Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Analysis Of The Scale Of Parenting And Life Functioning Using The Rasch Measurement Model, Laricia Longworth-Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to examine dimensionality, reliability, invariance, targeting, scale use and functioning of items across subgroups for a sample of 278 on the Scale of Parenting and Life Functioning (SPLF). Analysis was conducted using a Rasch partial credit model. Overall, the SPLF showed good overall fit to the model. Unidimensionality of the scale was supported in the analysis, with over 60% of the raw variance explained by the measure. Item fit also provided evidence that the items fit the model. Scale categories displayed clear monotonicity. No differential item functioning was found for mother's age, race/ethnicity, …

Parties And Peacebuilding: The Institutional Origin Of Multiethnic Politics In India, Indonesia, And South Africa, Geoffrey P. Macdonald

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Under what conditions do multiethnic political parties win elections in deeply divided societies? Using the cases of India, Indonesia, and South Africa, this dissertation first argues that the nature of liberation movements creates a soft path dependence that affects party formation. Ethnically inclusive liberation movements create conditions conducive to the formation of multiethnic political parties. Yet after this juncture point of party formation, multiethnic politics have dominated India and Indonesia while South Africa has experienced a slow degeneration into ethnic politics. To explain this divergence, this dissertation next examines the interaction of election rules and ethnic cleavage structure. India and …

Performing The Personal Within The Organizational: Communicating Professional Identities Through Taiwanese Commercial Airline Pilots' Personal Narratives, Kai-Chun Chuang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project explored professionalism and the performance of identities by examining Taiwanese commercial airline pilots' discursive practices in everyday life. The intentions for this project were to not only expand current knowledge of organizational communication from a critical rhetorical perspective, but to further explore the under-appreciated concept of professionalism of organizational members. Theoretically, I traced theoretical analysis in the sociology of professions and further investigated scholarship from identity research in organizational communication studies. This research agenda helped to advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professional identity as a complement to the sociological conception. I further merged …

The Hybrid Spirit Animating Chinese Pentecostals In Malaysia, Eu Kit Lim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the assertion in postcolonial scholarship, especially from the work of Homi Bhabha that the construction and performance of hybrid identities act as a form of resistance for marginalized communities against structures of oppression. While this study supports this assertion, it also critiques how hybridity fails to address issues of unequal power relations. This has led to an uncritical use of hybridity that reproduces the very idea of static identity which its proponents claim to transcend.

Through qualitative study of Chinese members of a Pentecostal church in Malaysia, this study argues that church members engage in "unequal belonging" …

Examining The Alliance-Outcome Relationship: Reverse Causation, Third Variables, And Treatment Phase Artifacts, John Paul M. Reyes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychotherapy research reveals consistent associations between therapeutic alliance and treatment outcomes in the youth and adult literatures. Despite these consistent findings, prospective associations are not sufficient to support the claim that the alliance is a change mechanism in psychotherapy. The current study examined the direction of effect of the alliance-outcome relationship, the contribution of early symptom change in treatment to the development of therapeutic alliance, and the potential for pretreatment interpersonal functioning characteristics to be third variables that account for the association between alliance and outcome. Participants were adolescents with depression and a history of interpersonal trauma that presented to …

Chinese Intellectuals And China's Policy Toward Japan, Wenting Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims at integrating two scholarships: state-society relation studies and Chinese foreign policy analysis. I created Two-level Perception Gap Model to analyze different intellectual groups' relations with party-state by confirming Chinese intellectuals play a role in CFP making in general, China's Japan policy in particular. This model is an alternative approach, instead of conventional wisdom patron-client approach, to explain and analyze the pluralized intellectual-state relations in China. This model first analyzed the role of two intellectual groups, namely think tank scholars and popular nationalist, in China's Japan policy making, and then based on these analyses it explains the interactional …

The Impact Of Religious Commitment And Motivation On African American Male Academic Achievement, Beverly Cabble Logan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed method, pragmatic, research study was to determine, from successful African American college age students, what influences have contributed to their academic success. Quantitative data were collected using two survey instruments, the Religious Commitment Inventory (RCI-10) and a researcher created demographic instrument for data collection. Qualitative data were collected through five researcherconducted focus group discussions with 10 African American students enrolled in a four year university located in the southeast region of the United States. The guiding questions were: How does religious commitment impact academic achievement among minority male college students? What relationship exists between religious …

Depression And Suicide Behavior Among College Students: Understanding The Moderator Effects Of Self-Esteem And Suicide Resilience, Canzi Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As suicide-related incidents on college campuses increase and receive intense media coverage and a growing percentage of college students experience suicide ideation and attempts, there is a desperate need for a more profound understanding of suicidality and its risk and protective factors among college populations. Recent years there has been a growing interest in the buffering effect of resilience on suicidality (Johnson, Wood, Gooding, Taylor, & Tarrier, 2011). This study adds to the suicide literature by exploring the relationship among depression, self-esteem, suicide resilience, and suicidality. Undergraduate students from a large university in the Western United States were asked to …

Hearts And Minds: Collaborative Approaches To Archaeological Site Preservation, Mark Russell Sanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Archaeological relic hunting on public lands in the southwestern United States accelerated with 19th century westward expansion and it continues today. Efforts to curb looting through the passage and enforcement of laws has been only moderately successful. Americans' misunderstandings of archaeology's ethical responsibilities, particularly with regard to Native Americans and other descendant communities, have further undermined historic preservation initiatives. My thesis addresses the usefulness of public, private, and nonprofit site protection efforts in changing the beliefs and behaviors associated with site looting, focusing particularly on the need for collaboration outside the heritage management profession. Using Postcolonialist, materialist, pragmatist, and collaborative …

The Impact Of Transit Oriented Development On The Travel Behaviors Of Workers In Denver, Colorado, Gregory J. Kwoka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To combat unsustainable transportation systems characterized by reliance on petroleum, polluting emissions, traffic congestion and suburban sprawl, planners encourage mixed use, densely populated areas that provide individuals with opportunities to live, work, eat and shop without necessarily having to drive private automobiles to accommodate their needs. Despite these attempts, the frequency and duration of automobile trips has consistently increased in the United States throughout past decades. While many studies have focused on how residential proximity to transit influences travel behavior, the effect of workplace location has largely been ignored.

This paper asks, does working near a TOD influence the travel …

Genetically Modified Food In The Us And The Uk: Proponents, Dissenters And Media Coverage, Tess Ann Doezema

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is a qualitative study examining the communication surrounding the issue of genetically modified food in the UK and the UK from October, 2011 through September, 2012. Material from biotechnology industry organizations, industry-funded non-profits, groups campaigning against the continued use of the technology, and mainstream media coverage of the issue in both countries during this time was examined using thematic analysis. The issue is analyzed through the lenses of Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model, agenda building and framing theory. The research finds support for agenda building as well as a modernized understanding of the propaganda model, which the researcher …

The Pursuit Of Balanced Income: An Economic Perspective On Wealth, Calvin E. Pierce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to determine if households with moderate incomes have the opportunity to acquire pecuniary wealth. In an environment of increasing globalization, labor-eliminating technology, and an overburdened entitlement system, the position of wealth is necessary for households with a penchant for early retirement and particularly for those that will inevitably succumb to involuntary retirement. In these writings, qualitative and quantitative descriptions of wealth are offered; two microeconomic metrics are introduced to identify baseline wealth and to gauge proximity to this value; and strategies are devised to close the gap between these metrics.

The construct of the …

Monetary Effervescence: A Sociological Theory Of Religion Applied To Money, David J. Worley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project attempts to answer the question "What holds the construction of money together?" by asserting that it is money's religious nature which provides the moral compulsion for people to use, and continue to uphold, money as a socially constructed concept. This project is primarily descriptive and focuses on the religious nature of money by employing a sociological theory of religion in viewing money as a technical concept. This is an interdisciplinary work between religious studies, economics, and sociology and draws heavily from Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life as well as work related to heterodox theories of …

The Role Of Disgust In Eating Disorders, Eun Ha Kim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Disgust, a basic emotional response, which influences approach/avoidance behaviors, has been studied in various psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. The current study employed exploratory correlations and hierarchical linear regressions (controlling for race, anxiety, and depression) in order to be able to observe the relationships among three traditional domains of disgust (i.e., core, animal-reminder, contamination) and eating disordered behaviors. Results revealed significant correlations between core disgust and dieting behaviors, in addition to contamination disgust and bulimia and symptoms of food preoccupation as well as behaviors concerning self-control around food-related stimuli (i.e., oral control). More importantly, disgust sensitivity was …

School Quality Capitalization Into Housing Prices In Minnesota And Pennsylvania, Jonathan Taylor Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops and estimates a spatial autoregressive with autoregressive errors model of housing prices that accounts for both the endogeneity of spatially-lagged housing prices and local school quality measured by performance on state standardized tests. Two datasets are used from Boyertown, PA and Minneapolis, MN. Homes are spatially weighted against each other using a k nearest-neighbor approach. School quality is thought to be endogenous because unobserved neighborhood amenities in the error term of a hedonic regression are very likely positively correlated with local elementary, middle, and high school quality. Following previous literature, the optimal instrument matrix is constructed as …

Three Essays On Odd-Lot Transactions, Hardy Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays on odd-lot transactions. The first essay investigates the role odd lot trades play in equity markets, as well as how this role has changed over three distinct time periods- 2010, 2007, and 2005. In each of these time periods, we document the determinants of the proportions of odd lot transactions, the price contribution of odd lot trades, and the characteristics of odd lot trading on an intraday and intraweek basis. We find that odd lot transactions make up 8% of volume and 20-22% of trades. We find that odd lot proportions as well as …

Inescapable Aversive Stimulus Decreases Subsequent Escape Responding In Humans: An Investigation Of The Learned Helplessness Effect In A 3d Virtual Environment, Zachary Kilday

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to an inescapable aversive stimulus decreases escape responses to subsequent escapable aversive stimuli. This is known as the learned helplessness effect. In the present experiment, human participants were trained in an immersive, 3D virtual environment analog of an operant chamber using an inescapable aversive stimulus, an escapable aversive stimulus, or no aversive stimulus. Then, all participants were tested using an immersive, 3D virtual environment analog of a shuttle box using an escapable aversive stimulus. Participants trained with an inescapable aversive stimulus were slower to escape during testing than participants trained with an escapable aversive stimulus. The current results demonstrate …

The "War On Terror," Mortality Salience, And American Prejudice Before And After The 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, Arthur Hatton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United States’ counterterrorism efforts have been framed in various ways in the media and politics, and each framing metaphor varies in its ability to accurately describe counterterrorism (Kruglanski, Crenshaw, Post, & Victoroff, 2007). Each frame also may have effects on the way the public perceives, responds to, and finds acceptable in counterterrorism. One common framing metaphor in American politics is counterterrorism as a “War on Terror.” Terror Management Theory (TMT) predicts that reminding people of mortality has predictable effects on their opinions and behavior. This study seeks to test empirically whether framing counterterrorism as a “War on Terror” acts …

Impact Of Social Identity On Rape Legitimacy And Myth Acceptance, Rachael Rosenberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current research assessed whether a statement by a deviant political ingroup (versus outgroup) member elicited measureable differences on trivialization, cognitive dissonance, rape myth acceptance, or decision to vote for that candidate, and if explicitly “debunking” the statement made by this politician further impacted these variables. Participants were randomly assigned to read a statement made by a Republican or Democratic politician, who would either be an ingroup or outgroup member based on the party affiliation of each participant. Results indicate that while there were no significant differences between Republican or Democratic participants overall, Republicans tended to trivialize the statements made …

Ego Depletion And Boredom: Does Boredom Compromise Future Acts Of Self-Control?, John Lemay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explored how boredom might influence self-control when participants believed that willpower is unlimited or limited. After completing one of two questionnaires, which induced the belief that willpower is either unlimited or limited, participants then completed one of three tasks. The tasks consisted of a non-ego depleting self-control task, an ego-depleting self-control task, and a task shown to induce boredom, with the nondepleting and depleting conditions having been replicated from research by Job, Dweck, and Walton (2010). In the non-depleting condition, participants completed a task that involved crossing out all occasions of the letter “e” found on two pages …

Psychopathy And Attachment: Examining The Relationship Between Secure Attachment Priming And Psychopathy, Victoria Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to employ implicit and explicit security priming in order to examine the relationship between attachment dimensions and expressed psychopathy; specifically, it was hypothesized that security priming would reduce levels of expressed psychopathy. A repeated measures design was also used to assess the association between state attachment variables and expressed psychopathy. The results showed that security priming was effective at reducing expressed psychopathy for individuals high in trait attachment anxiety. Security priming also caused changes in the associative relationships between attachment dimensions and expressed psychopathy. These findings increase our understanding of the relationships between attachment …

"A Song For You" As Tribute To The Daughters Of The South: Illuminating The Work Of Black Women Principals, Beverly Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Curriculum can be understood as a place of both struggle and possibility, where curriculum workers engage in complicated conversations about self, society, and the purposes of education (Pinar, 2004). Although curriculum theorists have contributed much to discussions of how to improve the current state of education, little attention in the field is given to the role that leadership can play in educational transformation (Ylimaki, 2011). This study contributes to the field of curriculum studies by exploring the ethics of care of Black women public school principals in the South.

By exploring the life experiences of Black female principals from the …

Archaeological Survey And Limited Testing At The Lincoln Trail Site (9bn17), Bryan County, Georgia, Ryan O. Sipe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Lincoln Trail site (9BN17) is an Irene phase (AD 1300-1580) village located in southeastern Bryan County, Georgia within the Richmond Hill Wildlife Management Area (WMA). Prior surface survey (ca. 1973, 2010) indicated an extensive artifact scatter and complex of shell middens in a marsh-edge environment, yet little was known of the site’s nature and no subsurface survey was conducted. 9BN17 was selected as a case study for a broad research query to identify the structure of mainland Irene phase polities and the role that this site played within one. The site was systematically shovel tested, revealing numerous middens, and …

Ego Depletion And The Internet: Can We Study Ego-Depletion Online?, Todd Allmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exercising self-control depletes a finite resource of energy and reduces the ability to control behavior on subsequent tasks. Baumeister and others refer to the attenuation of self-regulation as ego depletion. Recent research has successfully utilized computer based depletion manipulations and measures. Previous research has focused on depletion tasks and measures in a laboratory setting, but no known research has extended ego depletion research to the online environment. The present study attempted to manipulate and measure ego-depletion through an online medium. We hypothesized that participants in the online experimental condition would perform significantly worse on two measures of depletion than participants …

The Politics Of Atheism In The West, Daniel Ryan Blazo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Though the term "atheism" encompasses all persons without belief in god(s), more people claim unbelief in god(s) than describe themselves as "convinced atheists" in every society on earth. While the extant social science research on religion and secularism rigorously explores the nuances of the religion/nonreligion divide, the scholarship largely ignores the complexity of irreligion, or the rejection of all religious truth claims involving supernatural phenomena. In this dissertation, I argue that a cross-national, comparative analysis of nonbelievers and avoatheists provides an ideal opportunity to gain leverage into the poorly understood political dynamics of irreligion, particularly in the context of Western …

Examination Of Architectural Features On Mound C Of The Carson Mound Group, Coahoma County, Mississippi, Erika Carpenter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of An Alcohol Deterrence Policy On College Students' Behavior, Matthew Douglas Defore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The university under study developed an alcohol control policy in 2006 in response to a string of tragic alcohol-related deaths. At the time of the study, the policy had been in operation for six years with a growing number of student sanctions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the university's alcohol control policy to determine its deterrence impact on students. By surveying students who have been sanctioned under the alcohol control policy, the researcher sought to gain insight on the strengths and weaknesses of the policy as well as to use these responses as an opportunity to recommend …

Big Ben: The Gentle Rebel, Brandon Christopher Rook

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the University of Mississippi having a deep and somewhat negative history with racial tension, the sole purpose of this study was to figure out if Ben Williams, the first African American varsity football player experienced any issues with racism while he attended school. Over the years Williams has stated that no issues have come about because of his race. After interviewing Ben Williams and over 10 others for the thesis project documentary entitled "The Ole Miss Black Athlete,” it can be predicted that Williams didn't receive any racial tension on the campus of Ole Miss from the media or …

Plants And Animals As Saviors And Invaders: Changing Perspectives On Invasive Species From The Colonial Era To The 21st Century, Meghan Leann Holmes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human beings integrate their environment into their group identities. Familiar plants and animals become associated with cultural memories through food, music, and everyday interaction. When species enter a new environment and change the composition of species within a space these plants and animals challenge assumptions of cultural unity and national and regional identities. In the Colonial era European arrivals brought plants and animals for economic and aesthetic purposes to maintain cultural traditions and environmental familiarity. This practice changed following the rise of nationalism in the late 19 th century. Americans continued to grow crops and raise livestock from other countries …

Interpreting Ambiguity In Sexual Dating Encounters: Social Information Processing Differences In Men And Women, Carrie Ambrose

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown date/acquaintance rape to be the most prevalent type of rape. Dating and social interactions provide a context influenced by social factors (e.g., relationship with perpetrator, relationship expectation, peer influences) and personal factors (e.g., social perceptions, goals, learning history), many of which have been suggested to complicate decision making in reference to communicating sexual boundaries. Social Information Processing Theory (SIP) suggests individuals follow successive cognitive stages in determining how to respond to social stimuli. These stages are influenced by biological predisposition, environment, and learning history. The SIP model involves 6 stages: encoding of cues, interpretation of cues, goal …