City concept within federally acquired properties is not widely considered by flood management professionals as an effective means to manage floods. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the feasibility of incorporating the Sponge City concept on federally–acquired properties to reduce significant flooding within designated flood–prone communities. The concept of disaster recovery, which focuses on the process of restoring, …

Legislative Efforts And Community Change To Combat Female Genital Mutilation In Egypt, Maryam Berkshire

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Female genital mutilation is recognized as a violation of human rights as it violates the bodily rights of young girls by cutting part of their bodies without their consent and leaves long term psychological, physical and sexual harm to women who were exposed to the practice. The World Health Organization estimates that 130 million girls and women are subjected to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in African and Middle Eastern Countries. According to a UNICEF 2020 report, Egypt will not meet the SDG goal of eradicating FGM as the decrease in the practice is too slow despite the policy and community …

Education Policy Reform In Ghana And The Role Of Avatime Traditional Leaders, Hubert Kwami Akrong

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractWith declining academic standards in Ghana, public attention has been focused on education policies. In 1992, the amended constitution excluded traditional village leaders from being involved in formulating education policies in Ghana. The exclusion of grassroots leaders from education policy reform resulted in low expectations and poor student outcomes in the towns and villages of Ghana’s Avatime Traditional Area. This case study was an investigation into how traditional chiefs in the Avatime Traditional Area participate in democratic governance to improve education in the region. Joshee and Goldberg’s social justice theory in policy making was used to ground the study. Data …

Disparities In The Sentencing Of African American Men In Wayne County, Michigan, Brian Banks

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe ability of judges in the U.S. criminal justice system to administer penalties based on a defendant’s socioeconomic status has resulted in a disproportionate number of African Americans receiving harsher penalties than those of other racial groups and socioeconomic statuses. Currently, there is little evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of harsher sentencing of defendants with lower socioeconomic statuses in preventing crime or lowering recidivism, but more work is needed to clarify what sentencing factors judges use. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the factors that Wayne County, Michigan, judges used during the sentencing process of criminal defendants, along …

Work Engagement In A Changing Nonprofit Environment, Shukura Crevelle

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind and describes work team members who gain a sense of connection in what they do. This has an impact on the physical, mental, and emotional health of the employee and the health of the organization. There was a need to explore contributing factors to employee engagement in a changing remote organization because there was a current gap in the literature regarding employee engagement and organizational change. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore causes to low engagement among employees in a nonprofit organization located in the …

Disparate Financial Assistance Support For Small Business Owners, Sophia Fox-Dichter, Daniel Auguste, Mathieu Despard, Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Social Policy Institute Research

Small business owners experienced a drastic economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Government pandemic assistance failed to reach many small business owners, especially those historically underserved by financial institutions. Drawing on a 2021 survey of 246 small business owners, the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis descriptively examined the extent to which small business owners sought and received business assistance, and whether applications and approval of government assistance varied by race and ethnicity. We find that though Hispanic and Black business owners applied for government assistance at a higher rate than white business owners, Black business …

The Impact Of Food Justice Advocates In Creating And Influencing Public Policy, Michael Joseph Chadukiewicz

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

This case study explored the impact that food justice advocates had on creating and implementing public policy to provide access to adequate, healthy, and culturally appropriate food for the residents of New Haven, Connecticut. The problem the case study explored is in 2020 food insecurity affected 22% of the residents of New Haven, more than twice the national average. This qualitative case study used grounded theory to analyze the experiences of 31 food justice advocates that were members of a coalition of researchers, food service providers, non-profit agencies, grassroot organizations, and residents tasked with improving the city’s emergency food system. …