Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Use Of Discursive Features As A Representation Of Voice And Identity In L2 Writing: A Case Study Of Multilingual Graduate Students, Demet Yigitbilek

Theses and Dissertations

Considering the constant increase in the number of international students studying in the US universities, it is important to address the issue of self-representation in writing as there are classrooms where students are still assumed to be native English speakers by default (Matsuda, 2006). Therefore, academic writing practices of multilingual writers can easily be seen as divergences from the ‘standard’ rather than conscious acts. However, since languages are at the core of who we are (Anzaldúa, 2001), how we use our linguistic repertoires in writing should be seen as representation of our multilingual and diverse identities. This thesis, then, presents …

Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior And Organizational Identification: Exploring The Moderating Effects Of Conscientiousness And Neuroticism, Conrad Niederhauser

Theses and Dissertations

Little research in the field of industrial and organizational psychology has focused on unethical behavior intended to help the organizations and its members or the factors that may predict the prevalence of these behaviors. The purpose of this study was to further this research and examine possible moderating effects of conscientiousness and neuroticism on the relationship between organizational identification (OID) and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). While no support was found to suggest higher levels of neuroticism or conscientiousness moderate the relationship between UPB and OID. This study contributed to the literature through investigating the role of individual-level differences on the …

Sovereignty In Islamist Political Thought: Continuity And Change, Md Mizanur Rahman

Theses and Dissertations

Sovereignty is a contested issue in Islamist political thought. Although Islamists practically accepted liberal democracy in various forms across the world, they are yet to solve the normative paradox: how to reconcile Islam’s divine sovereignty to nation-state’s popular sovereignty. Normatively, Islamists advocating the divine sovereignty reject any human-constructed system that intervenes in the divine order and distorts God’s divine design. Some Islamists, however, attempt to move away from this interpretation of absolute sovereignty of God and consequently reinterpret Islamic thoughts and practices in a manner that is compatible with the ethos of liberal democracy. This study examines this shifting concept …

Disney World, The Mythic Space, And The Disney Company Mythology, Logan Sean Spence

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine previous literature about Disney, his life, and his company to dissect and illustrate how he functioned as a mythical tale. Disney’s life story is a point of pride for those close to him and his family because it reflected the success of a man in a dire situation. However, once this claim is established, I use it, as well as other academic literature, to assert that the Walt Disney Myth eventually expanded into a broader Disney Company Mythology. The mythology, as I later establish, is less about Disney and more about the ideas he represents …

Stereotipat Gjinore Në Radiotelevizionin E Kosovës Dhe Në Radiotelevizionin 21, Besarta Breznica

Theses and Dissertations

Në këtë punim diplome do të shtjellohet tema e paragjykimeve gjinore në RadioTelevizionin e Kosovës dhe RadioTelevizionin 21, por si rast studimi do të merren reklamat, emisionet dhe seriali “Çka ka shpija”, serial i cili transmetohet në RadioTelevizionin e Kosovës. Duke pasur parasysh se ne vazhdimisht jemi në kontakt me televizionin, internetin e mediat online, dhe duke e konsideruar faktin që përdorshmëria e rrjeteve sociale po rritet çdo ditë e më shumë, kjo nënkupton që ne jemi të rrethuar nga reklamat dhe është e pamundur shmangia e tyre, në një botë konsumeriste dhe komercialiste, sepse pikërisht mediat në përgjithësi nuk …

Roli I Këshillit Të Mediave Të Shkruara Të Kosovës, Edita Shabani

Theses and Dissertations

Tema e titulluar, Roli i Këshillit të Mediave të Shkruara të Kosovës, është e një rëndësie të veçantë. Këshilli i Mediave të Shkruara të Kosovës, pos që është fushë e re dhe veprimtari e re e sjelljes së mediave online, ajo në radhë të parë është e vlefshme edhe për të parë pozicionin e këtij Këshilli dhe rolin që ai ka pasur për këto vite. Qëllimi i KMSHK- së është të mbroj qytetarin nga shkrimet e pavërteta si dhe ta mbroj gazetarin nga ankesat e pambështetura. Misioni mbështetet mbi bindjet e Kodit të Mediave të Shkruara të Kosovës. Dega …

Portalet Në Kosovë Dhe Ndikimi I Fake News, Endrit Gashi

Theses and Dissertations

Tema e titulluar “Portalet në Kosovë dhe ndikimi i Fake News”, pos që është fushë e re dhe veprimtari e re e sjelljes së medieve online, ajo në radhë të parë është e vlefshme për të parë dhe analizuar tërë këtë rol mediatik që po dominon kohëve të fundit në mediat online. Dega e Medias dhe Komunikimit në UBT do të pasurohej me këtë punim diplome sepse Lajmet e Rreme tashmë po bëhen gjithnjë e më shumë të pranishme në portalet kosovare dhe si të tilla përmes tyre po viktimizohet publiku. Fake News nuk është më risi, por domosdoshmëri për …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of A Supervision Intervention On Secondary Traumatic Stress Responses Among Counselors Treating Child Survivors Of Sexual Abuse, Brooke Wymer

Theses and Dissertations

Novice counselors who have high trauma caseloads are at risk for secondary traumatic stress (STS) responses, which can impact their ability to function effectively in professional counseling roles. Supervision is one factor frequently conceptualized to have an impact on STS responses in counselors; however, there is a dearth of literature regarding specific supervision interventions that are evidence-based to reduce or prevent STS responses among counselors treating trauma, specifically child survivors of sexual abuse (CSSA). Due to the absence of supervision intervention studies among counselors working with this population, the current study implemented an experimental single case research design to measure …

Essays In The Economics Of Education, Breyon J. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

I examine, separately, the impact of three education programs on student achievement, using difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences designs. First, I examine whether spillover benefits on achievement exist from preschool. I estimate the effect of exposure to a South Carolina preschool program that targets disadvantaged four-year-olds on students’ test scores in grades 3 through 5, where exposure means residing in a school district once the program was made available and disadvantaged students are those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch or Medicaid. I find that exposure to the preschool program not only increases the math and reading scores of targeted students, but …

Acquisition Of The English Copula By Arabic Speaking Esl Learners: Evidence For Feature Reassembly, Jenna Steiner

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to identify whether the acquisition of the English copula by Arabic- speaking learners of English provides evidence for a performance or representational- based account of errors. The representational theory tested in this study is the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Mastropavlou, 2007) which proposes that language learners have only partial access to Universal Grammar (UG), making some language structures unacquirable for second language learners. The performance theory tested in this study is Feature Reassembly (Lardiere, 2008), which proposes that the source of errors lies with the mapping of features onto morphology rather inside the core computational component of …

Prototyping A Social Media Flooding Photo Screening System Based On Deep Learning And Crowdsourcing, Huan Ning

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to implement a prototype system to screen flooding photos from social media. These photos, associated with their geographic locations, can provide free, timely, and reliable visual information about flood events to the decision makers. This system is designed for the application to the real social media images, including several key functions: tweets downloading, image downloading, flooding photo detection, and human verification via a WebGIS application. In this study, a training dataset of 5,000 flooding photos was built based on an iterative method; a convolutional neural network (CNN) was then trained and applied to detect flooding photos. Also, …

Teaching Conversation Skills To Adults With Developmental Disabilities Using A Video-Based Intervention Package, Kaitlyn Rayne Osborne

Theses and Dissertations

Social skills deficits may hinder learning, terminate relationships, and impede employment. Individuals with autism and intellectual disability are often characterized with difficulties in social judgement, emotions, and interpersonal relationships, all of which can lead to disruptive and aggressive behaviors. Explicit instruction, video modeling, and video feedback are research-based practices that have been used to teach conversation skills to individuals, particularly children with developmental disabilities and social impairments. This study examined the effects of explicit instruction combined with video modeling and video feedback in teaching six adults ages 18-20 with autism and intellectual disability skills for initiating a conversation. A multiple …

Social Support: Who And What Types Matter For Early Adolescents’ Life Satisfaction, Kimberly G. Sitter

Theses and Dissertations

Trends in current psychological research suggest an increasing interest in indicators of well-being in youth, such as life satisfaction (LS). Studies indicate a strong association between LS and social support from different sources within an early adolescent’s social network. However, the unique contributions of specific types of supportive behaviors (within sources of social support) as they relate to development of early adolescent global LS have been largely overlooked. The current study sought to examine the unique contributions of social support types (emotional, appraisal, informational, instrumental) within three sources of support (parent, teacher, peer) to global LS in a sample of …

Possession Of Status Value: An Extension Of Status Value Theory, Nicolas L. Harder

Theses and Dissertations

Through what mediums is it possible to spread status? Prior research shows that status can be inferred from reward states, status and expectations can spread from one valued characteristic to another, and that differences in the status value of an object possessed by an individual can lead to differences in power during exchange interactions. However, it is not known if possession of these objects actually results in increased status and expectations for an individual possessing the status valued object. Building on Status Value Theory, Status Construction Theory, Reward Expectations Theory, and the Status Value Theory of Power, I construct a …

“Philosophical Treatises On Life And Death”:Newspaper Coverage Of A Controversial Brain Death Case, Khadija Ejaz

Theses and Dissertations

The central concern of this multi-method research project was to investigate newspaper coverage of the controversial brain death case of Jahi McMath. This represents the first study of sense-making of the case in the news media, positioning it at the intersection of science communication and critical qualitative inquiry. First, framing theory was used to guide a textual analysis of 81 newspaper articles from high-circulation newspapers in California. This revealed four frames that first created uncertainty about brain death, thereby permitting two competing frames of Jahi being alive and also being dead to co-exist before merging into a frame that further …

Causes And Consequences Of Police Militarization, Edward Eugene Lawson, Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, and many other incidents of police violence that followed, the militarization of policing and the use of violence by police became the subjects of contentious debate among the public, policymakers, and scholars. Research on these subjects necessary to inform the debate has been lacking. This work examines the causes and effects of police militarization in the United States. Specifically, I argue that militarization is a response to perceived threat from minority racial groups, but the rela- tionship between racial demographics and militarization is curvilinear. Militarized begin to see themselves as soldiers fighting on …

Ammani Youth- Paradoxical Citizens On The Margins, Holly L. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Cities are complex social environments representing a convergence of many physical and human processes which influence how young people form their identities and plan for their futures. The role of urban environments on social processes has received substantial attention. However, significantly less attention has been focused on how urban youth are impacted specifically as political actors. Youth are particularly exposed to feeling the impacts of historical and on-going geopolitical issues in and surrounding their urban environments. Amman, Jordan is a compelling location to examine urban impacts on young political actors because of the clear geopolitical changes taking place in and …

The Intersections Of Health And Wealth: Socioeconomic Status, Frailty, And Mortality In Industrial England, Samantha Lee Yaussy

Theses and Dissertations

Socioeconomic status (SES) is considered one of the most powerful predictors of mortality today. However, studies of health in living populations and bioarchaeological studies of health in the past often oversimplify the connection between SES and mortality and overlook heterogeneity in frailty within a population and the potential for multiple types of marginalization to be layered within a single individual. This dissertation project uses skeletal samples to examine the interactions of SES, demographic characteristics (e.g., age and sex), exposure to physiological stressors, and mortality in the context of industrialization in 18th- and 19th-century England. Skeletal data from four industrial-era cemeteries …

Vietnamese Family Caregivers’ Adjustment Process To Their Caregiving Roles For Family Members With Dementia, Trang Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the psychological process that Vietnamese family members go through to adjust to the caregiving role for their relatives with dementia. Adopting constructivist grounded theory, 30 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews, including 10 follow-up interviews, were conducted with 20 Vietnamese primary family caregivers of relatives with dementia from the National Geriatric Hospital in Vietnam. The study results reveal that Vietnamese family caregivers held limited understanding of dementia. They used a mixed explanatory model, combining both folk (e.g., dementia as normal aging) and biomedical approaches (e.g., dementia as a brain-related disease) to explain causes of dementia. Family cohesion and responsibility are …

Reading Between The Lines: An Intersectional Media Analysis Of Female Sex Offenders In Florida Newspapers, Toniqua C. Mikell

Theses and Dissertations

The media is one of the furthest reaching social institutions of our society. It is a source of white patriarchal ideologies and a vehicle through which they are communicated. Female sex offenders represent a nexus of prescribed social and legal violations. This dissertation examines the reinforcement of patriarchal ideas in media coverage of female sex offenders by posing the question: how are female sex offenders portrayed in the media? Specifically, how are those portrayals racialized? Using an intersectional lens, this study employs a qualitative content analysis to examine the top five circulating newspapers in Florida and their coverage of female …

Creating A Place: Mulberry Site (38ke12) Interpretation And Exhibition, Abigail Geedy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis interprets the place and archaeological collections of the Mulberry site (38KE12) through a community-focused lens and applies that interpretation into text for a museum exhibition. Mulberry is a multi-mound Mississippian town in central South Carolina that was likely inhabited by ancestral Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Muscogee (Creek), and/or Catawba Indian Nation peoples. Utilizing entanglement, place-making studies, and Indigenous worldview studies as grounding theory, oral histories and ethnographies are applied to the physical landscape and artifactual remains of the site in an effort to understand the ways that people interacted with objects and the landscape to create meaning-laden …

A Choice To Engage: Selective Marginality And Dynamic Households On The 18th-19th Century Irish Coast, Meagan Conway

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the nature of marginality on the peripheries of empire in 18th and 19th century rural Ireland. These shifting imperial borders, both cultural and geographic, are historically fluid spaces that have potential to impact individual decision-making, spark cultural change, and alter social dynamics under the pressures of foreign rule. This project focuses on individual rural households off the coast of western Ireland to understand the selective engagement (choices to accept or reject externally generated ideologies) of households in transnational systems, and the ways islanders generated a material reaction to prescribed narratives of marginality from the imperial epicenter. Expressions …

The Interaction Of Individual Working Memory Capacity With Cognitive Linguistics-Based And Translation-Based Instructional Treatments During The Acquisition Of Polysemous L2 Spanish Spatial Prepositions, Joseph F. Letexier

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated three areas in SLA related to the acquisition of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions. These three areas were (1) the effect of instructional method on the acquisition of productive knowledge of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions, (2) the effect of working memory capacity on the acquisition of productive knowledge of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions, and (3) the effects resulting from the interaction of working memory capacity with instructional method on the acquisition of productive knowledge of polysemous L2 Spanish spatial prepositions. The target learners were adult L1 English speakers 18 years of age or over …

The Games Behind The Scenes: Newspaper Framing Of Female African American Olympic Athletes, Martin Reece Funderburk

Theses and Dissertations

Competing in and representing their country in the Olympic games is considered one of the greatest achievements for an athlete. From heroes such as Michael Jordan and the “Dream Team,” to Michael Phelps setting world record after record in the pool, Olympians are remembered as legends to those watching at home. How their amazing achievements at these Olympic games have been framed by the media though is another story. Newspapers have facilitated a platform for a qualitative content analysis on the framing of three female African American Olympic gold medalists that showed statistical significance in terms of the amount of …

Investigating The Construct Validity Of Sluggish Cognitive Tempo In Children, Kristin L. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

The term Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) refers to attention difficulties that are characterized by a constellation of symptoms ranging from excessive daydreaming to drowsiness, sluggishness, and lethargy. Although several SCT scales have been developed in recent years, researchers have yet to agree upon an ideal set of symptoms. In addition, it remains unclear whether SCT consists of a single dimension or if it is a multidimensional construct. The first aim of this study was to extend research related to SCT symptomatology and measurement by conducting a comprehensive investigation of SCT symptoms. A 25-item scale was developed to include each of …

Examining Non-Targeted Effects Of The Connect Through Play Project: Implications For Addressing Mental Health Of Underserved Middle School Youth, Jessica Dandan

Theses and Dissertations

Early adolescence is a developmental phase accompanied by several changes occurring in various biopsychosocial domains, associated with an increased vulnerability to mental and physical health problems. Youth of minority status and/or low socio- economic status have been shown to be more susceptible, as they are more likely to incur greater exposure to stressors accordingly. Coincidently, as psychological problems emerge such as internalizing disorders, physical activity engagement declines; those trends seem to persist into adulthood and have been associated with numerous negative health outcomes. Evidence points to the direct impact of physical activity, as well as, social variables such as social …

Judicial Legitimacy And The Dearth Of State Supreme Court Knowledge, Tj Kimel

Theses and Dissertations

As western democracies face challenges unseen since the Cold War ended, understanding the correlates of legitimacy for democratic institutions has grown in importance. While scholars have well-developed theories and empirical evidence of Supreme Court support, we know far less about state supreme court legitimacy. This is despite the fact that these courts hand down 100,000 legal decisions annually. Relying on an original survey conducted with participants in 46 states, I develop and test a theory that respondents rely on the Supreme Court as a cue when deciding whether they should extend legitimacy to state supreme courts they know next to …

Effectiveness Of A Brand’S Paid, Owned, And Earned Media In A Social Media Environment, Anan Wan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explored how a brand’s paid, owned, and earned media (POEM) influence and engage its audience in the social media environment where consumer engagement is stressed. This dissertation used an online experiment (N = 250) to explore the effectiveness of applying earned media within an advertising context, The findings indicated that positive earned media was more effective on people’s consumer engagement intention and download intention than paid media, but it did not work on perceived credibility of the post or product attitude. Positive earned media was found to be less credible than owned media. Among all the five …

Minimum Wage And National Culture, Zhongyu Cao

Theses and Dissertations

Minimum wage adjustment affects economic agent behaviors and leads to an unintended side effect s. The first chapter of the dissertation studies the impact of the minimum wage level on the college enrollment. Using institution-level data from IPEDS, the results show that the real minimum wage level has significant and diverse effects on different types of enrollment. The results are robust using several alternative specifications and individual level analysis. The second chapter of the dissertation addresses another side effect of the minimum wage law: crime. Using U.S. state-level arrest and offense data and agency-level offense data, this chapter provides empirical …

Public Debt, High Inflation And Economic Depression: A Survival Analysis Approach, Minjie Guo

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the association between public debt, high inflation and economics depression by using the survival analysis approach.

In the first chapter, I use non-parametric survival analysis to check the association between high debt episodes and high inflation episodes. Both the Kaplan-Meier estimate and the Nelson-Aelon analysis indicate that the existence of an overlapping high inflation episode is correlated with longer duration of high debt episodes. The reverse is also true: the existence of a high debt episode overlap is associated with longer duration of high inflation episodes. Whether or not the country is a member of the OECD …