Sociology Commons^™

Maternal And Paternal Psychological Well-Being And Child Behavior In Japan, Jared Poff

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding child behavioral outcomes is important because early behavioral issues can lead to negative outcomes that persist throughout the life course. One characteristic that can affect child behavioral outcomes is parental psychological well-being. While there have been many studies describing the effects of parental psychological well-being on child behavior in the US, the nature of this relationship in non-Western countries has yet to be thoroughly explored. There is also limited research that distinguishes between the effects of both maternal and paternal psychological well-being on child behavioral outcomes. Japan is an interesting area in which to examine this relationship due to …

Meanings Of Mindfulness And Spiritual Awakening: Affliction And Holistic Healing In Contemporary Cairo, Sohayla El Fakahany

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary Cairo, people turn to various modes of spiritual, alternative, and complementary healing. Some are rooted in formal religious traditions, and others are inspired by a new globalized form of holistic healing such as yoga or meditation. What makes these practices more controversial than spiritual healing practices like el-Zar or el-Hadra is the exchange of money for the promise of healing or foreknowledge. Spiritual healing is often deemed “charlatanistic” by religious exclusivists. This entanglement of the practices with religion creates a threat because it provides an alternative to the modes of religiosity supplied by the main hegemonic Egyptian religious …

An Examination Of Drug Court Clients’ Risky Behavior And Perceptions Following An Hiv Education Program, Latunja Sockwell

Theses and Dissertations

Drug courts were intended to allow non-violent drug offenders an alternative to imprisonment. Drug court programs have a focus on health as well as drug use, and HIV education is a required component of drug courts. Through a partnership with the AR Department of Health (ADH) and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, ADH was able to provide an HIV intervention conducted by certified trainers and counselors. Research is limited on HIV education, delivery, and outcomes in drug court settings. The purpose of this study is to examine whether using an outside entity to deliver HIV education should prove …

The Associations Of Extraversion And Heart Rate Variability, Rachel Marie Channell

Theses and Dissertations

Heart rate variability as a measure of cardiovascular health and autonomic activity correlates with psychological resiliency but is not consistently related to trait extraversion, a strong predictor of emotional well-being. This study intends to clarify research findings about trait extraversion and heart rate variability by identifying the context and nature of the relationship between extraversion and physiological responses. As a secondary analysis of data from a study comparing biofeedback and compassionate breathing, extraversion scores were compared with heart rate variability data at three different points including prior to a stressor, during exposure to a stressor, and recovery to a stressor …

The Effect Of Depression, Anxiety, And Stress On Heart Rate Variability During Self-Critical And Self-Compassionate Exercises, Derek C. Bartlett

Theses and Dissertations

The cognitions of individuals who experience symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress have been well documented, but their physiological reactions have not. The present study examines the physiological reactions of individuals with elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and stress during a self-critical and self-compassionate writing exercise to see if there is a difference in comparison to healthy participants. This study is a secondary analysis of data that was collected from a randomized controlled trial where participants followed a protocol. This protocol consisted of a 5-minute baseline, a 10-minute breathing exercise or nature video, 5-minutes of a self-critical writing exercise, 5-minutes …

Brand Activism And Gender: Nike As A Case Study, Kirsten Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

Nike is a prominent company that engages in brand activism, a marketing approach wherein they brand themselves as socially progressive by adopting public stances on controversial social issues. Because Nike resides at the intersection of media and sports, both of which are institutions that gender plays an important role in, an exploration of how Nike constructs gender in its commercials may illuminate the authenticity of its brand activism and progressive politics. Through a content analysis of 131 commercials released by Nike in the past decade, I explore whether their reputation as a socially progressive company extends to genuinely diverse and …

Brown Moral Panic: Racism In The Trump Era, Carlos Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the study is to examine the language used by news media to report Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric against Mexican immigrants, from the beginning of his presidential campaign to the El Paso Massacre on August 3rd, 2019. The study focuses on the latest moral panic in the United States against Mexican immigrants (2015 to 2019) using qualitative methods. The research examines how Trump’s racist anti-immigration rhetoric is depicted in news media categorized as neutral. The study focuses on the Associated Press (Neutral Center), New York Times (Neutral Left) and Reuters (Neutral Right).

A Nonhuman Primate Model Of The Out Of Africa Theory Utilizing Chinese- And Indian-Derived Rhesus Macaques (Macaca Mulatta), Jacob N. Hunter

Theses and Dissertations

Evidence suggests that certain genotypic variants associated with novelty-seeking and aggressiveness, such as the 7-repeat dopamine D4 receptor variant (DRD4-7R), short (s) allele of the serotonin transporter (5-HTT), and the low-activity variant of the MAOa promoter (MAOa-L), are more prevalent in human groups that radiated out of Africa than human groups that remained in Africa. Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), like humans, are a widespread species of primates that needed to adapt to different regional environments with one group, Indian-derived rhesus macaques, largely occupying predictable and resource-rich environments, while the other group, the Chinese-derived rhesus macaques, has come to occupy less …

What Do They Know? Police Experiences With Hate Crime In Arkansas, Randi Marie Latiolais

Theses and Dissertations

Hate crimes are likely underreported due to victim’s understanding and reluctance to reporting hate crimes. Few studies have looked at how police attitudes and experiences can affect the way officers report incidents, especially for hate crimes. This Thesis explored police definitions and perceptions of hate crime to ascertain the degree to which these experiences might affect police responses to hate crime (e.g., reporting, investigation, protective actions for victims) and their interactions with victims. A thematic content analysis identified patterns in the definitions and experiences police officers from Pulaski County (AR) have regarding hate crimes. A snowball sampling technique resulted in …

A Qualitative Examination Of Homeless Lgbtq+ Adults In Arkansas, Trye Price

Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, LGBTQ+ individuals are disproportionately represented among the homeless population. While homeless, members of the LGBTQ+ community are more likely to face discrimination, stigmatization, and victimization than their heterosexual counterparts. Although previous research on homelessness among the LGBTQ+ community has been insightful, we know little about the lived experiences of homeless LGBTQ+ adults in Arkansas. Therefore, the current study sought to understand the life experiences of LGBTQ+ adults in Arkansas who are or were homeless at one time in their adult lives. More specifically, this study focused on how individuals enter and exit homelessness, incidents of physical …

Tessellated Pictures And Traditional Piety, Matthew K. Higham

Theses and Dissertations

Nearly 300 years before the rise of a ‘Christianized,’ Eastern Roman Empire, generations of inhabitants in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East had witnessed a considerable variety and evolution of religious thought. As a result of the expansion of Christian sects throughout the Near East and Mediterranean, in 325 CE, Emperor Constantine I convened a theological council to unite his vast kingdom in the East under a single religious creed. While revisions to the text of the first ‘Nicene Creed’ and subsequent councils would be organized, many dissenting factions refused to relinquish their long-held beliefs and traditions. Some of these …

Subsistence Practices At Nancy Patterson Village, Elizabeth C. M. Whisenhunt

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to gain an insight into the macrobotanical subsistence practices of Nancy Patterson Village and see how those practices fit in with the practices of the general Mesa Verde region by analyzing the burnt macrobotanical remains found in processed flotation samples. Previous work done at Nancy Patterson Village showed a shift in the faunal subsistence practices to a greater reliance on domesticated turkey during the Pueblo III period. However, the macro botanical analysis showed a higher richness of wild plant taxa in the Pueblo III period when compared to Pueblo II. The change to a …

Married Mothers' Multiple Roles: Implications For Cardiovascular Health, Tyler C. Graff

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the traditional nuclear family, as defined by social role theory with mother at home and father in the workplace, is no longer the norm. Nearly three out of every four women with children under the age of 18 are part of the workforce. Mothers are frequently juggling multiple roles as well as most of the responsibilities that are inherent in these roles. The current project examined diurnal ambulatory blood pressure influences associated with the responsibility of having a greater number of roles. We investigate differences between a self-reported healthy population of 112 married stay-at-home and 112 married …

Relational And Mental Health Outcomes Of Trauma And Disaster: The Medicating Role Of Grit, Lacey A. Bagley

Theses and Dissertations

Current literature focusing on those exposed to disaster includes calls for more studies with populations who have regular exposure to extreme weather events. The current study reported on a secondary data analysis with a sample of 240 heterosexual couples living in or near coastal regions in the southeast US, who were at risk of experiencing disaster events during the 2019 hurricane season (June-December). An actor-partner interdependence model was fit to the dyadic data via path analysis to test the mediating effect of grit on the relationship dyadic coping (mental health and attachment behaviors) and disaster-related losses, accounting for trauma history. …

How Many Ways Can You Vocalize Emotion? Introducing An Audio Corpus Of Acted Emotion, Logan Ricks Kowallis

Theses and Dissertations

Emotion recognition from facial expressions has been thoroughly explored and explained through decades of research, but emotion recognition from vocal expressions has yet to be fully explained. This project builds on previous experimental approaches to create a large audio corpus of acted vocal emotion. With a large enough sample size, both in number of speakers and number of recordings per speaker, new hypotheses can be explored for differentiating emotions. Recordings from 131 subjects were collected and made available in an online corpus under a Creative Commons license. Thirteen acoustic features from 120 subjects were used as dependent variables in a …

"I Thought That We Could Nurture The Nature Out Of Our Son": Making Meaning Of Parenting In The Narratives Of Parents Of Children In Residential Treatment, Jared V. Worwood

Theses and Dissertations

This study implements relational dialectics theory to explore the meaning of parenting from the perspective of parents who had enrolled a child in a residential treatment program. Contrapuntal analysis of six interviews revealed two discourses competing to make meaning of parenting. The Discourse of Demanding Parenting Ideals (DDPI) consisted of two themes: relentless sacrifice and complete responsibility, whereas themes of boundary-setting and acceptance compose the Discourse of Realistic Best Effort (DRBE). Discursive interplay between these discourses occurred in the forms of diachronic separation, synchronic interplay, and discursive transformation to make meaning of parenting and hold theoretical and practical implications.

"I Understand, Honey": Perceived Spousal Empathy's Moderating Influence On The Links Between Depression And Marital Satisfaction And Marital Satisfaction And Physical Health, F. Javier Celestino

Theses and Dissertations

An adapted version of the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation model was used as a theoretical guide for this study, which proposes that adaptive processes exist and can moderate relationships between enduring vulnerabilities and different outcomes. Relationships of interest include the negative link between depression and marital satisfaction and the positive link between marital satisfaction and physical health. An adaptive process of interest is empathy, due to its well-researched positive impact on mental, relational, and physical health. This study examined whether perceived spousal empathy (i.e., the empathy perceived by one spouse coming from their spouse) had any moderating effects on the previously mentioned links. …

Empathic Listening Processes In Couple Therapy: A Task Analysis Of Effective Interventions By Therapists In Training, Samuel Ryland

Theses and Dissertations

Listening is a fundamental and deceptively complicated component of talk therapy that has received very little specific research attention. The work of Carl Rogers and others promotes the importance of empathic listening to create safety and process client experiences, and several models identify its importance in processing and regulating client emotions (especially in couple therapy, where empathic listening can disrupt rigid conflict cycles and model coregulation skills). Much of the dysregulation and resistance we see in therapy may be related to a perceived lack of safety caused by persistent conflict or previous trauma, explained by the unconscious processes of the …

The Effects Of U.S. Fiscal Policy On Income Inequality ( 1913 – 2013 ), J.D. Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

Income inequality in the United States has reached a level not seen since the Great Depression. Some academics and lawmakers suggest that growing inequality is due to changes in fiscal policy, arguing that cuts in taxes and government spending have reduced the inequality-mitigating effect of fiscal redistribution. While older research provides some support for this argument, newer research suggests otherwise. This disagreement in the literature led me to ask, How has fiscal policy affected income inequality in the United States during the last century? This study seeks to answer this question using data from Piketty et al. (2018), which includes …

Let's Talk! An Investigation Of Parent-Child Conversations About Self-Conscious Emotions, Alexandra Marie Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

Parents play an important role in socializing children's emotion understanding. Previous research on parents' conversations with their children shows that parents emphasize different aspects of emotion contexts depending on the emotion depicted. However, there is limited research on how parents and children discuss self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, guilt, and shame. The current study explored the socialization of self-conscious emotions in parent-child conversations during a storybook task. One hundred and sixty-six children between the ages of 24 and 36 months were observed reading a storybook with their parent. Analyses of parent-child conversations revealed that while parent and child utterances were …

To Control Or Be Controlled: Sibling Control And Adolescent Sibling Relationship Quality, Lauren Elizabeth Andrus

Theses and Dissertations

The current body of research pertaining to sibling control dynamics look specifically at either the absence or presence of control within the sibling relationship. Research to date has not differentiated between a sibling's experience of being controlling versus being controlled. This study examined adolescent sibling control dynamics and its link with sibling relationship quality (sibling closeness and sibling conflict), and how those links are moderated by birth order and having an agreeable personality. Data were analyzed from 327 families with two adolescent siblings between the ages of 12 and 18 (Older Sibling M = 17.17 years, SD = .94; Younger …

How Does External Referencing Define Sense Of Self And Link To Relational Well-Being?, Amber A. Price

Theses and Dissertations

As individuals develop, it is natural to reference social situations to learn about the self. Even as adults, some learning about the self comes from interactions with others. However, when adults consistently allow others to define their sense of self, their focus may shift away from connection and intimacy toward external factors. No studies have examined how allowing others to define the sense of self is associated with intimacy and satisfaction in relationships. Using structural equation modeling, this study examined whether allowing others to define the self is associated with a decrease in emotional intimacy, relational satisfaction, and sexual satisfaction …

Non-Violent Resistance Movements And Substantive Democracy, Jalal Fetrati

Theses and Dissertations

Does the mode of transition to democracy account for the depth of democracy in the post-transition democratic regimes? Whereas previous research has primarily focused on the effects of nonviolent resistance campaigns on improving formal dimensions of democracy, the present study examines whether or not democracies that come into existence as the result of nonviolent resistance campaigns are more successful in deepening democracy than democracies that emerge following violent conflicts or elite-led top-down liberalizations. This paper analyzes all democratic transitions that took place from 1946 to 2010, and relies on V-Dem High-Level Democracy Indices for measuring formal and substantive dimensions of …

The Basha's Tools? Imagining Alternative Justice Futures In Egypt, Farah Ghazal

Theses and Dissertations

The dominant approach to addressing violence against women in Egypt today is carceral, or relying on the punitive instruments of the state to achieve justice (most visibly represented by the prison and police). While carceral responses are perhaps unsurprisingly advocated by state feminism, they are also promoted by what would typically be described as anti-state actors. This paradoxical entanglement takes place during what I identify as the 'carceral moment', a period marked by the intensification of political and social repression and during which incarceration appears more readily available as a solution to remedy perceived problems of governance. I argue that, …

Journeys Of Middle-Class Syrian Women To And In Berlin: Modes Of Subjectivity, Possibilities And Becoming, Randa Adnan Bashlah

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an invitation to dive into the possibilities that emerge in the multiple stages of displacement journeys of a group of diverse Syrian women from a middle-class background, who happen to live in Berlin today, and learn about the displaced bodies' experiences from a personal scale. By capturing the journeys' nuances and trajectories, this study demonstrates how the mobile subjects interact differently and create different attachments with different power structures in the various modes which emerge through the journeys' different spatial and chronological stages. Looking at how displacement adds layers of complexity to the social's messiness and diversity, …

The Determinations Of Public Trust In The Government Of Egypt: An Empirical Study, Mohamed Elimam

Theses and Dissertations

Trust is a concept that is usually studied in the context of social interactions. At varying levels, we trust our families and friends, we trust strangers who share some traits with us and even trust institutions like banks with our savings and to handle our personal finances. By expansion, political trust, or the public's trust in government as a whole and as individual agencies. Trust in government forms a basis for the legitimacy. High levels of political trust facilitates the implementation of policies with more willing compliance from the public. This is more evident in situations like global and national …

About Us Without Us: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Homelessness At The United Nations, Joanna Louise Padgett Herz

Theses and Dissertations

The United Nations plays a major role in creating, changing, and challenging international discourse on social inequities and injustices. Homelessness has historically been an underrepresented social problem within the UN system. To date, no official definition has been established. How has discourse on homelessness been shaped at the UN, if no official definitions have been established? What are the implicit meanings that representatives have used over the years? Homelessness was ignored for many years at the United Nations, and when it was talked about it was described vaguely. How was the discourse on homelessness created and how has is changed? …

Psychological Sense Of Community Among Older Adults In Puerto Rico Two Years After Hurricane María, Thomas D. Buckley

Theses and Dissertations

Hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 and resulted in adverse long-term outcomes. Psychological sense of community (PSOC) may serve as a protective factor against the effects of Hurricane María for older adults in Puerto Rico. Using a three-paper format, this dissertation draws on a resilience framework and theories of PSOC and the Ecological Theory of Aging to examine the role of PSOC among older adults in Puerto Rico two years after Hurricane María.

Paper one is a scoping review of the concept of PSOC in research with community dwelling older adults. I begin by presenting findings on study characteristics …

Japanese American Internment Experience And The Impact On Parent-Child Relationships, Jazmine Miyoshi Miyake

Theses and Dissertations

During World War II and after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the United States confined 120,000Japanese Americans in internment camps. The current study examined the incarceration of Japanese American citizens and its effect on parenting across generations. Specifically, the study examined parent-child relationships and the possible emergence of the relationship-directed parenting orientation across generations within this specific population. In order to examine the research objectives, the proposed qualitative research study utilized archived interview data. The interviews were conducted with participants of Japanese American descent who were incarcerated in camps during World War II and/or their family members. A hermeneutic phenomenological …

Disconnected Youth: The Journey To Educational Re-Engagement: The Alternative Education Experiences Of Black, Indigenous, People Of Color (Bipoc) Youth, Latoya L. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Over 2.5 million youth remain disconnected from education or the workforce well into their adult lives. Nearly one-third of youth who remain disconnected are Black, Indigenous Persons of Color (BIPOC) from low-income communities. The purpose of this research study was to gain an understanding of what systems and processes support re-engagement for formerly disconnected, and subsequently re-engaged, BIPOC students from alternative high school programs in the State of California. The following research questions guided this qualitative narrative study: How do former disconnected youth ages 19-26 years of age describe their experience in traditional public schools compared to that of alternative …