Sociology Commons^™

Nourishing Births: A Program Evaluation Proposal For Community-Based Nutrition Education, Food Access, And Garden Engagement Among Black Birthing People, Naa Deedei-Vera Hammond

Master's Projects and Capstones

Black birthing people in the United States continue to experience unequal maternal health outcomes, shaped in part by racism and barriers to nutritious food, culturally relevant health education, and supportive community spaces. While prenatal nutrition education and food assistance programs can provide important resources, information alone cannot address the challenges many people face when trying to access healthy and affordable food during pregnancy. The Nourishing Births Initiative is a proposed community-based maternal health program designed to respond to these needs by bringing together prenatal nutrition education, help connecting to food resources, community gardening, and peer support for Black birthing people …

Towards The Achievement Of Maritime Social Sustainability : Seafarers’ Voice And Representation In Stakeholder Networks, Alina Prylipko

World Maritime University Ph.D. Dissertations

Merchant navy seafarers continue to experience a wide range of challenges associated with their labour conditions. Despite significant academic attention and increasing stakeholder awareness, these conditions have not been meaningfully improved. This knowledge-action gap raises questions about the voice and representation of seafarers’ needs and interests within the maritime stakeholder network, and about how the network’s characteristics contribute to the persistence of labour problems and, more broadly, to the undermining of maritime social sustainability.

To investigate this research problem, this study is underpinned by stakeholder and social network theories and draws further insights from employment (industrial) relations scholarship. Drawing from …

The Quilt On The Roof, Janny G. Santos

Persimmon Creek

This creative nonfiction essay explores the meaning of home, stewardship, and healing through the story of a veteran who restored a neglected house on a hill in Greenville County, South Carolina. Built in the 1950s by another veteran on land once belonging to the Perry family, the home becomes a place of repair for both the structure and the person caring for it. When the roof fails after years of restoration, the author creates a massive quilt to protect the house, transforming scraps of fabric into a signal of distress and resilience. The essay reflects on land, memory, family, and …

How States Can Design Better Economic Development Incentives, Timothy J. Bartik

Reports

No abstract provided.

How The Economic And Fiscal Benefits Of Economic Development Incentives Are Affected By Targeting, Housing Policy, And Incentive Design, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

This report finds that reformed state economic development policies can raise residents' per capita incomes by over 5 percent while generating a fiscal surplus exceeding 4 percent of state and local tax revenue. In other words, they can pay for themselves. Traditional policies, by contrast, boost incomes by less than half a percent and carry a net fiscal cost of more than 3 percent of tax revenue. Traditional policies rely on untargeted cash incentives such as tax abatements, credits, and grants, and leave zoning unchanged. Reformed policies instead provide customized business services (site-specific infrastructure, job training, business advice, incubators), target …

Higher Education Pathways For Native American Students In Nevada, David Damore, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Policy Briefs and Reports

This policy brief examines educational performance and outcomes for Native American learners in Nevada using data from the Nevada P-20 to Workforce Research Data System provided by the Nevada Department of Education and the Nevada System of Higher Education. Based upon analysis of these data and information collected from state and national sources, we propose public policy interventions to support Native American students in Nevada. The brief also evaluates the significant measurement and data challenges that limit researchers’ ability to evaluate Native American educational pathways and the implications this has for policy decisions.

The End Of Unmeasured Exploitation: How A.S.M., C.A.S., And S.I.A. Challenge Digital Attention Capitalism, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Digital attention capitalism generates value through the capture and monetization of human attention, yet it has historically lacked standardized mechanisms for measuring attention-related harm. This paper argues that the Attention Safeguard Models (A.S.M.), Cognitive Attentional Standards (C.A.S.), and Sociological Impact Assessment (S.I.A.) collectively challenge this system by introducing an integrated framework for classifying, measuring, and evaluating digital attention harm and its societal consequences. C.A.S. provides standardized measurement of digital attention harm, A.S.M. identifies and classifies patterns of attentional disruption and manipulation, and S.I.A. evaluates broader impacts on institutions, communities, civic engagement, education, social cohesion, and inequality. Together, these systems transform …

Do Employer Challenges Drive Unemployment Insurance Benefit Nonpayment?, Marta Lachowska, Stephen A. Woodbury

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Victim Behaviour And Phone Snatching In Kano Metropolis: A Literature Review Based On Victim Precipitation Theory, Mu'azu Ya'u Abdullahi

African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies

This paper reviews studies on the problem of phone snatching in Kano Metropolis, with focus on the behaviour of victims. Many studies have explained the crime by linking it to poverty, unemployment, and weak policing among others. However, less attention has been given to how people’s everyday actions may increase their risk. Using Victim Precipitation Theory, this review shows that behaviours such as openly displaying phones, walking alone in unsafe places, or using phones while distracted create easy chances for offenders. The review also notes that wider issues, such as poor street lighting and active black markets, combine with victim …

Marital Status And Wellbeing Of Females In Egypt: Informing The Discourse And Exploring A New Framework, Hoda Rashad, Mohamed Hassan, Amr El Sayed, Rania Elsebaie

Faculty Books

Egypt is experiencing important changes in marriage formation and dissolution amid broader social, economic, and gender transformations. This study examines these changes by analyzing the recent patterns and social distribution of delayed and non-occurrence of marriage and divorce, their association with women’s empowerment, and their implications for women’s subjective wellbeing. Drawing on nationally representative quantitative data alongside exploratory qualitative evidence, the study also develops and investigates a “Conscious Decision Model” to examine how resources, agency, aspirations, and prevailing gender relations may shape women’s marital decisions and wellbeing. The analysis responds to public narratives that frequently attribute delayed marriage and divorce …

Women's Empowerment And Transformations In Marriage Formation And Dissolution: From Social Anxiety To Evidence-Based And More Responsive Policies, Hoda Rashad, Mohamed Hassan

Faculty Journal Articles

The central premise of this policy brief is that effective family policy in Egypt cannot be built on public perceptions, ideological assumptions or isolated demographic indicators. It must instead be grounded in robust evidence and a comprehensive understanding of the changing mechanisms through which women form, sustain and dissolve marital unions.

The study provides evidence-based findings that are inconsistent with the crisis and anxiety mode dominating the public discourse. The findings neither dismiss the public concerns nor support their dominant framing. Delays in marriage, the growing visibility of never married and divorced women, and the increasing occurrence of divorce represent …

Sacred Loss And Moral Authority: Religious Leadership And Identity Reconstruction In Post-Conflict Societies, Kimberly C. Kennedy

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

This paper examines how religious leaders shape narratives of identity formation and reconciliation in post-civil conflict societies where violence, defeat, or political transition produces moral injury and crises of meaning. By drawing on themes of justice, forgiveness, and accountability, religious leadership can wield moral authority to influence public perception, guide healing processes, and support transitions from active conflict to more stable forms of peace. The paper explores how religious leaders reframe narratives of defeat, particularly in cases where a community’s cause was endowed with sacred meaning, creating a crisis of faith. It argues that this work is best understood as …

Enhancing Visitor Experiences Through Storytelling In Interpretive Tour Guiding, Naoko Yamada

International Journal of Tour Guiding and Visitor Attraction Research

Heritage interpretation enables visitors to make sense of their experiences by communicating meaningful messages at natural and cultural heritage sites. By fostering understanding, appreciation, and personal relevance, interpretation enriches visitor experiences and encourages responsible attitudes and behaviors. Among various interpretive approaches, storytelling has emerged as a particularly promising means of achieving these outcomes. However, research examining how storytelling enriches heritage interpretation and promotes deeper visitor engagement remains limited. This conceptual paper synthesizes literature from storytelling, psychology, marketing, tourism, and heritage interpretation to develop a framework explaining how storytelling influences interpretive outcomes. The framework proposes that story elements activate psychological mechanisms, …

One Land, “Different Owners”: Theoretical Explanations Of Communal Conflicts In Nigeria, Chukwudi G. Njoku

Journal of Peace, Conflict, and Security Studies

Communal conflicts are prevalent in Nigeria, with thousands of fatalities recorded. Literature suggests that an overwhelming percentage of these conflicts are land ownership related. Through a systematic review of literature and an analysis of conflict data, this study provides further understanding of the role of land ownership and competition in the occurrence and lethality of communal conflicts. It argues that land competition, more than other socio-economic factors is the key driver of communal conflicts in Nigeria. The findings from the analyses are explained with three theories – the tragedy of the commons which proved that the conflicts are triggered by …

The Heterogeneous Impacts Of The Residential Component Of A Training Program: A Semi-Parametric Analysis, Jun Cai, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Xintong Wang

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Several training programs worldwide are residential, bringing enrollees to live in facilities and thus increasing program costs. In the U.S., the Job Corps (JC) program for disadvantaged youth includes a residential component. Despite extensive literature evaluating JC, the impact of the residential component has received limited attention. We develop and employ a semi-parametric model to estimate the average causal effects of this residential component, accounting for selection into both the program and the residential feature. Our findings indicate that, for JC enrollees, the residential component boosts earnings, employment, and educational degree attainment among adolescents. For other subgroups, the residential component …

Regulating Religious Coexistence : The Intricacies Of Interfaith Cooperation In Coastal Kenya, Erik Meinema

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Regulating Religious Coexistence offers a compelling ethnographic analysis of how Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of indigenous African religions negotiate coexistence in Kenya’s coastal region. The book conceptualizes religious diversity as a dynamic field shaped by multiple partly intersecting and partly conflicting models of interaction. These include the political secularism promoted by the Kenyan state and civil society organizations focused on interfaith harmony, forms of competition between religious groups, and pluralistic practices in which individuals draw on multiple traditions to meet spiritual needs.

Through a close examination of civil society initiatives funded by Western donors to foster peacebuilding and to counter …

Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets As Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure, Raji Srinivasan, Maria C. Merino

Subsistence Marketplaces

Street markets are key provisioning systems across the Global South, supplying fresh food, employment, and retail access absent formal infrastructure. Yet despite street markets’ functional indispensability to millions of low-income consumers, their legitimacy is chronically contested, affirmed by vendors and communities yet challenged by planners, developers, and state authorities who apply formal-economy criteria in evaluating them. We theorize this as a legitimacy paradox and ask what structural mechanisms sustain it? Using composite vignettes grounded in fieldwork, we theorize three mechanisms. First, visibility without recognition: street markets are hyper-visible yet excluded from cognitive templates of legitimate, formal retail. Second, asymmetric essentiality: …

From Monopoly To Orchestration: The Hilltop And Farm Youth And The Changing Organization Of State Coercion - The Israeli Case, Idan Yaron

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork – as a social anthropologist, studying the Far Right in Israel, on the ground, and through intimate and prolonged relationships with opinion leaders and rank-and-file activists – this essay examines the Hilltop and Farm Youth in the West Bank to reconsider Charles Tilly's influential account of state formation and the organization of coercion. It asks a simple but troubling question: why would a powerful modern state, fully capable of suppressing autonomous violent actors, sometimes allow them to persist? I argue that Tilly's theory should be confirmed, adapted, and amended. His fundamental …

Analysis Of Tiktok Content Marketing Strategy In Building Brand Awarness For Sana Tour Trekking Tour, Sechan Shamic

Journal of Indonesian Tourism and Policy Studies

The paradigm shift in tourist behavior post-COVID-19 has altered market preferences from mass tourism toward a more personalized and quality-oriented special interest tourism, such as outdoor trekking. This phenomenon compels micro-enterprises like Sana Tour to transition their marketing strategies into the digital ecosystem to build brand awareness. This study aims to analyze the organic content packaging formulas on the @sanatourtrekkingbogor TikTok account, map the customer journey path using the 5A Customer Journey framework, and identify the supporting and inhibiting factors of content effectiveness. The research approach employed is qualitative descriptive utilizing Robert Kozinets' Netnography model. Data were gathered through in-depth …

Mission Over Bureaucracy: Special Operations Command’S Warrior-Driven Model For Defense Innovation, Robert D. Seader

Joint Force Quarterly

In an era of accelerating technological change, military organizations must rapidly develop and field new capabilities to maintain battlefield superiority. Traditional defense acquisition processes, optimized for peacetime oversight and risk avoidance, now take four times longer than in the 1950s, threatening to undermine military effectiveness against rapidly modernizing adversaries. This paper examines how the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has pioneered a fundamentally different acquisition approach that delivers new capabilities in months rather than the decades typical of conventional programs.

Through extensive interviews with senior acquisition leaders, this analysis identifies three core elements of USSOCOM’s success: a mission-centric culture …

Without A Map: A Lived Experience Study Of The Paths People Create Through Homelessness, Kathleen P. Conte, Susan Avila, Desiree' J. Duboise, Carlton Bone, Marisa A. Zapata, Transformational Research For Equity And Experience In Shelter (Trees) Committee

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

The Pathways to Housing Study examines how people experience and navigate homelessness and the systems intended to help them move toward stable housing. Conducted in Multnomah County, Oregon, the study used a participatory mixed-methods design co-led with the TREES lived experience committee. The first phase was reported in April 2026 included surveys with 541 people with current or recent experience of homelessness. The second phase, reported here, used in-depth interviews and journey mapping with 29 participants to explore how pathways through homelessness unfold over time and across service systems.

Findings demonstrate that homelessness pathways are rarely linear. Participants described entering …

From Today's Prices To Tomorrow's Investments: A Guide For Child Care Providers On Why The Market Rate Survey & Narrow Cost Analysis Matter, Jess Carson

New Hampshire Early Care and Education Research Consortium

No abstract provided.

Building Wellbeing Through Nature And Adventure For Justice-Involved Youth, Lewis Kogan, Meagan Ricks, Janna Coulter, Miranda Margetts, Lori Butterfield, Ben Ukoh-Eke

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Justice-involved youth often experience elevated levels of stress, mental health challenges, and reduced access to positive developmental opportunities. A nature- and adventure-based youth development program designed to strengthen resilience, self-efficacy, nature-connectedness, and well-being among justice-involved youth was piloted in 2025 to address these challenges. Pilot findings indicated improvements in resilience, self-efficacy, hopefulness, and connectedness to nature.

When Protection Becomes Predation: Militarized Masculinity And Sexual Violence In Northeastern Nigeria, Tosin Osasona

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The study investigates the structural and situational drivers of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) perpetrated by state security actors in the context of Nigeria’s counterinsurgency campaigns in Borno State. Drawing on militarized masculinity and strain and deprivation theories, and using a qualitative, interpretive research design, the study argues that CRSV is not an isolated or episodic form of deviance by individual soldiers and security personnel but is embedded in routine military–civilian interactions. Advancing an interactionist explanation of CRSV in Nigeria’s Islamist counterinsurgency operations, the study demonstrates that the likelihood of sexual violence increases through the interaction of gendered institutional norms, operational …

Authoritarianism, Hostility And Threat: An Analysis Of American Political Podcasts Surrounding The 2024 Presidential Election, Noah D. Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Political rhetoric surrounding key events has seen sharp increases in emotionally affective speech, intergroup sentiment, and rhetoric unbecoming of democratic societies in recent years. Similarly, semi-democratic and ideologically driven speech has become increasingly normalized within an era of political polarization and hardline beliefs in modern media. Within this economy of outrage, sensational and largely unmoderated media formats, particularly podcasts, have become a mainstay of political information and discourse. This raises an important question: how does rhetoric surrounding political events construct intergroup sentiment and authoritarian rhetoric within political media, particularly American political podcasts? Further, given political podcasts’ growing social influence in …

Religion And Economics: The Economic Views Of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia Ii Of Georgia, Giuli Giguashvili

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The paper examines the impact of religion on a country’s economic development, analyzing how religious values and institutions influence economic behavior. The research employs a qualitative, comparative, and historical approach based on the systematic analysis of primary and secondary sources. Religion can promote economic growth by strengthening work ethics, education, and social order. Still, it may also hinder development through inefficient resource allocation and regulatory influence. In the context of the 1700th anniversary of Christianity in Georgia, the study highlights the relationship between Orthodox teaching and economic thought. Drawing on the epistles and sermons of the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, …

From Structure To Experiences: How Facility Capacity And Staffing Shape The Adoption And Impact Of Lgbt-Affirming Policies In Long-Term Care, Andrew Alberth

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Long-term care (LTC) settings – including nursing homes (NHs) and assisted living facilities (ALFs) – provide necessary care for individuals with extreme health and functioning limitations. Sexual and gender minority (LGBT) older adults report challenges receiving effective, person-centered care LTC. Some LGBT older adults may hide their sexual orientation and gender identity when entering LTC settings or delay seeking needed LTC fearing discrimination from staff and other residents. Furthermore, staff in LTC settings indicate little awareness of LGBT-residents and possess inadequate LGBT-cultural competency necessary for providing person-centered care. Therefore, LGBT-residents LTC experiences remain underexplored in the broader research. Adopting LGBT-affirming …

Our Claims Matter: Latin American Migrants’ Nonviolent And Everyday Resistance Across Transnational Spaces, Pryanka Penafiel-Cevallos

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how Latin American migrants engage in nonviolent resistance across transnational spaces in Ecuador, challenging dominant narratives that portray migrants primarily as passive actors or humanitarian subjects. Focusing mainly on Venezuelan, Colombian, and returned Ecuadorian migrants, the study places migrants’ political agency at the center of analysis. It asks how migrants resist, for what purposes, and under which conditions they mobilize nonviolent and everyday resistance practices to claim rights, dignity, and human security in a host country marked by both legal innovation and growing exclusion.

Drawing on civil resistance theory, everyday resistance approaches, and migration scholarship, the research …

The Effect Of State Policy On Individuals With Mental Illness In Nursing Homes: A Multilevel Analysis, Adrita Barooah

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE EFFECT OF STATE POLICY ON INDIVIDUALS WITH MENTAL ILLNESS IN NURSING HOMES: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS

August 2026

Adrita Barooah, B.Sc., University of Delhi, India

M.S., University of Massachusetts Boston

Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Boston

Directed by Professor Pamela Nadash

The proportion of individuals living with a mental illness in U.S. nursing homes has grown substantially over the past few decades (Fashaw et al., 2020), raising serious concerns about care quality, resource adequacy, and costs to both nursing homes and government payers. The lack of adequate resources and knowledge has resulted in sub-par mental health care (O'Connor et al., …

Nihilistic Violence Aesthetics In Public Online Communication, Heath Nicholas Landress

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Public online communication has increasingly included violence-related content that is meme-based, ironic, visually stylized, multimodal, and only partially ideological. This comprehensive literature review synthesized research on online extremism, extremist memes, toxic multimodal content, dehumanizing digital communication, nihilistic violent extremism, warning behaviors, platform affordances, and youth-facing online environments. The purpose was to clarify what the literature had established; identify where the scholarship remained fragmented; and map research domains relevant to social, behavioral, public safety, and human services scholarship. The review used a structured, comprehensive literature review strategy supported by integrative synthesis procedures. The final corpus contained 34 scholarly sources, including 32 …