Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ethnic Minority High School Students: Academic Self-Efficacy And College Preparedness, Melanie Ann Faustino Hansen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In an effort to better understand high school student's academic self-efficacy and college preparedness, 165 students were surveyed at the Utah State University event Diversity Day held on November 21st, 2014. As such, we collaborated with the Utah State University Admissions office so that all evaluation materials and results could be used for future recruitment purposes. Students were asked questions designated to gain insight into the factors they determined to be important when choosing to attend college, selecting a college to attend, and how prepared they viewed themselves to succeed in college. In addition, basic measures were also taken that …

Ala Midwinter 2015: Issues In Resource Sharing And Implementing A Tool For Tracking Electronic-Resource Outages, Robert Heaton

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Among many great sessions on electronic-resource management at ALA Midwinter in Chicago, two ALCTS Interest Group (IG) meetings covered relevant ideas in considerable depth. These were the Collection Management and Electronic Resources IG meeting, on the state of resource sharing of electronic resources, and the Electronic Resources IG meeting, on tracking e-resource outages in detail. The former was in the format of an open, guided discussion on many overlapping issues while the latter was an individual presentation followed by Q&A.

Discussions On Technical Services Management And Data-Driven E-Resource Management At Ala Midwinter, Robert Heaton

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

The 2015 ALA Midwinter Meeting was in Chicago this year and, as always, gave attendees the opportunity to get a wide-angle view of the profession or to focus in on the day-to-day issues in their areas of work. This report covers two Interest Group (IG) sessions with particular relevance to the Serials Spoken Here readership: the ALCTS Technical Services Managers IG and the joint LITA/ALCTS Electronic Resources Management IG

Teaching And Learning Information Synthesis: An Intervention And Rubric Based Assessment, Kacy Lundstrom, Anne R. Diekama, Heather Leary, Sheri Haderlie, Wendy Holliday

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

The purpose of this research was to determine how information synthesis skills can be taught effectively, and to discover how the level of synthesis in student writing can be effectively measured. The intervention was an information synthesis lesson that broke down the synthesis process into sequenced tasks. Researchers created a rubric which they used to assess a student’s level of information synthesis demonstrated in their final research essays. A form of counting analysis was also created to see if other methods could help in measuring synthesis.

Findings from the rubric analysis revealed that students appear to benefit from the synthesis …

Children As A Reserve Labor Force, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Human life history is unique in the great length of the juvenile or immature period. The lengthened period is often attributed to the time required for youth to master the culture, particularly subsistence and survival skills. But an increasing number of studies show that children become skilled well before they gain complete independence and the status of adults. It seems, as they learn through play and participation in the domestic economy, children are acquiring a “reserve capacity” of skills and knowledge, which they may not fully employ for many years. The theory offered here to resolve this paradox poses that, …

Understanding The Opportunities And Challenges Of Introducing Computational Crafts To Alternative High School Students, Maneksha Dumont, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In recent years, the integration of computation with crafting has garnered increased attention. Partly spurred by the growth of the “maker movement” and also by recognition of the importance of broadening computational interest and proficiency, computational crafts have become more familiar to educational technologists and designers. For example, computation has been combined with textile design in summer camps for young people (Buechley, Eisenberg, Catchen & Crockett, 2008) and integrated into media as pervasive as paper (Eisenberg, Elumeze, MacFerrin & Buechley, 2009). Additionally, maker spaces are being established in major metropolitan areas, Maker Faires are becoming increasingly ubiquitous (Dougherty, 2012), university …

Second Language Research In Practice: Exploring Foreign Language Teaching, Maria Luisa Spicer-Ecalante, Karin Dejonge-Kannan, Aliza M. Atkin Kroek

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Numerical Simulations Of Competition In Quantities, Devon Haskell Gorry, John Gilbert

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We present a series of numerical simulation models built in Excel that can be used to explore the properties of various models of strategic competition in quantities and their economic implications. The resources incorporate both tabular and graphical data presentation formats and are built in such a way that they provide instant or ‘live’ feedback on the consequences of changes in the economic system. We discuss the theory behind the models, how they can be implemented as numerical simulations in Excel, and ways in which the simulations can be used to enhance student understanding of the material.

A Framework For Non-Drastic Innovation With Product Differentiation, Jeremy Jay Jackson, Jason Smith

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We model non-drastic technological innovation in a duopoly model with differentiated products. We derive profit functions for both firms which depend on only one variable, the technological gap. As our model derives product demands directly from agent utility we are able to fully describe the welfare effects of innovation. We show that the welfare improvements from innovation come not only as firms accrue higher profits, by charging consumers higher prices, but also as consumers enjoy higher quality products.

Kpelle Children At Play, David F. Lancy

David Lancy

Although children’s play has been a relatively popular subject for anthropologists who study childhood, comprehensive studies of the entire play repertoire in a society are rare. One such study was carried out among the Kpelle people in the remote Liberian village of Gbarngasuakwelle four decades ago. A summary of that study reveals that Kpelle children have access to a rich store of traditional play-forms including make-believe, board-type games, active play, contests and folklore. A major finding affirmed that play, far from being the antithesis of work or a reversal of cultural ideals, fundamentally supports and affirms the child’s acquisition of …

Free Web App Trello: Your Key To Institutional Memory In Your Subject Librarian Departments, Robert Heaton

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

A new subject-liaison assignment carries with it a daunting information-management challenge: Who are the faculty members in this department, and how have they worked with the previous subject librarian? Often librarians step into such a role completely blind to this history, but with an easy-to-use online tool, helpful information such as faculty photos, CVs, syllabi, assignment descriptions, research interests, collection needs, teaching schedules, notes on planning meetings and library-instruction sessions, and more can be given to a librarian along with their new subject assignment. Legwork to gather the information from department websites and personnel is required up front, but Trello, …

Linkages Between Water Challenges And Land Use Planning In Megacities, Enjie Li, Joanna Endter-Wada, Shujuan Li

Joanna Endter-Wada

No abstract provided.

Mormon Feminism Among The Early Saints, Camilla Anderson

Arrington Student Writing Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Two Extremes: Persisting Dualities In Portrayals Of Black Mormons, Joshua Wagner

Arrington Student Writing Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Wickiup Site Structure: A Comparison Of Aboriginal Wooden Features From The Great Basin And Colorado Plateau, Brandi Jensen Allred

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Throughout all of human history, people have built shelters for themselves whenever they stop for more than a few minutes. Many of these structures, built from wood and brush, are today colloquially known as wickiups. Wickiups are temporary housing structures, but were sometimes used for longer duration or even winter stays. In the Great Basin and surrounding montane West, we have a surprising amount of still standing wickiups. These have yet to fall to time's ravages and were initially built within the last several hundred years. Older sites, those around the world and deep into time, no longer have the …

Teaching Is So Weird, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Direct active teaching by parents is largely absent in children’s lives until the rise of WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized rich, democratic) society. However, as mothers become schooled and missionized – like Kline’s Fijian subjects – they adopt “modern” parenting practices, including teaching. There is great variability, even within WEIRD society, of parental teaching, suggesting that teaching itself must be culturally transmitted.

Playing With Knives: The Socialization Of Self-Initiated Learners, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Since Margaret Mead's field studies in the South Pacific a century ago, there has been the tacit understanding that as culture varies, so too must the socialization of children to become competent culture users and bearers. More recently, the work of anthropologists has been mined to find broader patterns that may be common to childhood across a range of societies. One improbable commonality has been the tolerance, even encouragement, of toddler behavior that is patently risky, such as playing with or attempting to use a sharp-edged tool. This laissez faire approach to socialization follows from a reliance on children as …

Mapping The Landscape Of Children’S Play., David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cultural Views Of Life Phases., David F. Lancy, M. Annette Grove

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The knowledge base in the study of human development is built primarily from work with children from the modern, global, post-industrial population. This population is unrepresentative in many respects, not least in that childhood and adolescence is dominated by the experience of formal schooling—an experience missing from the lives of most of the world’s children until very recently. This entry will examine child development from the perspective of pre-modern societies as described in the ethnographic, archaeological and historic records. Specifically, we will review material indicative of cultural or indigenous models of development, phases and phase transitions, in particular.

Measuring The Environmental Cost Of Hypocrisy, Arthur Caplan

Arthur J. Caplan

This paper provides an example of howto estimate the marginal environmental cost of hypocrisy using revealed behavior and self-identification survey responses from coffee drinkers regarding their use of cardboard and plastic (i.e., non-reusable) cups. Coffee shops provide a convenient microcosm for assessing the impact of hypocritical behavior because of (1) readily available, cheap substitutes (i.e., reusable coffee cups), (2) a relatively accurate estimate of the environmental (in particular, carbon) cost associated with using non-reusable cups, and (3) the ability to delineate hypocritical behavior by observing a choice with relatively few potential confounding factors. Hypocritical behavior is measured as a geometric …

Teaching Communication: Helping Students To Learn And To Love A New Language, Jacob Fredrickson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio represents many hours spent in classrooms (as a student and as a teacher), in the library reading and writing, and spent in quiet contemplation. My views on teaching languages and on education in general have grown and changed. What a tragedy it would be to pass through a graduate program and not to have one’s views evolve and grow. Most importantly, this portfolio represents that growth and the ideal that, as an educator and as a human being, time on this earth ought to be spent growing, learning, and striving for something better.

Focusing On Student Research In The Institutional Repository, Danielle M. Barandiaran, Betty Rozum, Becky Thoms

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Student research is a significant and rapidly growing component of the institutional repository (IR) at Utah State University (USU). A briefing paper prepared for Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) points to student works as one of nine purposes for an IR.¹ It is not uncommon to find undergraduate and graduate theses and dissertations in IRs. In 2013, an analysis of 283 U.S. repositories using the bepress or DSpsace platforms indicated 71% include this type of student research. However, other student research such as posters, presentations, or papers were only found in 38% of these repositories. Utah State University’s …

Engaging Wisdom: A Comparison Of Cognitive And Interpersonal Interventions On Elderly Mental Health, Kade Downs

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the United States the population of individuals over the age of 60 is large and expected to increase (Administration on Aging, 2009). Mental disorders (e.g., dementia) are especially prevalent in elderly populations (WHO, 2012). Considering the relatively small amount of research examining elderly populations in the United States, this prevalence highlights the potential and necessity for intervention research specifically designed for elderly individuals. This study examines the effectiveness of a cognitive as well as an interpersonal intervention on the mental health of a sample of individuals over the age of 60 at residential eldercare facilities. Results showed no significant …

The Relationship Between Attachment, Couple Conflict, And Recovery From Conflict, Nathan C. Taylor

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Advances in technology have opened the door for increased understanding to the physiological changes that influence and are influenced by conflict. The objective of this research was to use these advances in technology to better understand the relationship between attachment and physiological reactivity during conflict, as well as during recovery from couple conflict. Skin conductance equipment was used to measure 10 couples (n = 20) physiological arousal while discussing an area of conflict, and during a recovery section which included a relationship distraction task and discussion. Five multiple regressions were used to analyze physiological reactivity during and after conflict …

Dynamic Assessment Of Narrative Ability In English Accurately Identifies Language Impairment In English Language Learners, E. D. Peña, Ronald B. Gillam

Speech and Language Pathology Faculty publications

PURPOSE:To assess the identification accuracy of dynamic assessment (DA) of narrative ability in English for children learning English as a 2nd language.

METHOD: A DA task was administered to 54 children: 18 Spanish-English-speaking children with language impairment (LI); 18 age-, sex-, IQ- and language experience-matched typical control children; and an additional 18 age- and language experience-matched comparison children. A variety of quantitative and qualitative measures were collected in the pretest phase, the mediation phase, and the posttest phase of the study. Exploratory discriminant analysis was used to determine the set of measures that best differentiated among this group of children …

The Effect Of Functional Fixation In Problem Solving Among Preschool, Second Grade, And Ninth Grade Children, Michael Kenneth Nehring

Dissertations

Functional fixedness is a cognitive function whereby an individual becomes fixated on a given function of an object, which prevents the individual from using the object in an alternative fashion to solve a problem (Duncker, 1935/1945). The current study analyzed the effect of functional fixedness on 36 children from three different age groups, preschool, second grade, and ninth grade. The children were presented with a problem solving activity based on a problem used by German and Defeyter (2000), in which they concluded that young children are immune to the effects of functional fixedness. Research conducted by Chrysikou (2006) indicated using …

Cultural Mismatch In Pedagogy Workshops: Training Non-Native Teachers Communicative Language Teaching, Maria Luisa Spicer-Ecalante, Karin Dejonge-Kannan

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

As a professional ideology, the Communicative Language Teaching approach (CLT) (Ellis, 1996, 2012; Lee & VanPatten, 2003) has been exported to non-Western contexts with varying degrees of success (e.g., Lewis & McCook, 2002; Li, 1998). The authors of this paper, both non-native speakers of English who have lived and taught in the USA for 20 years, discuss their experiences training teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) from China and Iraq/Kurdistan. Confirming previous research on the topic, they found teachers’ beliefs about teaching to be highly resistant to change, even in the face of evidence that negates them (Bax, …

A Portrait Of The New York City Lunatic Asylum On Blackwell's Island, Austin C. Labau

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Statement of Purpose

"Insanity is a subject which touches our civil rights at so many different points, that it may be said to have a place in every problem involving human responsibility." -John Ordronaux, New York State Commissioner in Lunacy, 1878.

Mental illness can reduce even the strongest person to a state of helplessness. The way in which a society treats individuals with mental illness provides a window into what that society most values - what behaviors it approves, what people it sees as most valuable, and how much society is willing to sacrifice to help those who may or …

A Mixed Methods Analysis Of The Family Support Experiences Of Lgbtq Latter-Day Saints, Mckay Stevens Mattingly

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A burgeoning vein of research assesses links between familial support and psychosocial health among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) individuals. This study is a cross-sectional, multi-method survey that examined these associations in highly religious families. Participants were 587 individuals who identified as LGBTQ, were affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), and were between the ages of 18 and 30. Reports of early support from families were significantly associated with various measures of psychosocial health, more consistently for men than women. In addition, participants provided written narratives in response to an …

Measuring The Environmental Cost Of Hypocrisy, Arthur J. Caplan, Charles Sims, Elliot Jordan Anderson

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

This paper provides an example of how to estimate the marginal environmental cost of hypocrisy using revealed-behavior and self-identification survey responses from coffee drinkers regarding their use of cardboard and plastic (i.e., non-reusable) cups. Coffee shops provide a convenient microcosm for assessing the impact of hypocritical behavior because of (1) readily available, cheap substitutes (i.e., reusable coffee cups), (2) a relatively accurate estimate of the environmental (in particular, carbon) cost associated with using non-reusable cups, and (3) the ability to delineate hypocritical behavior by observing a choice with relatively few potential confounding factors. Hypocritical behavior is measured as a geometric …