Other Sociology Commons^™

Proliferating A Culture Of Fear: Islam In A Post 9/11 America, Setareh Motamedi

Political Science Student Papers and Posters

The threat of terrorism perceived by the American public has been shaped by a series of traumatic events over the past decade. In the years following the attacks of September 11, 2001, fear of terrorism has extended beyond the threat of terrorist groups. Much of the American public considers not only terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, but the entire religion of Islam to be a security threat. In much of this security discourse, ideas of hatred, violence, and terror have become associated with Islam. This study explores that association, and aims to identify what motivates existing stereotypes. Drawing on research from …

Biography As A “Tree Of Choices”: Discovering The Life Trajectories Of Young Entrepreneurs In Russia, Anastasia Poylova, Elizaveta Polukhina

The Qualitative Report

The article reveals the life trajectories of Russian entrepreneurs in the context of four modern institutions of socialization which determine individual career paths—family, education, social environment and professional experience. Our empirical data were 20 semi-structured narrative interviews with entrepreneurs analyzed based on grounded theory (open and axial coding). We analyzed individual life trajectories as “trees of choices,” where the main branches are institutions of socialization, and the subsequent branches—individual life features. Finally, we showed the meanings of each institution and found out the determining role of gender and the city of socialization. The empirical output is a model of life …

Technology From The Perspective Of Society And Public Interest, Chanwoon Park

Purdue Polytechnic Doctoral Dissertations

The ultimate goals of this study were to determine ways to reconcile technology with public interest and to understand the relationship between what we know and how we feel about technology. To achieve the goals, related literatures were reviewed; the mechanism of technology development was described with empirical data; and human perception of technology was tested with a survey. The duality of technology that implied technological inherencies of technical reason and social meanings was the principle assumption of the study. Neutrality of technology becomes a myth with the presence of social meanings embodied in technology. Given the huge impact of …

Protests In The Post-Cold War Era: World Systems Dynamics And Hardship Effects In Post-Colonial Countries, Shawn M. Ratcliff

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, I explore the determinants of protests across 15 post-colonial countries from 1990 to 2010. Specifically, I investigate the direct and mediating impact of global economic dynamics and hardships experienced by populations in these countries. To that end, I employ world systems theory as well as relative deprivation and political opportunity theories. Analyses employ pooled-time series analysis based on national-level data from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), as well as data from the World Bank and the Polity IV project, which provide insight into the role of world systems dynamics on social unrest. Analyses …

Driverless Cars And Disability: Alternative Worlds In Media Presentation, Art Blaser

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

How liberating? For whom? At what costs (economic and social)? This paper is an exploratory examination of images that people have expressed about driverless cars, particularly as seen through particular media outlets. I am also concerned with the question of where disabled people fit. As I argue, many answers are narrow and superficial. Neither policy-makers nor media outlets should reduce disabled people to consumers of a product, while paying insufficient attention to related environmental and social issues. Although it would be easy to identify problematic media images of disabled people, there are also examples of nuanced, detailed analysis.

The author …

Similarities And Differences In The Influence Of Paternal And Maternal Depression On Adolescent Well-Being, Kevin Shafer, Brandon Fielding, Douglas Wendt

Faculty Publications

Depressed parents may negatively influence the well-being and outcomes of their children. However, prior research has mostly addressed mother's depression and early childhood outcomes, whereas fathers and adolescents have been largely ignored in the literature. Using data from the sixth grade and age 15 waves of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, this study addresses similarities and differences in the influence of paternal and maternal depression on adolescent behavior. Results from structural equation models showed that paternal depression had direct effects on both internalizing and externalizing …

Assessing Preschool Professionals’ Learning Experiences In Ohio: What Have We Learned?, Shayne B. Piasta, Susie Mauck, Rachel E. Schachter, Caitlin F. Spear, Kristin S. Farley, Melissa M. Weber-Mayrer, Laura M. Justice, Ann A. O’Connell

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

In the Assessing Preschool Professionals’ Learning Experiences (APPLE) project, we partnered with ecQ-net and the Ohio Department of Education to conduct an independent evaluation of Ohio’s statesponsored language and literacy professional development for early childhood educators. Participating educators were randomly assigned to experience the state’s 30-hour language and literacy professional development course, the course plus ongoing in-class coaching, or professional development on an alternative topic. Largely, the language and literacy professional development did not improve educators’ knowledge, dispositions, or classroom practices, nor did it improve children’s language and literacy outcomes. This may have been due to variability in implementation. Although …

How To Conduct A Mini-Ethnographic Case Study: A Guide For Novice Researchers, Patricia I. Fusch Ph.D., Gene E. Fusch, Lawrence R. Ness

The Qualitative Report

The authors present how to construct a mini-ethnographic case study design with the benefit of an ethnographic approach bounded within a case study protocol that is more feasible for a student researcher with limited time and finances. The novice researcher should choose a design that enables one to best answer the research question. Secondly, one should choose the design that assists the researcher in reaching data saturation. Finally, the novice researcher must choose the design in which one can complete the study within a reasonable time frame with minimal cost. This is particularly important for student researchers. One can blend …

Reducing Caregiver Burden: Fostering Healthy Aging And Social Support, Maria A. Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over 43.5 million Americans provide informal care to a fast-growing elderly population in the United States. Informal care allows care-recipients to remain functional members of society. However, research suggests that the demands of informal care can negatively impact the health of caregivers. For example, caregiver burden increases the risk for poor health in caregivers compared to non-caregivers. Caregiving research is on the rise, but the dynamics of informal care in active retirement communities remains widely unexplored. To provide adequate services to lessen caregiver burden and improve the Quality of Life (QoL) of informal caregivers, the various settings in which informal …

Teachers’ Experiences With A State-Mandated Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, Rachel E. Schachter, Tara M. Strang, Shayne B. Piasta

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

This study used an embedded mixed method design to examine teachers’ experiences with a state-mandated kindergarten readiness assessment during its inaugural year. Participants were 143 kindergarten teachers from one county in a Midwestern state. In general, teachers did not perceive the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment as useful for one of its intended purposes of guiding instruction. Our findings did not indicate an adversity to assessment in general. Rather, perceptions that the new KRA was less useful for practice seemed to stem from administration issues, problems with the content assessed by the KRA, and participants’ misunderstandings regarding the purpose of the KRA. …

Rulers, Religion, And Riches: Why The West Got Rich And The Middle East Did Not, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Books and Book Chapters

For centuries following the spread of Islam, the Middle East was far ahead of Europe. Yet, the modern economy was born in Europe. Why was it not born in the Middle East? In this book Jared Rubin examines the role that Islam played in this reversal of fortunes. It argues that the religion itself is not to blame; the importance of religious legitimacy in Middle Eastern politics was the primary culprit. Muslim religious authorities were given an important seat at the political bargaining table, which they used to block important advancements such as the printing press and lending at interest. …

The Impact Of Spiritual Mentoring Among African American Males At Eastern Kentucky University, Harvey Cosart

Journal of Applied Christian Leadership

"the findings of this study demonstrated that mentoring had a significant impact on African American males who attended the spiritual mentoring program at Eastern Kentucky University. these findings demonstrated mentoring can play a significant role in the life of a person and encourage growth and balance. Mentoring can bring about positive change and empower those being mentored to discover their identity and spiritual direction."

A Study Of Nature Versus Nurture While Diagnosing Anxiety Or Conduct Disorders In Adolescents, Austin Laura Schnur

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Early Childhood Teachers’ Pedagogical Reasoning About How Children Learn During Language And Literacy Instruction, Rachel E. Schachter

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

The knowledge that teachers hold about children’s learning is important to teachers’ practice. Few studies have examined how early childhood teachers use such knowledge during moment-to-moment instruction for language and literacy learning. This study employed a phenomenological approach to understand the knowledge that eight early childhood teachers used to inform their pedagogical reasoning during language and literacy activities. Stimulated recall interviews about practice were conducted with the prekindergarten teachers. Results indicated that the teachers used multiple sources of knowledge to inform their pedagogical reasoning that included: conceptions about how children learn; knowledge about specific children and the learning goals for …

"Tough On Crime, Tough On The Causes Of Crime": Liberal Carceral Logics And The Reproduction Of Settler Colonial Violence In Winnipeg, Mb, Canada, Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation illustrates how settler colonialism is reproduced in present-day Canada through the governance of crime, and how political struggles against policing, imprisonment, and colonialism are linked. It focuses on the politics of crime in the Province of Manitoba from 1999–2016, during which the left-of-center New Democratic Party (NDP) government engineered a significant expansion of the carceral state, overseeing unprecedented increases in policing and jail growth. In Manitoba, the vast majority of prisoners are Indigenous. This dissertation explores the logic through which the NDP integrated their support for policing and imprisonment into their “progressive” value system, packaging their carceral expansion …

Commentary: "How Much Is That Player In The Window? The One With The Early Birthday?" Relative Age Influences The Value Of The Best Soccer Players, But Not The Best Businesspeople, Luca Fumarco, Benjamin G. Gibbs

Faculty Publications

Fuelled by Gladwell's (2008), researchers have expanded their gaze beyond sports for evidence of the Relative Age Effect: that something as arbitrary as the month you were born in has important consequence for later life success. In line with Furley et al. (2016), we agree that any RAE outside of sports deserves closer scrutiny, but unlike Furley et al., we argue that we should not expect to find evidence of RAE for labor market outcomes in the first place, because there is not sufficient evidence of uniform age cut-offs in school.

Link Voices Blog: Internment, Immigrant Detention, And The Imagined Imperiled Whiteness Of U.S. Citizenship, Miranda Cady Hallett

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

The immigration and citizenship laws that prevail in the 21st century United States — as well as the enforcement of them — reflect Eurocentric racial hierarchies and help create and reproduce a white-majority nation.

While schoolchildren hold a basic understanding of how slavery and Jim Crow segregation produced persistent racial divides and inequality in U.S. history, they are far less familiar with the story of how the pervasive legal exclusion, marginalization, and persecution of Asian and Latin American immigrants (and birthright citizens with Asian or Latin American heritage) has played a key role in maintaining white dominance in the United …

Smoking Selectivity Among Mexican Immigrants To The United States Using Binational Data, 1999–2012, Nancy L. Fleischer, Annie Ro, Georgiana Bostean

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Mexican immigrants have lower smoking rates than US-born Mexicans, which some scholars attribute to health selection—that individuals who migrate are healthier and have better health behaviors than their non-migrant counterparts. Few studies have examined smoking selectivity using binational data and none have assessed whether selectivity remains constant over time. This study combined binational data from the US and Mexico to examine: 1) the extent to which recent Mexican immigrants (< 10 years) in the US are selected with regard to cigarette smoking compared to non-migrants in Mexico, and 2) whether smoking selectivity varied between 2000 and 2012—a period of declining tobacco use in Mexico and the US. We combined repeated cross-sectional US data (n = 10.901) on adult (ages 20–64) Mexican immigrants and US-born Mexicans from the 1999/2000 and 2011/2012 National Health Interview Survey, and repeated cross-sectional Mexican data on non-migrants (n …

E-Cigarette Specialty Retailers: Data To Assess The Association Between Retail Environment And Student E-Cigarette Use, Georgiana Bostean, Catherine M. Crespi, Patsornkarn Vorapharuek, William J. Mccarthy

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

The retail environment is a major social determinant of health, yet little is known about the e-cigarette specialty retailer environment. The e-cigarette specialty retail environment may be associated with e-cigarette use by middle and high school students, an issue that was addressed in a recent article entitled, “E-cigarette use among students and e-cigarette specialty retailer presence near schools,” by Bostean and colleagues (G. Bostean, C.M. Crespi, P. Vorapharuek, W.J. McCarthy, 2016). We present data relating to e-cigarette specialty retailers in Orange County, California. We describe the data collection method (including the search methodology to identify e-cigarette specialty retailers), present descriptive …

Preschool Children’S Biophilia And Attitudes Toward Nature: The Effect Of Personal Experiences, Ruddy E. Yanez, Bronwyn S. Fees, Julia C. Torquati

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

Regular engagement outside may promote healthy physical and psychological development as well as a respect and appreciation for nature. This exploratory study compared biophilia and attitudes toward nature between young children living in an urban area to those in a rural area. Urban and rural areas may offer different opportunities for exposure and engagement with elements such as water, plants, and animals. A comparison between young children in these settings may determine if experience in these different environments affects their attitudes and biophilia. Thirty-six children (urban n = 27; rural n = 9) participated in one-on-one structured interviews about their …