Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Latent ;Toxoplasma Gondii; Infection Moderates The Association Between The C677t Mthfr Polymorphism And Cognitive Function In U.S. Adults, Andrew Nathan Berrett

Theses and Dissertations

Sufficient blood concentrations of folate and the products from its metabolism arenecessary for several cellular functions. The C677T MTHFR polymorphism, present in over halfof the U.S. population, reduces the efficiency of folate metabolism and has been linked to theonset of multiple psychiatric disorders and cognitive decline. The intracellular parasiteToxoplasma gondii can infect the human brain and is associated with increased prevalence ofpsychiatric disorders and cognitive decline. In vitro studies have found that Toxoplasma gondiimay salvage unmetabolized folate from host cells. Since the C677T MTHFR polymorphism andinfection by Toxoplasma gondii both affect folate metabolism or availability, I used data fromthe third …

Latent Toxoplasma Gondii Infection Moderates The Association Between The C677t Mthfr Polymorphism And Cognitive Function In U.S. Adults, Andrew Nathan Berrett

Theses and Dissertations

Sufficient blood concentrations of folate and the products from its metabolism are necessary for several cellular functions. The C677T MTHFR polymorphism, present in over half of the U.S. population, reduces the efficiency of folate metabolism and has been linked to the onset of multiple psychiatric disorders and cognitive decline. The intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii can infect the human brain and is associated with increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders and cognitive decline. In vitro studies have found that Toxoplasma gondii may salvage unmetabolized folate from host cells. Since the C677T MTHFR polymorphism and infection by Toxoplasma gondii both affect folate metabolism …

An Evaluation Of The 2016 Election Polls In The United States, Courtney Kennedy, Mark Blumenthal, Scott Clement, Joshua D. Clinton, Claire Durand, Charles Franklin, Kyley Mcgeeney, Lee Miringoff, Kristen M. Olson, Douglas Rivers, Lydia Saad, G. Evans Witt, Christopher Wlezien

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The 2016 presidential election was a jarring event for polling in the United States. Preelection polls fueled high-profile predictions that Hillary Clinton’s likelihood of winning the presidency was about 90 percent, with estimates ranging from 71 to over 99 percent. When Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidency, there was a widespread perception that the polls failed. But did the polls fail? And if so, why? Those are among the central questions addressed by an American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) ad hoc committee. This paper presents the committee’s analysis of the performance of preelection polls in …

Discovery Orientation, Cognitive Schemas, And Disparities In Science Identity In Early Adolescence, Patricia Wonch Hill, Julia Mcquillan, Amy Spiegel, Judy Diamond

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Why are some youth more likely to think of themselves as a science kind of person than others? In this paper, we use a cognitive social-theoretical framework to assess disparities in science identity among middle school–age youth in the United States. We investigate how discovery orientation is associated with science interest, perceived ability, importance, and reflected appraisal, and how they are related to whether youth see themselves, and perceive that others see them, as a science kind of person. We surveyed 441 students in an ethnically diverse, low-income middle school. Gender and race/ethnicity are associated with science identity but not …

Poor Parenting, Attachment Style, And Dating Violence Perpetration Among College Students, Brian Ermon Tussey, Kimberly A. Tyler, Leslie Gordon Simons

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although dating violence is prevalent among college students, little is known about how both attachment style and participation in risky behaviors contribute to this pattern of violence. To address this literature gap, we examine the role of poor parenting, child abuse, attachment style, and risky sexual and drug use behaviors on dating violence perpetration among 1,432 college students (51% female). Path analysis results revealed that females were more likely to report greater attachment anxiety but lower attachment avoidance compared with males. Correlates of attachment anxiety included child physical abuse, witnessing parental violence, and poorer maternal relationship quality whereas attachment avoidant …

Still Life: Growing Up With Death - A Visual Memoir, Lindsey Roth-Rosen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a multidimensional visual narrative project that incorporates heuristic methodology to illustrate complicated grief that emerged from early childhood loss. The memoir’s intention is to exemplify grief as a complex and mutable composite response to the death of my mother. One objective of this capstone is to understand melancholy, commonly associated with mental illness or symptomatic of depression, as an aesthetic emotion as well as a conduit for philosophical reflection. I use non-verbal approaches to the genre of a memoir by incorporating my photography to epitomize art as a powerful means to comprehend the totality of loss: as …

Conditions Of Personhood And Property, Zachary James Acree

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper seeks to demonstrate that a more robust understanding of personhood both reveals flaws in the underlying assumptions of modern property law, and orients that law to a more just application. To do this, the law needs not only a better definition of what persons are, but also a better understanding of how persons function in their society. First, in order to provide some context to the issues at stake, there is a brief historical introduction to some of the problems that personhood inquiries have faced. After the introduction, this paper is divided into four sections. Part I summarizes …

Positive Outcomes Of Divorce: A Multi-Method Study On The Effects Of Parental Divorce On Children, Grant W. Mohi

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Previous literature on parental divorce focuses on the negative effects it has on children and young adults in terms of relationships (romantic and familial) and academic standing. The implications of such research are that parental divorce brings harm to families and, consequentially, should be avoided for the sake of the children's wellbeing. What is often missing from this research is a focus on the potential positive outcomes of parental divorce. The current study explores the effects of parental divorce on young adults' ability to form and maintain romantic relationships, exploring the possibility for positive outcomes of parental divorce on young …

Political Stability In The Open Society, John Thrasher, Kevin Vallier

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

We argue that the Rawlsian description of a just liberal society, the well‐ordered society, fails to accommodate deep disagreement and is insufficiently dynamic. In response, we formulate an alternative model that we call the open society, organized around a new account of dynamic stability. In the open society, constitutional rules must be stable enough to preserve social conditions that foster experimentation, while leaving room in legal and institutional rules for innovation and change. Systemic robustness and dynamic stability become important for the open society in a way that they are not in the well‐ordered society. This model of the open …

A Method For Assessing The Success And Failure Of Community-Level Interventions In The Presence Of Network Diffusion, Social Reinforcement, And Related Social Effects, Hsuan-Wei Lee, G. Robin Gauthier, Jerreed D. Ivanich, Lisa Wexler, Bilal Khan, Kirk Dombrowski

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Prevention and intervention work done within community settings often face unique analytic challenges for rigorous evaluations. Since community prevention work (often geographically isolated) cannot be controlled in the same way other prevention programs and these communities have an increased level of interpersonal interactions, rigorous evaluations are needed. Even when the `gold standard' randomized control trials are implemented within community intervention work, the threats to internal validity can be called into question given informal social spread of information in closed network settings. A new prevention evaluation method is presented here to disentangle the social influences assumed to influence prevention effects within …

Using Photovoice With Adults With Developmental Disabilities To Measure Camp Goals, Haley Alexandra Allmond

Honors College Theses

This project addressed the perspectives of adults with developmental disabilities in a residential camp setting, with a particular focus on health beliefs. It involved 15 participants with a range of diagnoses in participatory action research using Photovoice, which is a technique that allows marginalized groups the ability to voice specific needs through photography. For the purposes of this project, subjects took photos and examined evidence of healthy living skills learned during the camp experience. After analyzing data collected, the researcher identified four separate definitions of health discussed by participants. Study findings suggest that the residential camp experience has a positive …

Die-Logue: Elderly Isolation And The Need To Talk About Death, Mark Lin

Social Space

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the elderly population of Singapore—often manifested as articles about the “silver tsunami” as well as an ageing population’s impact on the economy, workforce and healthcare. However, there are much fewer discussions that touch on how a growing number of people are dying, and how these deaths can pose signifi cant challenges in themselves. At the macro level, the general belief is that an economy can be kept going as long as businesses raise productivity and expand their market presence through “gamechanging” innovations. However, when it comes to addressing a problem like …

Incarceration Rates And Single Motherhood, Ethan Zurbrugg, Colt Hall

Student Scholarship - College of Business

Traditionally, the family unit consists of a mother, a father, and one or more children. There are many instances throughout the United States where this traditional family structure is not found. One of these situations, the single motherhood situation, occurs when a father figure is absent and the mother has to provide for her children on her own. Could the lack of a father figure in a child’s life cause them to be more likely to break the law and become incarcerated? Is there a causation between a state’s single motherhood rate and their incarceration rate, or are the two …

Mexican-Origin Parents’ Stress And Satisfaction: The Role Of Emotional Support, Tierney K. Popp, Melissa Y. Delgado, Lorey Wheeler

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Guided by a process model of parenting and the integrative model, this study examined sources of emotional support (i.e., partner, maternal, paternal) as related to stress and satisfaction resulting from the parenting role in a sample of Mexican-origin young adult parents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) during Wave IV. Participants were male and female parents (26–35 years of age; 59% female; N = 737) who had children and a partner. Results from structural equation modeling revealed support from mothers as salient; high levels of maternal support were associated with high levels …

The Influence Of Religious Homogeneity Upon Life Expectancy: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis, Donald J. Ebel

Sociology Department Publications

Research upon health and life expectancy has focused primarily upon individual and community level analyses, with extrapolations to national level data. In this study, the unit of analysis is shifted from individual health statistics to the national level. Life expectancy data for every nation and in the world (total n=191, restricted n=138) is explored, controlling for a variety of socio-economic factors. Two hypotheses are tested which offer the explanation homogeneity in both religion (H1) and ethnicity (H2), determines differences in life expectancy between nations. The first hypothesis, that religious homogeneity supports positive health outcomes is supported. The second hypothesis, that …

Weathered Mountains: A Qualitative Study Of West Virginia Women And Their Perceptions Of Strength, Land, And Womanhood, Danielle Renee Mullins

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Appalachia and those living within the region have been discussed, examined, critiqued, and defined primarily by those living outside of the area, particularly following the 2016 Election. The main narratives of Appalachia form a dichotomous view of the land and its people: beautiful landscapes threatened by resource extraction and a people wrecked by the symptoms of longterm poverty and economic stagnation. Simultaneously, the Appalachian identity has been constructed around a rugged or blue-collar male identity that excludes and makes invisible the female experience. This study seeks to break through the landscape and poverty binary, as well as the male-archetype, to …

“My Tummy Tells Me” Cognitions, Barriers And Supports Of Parents And School-Age Children For Appropriate Portion Sizes, Kaitlyn M. Eck, Colleen L. Delaney, Mirian P. Leary, Oluremi A. Famodou, Melissa D. Olfert, Karla P. Shelnutt, Carol Bryd-Bredbenner

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Larger portion sizes have increased in tandem with the rise in obesity. Elucidation of the cognitions of children and parents related to portion size is needed to inform the development of effective obesity prevention programs. This study examined cognitions of parents (n = 36) and their school-age children (6 to 11 years; n = 35) related to portion sizes via focus group discussions. Parents and children believed controlling portion sizes promoted health and weight control. Some parents felt controlling portions was unnecessary, particularly if kids were a healthy weight because kids can self-regulate intake. Barriers to serving appropriate portions identified …

Examining The Roles Of Child Temperament And Teacher-Child Relationships As Predictors Of Turkish Children’S Social Competence And Antisocial Behavior, Ibrahim H. Acar, Traci Kutaka, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Julia C. Torquati, Robert J. Coplan, Süleyman Yıldız

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The present study examined the concurrent contribution of Turkish children’s temperament and teacher-child relationship quality to their social competence and antisocial behavior, with a specific focus on the moderating role of teacher-child relationships (closeness and conflict) on children’s temperament (inhibitory control and shyness) when predicting social competence and antisocial behavior. Participants were 94 children (56 boys) with mean age of 7.05 years (SD = .88) enrolled in 24 classrooms from five elementary schools in a suburban school district in Turkey. Mothers reported on children’s temperament and teachers reported on their relationships with children as well as children’s social competence …

Comparing Snp Panels And Statistical Methods For Estimating Genomic Breed Composition Of Individual Animals In Ten Cattle Breeds, Jun He, Yage Guo, Jiaqi Xu, Hao Li, Anna Fuller, Richard G. Tait Jr., Xiao-Lin Wu, Stewart Bauck

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Background: SNPs are informative to estimate genomic breed composition (GBC) of individual animals, but selected SNPs for this purpose were not made available in the commercial bovine SNP chips prior to the present study. The primary objective of the present study was to select five common SNP panels for estimating GBC of individual animals initially involving 10 cattle breeds (two dairy breeds and eight beef breeds). The performance of the five common SNP panels was evaluated based on admixture model and linear regression model, respectively. Finally, the downstream implication of GBC on genomic prediction accuracies was investigated and discussed in …

Fictive Kinships And The Remaking Of Family Life In The Context Of Paid Domestic Work: The Case Of Philippine Yayas, Maria Rosario De Guzman, Aileen S. Garcia, Minerva D. Tuliao

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

In this chapter, we draw from our study on Filipina rural-to-urban migrant workers in the domestic care sector to illustrate how migrants make and remake family in the context of separation. The setting of our study is in Quezon City, Philippines, and our participants are women employed as yayas-domestic care workers employed to care for children. They live in their employers' homes, and most of our respondents live apart from their own children and all are living away from their nuclear families. Details of this study are laid out in an earlier paper that focused on the experience of family …

What Is My Role In Changing The System? A New Model Of Responsibility For Structural Injustice, Robin Zheng

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the Role-Ideal Model is that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles …

Why Mowing The Lawn Can Be Complicated (Chapter 6 From Worthy: Finding Yourself In A World Expecting Someone Else), Melanie Springer Mock

Faculty Publications - Department of English

In Worthy, college professor Melanie Springer Mock sifts through the shape and weight of expectations that press Christians into cultural molds rather than God's image. By plumbing Scripture and critiquing the ten-billion-dollar-a-year self-improvement industry, Mock offers life-giving reminders that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Set free from the anxiety to conform to others' expectations, we are liberated to become who God has created us to be. If you're worn out from worrying that you've missed God's One Big Calling, and if you're tired of trying to fit yourself into some cookie-cutter Christian mold, step away from the expectations and …

Making A University Community More Dementia Friendly Through Participation In An Intergenerational Choir, Phyllis Braudy Harris, Cynthia A. Caporella

2018 Faculty Bibliography

A dementia friendly community is one that is informed about dementia, respectful and inclusive of people with dementia and their families, provides support, promotes empowerment, and fosters quality of life. This study presents data from four cohorts of undergraduate college students and people with dementia and their family members, using an intergenerational choir as the process through which to begin to create a dementia friendly community. This was accomplished by breaking down the stereotypes and misunderstandings that young adults have about people with dementia, thus allowing their commonalities and the strengths of the people living with dementia to become more …

Engaging Male Partners Of Adolescent Girls And Young Women In Hiv Services In Malawi: Findings From Dreams Implementation Science Research, Project Soar

HIV and AIDS

Important contributors to adolescent girls' and young women's (AGYWs') vulnerability to HIV are the power differentials in their sexual relationships with male partners. Therefore, engaging male partners of AGYWs is important in reducing HIV incidence among these women. Project SOAR, in collaboration with the Center of Reproductive Health at the University of Malawi College of Medicine, conducted qualitative research in the districts of Zomba and Machinga in Malawi to: 1) identify and locate the types of men who have sexual relationships with AGYW; 2) understand the challenges to and facilitators of accessing HIV services among AGYWs’ male partners; and 3) …

Graduate Admissions Recruitment Project, Kevin Anderson, Chiemela Dike, Yixin Du, Arvinder Kaur, Amanda Popp, Huizhong Yang

School of Professional Studies

In this project, several comparison schools were interviewed and disclosed to have used search lists to find candidates. The organizations that have valuable search lists which may be of good use for the School of Professional Studies include Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). By choosing criteria such as demographics, location, academic performance, educational history provided by search lists, we believe there are many quality candidates for SPS programs. However, as we further investigated the functionality and cost-efficiency or return of investment of GRE search list, we spotted many uncertainties and few solid and successful …

Worcester Center For Crafts: A Transition To Online Sales, Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, Alberta Yamoah

School of Professional Studies

The Clark University School of Professional Studies created a capstone team consisting of Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Iana Matkovskaia, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, and Alberta Yamoah to assist Worcester Center for Crafts (WCC) with the launch of their new online store. Worcester Center for Crafts wanted to showcase their beautiful American handmade crafts on an online platform, Shopify, in order to increase their sales and expand their market reach. The capstone team created a charter that outlined the scope of the project and what the team would deliver to WCC by the end of the project. The team agreed to …

A New Measure For End Of Life Planning, Preparation, And Preferences In Huntington Disease: Hdqlife End Of Life Planning, Noelle E Carlozzi, E A Hahn, S A Frank, J S Perlmutter, N D Downing, M K Mccormack, S Barton, M A Nance, S G Schilling, Hdqlife Site Investigators And Coordinators

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Departmental Research

BACKGROUND: Huntington disease is a fatal inherited neurodegenerative disease. Because the end result of Huntington disease is death due to Huntington disease-related causes, there is a need for better understanding and caring for individuals at their end of life.

AIM: The purpose of this study was to develop a new measure to evaluate end of life planning.

DESIGN: We conducted qualitative focus groups, solicited expert input, and completed a literature review to develop a 16-item measure to evaluate important aspects of end of life planning for Huntington disease. Item response theory and differential item functioning analyses were utilized to examine …

Fp-18-22 Young Adulthood: Cohabitation, Birth, And Marriage Experiences, Paul Hemez

National Center for Family and Marriage Research Family Profiles

No abstract provided.

Fp-18-14 First Marriage Rate In The U.S., 2016, Krista K. Payne

National Center for Family and Marriage Research Family Profiles

No abstract provided.

Fp-18-10 Attitudes On Women’S Roles In The Home: 1986-2016, Colette A. Allred

National Center for Family and Marriage Research Family Profiles

No abstract provided.