Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Remembering School Shootings: An Examination Of Intergenerational Differences, Kelly Huie

Student Theses

In recent years, school shootings have evolved from rare occurrences to a full-blown epidemic, causing generations of students to have a realistic fear of attending school. When negative or traumatic events like a school shooting occur, people often form long lasting recollections of where they were, when learning about the traumatic, public event. Hence, the aim of this study was to understand if certain school shootings are more memorable for Americans, and whether differences exist across generations, as certain school shootings that occur during the reminiscence bump period (i.e., between the ages 10 – 30) may influence which shooting is …

A Quantitative Examination Of Black And Hispanic Students’ Time-To-Graduation, Ferdinand A. Verley Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What factors influence Black and Hispanic students’ time-to-graduation, and is it different for their special opportunity program peers? Using theoretical lenses including intersectionality, class struggle, justice, and sociological practice, this dissertation employs data from a large urban public university system to examine the relative impact of demography, academic preparedness, and financial background on students’ time-to-graduation performance.

Time-to-graduation, operationalized in this dissertation as the duration of years before a student earns a bachelor’s degree, for full-time students often represents an investment of time at the expense of earning a wage or salary in the job market. The economic gain that accrues …

Labor, Land Use, And The Luxury City, Samuel Stein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Labor, Land Use, and the Luxury City is an examination into the entanglements of working-class organizations, real estate capital, and state planning in 20th and 21st century New York City. Through theoretical inquiry, historical interpretation, and contemporary analysis, I investigate the motivations – both internally generated and externally imposed – that guide New York City unions’ and non-profits’ decision-making around questions of land use and gentrification. These institutions maintain a complex set of relationships to both real estate capital and the real estate state, leading many unions and non-profits to either support land use changes that accelerate gentrification or negotiate …

Exploring The Lived Experience Of Decision-Making Among Family Caregivers Of Black Older Adults With Advanced Chronic Illnesses, Theresa L. Lundy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This phenomenological study explored the lived experience of family caregivers' making health care decisions with or for community-dwelling older Blacks with advanced chronic illnesses. Max van Manen’s interpretative phenomenological approach was used to understand the meaning of decision-making among participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven family caregivers. Thematic analysis and interpretation of interviews revealed three essential themes: living out commitments with intention; making meaningful decisions situated in context; and reflecting on the past, anticipating the future. These essential themes culminated in an integrated interpretative statement: “Living out commitments with intentions of making or helping to make meaningful decisions that …

A Comparison Of Tribal Sovereignty, Self-Determination, And Environmental Justice At The Epa’S Onondaga Lake And Tar Creek Superfund Sites, Thomas Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program mandates that Native American tribes are afforded the same treatment as states in the implementation of environmental remediation projects; however, the degree of coordination and consultation between the EPA and sovereign tribal governments varies widely between sites. Two of the Superfund program’s highest profile sites with Native American interest, northeast Oklahoma’s Tar Creek and central New York’s Onondaga Lake, are characterized by such a disparity in tribal participation. While Oklahoma’s Quapaw Tribe would ultimately enter into a number of cooperative agreements with the EPA for direct control over remedial projects, New York’s Onondaga Nation …

Extra-Legal Information Transfer During Eyewitness Identification, Andrew J. Evelo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Researchers recommend that eyewitness lineups be conducted by administrators who do not know which lineup member is the suspect (i.e., that lineups be administered in a double-blind manner). Research on the effects of administrator knowledge generally support the idea that single-blind lineups damage the integrity of the lineup procedure and can lead to increases in the false identification of innocent suspects (Kovera & Evelo, 2017). This body of research has either explicitly stated or implicitly assumed that these negative effects are the result of leakage—that is, administrators are conveying information to witnesses about which lineup member to pick. Borrowing from …

Interrupting Intergenerational Silences Between Indo-Caribbean Women And Gender Non-Conforming People Through Participatory Oral History And Digital Archiving, Arita Balaram

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study used participatory oral history and digital archiving to explore two interrelated questions: How do the stories that Indo-Caribbean women and gender non-conforming (GNC) people tell challenge dominant narratives of resistance to historical oppression which represent women and passive and non-confrontational, and fail to represent GNC people at all? How might oral history and digital archiving be used to work against the historical erasure of women and GNC people? In the first phase of the study, twelve Indo-Caribbean women and GNC people across generations participated in an oral history workshop where they were trained in oral history methods, co-created …

Cracks In The Bathroom Stall: A Discourse Analysis On Transgender Bathroom Usage At Garden Spot High School, Kirsten D. Corneilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, high schools across the country have seen the concern around transgender students using gendered facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, come to the forefront. Often, dissenters raise worries of privacy and of “catering to a minority,” no matter what decision is reached. At Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the site of this research, one such concern has led to a district-wide decision to eliminate gendered facilities and move to single-use facilities, in the name of preserving student privacy. Through the examination of historical precedent and discourse analysis, this paper examines how transgender surveillance …

Mission Adrift: The Impact Of Managerialism On Graduate Social Work Education, Carolyn Hanesworth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neoliberal policies have led to the installation of managerialism, or the application of business practices and principles in institutions of higher education. Although much is known about the impact of managerialism on faculty in the overall academy, very little is known about its impact in specific disciplines, particularly in the United States. Using semi-structured interviews, this dissertation investigates how social work faculty experience and negotiate managerialism in the traditional pillars of teaching, service, and scholarship.

This study found that managerialism leads universities to place new and increased demands for productivity, efficiency, and accountability on social work faculty. Respondents report major …

Holding Both: Witness Aid Workers' Experiences Supporting Intimate Partner Violence Survivors In District Attorney Offices, Ovita Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social workers and advocates practice in district attorney (DA) offices as witness or victim aid workers providing intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors counseling, advocacy, resources and information as they enter the criminal legal system (CLS). Their experiences, in particular how stress and vicarious trauma (VT) manifested for them in this unique setting within the criminal legal system, had not yet been examined. This phenomenological study sought to better understand (1) how social workers and advocates in a prosecutor’s office experience practice with intimate partner violence survivors, (2) their experiences of stress, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and supports, and (3) …

Building For Culture: How Municipal Ownership Of Cultural Facilities Influences Annual Arts Funding In American Cities, Adam M. Sachs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how local government support for arts and culture varies across 24 American cities. It has proven to be challenging for researchers to accurately measure municipal arts support. Research on cultural policy has also often focused on the federal level, despite total city expenditures far exceeding national or state government support. This thesis attempts to take an accurate pulse of city expenditures in 2017 and correlates those spending levels to the variation in city ownership of arts facilities. Rooted in the historical perspectives of the ‘new institutionalism’ and path-dependency, this paper argues that past decisions about taking ownership …

Class Based Contestations In Neoliberal France, Sam Goodson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis documents the patterns of resistance taken up by the far left in France from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. Responding directly to the neoliberal reshaping of the French economy the groups that composed the far left diverged on terms of strategy, some holding fast to the class based contention of the previous decades, some jettisoning the language of class for one of identity and democratic inclusion. This project documents these changes and takes up the theoretical debates surrounding them, primarily the debates surrounding “post-Marxism.” It is an intervention on the enduring necessity of class struggle for …

The Effects Of Self-Esteem And Motivation On Cognitive Control, Andrea Benavides

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cognitive control describes a set of mechanisms that guide behavior towards a goal (Cohen, 2017). The successful execution of cognitive control is essential for effective learning, information processing, problem solving, and academic achievement (Visu-Petra et al., 2011). The Expected Value of Control framework (EVC; Shenhav et al., 2013) suggests that control carries an inherent cost, which is weighed against the potential benefits of expending it. This cost-benefit analysis determines the direction and intensity that a goal is pursued. Importantly, motivation plays a role in this cost-benefit analysis and may function as the factor that offsets the cost of control expenditure …

Climbing Performance And Ecology In Humans, Chimpanzees, And Gorillas, Elaine E. Kozma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to establish the effects of limb proportions and body size on the climbing performance of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas by assessing three aspects of climbing performance: 1) energetic cost, 2) fatigue, and 3) canopy access. Whether hominins were arboreal, and to what extent, is a matter of hot debate. Specifically, the relative prominence of vertical climbing in the locomotor repertoires of various hominin taxa remains a contested issue. Over the course of human evolution, both the body size and relative hindlimb length of hominins has increased. These traits are often linked to bipedality. Long forelimbs, in contrast, …

Beginning And Extending The Conversation, Maria T. Accardi, Emily Drabinski, Alana Kumbier

Publications and Research

The co-editors of a special issue of Communications in Information Literacy describe the origins and context for this issue and provide an overview of the ideas and perspectives of the contributors. The issue looks back at the past decade since the publication of Critical Library Instruction: Theories & Methods (Library Juice Press/Litwin Books, 2010).

Librarians In Dissertation Deposit: Infusing An Institutional Ritual With Scholarly Communication Instruction, Roxanne Shirazi, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Most doctoral students are required to produce a dissertation that makes an original contribution to their field of study in order to fulfill their degree requirements. The scholarly nature of this requirement informs how students and faculty approach doctoral research, but universities often treat the dissertations themselves merely as student records, not scholarly contributions. Librarians, however, are uniquely situated to work with graduate students as emerging participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem and help them prepare their dissertations for an outside audience. Librarians have the expertise to advise students with questions regarding copyright, licensing, fair use, and authors’ rights, as …

Dangerous Exhibitions: Erotic Justice And Comparative Constitutional Law, Elena Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The beginning of the 21^st century is widely seen as a time of great progress for LGBTQ people. Gay marriage, gay sex, adoption by same sex couples, and gay people serving in militaries have all been legalized in many countries in the past two decades, often through the decisions of constitutional courts. However, these constitutional protections of sexuality have been found in limited contexts and applied to a limited class of people, such that many are still vulnerable to repression by governments and majoritarian politics. In order to resist this sexual oppression, I widen the focus from gay and …

Campus Design And The Community College Experience: An Exploration Of Stress, Belonging And Scholarly Identity, Vanita Naidoo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This mixed methods research study examines factors that influence the development of scholarly identity at a community college campus. It uses survey methods and a focus group with undergraduate students at the Bronx Community College (BCC) campus to examine how campus design relates to a sense of belonging, the process of reflection, and the development of a scholarly identity. Academic attrition and low performance are challenges at urban community colleges. The study aims to address how campus design, specifically green space, impacts undergraduate students at a community college. It seeks to better understand the experience of the diverse student population …

Essays On The Education Production Function, Daniel Dench

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters which test interventions along several dimensions of the education production function. In chapter one, I run a field experiment comparing the effect of two interventions, (1) an email nudge telling students similar problems to their homework will be on the exam and (2) grading the homework, on attempting homework. I find both interventions increase homework attempts: nudging by 3 percentage points and grading by 72 percentage points. Instrumenting for the effect of attempting the homework using grading, I find that attempting problems from the homework leads to an increase in the probability of getting …

Desexualizing Queer Identities: Methods To Validating Non-Sexual Romantic Attraction And Relationships, Unnati Patel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is an increase in the negative views of queer and LGBT+ people in America, and I argue that it is, in part, due to the sexualized connotations of, and sexual association with, queer and LGBT+ identities. Innocuous acts by queer or LGBT+ people, such as being an out school teacher or holding hands in a public space, is enough for non-LGBT+ people to become uncomfortable to varying degrees and, sometimes, even cause verbal abuse or violence. When we look at queer or LGBT+ representation through the possibility of queerness, and by reading representations of queer and LGBT+ romantic attraction …

Development Of An Aba Tool Kit For Audiologists To Increase Hearing Aid Wear Time In Individuals With Autism, Lindsay Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When working with individuals with the dual-diagnosis of hearing loss and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), audiologists are often faced with unique challenges and must adapt their approach in order to more effectively address the needs of these individuals. Currently, there is only a small body of research focused on the special considerations required for appropriately fitting and utilizing amplification for children with the dual-diagnosis of hearing loss and ASD. Subsequently, recommendations and strategies for clinicians to implement when faced with these common challenges, specifically of hearing aid compliance and appropriate hearing aid wear time, are lacking. It is important to …

Living In A World Of “Stop, Question And Frisk” And “Trespass Enforcement”: Black And Latinx Youth Engaging In Police Reform In New York City, Jeanene Lee Barrett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although much has been written about youths’ experiences with police encounters in general, little qualitative research has been conducted into the SQF and housing trespass enforcement experiences of Black and Latinx youth in NYC. Additionally, there is little research that uses the voice of Black and Latinx youth to envision interactions with NYPD that could improve police-community relations. The present study, using a purposively sampled sub-set of 20 transcripts from a larger focus group process, examined the lived experience of Black and Latinx youth between the ages of 13 – 25, with a focus on stop-question-frisk (SQF) and housing trespass …

Young Children's Play In High-Rise Housing: A Window Into The Changing Lives Of Urban Middle-Class Families In Pune Metropolitan Area, Sruthi Atmakur-Javdekar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to identify the combinations of spatial arrangements and physical features that influence young children’s access to play and the quality of their play opportunities in a heterogeneous sample of high-rise housing in India. Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model of Human Development as a framework, the study examines two large umbrellas that contribute to young children’s play opportunities in high-rise housing developments: (1) The play environment that is made available for children by developers and design professionals; and (2) Parents’ and caregivers’ ways of using the designated and undesignated spaces based on their own play values and beliefs. A …

Can Gentrification Improve Education For Low-Income Minority Students?, Edir Coronado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gentrification is the process of investment into disinvested neighborhoods. The development of gentrification brings a reduction in crime, new job opportunities, and better government services, but these new neighborhood amenities are not available to all residents within the gentrified location. Newark, NJ one of the poorest municipalities in the northeast has long been one of the faces for urban blight and is one of the most troubled cities in the state of New Jersey in terms of crime, poverty, and academic performance.

Out of gentrification expensive chain stores, high priced rental units, and charter schools are born. Structurally the neighborhood …

Can A Growth Mindset Intervention Increase Individuals’ Intentions To Engage In Intergroup Dialogue?, Noelle A. Malvar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dialogue initiatives between different status groups foster meaningful conversations about inequality. Low and high status groups, however, frequently avoid discussions on difficult topics and do not participate in these initiatives. To address this, the current research tested an intervention model that aims to increase dialogue intentions using the growth mindset framework. The model proposes that inducing a malleable mindset toward one’s dialogue skills would boost group members’ intentions to engage with the outgroup. The intervention was hypothesized to be especially effective for high status groups, who have higher anxiety relative to lower status groups when anticipating intergroup dialogue. The intervention …

Soc 101 Introduction To Sociology, Kristine Rosales

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Prison Sentence Length On The Societal Dehumanization Of Ex-Offenders, Skye Jensen

Student Theses

The current study examined the factors that influence the societal dehumanization of offenders, belief in offender redeemability, and support for resource allocation and offender re- enfranchisement. Specifically, the study investigated how prison sentence length influences public opinion on these measures. Two hundred and twenty-two individuals participated in this study and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions involving their responses to a vignette depicting an offender having served either five or 15 years. The results revealed that the length of the offender’s prison sentence did not impact participants’ dehumanization of offenders, belief in their redeemability, or support for reentry …

Not All Videos Are Created Equal: Camera Perspective Bias And Video-Recorded Eyewitness Identification Procedures, Kelsey N. Doherty

Student Theses

Video-recorded eyewitness identification procedures can preserve an accurate record of the conditions under which the eyewitness made an identification. Scholars posit that having the record will allow legal actors to make better decisions on the basis of an identification. Yet limited research has examined how jurors’ judgments are influenced by this evidence. Research on other types of video-recorded evidence has demonstrated a strong camera perspective bias, wherein jurors’ judgments are influenced by the angle with which the evidence is recorded. This study examined whether the camera perspective bias similarly influences jurors’ perceptions of video-recorded identification procedures. Participants viewed a mock …

Digilantism, Discrimination And Punitive Attitudes. A Digital Vigilantism Model, Sebastián A. Galleguillos

Student Theses

In this article, I propose and apply a digital vigilantism model to a specific incident that occurred in Mexico, where the death of two innocent people was filmed through Facebook Live. Using a mixed methods approach and content analysis, I analyzed digilante Facebook posts (N=942) coding gender, digital vigilantism categories, discriminatory comments, and punitive attitudes aimed at the perpetrators and the inciter of the lynching. The categories include investigating, blaming, or rebuking, while the discriminatory comments include classism, racism, homophobia, and body-shaming. I coded the punitive attitudes distinguishing four categories: non-physical punishment (calling for God’s wrath and the guilty conscience …

Measuring The Temporal Stability Of Near-Repeat Crime Patterns: A Longitudinal Analysis, David Hatten, Eric L. Piza

Publications and Research

This study investigates the temporal stability of identified near-repeat robbery patterns in Newark, New Jersey. With one noteworthy exception, scholars have yet to explore the temporal stability of identified spatiotemporal crime clusters. Furthermore, researchers have yet to measure the near-repeat phenomenon longitudinally. To fill this gap, this study employs a longitudinal design to measure variation in effect size and significance of identified near- repeat crime patterns across 13 “rolling” one-year time periods within a 2-year study period (January 2015–December 2016). Temporal instability was found within two out of six spatiotemporal crime clusters. Results are reported in the form of formalized …