Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Temporal Association Between Alcohol, Negative Affect, And Dating Violence, Ryan Christopher Shorey

Doctoral Dissertations

Dating violence is a serious problem, with psychological aggression being the most common topography of aggression. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research on temporal risk factors for psychological aggression perpetration and victimization. Thus, the proposed study examined whether alcohol and negative affect increased the odds of psychological aggression perpetration and victimization, and whether these two risk factors interacted to temporally predict aggression. That is, consistent with the Attention-Allocation Model (AAM), it was hypothesized that at high levels of negative affect, acute alcohol consumption would increase the odds of aggression. However, at low levels of negative affect, acute alcohol consumption …

The Effects Of Social Support On At-Risk Youth, Christi Lanet Culpepper

Doctoral Dissertations

Social support is conceptualized as a protective factor that buffers against distress and dysfunction. Social support can be beneficial to all individuals and is usually available through a support system consisting of family and friends. Unfortunately, there are populations that lack effective support systems and consequently do not receive social support. One such population is at-risk youth. In this project, I examined the effects of social support, within the context of participation in youth programs, on the academic, emotional, and behavioral functioning of at-risk youth. Twenty-three adolescents participating in three youth programs were assessed at three time points: the beginning …

Exploring Employee-Organization Relationships In Post-Socialist Transition: Local Employees' Experiences In Foreign-Owned Companies In Croatia, Danijela Radić

Doctoral Dissertations

Organization-public relationships have been recognized as the essence of public relations. Even though employees have been identified as a strategic public contributing to organizational success, no attention has been given to employee-organization relationship development in postsocialist transitioning countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

This study explores how local employees in foreign-owned hotels in Croatia make sense of relationships with organizations for which they work. Interviews with Croatian employees reveal a number of barriers to successful employee-organization relationship development in foreign-owned companies. Findings indicate that local employees struggle with unfulfilled expectations in the workplace and face obstacles that prevent improvement. Employees …

The Long And The Short Of It: Testing The Conversion And Cuckold Strategies Of Ancestral Human Outgroup Mating, Joseph Frederick Salvatore

Doctoral Dissertations

The human social group likely aided in ancestral human’s survival. However, the small-knit extended kin group in which human ancestors evolved posed a plausible reproductive threat in the form of inbreeding. The outgroup mating hypothesis (Salvatore, Meltzer, & Gaertner, under review) proposed that, as a solution to the inbreeding dilemma, ancestral females may have mated outside their social group. The current work examines two competing hypotheses by which ancestral females mated with outgroup males and balanced parental investment concerns. The conversion hypothesis posits that ancestral females mated with an outgroup male under the provision that he and his group would …

Citizen Confidence In The Public Service: An Examination Of Established And Emerging Democracies In North America And Eurasia, Nurgul Ryskulovna Aitalieva

Doctoral Dissertations

How do levels of confidence in the public service differ across countries? Are these attitudes about the public service determined by similar individual-level attributes across countries? Do country-level correlates explain variation between countries in citizen attitudes toward the public service? Data from the 2005-2009 World Values Survey for 21 North American and Eurasian countries, in addition to aggregate-level measures of national context, are analyzed using multilevel binary logistic regression.

The study shows that there is a significant amount of variation in the confidence attitudes not only within each country but also across countries. Citizens of Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and Finland …

Citizen Science: Framing The Public, Information Exchange, And Communication In Crowdsourced Science, Todd Ernest Suomela

Doctoral Dissertations

Citizen science, the participation of non-scientists in scientific research, has grown over the last 20 years. The current study explores the communication frames used to describe citizen science and how they are created. It also investigates the effects of citizen science on the relationship between the public and science. It also situates citizen science in a larger historical context that critques normal science and intersects with a number of other scholarly discussions including science and technology studies, citizenship, expertise, professionalism, and participation.

The dissertation draws on theory from the social worlds analysis of Anselm Strauss, framing in science communication, the …

"Game Time Is My Time. I Get To Define That:" Gender, Identity, And The National Football League's Female Fans, Traci Yates

Doctoral Dissertations

Based on existing literature relatively little is known about the female football fan in America. Previous research has acknowledged that these women exist, often in startling proportions. It has also identified some of the reasons why they attend the game and some of the perceived benefits of their participation as fans (Clark, Apostolopoulou, & Gladden, 2009; Dietz-Uhler, Harrick, End, & Jacquemotte, 2000). Yet we do not know the value they place on their fan identities, nor how they manage to negotiate being both women and fans in a sport environment that both subtly and not-so-subtly continues to reinforce the model …

Predicting High-Stakes Tests Of Math Achievement Using A Group-Administered Rti Instrument: Validating Skills Measured By The Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math, Jeremy Thomas Coles

Doctoral Dissertations

Three universal screeners and nine progress monitoring probes from the Monitoring Instructional Responsiveness: Math (MIR:M), a silent, group-administered math assessment designed for implementation with an RTI Model, were administered to 223 fifth-grade students. The growth parameters of the overall MIR:M composite and two global composites (math calculation and math reasoning) identified significant variation in student growth, within significant linear and quadratic trajectories. However, there were significant differences in the nature of the growth trajectories that have applied educational implications. In addition, growth parameters across the three composites provided significant predictive potential when using the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) Achievement …

Impacts Of Climate Change On The Evolution Of The Electrical Grid, Melissa Ree Allen

Doctoral Dissertations

Maintaining interdependent infrastructures exposed to a changing climate requires understanding 1) the local impact on power assets; 2) how the infrastructure will evolve as the demand for infrastructure changes location and volume and; 3) what vulnerabilities are introduced by these changing infrastructure topologies. This dissertation attempts to develop a methodology that will a) downscale the climate direct effect on the infrastructure; b) allow population to redistribute in response to increasing extreme events that will increase under climate impacts; and c) project new distributions of electricity demand in the mid-21^st century.

The research was structured in three parts. The first …

Essays On Resource Allocation Efficiency And Behavior, Julianna Marie Butler

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three papers in the field of microeconomics. The first examines bidder’s choice auctions using both field and laboratory experiments. The field experiments demonstrate that traditional bidder’s choice auction theory does not always hold; the laboratory experiments subsequently isolate several characteristics of this auction format to explain why. We find that while price revelation does not impact the revenue superiority of the auction mechanism, multi-good demand significantly reduces the revenue premium. Intuitively, risk aversion plays less of a role when bidders have the opportunity to win multiple goods. The second chapter is theoretical and presents a …

Five Dimensions Of Emerging Adulthood: A Comparison Between Students, Nonstudents, And College Graduates, Jennifer Renée Zorotovich

Doctoral Dissertations

U.S. census data suggests that young people today are entering marriage (U. S. Census Bureau, 2011) and parenthood (U. S. Census Bureau, 2012) later than young people in previous decades. Delayed trajectories have led researchers to reconsider the nature of development from adolescence to adulthood and has given way to the construct of emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000a). Although this construct has been largely embraced by contemporary scholars, questions remain about the universality of emerging adulthood and whether or not it accurately captures the experiences of young people who do not pursue postsecondary education as well as those who have transitioned …

Peace Under Pressure: Portraits Of Christian Leadership In College Basketball Coaches, Charles Henry Wilson Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

NCAA Division I college basketball coaching is a high-stakes, high-reward profession. This study is based on three premises: (a) there is increasing pressure on college basketball coaches to win immediately and win consistently; (b) coaches are expected to maintain their integrity; (c) the pressure to win immediately and win consistently can influence some coaches to compromise their integrity. Given that context, the purpose of this study was to investigate and illuminate the lived experience of Christian head men’s and women’s basketball coaches at public, NCAA Division I institutions. This study was guided by two guiding research questions: (a) What is …

Communication, Control, And Time: The Lived Experience Of Uncertainty In Adolescent Pregnancy, Elizabeth Dortch Dalton

Doctoral Dissertations

This study qualitatively examined the lived experience of uncertainty among pregnant adolescents. Utilizing a phenomenological approach, long interviews were conducted with 10 pregnant adolescent women between the ages of 15-18 years. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using the process of phenomenological explication. Data, emergent themes, memos, and a detailed audit trail were maintained using the qualitative data analysis package Nvivo 10 for Mac (beta version). Findings can be summarized with eight themes that underlie the essence of uncertainty in adolescent pregnancy: suspicion and denial, disclosure and reactions, controlling the flow of information, relational renegotiation, the emerging reality of pregnancy, information …

International Trade And Third Parties' Conflict-Joining Propensities: The Political Economy Of Conflict Expansion, Amanda Gale Sanford

Doctoral Dissertations

In recent years, a renewed interest in the differences between dyadic conflicts and complex, multiparty disputes has developed within international relations (Vasquez and Valeriano 2010; Valeriano and Vasquez 2010). The conflict expansion literature focuses heavily on how traditional realist variables – such as alliances, shared borders, and rivalries – facilitate the spread of conflict, but these studies largely ignore other incentives to join disputes, such as the protection of an economic relationship. Absent a few notable exceptions (Polachek 1980; Aydin 2008), questions concerning the role that economic interdependence plays in conflict expansion have remained generally unanswered.

This dissertation seeks to …

News And The Public Sphere: The Boston Marathon Bombing In The New York Times And Le Figaro, Ioana Alexandra Coman

Doctoral Dissertations

The current dissertation explores the online mediatization of the Boston Marathon bombing crisis by an American newspaper (The New York Times) and a French one (Le Figaro) and their publics’ reactions to it. The research was conducted along two main analysis axes: (1) the main frames and themes through which the journalists and the publics gave meaning to the event, and (2) the characteristics of the online public spheres therefore created. The comparative perspective on the journalistic frames showed a strong tendency of homogenization, as the same main frames appeared in both analyzed newspapers. However, the …

Essays On Fiscal Policies In Open Economies, Ahiteme Nicodeme Houndonougbo

Doctoral Dissertations

Investigating various fiscal policy issues in the context of an open economy, this dissertation consists of three essays.

The first essay addresses the question of the volatility of foreign aid and its impact on resource-constrained developing economies. A small open-economy business cycle model is developed that accounts for the effect of external shocks specific to developing economies. The model produces business cycle patterns consistent with the data and key stylized facts. The model is calibrated to reflect the structural empirical regularities of an aid-dependent developing country. The parameters of the exogenous stochastic shocks are estimated using Bayesian methods and 50 …

Developmental Trajectories Of Adhd Symptoms To Adolescent Substance Use: What Influence Do Peer, Family And Neighborhood Factors Have?, Michael Lawrence Vitulano

Doctoral Dissertations

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been consistently linked to risk for early substance use. However, the potential mediating mechanisms and moderators of this association remain unclear. The current study examined peer rejection, school bonding and internalizing problems as potential mediators of the association between childhood ADHD symptoms and adolescent substance use in a longitudinal study following children from fourth to ninth grade. Results suggest that ADHD symptoms follow a path to early initiation of tobacco use through the combined effects of peer rejection and internalizing problems as well as through internalizing problems alone. ADHD symptoms did not follow developmental pathways to …

The Role Of Social Media Editors In Television Newsrooms: An Exploratory Study, Allyson Beutke Devito

Doctoral Dissertations

More Americans are using social media in their daily lives and finding news and information on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Media organizations are using social media sites to locate sources and verify information to increase ratings and circulation. Reporters and editors are interacting with audiences more than ever before. The result is a weakening of news organizations’ systems of editorial control and, consequently, their traditional gatekeeping function.

To assist with disseminating information about news stories and engage with their audiences more, some media organizations are creating a new position at newspapers and broadcast stations, known as a social …

State Space Modelling Of Dynamic Choice Behavior With Habit Persistence, Kang Bok Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present a new approach to capturing dependence across time in dynamic choice data. To achieve this, I develop a state space dynamic choice model and a novel algorithm to fit the data. Instead of capturing dependence in outcomes through lagged response variables, referred to as state dependence, I introduce a lagged utility term through the latent state equation. The lagged utility term captures habit persistence, which has not been explored directly in earlier models (Heckman, 1981b). The autoregressive nature of the lagged utility provides a significantly richer summary of prior utility than a lagged outcome variable. …

La Supervivencia Del Acompañado: Reflexiones Y Debates Sociológicos En Cuatro Novelas De Benito Pérez Galdós, Mariana Roxana Segovia

Doctoral Dissertations

Using the novel as a forum for debate, Galdós presents a whole array of intellectual themes that were of great interest in the latter part of the 1800s. One of the areas the famed Spanish novelist paid more attention to is that of sociology. This dissertation deals precisely with Galdós’s interest and participation in discussions about sociological matters -- for instance, social darwinism, anomie, and anarchy-- being carried out in Spain’s intellectual circles in his time. The term galdosismo social is introduced to refer to Galdós’s literary articulation of his sociological reflections about the formation of different communities structured inside …

Tax Policy And Entrepreneurship, Xiaowen Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit are among the driving forces in economic growth and development in the United States. The US governments (both federal and state) have long been aware of the importance of entrepreneurship, and many policies are directed toward helping small businesses. However, whether such policies give rise to expected behavioral responses from small businesses remains inconclusive. This dissertation looks into the behavioral response of self-employed filers to individual income tax and the impact of state and federal tax policies on entrepreneurship. In the first chapter, we examine taxpayers’ behavioral response to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). …

The Effect Of Self-Compassion Training On Trauma-Related Guilt In A Sample Of Homeless Veterans In Transitional Housing, Philip Held

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the effects of a four-week long self-administered self-compassion training on trauma-related guilt in a sample of homeless veterans in transitional housing. Changes in self-compassion, trauma-related guilt, resilience, PTSD severity, and general distress in the self-compassion intervention group (N = 13) were studied and compared to a coping with stress (control) group (N = 14). Participation in the four-week long self-administered self-compassion training led to significant reductions in trauma-related guilt. Both interventions seemed equally effective at reducing trauma-related guilt. The results from this study lay the foundation for the use of self-compassion training as an effective …

Behavioral Activation For Depressed Breast Cancer Patients: The Impact Of Therapeutic Compliance And Quantity Of Activities Completed On Symptom Reduction, Marlena Maria Ryba

Doctoral Dissertations

Behavioral activation (BA) is an empirically validated treatment that reduces depression by increasing overt behaviors and exposure to reinforcing environmental contingencies. Although research has identified an inverse correlation between pleasant or rewarding activities and depression, the causal relation between increased structured activities and reduced depression has not directly been studied. In the context of a recent randomized trial (Hopko et al., 2011), this study used longitudinal data and growth curve modeling to examine relationships among the quantity of activities completed, proportion of activities completed (i.e., therapeutic compliance), environmental reward, and depression in breast cancer patients treated with BATD (n …

Should Sociology Care About Theories Of Human Nature?: Some Durkheimian Considerations On The ‘Social’ Individual, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Theories of human nature underlie major positions not only in social science but also in the public sphere and its relationship to inequality. When it comes to Durkheim, his theory of human nature is often confused with his critiques of intellectual individualism and his historical argument concerning moral individualism. This paper proposes to analytically separate Durkheim’s apparently intertwined positions to show Durkheim’s concept of the ‘social individual’ as found within his theory of human nature. This is the difference between society as the object of analysis where the individual is slowly expressed historically in regard to the transition from mechanical …

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group Vii: Cuny, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group VII is materials about the City University of New York, transferred from the Mina Rees Library and the Provost's Office. Also included in this group are the records of the Research Foundation.

Leadership Department Newsletter - August 2014, Andrews University

Leadership Department Newsletter 2014

No abstract provided.

Memoirs Introduction: The Early Years, Delivered In August 2014, Arend D. Lubbers

Presidential Speeches

Memoirs Introduction: The Early Years, delivered in August 2014 by Arend D. Lubbers, who served as President of Grand Valley from 1969-2001.

Remarks For Opening Of Art Van Baseball Complex, Delivered On August 1, 2014, Arend D. Lubbers

Presidential Speeches

Remarks for Opening of Art Van Baseball Complex, delivered on August 1, 2014 by Arend D. Lubbers, who served as President of Grand Valley from 1969-2001.

Publish, Not Perish: Supporting Graduate Students As Aspiring Authors, Jennifer Bonnet, Barbara Alvarez, Meredith Kahn

Library Staff Publications

BACKGROUND Students pursuing advanced degrees are increasingly expected to contribute to their discipline’s scholarly discourse during their tenure in graduate school. However, they are often unsure of how or where to begin the publishing process, and do not always feel comfortable asking for help from their faculty advisors or fellow students. Scholars, including librarians, have attempted to address these concerns by developing tools and services to meet the needs of future faculty. In recent years, university presses and research libraries have recognized their shared mission in furthering scholarship, with libraries themselves offering publishing education and expertise. PROJECT OVERVIEW During the …

Sleep-Related Arousal And Spontaneous Movement Properties In Methadone-Exposed Neonates: A Videographic Assessment On The First Or Second Postnatal Night, Hira Shrestha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prenatal substance exposure such as alcohol, nicotine, and opiates is known to modulate autonomic regulatory function during sleep, and to decrease arousability and spontaneous movements (SM). SM during sleep may reflect a protective mechanism for immature patterns of arousals. Neurodevelopmental compromise in sleep and arousal systems may underlie sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) risk in which infants expire during sleep. Previous studies from our laboratory found abnormal patterns of neonatal arousal, sleep fragmentation, and deficits in sleep-related SM in infants with prenatal alcohol exposure. In this study, prenatal exposure to methadone was hypothesized to disrupt the development of sleep and …