Sociology Commons^™

What's Important To You? A Look Into The Historical And Social Significance Of Buttons, Hope Je Ferns

University Honors Theses

This project is an exploration into the social and historical significance of buttons and the culture surrounding buttons. Not only is it looked at from a graphic design context, but it is also looked at from the context of nonverbal communication, social change, and a piece of history that is tangible, accessible, and for all groups of people.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 Regulatory Response In United States-Assisted Living Communities: Lessons Learned, Sarah Dys, Jaclyn Winfree, Paula Carder, Sheryl Zimmerman, Kali S. Thomas

Institute on Aging Publications

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disproportionately affected residents, their families, staff, and operators of congregate care settings. Assisted living (AL) is a type of long-term care setting for older adults who need supportive care but not ongoing nursing care and emphasizes a social model of care provision. Because AL is a type of long-term care, it has at times been referenced along with nursing homes in discussions related to COVID-19 but not recognized for its different care practices that pose unique challenges related to COVID-19; in that manner, it has largely been left out of the COVID-19 discourse, although ~812,000 …

Redesigning Schools Of Social Work Into Schools Of Social Work And Social Justice: Opportunities For Civic And Organizational Renewal In A Justice Reform Environment, Bowen Mcbeath, Michael J. Austin

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper explores the re-envisioning of a school of social work into a School of Social Work and Social Justice. The thought experiment identifies how a school can meet its educational and social justice mission in response to the historic crises of 2020. An outgrowth of the aspirational strategic vision statement is the proposed strengthening of democratic learning spaces involving students and faculty members, better alignment of school curricular reform with human service workforce dynamics and social work practice needs, and an emphasis on culturally responsive leadership. The overall intention is to identify opportunities for social work schools and departments …

Quarantine Ethics: From Past To Covid-19, Chrystal Barnes

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

Quarantines have been a preventative measure for reducing communicable disease spread for centuries. The method of implementation can vary widely and to some extent requires some level of judgement from enforcing powers, often state police power. As such, historically, some quarantines have been unfairly enforced based on discriminatory practices. COVID-19 has brought about the most widespread and extended quarantine in U.S. history, which makes evaluating the ethics all the more critical. In addition, it is well established that COVID-19 impacts have disproportionately caused harm to populations, such as those who are of a low socioeconomic status and people of color. …

Covid-19 Exacerbates Existing System Factors That Disadvantage Defendants: Findings From A National Survey Of Defense Attorneys, Tarika Daftary-Kapur, Kelsey S. Henderson, Tina M. Zottoli

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

COVID-19 has impacted many facets of daily life and the legal system is no exception. Legal scholars have hypothesized that the effects of the pandemic may contribute to more coercive plea bargains (Cannon, 2020; Johnson, 2020). In this study, we explored defense attorneys' perceptions of whether and how the plea process has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Values Of Young Adults In An Increasingly Secular World, Joseph Daniel Eichenlaub

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines data from a religion and values survey entitled Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG) conducted in the spring of 2018. The data for this research comes from a sample of college undergraduates from diverse nations, Portland State being one of the sites sampled. This research investigates three main research questions: Do the values of college-age youth tend to be more individualistic, the less religious that they are? Do the irreligious still maintain moral values? And is irreligiosity related to a cosmopolitan-humanitarian outlook? This research finds that the overall sample is individualistic while still holding …

A Corpus Approach Study On The Manzanar Free Press, Danielle Jochums

University Honors Theses

Past studies on the physical environment of the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II have argued that internees were able to express their agency and identity despite the dehumanization of the camps. However, studies on the newspapers circulated in the camps have argued that internees had no agency as they worked on newspapers. In a preliminary reading, it was clear that these newspapers evidenced internee agency in their language. Utilizing de Certeau's theoretical framework of tactics, this study addressed the following questions: What tactics did Japanese-American internees use to take agency when writing and editing camp newspapers? How did …

Exploring "What Works" In Veterans Affairs Home-Based Primary Care, Elizabeth Catherine Hulen

Dissertations and Theses

Home Based Primary Care (HBPC) is an interdisciplinary care model involving comprehensive primary care services for patients with chronic illness who are unable to access clinic-based care. The largest HBPC program in the United States is run by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and provides team-based primary care service to Veterans with complex, chronic conditions. The VA HBPC model includes primary care visits from a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant, nurse care management, service coordination by a social worker, mental health services from a social worker or psychologist, nutrition counseling from a dietician, and help with medication management. …

Gas Stations And The Wealth Divide: Analyzing Spatial Correlations Between Wealth And Fuel Branding, Jean-Carl Ende

Dissertations and Theses

The gasoline refining and sales industry has many peculiarities. One such oddity is a difference in sales, distribution and pricing between branded and unbranded gasolines. Although fuels leave the refinery a uniform commodity, branding determines entirely different marketing and pricing schemes, with entirely different volatility and risk premiums. In order to determine if this volatility is felt evenly across all wealth demographics, this study uses t-tests and CART models to analyze income, home value and other wealth-based indicators in the areas surrounding gas stations, to determine if there is a correlation between branding and wealth. The results show the wealth …

Mape-R: A Rescaled Measure Of Accuracy For Cross-Sectional Subnational Population Forecasts, David Swanson, Jeff Tayman, T. M. Bryan

Publications, Reports and Presentations

Accurately measuring a population and its attributes at past, present, and future points in time has been of great interest to demographers. Within discussions of forecast accuracy, demographers have often been criticized for their inaccurate prognostications of the future. Discussions of methods and data are usually at the centre of these criticisms, along with suggestions for providing an idea of forecast uncertainty. The measures used to evaluate the accuracy of forecasts also have received attention and while accuracy is not the only criterion advocated for evaluating demographic forecasts, it is generally acknowledged to be the most important. In this paper, …

Home-Deliveries Before-During Covid-19 Lockdown: Accessibility, Environmental Justice, Equity, And Policy Implications, Miguel Figliozzi, Avinash Unnikrishnan

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, home deliveries have changed from being a desirable luxury or comfortable solution to a health-supporting and essential service for many COVID-19 at-risk populations. However, not all households are equal in terms of access to home deliveries. The onset of COVID-19 has brought to light access inequalities that preceded the pandemic and that the COVID-19 lockdown has exacerbated and made visible. The concept of home-based accessibility (HBA) is introduced, and novel research questions are addressed: (i) What type of households had zero home deliveries before COVID-19 lockdown? (ii) How the COVID-19 lockdown affected the type of households …

The Dark Footprint Of State Violence: A Synthetic Approach To The American Crime Decline, Aaron Roussell, Lori Sexton, Paul Deppen Iii, Marisa Omori, Esther Scheibler

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project combines the conversation on the national crime rate with emerging discussions on the violence that the state perpetrates against civilians. To measure US lethal violence holistically, we reconceptualize the traditional definitional boundaries of violence to erase arbitrary distinctions between state- and civilian-caused crime and violence. Discussions of the “crime decline” focus specifically on civilian crime, positioning civilians as the sole danger to the health, wealth, and safety of individuals. Violence committed by the state—from police homicide to deaths in custody to in-prison sexual assault—is not found in the traditionally reported crime rate. These absences belie real dangers posed …

Thematic Content Analysis Of Newspaper Coverage Of The Causes Of The Opioid Crisis, Joseph Daniel Eichenlaub, Essma Nasher

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it”[1]. According to the CDC, In 2017 alone, 47,600 people died from opioid-related overdoses [2]. The current opioid epidemic has developed in three distinct waves. Initially there was a sharp rise in opioid overdoses after doctors began prescribing drugs such as Oxycontin, which they were assured by pharmaceutical companies were less addictive than traditional opiates. The second wave began around 2010, when a rapid …

Invited Commentary: The Uneven Gender Revolution And The Gender Gap In Depression In The Us, Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Women suffer depression at higher rates than men. In a meta-analysis using data from 1982-2017, Platt et al. (Am J Epidemiol. XXXX;XXX(XX):XXXX-XXXX) examine trends by age group in the gender depression gap and find no change in the depression gap among adults despite large changes in women's opportunities during the same time period. They do, however, find an increase over time in the gender gap in depression among adolescents. I concur with Platt et al. that likely explanations for their findings involve the social environment. For adult women, the burden of being responsible for the majority of the household labor …

Connecting Policy To Licensed Assisted Living Communities, Introducing Health Services Regulatory Analysis., Lindsey Smith, Paula Carder, Taylor Bucy, Jaclyn Winfree, Joan F. Brazier, Brian Kaskie, Kali S. Thomas

Institute on Aging Publications

To document dementia-relevant state assisted living regulations and their changes over time as they pertain to licensed care settings.

Assisted Living Communities That Accept Medicaid Are Not Subject To Federal Oversight, Lindsey Smith, Sarah Dys, Paula Carder

Institute on Aging Publications

We commend Mauldin et al. (2020) for their recent article titled “Supports and gaps in federal policy for addressing racial and ethnic disparities among long-term care facility residents,” which addresses opportunities to mitigate racial and ethnic disparities in long-term care (LTC) through federal policies. However, we would like to clarify a statement regarding federal oversight of assisted living (AL) communities made by the authors.

Decolonizing Healthcare: A Black Feminist Analysis Of Sisters Informing Sisters On Topics Of Aids (Sista), Joy Mutare Fashu Kanu

Dissertations and Theses

This mixed methods project combines the conceptual insights offered by institutional ethnography, the deductive and inductive attributes of content analysis, semi structured interviews, and quantitative data analysis to study Sisters Informing Sisters on Topics of AIDS (SISTA), a social skills training program designed for sexually active, heterosexual African American women. This progressive program serves as a site to examine the complex relationship the U.S. state has had, and continues to have, with marginalized populations, particularly African Americans. The program reveals how the state, through the public health service, partners with scholars, researchers, and community-based organizations to produce, reproduce and perpetuate …

Survey Deficiencies As Quality Indicators In Oregon Assisted Living Communities, Ozcan Tunalilar, Sunny C. Lin, Paula C. Carder

Institute on Aging Publications

Background and Objectives License inspection data have commonly been used as a quality measure for nursing homes but has not yet been used to assess the quality of assisted living/residential care (AL/RC) communities. Drawing on resource dependency theory, we test the hypothesis that structural and environmental characteristics influence AL/RC quality as measured by deficiency citations (“deficiencies”) issued during license inspections.

Research Design and Methods Using data from 526 licensed AL/RC communities in Oregon that received a license inspection visit between 2008 and 2016, we examined the prevalence of deficiencies by type and year. We estimated regression models to identify structural …

“Eyes In The Home”: Addressing Social Complexity In Veterans Affairs Home-Based Primary Care, Elizabeth Catherine Hulen, Avery Laliberte, Sarah S. Ono, Somnath Saha, Samuel T. Edwards

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

BACKGROUND: Home-Based Primary Care (HBPC) has demonstrated success in decreasing risk of hospitalization and improving patient satisfaction through patient targeting and integrating long-term services and supports. Less is known about how HBPC teams approach social factors.

OBJECTIVE: Describe HBPC providers’ knowledge of social complexity among HBPC patients and how this knowledge impacts care delivery.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Between 2018 and 2019, we conducted in-person semi-structured interviews with 14HBPCproviders representing nursing,medicine, physical therapy, pharmacy, and psychology, at an urban Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center. We also conducted field observations of 6 HBPC team meetings and 2 home visits.

APPROACH: We …

Model-Based Estimates Of Population Of Oregon Census Blocks As Of April 1, 2020, Population Research Center, Portland State University

Publications, Reports and Presentations

The methodology used to produce population estimates as of 4/1/2020 for the state at the block group level relies on data from the 2010 Census Summary File 1 (SF1), 2020 Census Apportionment Results, US Census partnership programs supporting the 2020 Census, 2020 Tiger/Line boundary files, 2015-2019 5-year American Community Survey (ACS) files, ESRI Updated Demographics vintage 2020, and estimates from the Portland State University Population Research Center and US Census Population Division.

The 2010 decennial census block file was the baseline for average household size, and counts of housing units and population by race in 2010. Block group or tract …

An Example Of Converting Clinical Study Mortality Data Into A Life Table: The U.S. Population With Sickle Cell Disease, David A. Swanson

Publications, Reports and Presentations

There are approximately 100,000 people in the United States with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and the paucity of life tables for this population makes it difficult to determine if research and treatment innovations have improved their life expectancy over time and relative to the general U.S. population. Using mortality data generated in a population-based surveillance study over the period, 2004 to 2008, this paper generates a life table for this study population circa 2006 and applies it to the US population that has SCD. I find that a newborn with this condition circa 2006 had a life expectancy of approximately …

2021 Community-Based Care: Resident And Community Characteristics Report On Assisted Living, Residential Care, And Memory Care Communities, Ozcan Tunalilar, Paula Carder, Sheryl Elliott, Jason Z. Kyler-Yano, Sarah Dys, Minju Kim, Diana Cater, Ellis Jourdan Hews

Institute on Aging Publications

This report summarizes findings from the 7th annual study of Oregon assisted living (AL) and residential care (RC) facilities, including memory care (MC) communities. The purpose of this report is to inform Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), providers, consumers, and other interested parties about this sector of long-term services and supports (LTSS) and ensure data-informed policy decisions. The report contains information about various resident and community characteristics, including capacity and supply, resident demographics and health services use, and community services, policies, fees, and staffing. These data were collected between winter 2020 and spring 2021. This report constitutes the first …

Evaluation Of The Livewell Method: Final Report, Paula Carder, Serena Hasworth, Diana Cater

Institute on Aging Publications

The LiveWell Method uses a practice-based framework to improve the quality of life for people living and working in long-term care settings, including assisted living and memory care. It is designed to improve teamwork, communication, and morale by helping staff organize, track, measure, and improve daily operations. This evaluation is informed by the LiveWell Method’s “bottom-up and top enabled” approach, which engages and empowers direct care staff and administrators to create a more democratic and transparent workplace. In addition, the evaluation included questions to assess LiveWell’s core values, such as creating care innovations, nurturing dignity, creating community, and honoring elders, …

Does The Anthropocene Require Us To Be Saints?, Bennett B. Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This presentation is one of several salients for thinking through the place of moral life and thought in human temporality and historicity, including that of future history, such as the Anthropocene, and in particular questions about personhood in a milieu in which non-human species might have moral claims upon us. I hope to launch your further consideration of these matters in your work on the Anthropocene and anti-anthropocentrism.

Blacks In Oregon, Darrell Millner

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Periodically, newspaper or magazine articles appear proclaiming amazement at how white the population of Oregon and the City of Portland is compared to other parts of the country. It is not possible to argue with the figures—in 2017, there were an estimated 91,000 Blacks in Oregon, about 2 percent of the population—but it is a profound mistake to think that these stories and statistics tell the story of the state's racial past. In fact, issues of race and the status and circumstances of Black life in Oregon are central to understanding the history of the state, and perhaps its future …

Dual Panics: A Media Analysis Of Narratives On The Role Of Unauthorized Migration In America's Overdose Crisis, Morgan Godvin

University Honors Theses

Background: The realms of drug policy and immigration policy have long been fueled by misinformation, where sensationalism and panics help shore up political support. Most recently, the "border crisis" has been invoked to explain the "overdose crisis" in mass media narratives. Although the increase in migration is being blamed for illicit drug flows, drug importation occurs primarily through legal points-of-entry. The extent and excess visibility of false narratives linking overdose to migration in mainstream media is unknown.

Methods: We used the Media Cloud ecosystem to compile and characterize mainstream media content published between June 2021 and July 2021 regarding the …

The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies To Strengthen Students’ Resilience For Lifelong Personal Transformation And Positive Community Change, Namdrol Miranda Adams, Kevin Kecskes

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

For decades, community engagement scholars have built a robust body of knowledge that explores multiple facets of the higher education community engagement domain. More recently, scholars and practitioners from mainly Christian affiliated faith-based institutions have begun to investigate the complex inner world of community-engaged students’ meaning-making and spiritual development. While most of this fascinating cross-domain effort has been primarily based on “Western” influenced Judeo-Christian traditions, this study explores service-learning/community engagement themes, approaches, rationale, and strategies from an “Eastern” perspective based on the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This case study research focuses on curricular approaches, influences, and impacts of Buddhist …

The Electronic Hardware Music Subculture In Portland, Oregon, James Andrew Hickey

Dissertations and Theses

Music is relatively understudied as a geographic phenomenon, but recently there has been a shift in academic literature to understand the social, cultural and economic factors that determine music and its development in specific places. The purpose of this study is to examine the Electronic Hardware Music Subculture (EHMS) in Portland, why it thrives, and how it is linked to the local cultural economy. To do this, I used semi-structured, long form interviews with key members of the EHMS. These interviews, and my own observations, gave insight into what factors affect the success of members of the EHMS, and how …

Racial Gatekeeping In Country & Hip-Hop Music, Cervanté Pope

University Honors Theses

In mass communication, gatekeeping refers to how information is edited, shaped and controlled in efforts to construct a "social reality." One way it presents itself is in regard to racial inclusion and equality, and despite the headway we’ve seemingly made as a society, we are still lightyears away from where we need to be. Because of this, the concept of cultural property has become even more paramount, as a means for keeping one's cultural history and identity-preserved. Blacks and whites similarly attempt to protect or preserve facets of their culture they feel belong to them. What’s different for both of …

Enclosing Water: Privatization, Commodification, And Access, Daniel Jaffee

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter examines the global political economy of access to drinking water, with particular attention to the implications for environmental and social justice. After reviewing theoretical approaches to the privatization and commodification of drinking water, the chapter examines the institutional and ideological drivers, dynamics, and effects of the enclosure of municipal (tap) water supplies, and the substantial countermovements it has generated, drawing on case studies from both the global South and the North. The chapter briefly reviews the present status of municipal water privatization, and then turns to another major modality of water commodification: bottled water. It explores the dramatic …