Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Stepfamily Functioning And Closeness: Children's Views On Second Marriages And Stepfather Relationships, Todd M. Jensen, Kevin Shafer

Faculty Publications

Current research on stepfamily well-being often overlooks the perspective of children, and deals primarily with factors as reported by the adults involved. The authors examine a number of family role characteristics, parental subsystem characteristics, and resources that might influence how children perceive the quality of their stepfamily relationships. A sample of 1,088 children in households with a mother and stepfather, ages 10 to 16 years, in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort—Children and Young Adult Sample, is used for the analyses. Results indicate that open communication between children and their mothers, low amounts of arguing between mothers and …

A Social History Of Technology In Libraries, Richard Hacken

Faculty Publications

For the International Conference on Information Systems and Technologies in Tangier, Morocco, on March 22, 2013, I presented a social history of technology in libraries over the past 30 years. In addition I speculated what the future may bring socially and technologically, obviously from my perspective as a librarian.

The Influence Of Media On Himba Conceptions Of Dress, Ancestral And Cattle Worship, And The Implications For Culture Change, Austin Sterling Cameron

Theses and Dissertations

For the Himba, deeply embedded cultural symbols—traditional daily way of life, traditional beliefs about the sacredness of cattle, and religious beliefs of ancestral worship—are of ancient origin and have been retained in their culture throughout all of recorded history. While they still exist in Himba society today, some scholars have observed a potential widespread generational shift in adherence to these core cultural values and beliefs. This study presents the findings of 41 in-depth interviews with members of the Himba tribe in northern Namibia—specifically Opuwo and Otutati—ages 18 to 65. It examines the degree to which cultural differences are emerging as …

Blogging In Defense Of Themselves: Social Media Implications For Rhetorical Criticism And The Genre Of Apologia, Ramona Dee Wheeler

Theses and Dissertations

The advent of social media has provided an arena where barriers to entry are low. Individuals may persuade, question others and defend both their philosophies and their actions. This study examines the classic role of rhetorical criticism as it may apply in new media venues. A blog written by a public figure was examined through a synthesis of rhetorical criticism analyses derived from Ware and Linkugel, Vartabedian, and Downey. Four strategies and associated positioning in the practice of apologia were identified in selected blog posts, indicating the genre of apologia applies to social media apologies and extends the genre of …

The Relationship Between Frequency Of Incest And Relational Outcomes With Family-Of-Origin Characteristics As A Potential Moderating Variable, Kathleen Diane Baxter

Theses and Dissertations

As we examined research on the relational effects of incest on survivors, several researchers noted that some of the negative outcomes may be moderated by certain family characteristic variables. Using RELATE data, we examined a subsample of females and males who reported being survivors of incest in childhood and compared them on key family-of-origin processes such as mother and father's marital satisfaction as well as family violence. We used a path analysis to determine whether family processes, specifically functional parents' marriage and low physical violence, moderate the relationship between incest and marital quality in adulthood. Functional family-of-origin processes significantly moderated …

Meta-Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of Biological And Non-Biological Treatments For Postpartum Depression, Sarah Jeung Soon Christian

Theses and Dissertations

I provided an updated, comprehensive review of treatments for mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression. Studies included in this meta-analysis were single-group pre-posttest, non-randomized and randomized controlled studies published from 1986 to 2010 that included face-to-face psychotherapy and psychopharmacology as well as non-traditional methods such as exercise and nurse-assisted counseling. 53 published studies were analyzed. The randomized studies showed a moderate to large effects (d= 0.72 to 1.25, k= 9) when postpartum interventions were compared to a control condition, and smaller effects (d= 0.3 to 0.57, k = 13) to treatment as usual. When postpartum interventions were compared to each other …

Toward A More Inclusive Construct Of Native Chinese Speaker L2 Written Error Gravity, Steven K. Holland

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine two types of error gravity in a corpus of texts written by native Chinese learners of English (ELLs)—one that enriches the traditional construct of gravity found in error gravity research by including error frequency, or how often an error occurs in a text relative to others, as an intervening variable, and one that applies the new error gravity data in a practical way to help establish salient grammatical focal points for written corrective feedback (WCF). Previous error gravity research has suggested that the amount of irritation caused by error is determined by …

Qualitative Analysis Of Women Who Make Motherwork A Career Choice: Religious Minorities, Karen Adell Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

Interviews were conducted with 44 highly religious women from three demographics: Mennonite, Evangelical Christians and Cajun Catholics. The results provide insight into the reasons that faith appears to play a part in making motherwork a deliberate choice for many women. Comparing and contrasting the interviews within and between demographics as well as allowing for the influences of modern academia and media on attitudes toward motherwork grants voice to these often marginalized religious minorities. The resulting analysis shows that all of these women, to varying degrees, find value in motherwork. Each group seemed to have a perspective of this work which …

"At The Coal-Face Of Standardization": Uncovering The Role Of Copy Editors In Standardizing The English Language, Jonathon R. Owen

Theses and Dissertations

Though much work has been done on the definition of Standard English and on the standardization process, little attention has been paid to the role of copy editors in that process. Editors comprise a class of craft professionals employed to remove errors from texts and make them more consistent, but when editors speak about editors at all, they generally rely on anecdotes rather than hard data about what editors do. Since formal written English is often used as a baseline for determining what is standard, and since corpora of published writing are increasingly used to research questions of usage, it …

Speaking Like A Brahmin: Social Aspects Of A Register Of Spoken Telugu, Bradley B. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Among sociological studies in South Asia, frequent reference is made to caste as one of the greatest motivating factors in establishing, reinforcing, and creating social structure. This system of social hierarchy has, however, undergone drastic shifts and changes over the past decades (Dirks, 2001: 5) resulting in 'caste' as a term used to systematize concepts of social identity, community, and organization in India. The Brahmin caste, in particular, has undergone drastic changes as a result of social and political influence from without as well as from within, resulting in a conflict of identity (Bairy, 2010: 233).As a direct result of …

The Development Of Two Units For Basic Training And Resources For Teaching English To Speakers Of Other Languages: "Developing English Language Learners' Listening Skills" And "Developing English Language Learners' Speaking Skills", Ubambor Bumandalai

Theses and Dissertations

Today, a countless number of untrained and volunteer English as a second or foreign language teachers are working throughout the world to help meet the rising need for English teachers. Many of these volunteers have little or no training in teaching English. However, Basic Training and Resources for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (BTRTESOL) is a book and website that can be used as both a teacher-training program and a self-learning resource to help prepare these volunteer teachers. The idea for this program started with Dr. Lynn Henrichsen, who later invited a team of graduate students …

Bringing The Tutors To The Students: An Investigative Study Of Wac Tutoring In Second Language Contexts, Kendon C. Kurzer

Theses and Dissertations

The number of English as a second language (ESL) students attending universities in the United States has increased during the 2011-2012 school year (Hagedorn & Lee, 2005), with, for the first time since 2001, more undergraduate international students than graduate students in institutions across the country (Davis, 2012). Given the wide range of backgrounds and English proficiencies represented by this group, their varying needs are frequently not being fully met, particularly in reading and writing, two areas that are often weak in ESL students but linked to academic success (Matsuda, 2004). Regarding writing, much research has shown that ESL students …

Cost-Effectiveness Of Treating Pervasive Developmental Disorders: A Comparison By Treatment Modality, Jaime Elizabeth Ballard

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the costs of pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) treatment in a large healthcare organization. When compared to individual therapy and mixed therapy, family therapy had significantly fewer sessions, fewer episodes of care, and better cost-effectiveness. Individual therapy had significantly shorter treatment length than mixed therapy. There were no differences in treatment length or number of episodes by license, but dropout and cost-effectiveness were significantly different. Medical doctors had the highest dropout and best cost-effectiveness, while Marriage and Family Therapists had the lowest dropout and Masters of Social Work had the poorest cost-effectiveness. Children had significantly higher dropout than …

Areal Patterns Of Possessive Morphology In The Languages Of Eurasia, Garrett K. Nay

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study is to confirm Eurasia as an independent linguistic area with respect to four features of possessive morphology: locus of marking, position of pronominal possessive affixes, obligatory possessive inflection, and possessive classification. Raw data on these features was taken from the WALS database and then run through an algorithm of genealogical stratification called g-sampling, in order to minimize the bias of the sample. The resulting g-units were then categorized by type and geographical area (New World vs. Old World, Eurasia vs. the rest of the world). These counts were tested for significance using Fisher's exact test. …

Mothers' Work-To-Family Conflict And Children's Academic Achievement: Do School Involvement And Work Status Matter?, Hayley Maria Holladay

Theses and Dissertations

Structural equation modeling was used to explore associations between maternal work-to-family conflict, maternal involvement in schooling, and academic outcomes in early adolescents. Among a subsample of 725 fifth graders (and their employed mothers and teachers) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD), multigroup analyses were used to explore differences in this relationship between groups with mothers working part-time versus full-time. Results revealed that among part-time employed mothers maternal involvement in school fully mediated the relationship between maternal work-to-family conflict and fifth graders' academic achievement. …

An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Music And Sound Effects In Fiction E-Books, Alissa Eugenia Strong

Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that music has a unique and powerful ability to affect how listeners react to a story (Schaefer, 1998). Publishing houses are increasingly incorporating music and other multimedia effects into their products, with companies such as Booktrack now including novel-length soundtracks with e-books. The present study aimed to empirically investigate the relationship between music and text by examining whether readers' enjoyment of and distraction from a fiction e-book is affected by the inclusion of music or sound effects. One hundred and twenty undergraduate students at Brigham Young University completed an e-book reading task (either accompanied by sound effects, music, …

Appendix 5: Selected Worldwide Expatriate Killings And Attempted Killings, 1978-2011, Brian Champion, Lee Crowther

Faculty Publications

Appendix 5 documents thirty-eight attempts (successful or otherwise) on fifty expatriates for which some allegation was made that the target's own state, at an official or quasi-official level, was responsible.

Contact, Identity, And Prejudice: Comparing Attitudes Toward Arab Americans Pre-And Post-9/11-2001, Meghan Kimberly Wight

Theses and Dissertations

Using social contact and social identity theories, I seek to show how attitudes of mainstream American society toward individuals of Middle-Eastern descent (Arabs) have changed eight years after September 11, 2001 when compared to similar data from shortly after the terrorist attacks. I use data gathered from nationally representative opinion polls and the theoretical constructs of social contact theory and social identity theory to understand how attitudes have changed in the eight-year period. I first provide a firm grounding in the social contact and social identity literature, analyze the race/attitudinal data, and finally show how both social identity and social …

Appendix 1: Selected, Allegedly Iran-Sponsored Attempts To Kill Iranian Expatriates, 1979-2012, Brian Champion, Lee Crowther

Faculty Publications

In “Appendix 1,” we document attempted killings that meet the following criteria: (1) The attempt was made against one or more Iranians. (2) The attempt took place outside of Iran. (3) Some allegation was made that the state of Iran was at least partially responsible for the attempt.

We are far from the first to document allegedly Iran-sponsored attempts to kill Iranian expatriates. However, we attempt to fill a gap in the literature by combining breadth, detail, and a thorough citation of sources consulted.

Our survey begins with the 1979 assassination of Shahriar Shafigh in Paris and continues up to …

Appendix 6: Selected Cases Of Targeted Killings And Attempted Killings Around The World, 1979-2012, Brian Champion, Lee Crowther

Faculty Publications

Appendix 6 documents selected instances for which some allegation exists that a state, at an official or quasi-official level, was responsible for an extraterritorial attempt (successful or otherwise) on the lives of citizens of other states.

Appendix 3: An Interlinear Comparison Of Six Chronologies Documenting Allegedly Iran-Sponsored Extraterritorial Attempted Killings, 1979-1996, Brian Champion, Lee Crowther

Faculty Publications

In "Appendix 3," we compare six of the sources cited in "Appendix 1." While many of our sources focus on a single event, each of the six we investigate here alleges Iranian state responsibility for a pattern of attempted killings outside Iran. Due to the larger scope of the six sources, we here refer to them as chronologies.

Parental Involvement, Parent-Child Warmth And School Engagement As Mediated By Self-Regulation, Jeffrey James Bentley

Theses and Dissertations

Using both observational and questionnaire self-report data, this study examined preadolescent self-regulation as a potential mediator of the relationship between parental involvement, parent-child warmth and school engagement in a two wave panel design. Data was taken from two parent families in waves two and three of the Flourishing Families project which included 335 families with children between the ages of 12 and 14. Findings showed that parental, especially paternal involvement, was directly correlated to child's school engagement. Parental involvement and parent-child warmth were also shown to have an indirect effect on school engagement via child's self-regulation. Educators and therapists should …

Factors Mediating After-School Participation And Delinquency, John Andrew Whitney

Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing Social Control Theory, this study explores the role of participation in After School Programs, mentoring relationships, and commitment to school in reducing adolescent delinquency. This study uses local survey data of 556 youth attending Boys and Girls Clubs collected from 2010-2012. The negative binomial regression results indicate that increased club attendance is associated with reduced delinquency. This effect is mediated by the presence of a mentor and by the youths' commitment to school.

The Effect Of Attachment On The Therapeutic Alliance In Couples Therapy, Shawn A. Bills

Theses and Dissertations

There is substantial evidence that the strength of the therapeutic alliance in couples therapy is predictive of successful treatment outcome. However, little research has examined the factors that predict a strong therapeutic alliance in couples therapy. With evidence indicating that attachment styles play an important role in the development of healthy adult relationships, it was hypothesized that the attachment styles of partners in couples therapy would predict the development of a strong therapeutic alliance. Data from 115 heterosexual couples seen at a university-based MFT clinic in the southeastern region of the U.S. were used to test this hypothesis. Using multiple …

Mood And Memory: An Association Between Pattern Separation And Depression, Don J. Shelton

Theses and Dissertations

Depression is associated with reduced declarative memory performance and decreased hippocampal volume. Depression has also been associated with decreased levels of adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. Computational models propose that neurogenesis is critical for the computational process of pattern separation, whereby distinct memory representations are created for very similar stimuli and events. It has been proposed that depression negatively impacts pattern separation abilities; however, a link between depression and performance in pattern separation memory tasks has yet to be investigated. Accordingly, we designed a study to investigate the relationship between pattern separation performance and the severity of depression symptoms. …

A Dictionary Of Unorthodox Oral Expressions For English Learners And Teachers, Eewen Ting

Theses and Dissertations

To learn a language successfully, one needs to incorporate terms which are used commonly by native speakers but cannot be found in dictionaries. Words like uh-huh, oops, ouch, and brrr, are some examples of these terms. These expressions, commonly categorized under such linguistic labels as interjections (Ameka, 1992), alternants (Poyatos, 2002), and response cries (Goffman,1981), are what Dr. Lynn Henrichsen (1993) and Rebecca Oyer (1999) termed Unorthodox Oral Expressions (UOEs). These utterances are considered unorthodox because many of them are not formal or standard English words. Because of that, “we do not consider them part of the productive system of …

A Tutorial On Count Regression And Zero-Altered Count Models For Longitudinal Substance Use Data, Scott A. Baldwin, David C. Atkins, Cheng Zheng, Robert J. Gallop, Clayton Neighbors

Faculty Publications

Critical research questions in the study of addictive behaviors concern how these behaviors change over time - either as the result of intervention or in naturalistic settings. The combination of count outcomes that are often strongly skewed with many zeroes (e.g., days using, number of total drinks, number of drinking consequences) with repeated assessments (e.g., longitudinal follow-up after intervention or daily diary data) present challenges for data analyses. The current article provides a tutorial on methods for analyzing longitudinal substance use data, focusing on Poisson, zero-inflated, and hurdle mixed models, which are types of hierarchical or multilevel models. Two example …

Communities Of Innovation: Composition, Climate, And Process Variables In Group Innovation, Bradley D. Marianno

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing upon the Communities of Innovation (COI) framework, this study seeks to identify the composition (functional demographic diversity), team climate (vision, participatory safety, task orientation, support for innovation), and process (group reflection, group flow, group conflict, dynamic expertise) variables that influence team-level innovation. Using data from 15 business school teams enrolled in a class on innovation and entrepreneurship, I explore the extent to which the proposed composition, team climate, and process variables discriminate between high-ranking and low-ranking innovative teams. I also investigate the degree to which these variables are conceptually and empirically distinct. Given the relative importance of dynamic expertise …

Preliminary Examination Of International Students' Adjustment And Loneliness Related To Electronic Communications., Timothy B. Smith, David A. Shwalb

Faculty Publications

Electronic communication (e.g., e-mail, internet) may facilitate international students’ adjustment through contacts maintained with their native country. In the present study, the scores of 45 international students on a measure of adjustment and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale were significantly associated with their electronic communications involving their native country but not with general internet or e-mail use. International students’ scores on the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure were positively correlated with their amount of contact with people in their native country but were not correlated with scores on the measures of adjustment or loneliness.

Appendix 2: Selected, Allegedly Iran-Sponsored Attempts To Kill Iranian Expatriates, 1979-2010, By Locale, Brian Champion, Lee Crowther

Faculty Publications

In "Appendix 2," we compile geographic data from "Appendix 1." In "Appendix 1," we documented attempted killings which met the following criteria: (1) The attempt was made against one or more Iranians. (2) The attempt took place outside of Iran. (3) Some allegation was made that the state of Iran was at least partially responsible for the attempt. In "Appendix 2," we document locales, local in table 2.1 and by state in table 2.2, in which the 77 events documented in "Appendix 1" took place.