Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Reading Development In Adolescent First And Second Language English Learners: A Comparison Using Age Match Design, Vahidehsadat Shahidi

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Fourteen Iranian-Canadian bilingual students were tested for language ability as well as cognitive and phonological processing skills in two languages: Farsi and English. They were compared to 30 Iranian monolingual chronological age matched students and 30 Canadian chronological age matched peers. Since there were not any standardized tests in Farsi, one of the aims of this study was to begin creating the language ability measures in Farsi, and to test their reliabilities. In general, from six developed and translated Farsi tasks, three of them were found to be reliable. It was found that bilingual students perform better on memory tasks, …

Sector-Switching In Transition Economies: A Case Study Of Kazakhstan's Health Care Sector, Dariga Chukmaitova

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The dissertation examines the economic and behavioral factors influencing 'sector-switching' in Kazakhstan's health care industry. Sector-switching involves doctors moving from the national to the private system, which is not well established, thereby raising questions about why the switch occurs. It addresses the question: why health care professionals in Kazakhstan switch from the public sector to similar jobs in the private or nonprofit sectors? This study addresses a key issue in public management (sector switching) and also offers insights into the dynamics of the transition from a centralized economy to a market economy. As such, its findings have `real-world' applications beyond …

A Study Of Resilience In West Australian Small Business Owners, Philip Roggio

Theses : Honours

Research suggests a relationship exists between the resilience of the Small Business Owner (SBO) and the resilience of their business, however the nature of this relationship is unclear. The current study investigated whether the internal resources of the SBO were significant in predicting the resilience of their business. A sample of 108 SBOs in the Perth metropolitan area completed an online questionnaire which measured aspects of individual and business resilience. A series of multiple regression analyses were used to test three hypotheses. The results from all three analyses consistently revealed that the internal resources of the SBO were the most …

Formal Supports Improve Qol For Parents Of Children With Disabilities: Systematic Review; And, Mothers Caring For A Child With A Disability Require Dynamic, Tailored Support Services To Return To Paid Work, Sylvana Pasini

Theses : Honours

Parents caring for a child with a disability (PCCD) may experience adverse effects on quality of life (QOL) due to role demands, hence it is important to evaluate available support services. This paper aims to systematically review current research examining the impact of formally provided, parent-focused emotional or informational interventions on QOL for parents caring for a child with a disability or chronic condition. Procedures: Electronic searches of five databases (2001 – 2011) were conducted and reviewed against the study eligibility criteria. All levels of evidence were included, and studies were evaluated against standard quality assessment criteria by two reviewers. …

Comparison Of Growing Media For Container Grown Plants, Paul Harris, David Longer, Derrick Oosterhuis, Dimitra Loka

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Greenhouse and growth chamber experiments are conducted worldwide in efforts to produce solutions that would increase yields of agronomic crops. However, the results of those experiments vary due to the many growth media being used. An experiment was conducted in the fall of 2010 to identify a broadly acceptable growth media that would produce uniform stands and optimum results in greenhouse and growth chamber settings. A total of six growth media were tested on cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) at the Arkansas Agricutural Research and Extension Center’s Altheimer Lab in Fayetteville. The plants grown in each medium were harvested six weeks after …

Assumed Transmission In Political Science: A Call For Bringing Description Back In, Scott L. Althaus, Nathaniel Swigger, Svitlana Chernykh, David J. Hendry, Sergio C. Wals, Christopher Tiwald

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

News outlets cannot serve as reliable conveyors of social facts, nor do their audiences crave such content. Nonetheless, much political science scholarship assumes that objective information about social, political, and economic topics is routinely transmitted to the mass public through the news. This article addresses the problem of selection bias in news content and illustrates the problem with a content analytic study of New York Times coverage given to American war deaths in five major conflicts that occurred over the past century. We find that news coverage of war deaths is unrelated to how many American combatants have recently died. …

No. 05: The Hiv And Urban Food Security Nexus, Jonathan Crush, Bruce Frayne, Scott Drimie, Mary Caesar

African Food Security Urban Network

Considerable attention has been devoted to the impact of the HIV and AIDS epidemic on small farmers and the food security of the rural poor. Despite the rapid progression of the epidemic in rural areas, it remains an ever-growing challenge in the continent’s rapidly-growing cities where prevalence rates are still higher than in rural areas. This report examines the reciprocal relationship between HIV and urban food security. Much of the research and most of the policy interventions on the HIV-Urban Food Security Nexus focus on the nutritional status of individual People Living With HIV (PLHIV). Other members of households with …

The Prevalence And Predictive Nature Of Victimization, Substance Abuse & Mental Health On Recidivism: A Comparative Longitudinal Examination Of Male And Female Oregon Department Of Corrections Inmates, Anastacia Konstantinos Papadopulos

Dissertations and Theses

As a consequence of increased awareness and the current scholarly debate regarding women's differential predictors of recidivism, criminal justice agencies are working with researchers in the field to expand their knowledge in this area. In 2007, Portland State University researchers in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Corrections conducted an investigation of factors emerging in the pathways and gender responsive literature as predictive of women's recidivism in a randomly selected sample of female (n=150) and male (n=150) inmates. This study used information gathered from that investigation for two purposes: (1) to assess the prevalence rates of victimization experiences (childhood, adolescent …

Re-Locating Recycling: A Contextual Analysis Of Recycling Behavior In The Usa And Germany, Tsai-Shiou Hsieh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While recycling remains a common research topic within environmentally responsible behavior studies, it is little known how contextual factors such as physical environments, social interactions, and cultural backgrounds influence people's attitudes and behavior. This research adopts an ecological framework and conducts a mixed-method qualitative inquiry of whether and how relocation has impacts on people's ecological thinking and behavior in their everyday life. Semi-structured interviews were conducted within two groups of people: Americans who moved to Munich and Germans who moved to New York City. Interviews were conducted in participants' homes or workplaces. Pictures were taken inside the apartments, in common …

Finding A Place For Marginal Migrants In The International Human Rights System, Leila Kawar

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article examines how international human rights law is shaping the politics of immigration. It argues that migrant human rights are neither conceptually nor practically incompatible with an international order premised upon state territorial sovereignty, and that the specific aesthetics of the contemporary international human rights system, namely its formalistic and legalistic tendencies, has facilitated its integration with a realm of policymaking traditionally reserved to state discretion. An exploration of two areas in the emerging field of migrant human rights traces the multi-scalar transnational legal processes through which these norms are formulated and internalized.

Fertility Following An Unintended First Birth, Karen Guzzo, Sarah Hayford

Sociology Faculty Publications

Research on unintended fertility tends to focus on births as isolated events. This article expands previous research by examining the relationship between early unintended childbearing and subsequent fertility dynamics in the United States. Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth show that 27.5% of mothers report an unintended first birth. We use event history methods to show that these women are significantly more likely than women with an intended first birth to have an unintended second birth than to either have no second birth or an intended second birth, net of sociodemographic characteristics. An unintended first birth also …

Policing In The United States: Balancing Crime Fighting And Legal Rights, John Eterno Ph.D.

Faculty Works: CRJ and LS (2002-2017)

Policing in any nation is an inextricable and essential aspect of the existing government. The government of the United States is an elected democracy. It is a tripartite system including legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Essentially, the legislature creates the laws, the executive is charged with enforcing laws, and the judiciary interprets the laws. At the federal level these branches are the president, Congress, and federal courts (the highest court being the United States Supreme Court). Because the founding fathers of the U.S. (the authors and supporters of the Constitution of the United States) feared tyranny, no branch of government …

The Coping Context Of Anticipatory Grief For Hiv Case Managers, Amandia Speakes-Lewis Phd, Lcsw-R

Faculty Works: SW (2011-2020)

In the early phase of HIV/AIDS the exorbitant rate of death impeded the case managers’ ability to effectively engage the client in preparing for an impending death outcome. In the post-HAART era, case managers are charged with assessing and coordinating a circle of care related to a chronic illness. This article examines the context of anticipatory grief as a framework for addressing HIV as a chronic illness. A spectrum of strategies are provided for coping with anticipatory grief and multiple losses related to providing services to those HIV/AIDS infected.

Emotions, Genre, Justice In Film And Television: Introduction And Chapter 1, E. Deidre Pribram Ph.D.

Faculty Works: COM (1993-2016)

In many ways film and television studies are ideally suited for detailed analyses of the place of emotions in narrative and social discourses and practices. Emotions always have been central to how popular culture "works," how it creates its impact and meanings. Popular culture's complex, intricate deployments of emotion are a primary means by which it achives its status as popular. Cultural theorists have moved toward the analysis of popular culture precisely because it has mass emotional appeal and resonance. Herein lies its significance.

Working Memory In Simultaneous Interpreters: Effects Of Task And Age, Teresa Signorelli, Henk Haarmann, Loraine Obler

Publications and Research

This study examines whether interpreters have better working memory (WM) than noninterpreters, taking into account different WM components and the potential modulatory influence of age. Younger and older interpreters and non-interpreters were tested on reading span, nonword repetition, and order- and category-cued recall, using English, second-language materials. Articulation rate was also assessed. Interpreters outperformed non-interpreters in reading span and nonword repetition, but not cued recall and articulation rate. These results suggest that interpreters have better ability to manipulate information in working memory and process or store sub-lexical phonological representations, but have no advantage in short-term retention of words and their …

The Contribution Of Set Switching And Working Memory To Sentence Processing In Older Adults, Mira Goral, Manuella Clark-Cotton, Avron Spiro Iii, Loraine Obler, Jay Verkuilen, Martin Albert

Publications and Research

This study evaluates the involvement of switching skills and working memory capacity in auditory sentence processing in older adults. The authors examined 241 healthy participants, aged 55 to 88 years, who completed four neuropsychological tasks and two sentence-processing tasks. In addition to age and the expected contribution of working memory, switching ability, as measured by the number of perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, emerged as a strong predictor of performance on both sentence-processing tasks. Individuals with both low working-memory spans and more perseverative errors achieved the lowest accuracy scores. These findings are consistent with compensatory accounts of …

Freight Distribution Problems In Congested Urban Areas: Fast And Effective Solution Procedures To Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problems, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Congestion is a common phenomenon in all medium to large cities of the world. Reliability of freight movement in urban areas is an important issue to manufacturing or service companies whose operation is based in just-in-time approaches. These companies tend to provide high value or time sensitive products/services. As congestion increases, carriers face increasing challenges to satisfy their time sensitive customers in an economical way. Route designs or schedules which require long computation times or ignore travel time variations will result in inefficient and suboptimal solutions. Poorly designed routes that lead freight vehicles into congested arteries and streets not only …

Critical Teaching In The Library, Alycia Sellie

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The (Coming) Social Media Revolution In The Academy, Jessie Daniels, Joe R. Feagin

Publications and Research

A revolution in academia is coming. New social media and other web technologies are transforming the way we, as academics, do our job. These technologies offer communication that is interactive, instantaneous, global, low-cost, and fully searchable, as well as platforms for connecting with other scholars everywhere.

Governance And Merger Activity In Banking, Thomas J. Piskula

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

One method of evaluating the success of management decisions regarding acquisitions is to examine equity price movements as the news of the merger is made public. The price movement of the acquiring firm's equity around the announcement of the acquisition indicates if shareholders believe management has acted in their interest. In the banking industry, researchers have found that on average equity values of the acquiring bank do not display abnormal positive returns upon announcement, and often display statistically significant negative returns. Another line of research has documented that CEOs are better compensated for managing larger organizations, particularly when involved in …

A Secure Behavior Modification Sensor System For Physical Activity Improvement, Alan Price

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Today, advances in wireless sensor networks are making it possible to capture large amounts of information about a person and their interaction within their home environment. However, what is missing is how to ensure the security of the collected data and its use to alter human behavior for positive benefit.

In this research, exploration was conducted involving the "infrastructure" and "intelligence" aspects of a wireless sensor network through a Behavior Modification Sensor System. First was to understand how a secure wireless sensor network could be established through the symmetric distribution of keys (the securing of the infrastructure), and it involves …

Attitudes, William A. Cunningham, Ingrid J. Haas, Andrew Jahn

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

This chapter reviews social neuroscience research that links social psychological attitudes and evaluative processes to their presumed neural bases. The chapter is organized into four parts. The first section discusses how attitude representations are transformed into evaluative states that can be used to guide thought and action. The next two sections address the related processes of attitude learning and change. The final section discusses applications of these concepts for the study of prejudice and political behavior.

The Politics Of Mate Choice, John A. Alford, Peter K. Hatemi, John Hibbing, Nicholas G. Martin, Lindon J. Eaves

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Recent research has found a surprising degree of homogeneity in the personal political communication network of individuals but this work has focused largely on the tendency to sort into likeminded social, workplace, and residential political contexts. We extend this line of research into one of the most fundamental and consequential of political interactions—that between sexual mates. Using data on thousands of spouse pairs in the United States, we investigate the degree of concordance among mates on a variety of traits. Our findings show that physical and personality traits display only weakly positive and frequently insignificant correlations across spouses. Conversely, political …

Alzheimer’S Disease, Carol Watwood

DLPS Faculty Publications

Alzheimer’s disease is a common health issue mostly found in elderly persons. An overview of the disease and a list of reliable Web-based information sources suitable for a general audience are presented.

Profiles In Science For Science Librarians: "What Lives Where, And Why": Alfred Russel Wallace, And The Field Of Biogeography, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

Biogeography, the study of animal and plant distribution, has a history extending back to at least the eighteenth century. But it was not until the work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid-nineteenth century that it really came into its own as a science. Darwin’s importance notwithstanding, it was really Wallace who put the field on the map, and many of today’s research threads can be traced back to his influence. This article provides a summary review of Wallace’s life and work and biogeography as a field of study, including Wallace’s role in its development.

Genealogy Gems: Academic Assets, Nancy Richey

SCL Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Defining A Niche For International Education As The Link To Building Global Civil Society, Thomas Millington

Office of International Programs Faculty/Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: Moral Psychology: Historical And Contemporary Readings, Audrey L. Anton

Philosophy & Religion Faculty Publications

Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings is a much-needed collection of essays on issues of moral psychology. The aim of the book is to present the reader with a comprehensive view of both the history and foundations of moral psychology as well as the discipline's position in academia and its relationship with other disciplines, such as psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, all of which involve empirical investigation of human capabilities and behavior. This collection is well organized into five distinct parts. Each part has a helpful editorial introduction that not only summarizes the main themes of the debate assigned to …

Editorial: Journeys And Pathways: A Different Road, Connie Foster

DLTS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Choosing To Serve: Modeling Antecedents Of Public Service Motivation In Undergraduate Students, Vivian Walker Greentree

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

This research builds upon the public service literature to better understand the distinctive nature of motivations associated with pursuing careers in the public sector. Previous research has shown that a wide variety of socialization experiences help to develop one's public service motivation (PSM). However, the research has fallen short of providing a comprehensive explanation. Additionally, a majority of the research focuses on those already employed in the public sector, with a dearth of exploration into students' preferences. This study utilized Perry's (1996) original survey instrument to measure PSM scores (both composite and dimensions) in college students, those who we must …