Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Influence Of Gun Control Legislation On Rampage Shootings, Andrew D. Manor

HIM 1990-2015

The United States has experienced several mass shootings in the past few years. It has been averaging one shooting every week in 2015, and something must be done about it. This problem appears to be limited to the United States since several other nations have been able to minimize, and almost eliminate the number of mass shootings. By taking an analysis of the gun laws of the United States with those of Australia and Canada it can be concluded that some aspects of strict gun control can reduce the number of mass shootings. Further, the United States should look at …

Developmental Challenges And Opportunities Of Brazil In The 21st Century, Henrique Ruda Vianna Ribeiro

HIM 1990-2015

As Brazil develops into the first South American world power many changes in its society, economy and political system are necessary for a successful transformation. Nevertheless this is no easy task as the country battles corruption, vast inequality and a severe problem with freedom of information within the media. For decades the Brazilian mainstream media has been controlled by elite political forces together with elite families influencing and controlling many factors that are responsible for social, economic and political development. As new developments and implementations in the last fifteen years have been ongoing within Brazil, such as welfare programs, social …

Attitudes Toward Diversity And Life In The U.S. Held By Children Of Hispanic Immigrants: Do Their Parents Play A Role?, Vanessa Ruiz

HIM 1990-2015

The present study explores how children of Hispanic immigrants (CHIs) perceive life in the U.S., and how they view cultural diversity. Questionnaires were given to 92 non-U.S. born CHIs and one of their non-U.S. born Hispanic immigrant parents (HIPs) who have lived in the U.S. between 1 and 17 years (M yrs = 8.43); their views of the U.S. were assessed along with their acceptance of diversity, acculturative stress, and levels of acculturation. In this study, I found that CHIs generally hold positive views of the lives in the U.S. and also hold favorable views toward cultural diversity. Furthermore, this …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Usa Patriot Act Of 2001 To The Usa Freedom Act Of 2015: Balancing Security With Liberty, Richard L. Russo

HIM 1990-2015

Freedom and safety are two ideals that American citizens value greatly; however, the balance between privacy and security determines whether or not both can be achieved in a reasonable manner. Security and privacy are not mutually exclusive; however, they tend to exhibit an inverse correlation with regards to maintaining individual liberties. Security and privacy are highly beneficial, but when one is given too much weight, the other most often suffers. When the United States citizens are given too much privacy through regulations, the citizens risk their well-being by not allowing the government the ability to prevent dangerous activities being done …

Mental Rotation With Martial Arts Expertise, Michael E. Torres

HIM 1990-2015

This research aims to investigate whether expertise, specifically martial arts expertise, is transferrable across domains, which would indicate spatial skills in one task can also apply to a seemingly unrelated one. In this study, reaction time during a mental rotation task was compared between experts and novices. Participants were shown two images and had to decide if the images were the same or mirror reflections. The images were comprised of Shepard-Metzler blocks, people in martial arts poses, and people in neutral poses. The results suggest expertise is not transferable across domains. While experts outperformed novices with some of the martial …

Family Struggles And Substance Use Among First Generation College Students, Barbara Vehabovic

HIM 1990-2015

The current study seeks to examine the relationship between family struggles, as measured by social class and parental marital status, and substance use among first-generation college students. 902 students from the University of Central Florida participated in an online questionnaire that assessed their social class, parents’ marital status, drug and alcohol use, as well as demographic variables. Results indicated a significant positive correlation between substance use and social class as well as generational status. Males were also more likely to use drugs and alcohol than females. A regression analysis indicated social class, gender, junior and senior academic years were all …

The Perpetration Of Adulthood Animal Abuse And Intimate Partner Violence In Men And Women Arrested For Domestic Violence, Jeniimarie Febres

Doctoral Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs at devastatingly high rates in the United States. The current interventions for perpetrators of IPV are limited in their effectiveness. Research regarding characteristics of perpetrators of IPV may provide needed insights about their aggression in order to inform more effective treatments. This cross-sectional study employed the newly developed Interactions with Animals Scale, an original measure of a form of aggression that lacks comprehensive examination despite its demonstrated association with IPV, adulthood animal abuse (AAA). The prevalence, frequency, initiation, motivation, type of animal victimized, and recency of AAA was obtained from a sample of men ( …

How Therapy Affects The Counselor: Development Through Play Therapy Practice And Supervision, Tiffany Paige Brooks

Doctoral Dissertations

Therapeutic relationships and counselor qualities as contributions to therapeutic relationships are widely recognized as critical to counseling outcome (Norcross, 2011). Counselors in training (CITs) tend to possess certain traits at certain stages, such as high anxiety, lack of confidence, and a high focus on self in an early stage of development. Child-centered play therapy (CCPT) represents a specialization within counseling, and the current research highlights how the CITs learn CCPT within the classroom (Fall, Drew, Chute, & More, 2007; Homeyer & Rae, 1998; Kao & Landreth, 1997; Lindo et al., 2012; Ray, 2004; Ritter & Chang, 2002; Tanner & Mathis, …

Incentive Based Residential Demand Aggregation, Qinran Hu

Doctoral Dissertations

From the beginning of the twenty-first century, the electrical power industry has moved from traditional power systems toward smart grids. However, with the increasing amount of renewable energy resources integrated into the grid, there is a significant challenge in power system operation due to the intermittency and variability of the renewables. Therefore, the utilization of flexible and controllable demand-side resources to maintain power system efficiency and stability has become a fundamental goal of smart grid initiatives.

Meanwhile, due to the development of communication and sensing technologies, intelligent demand-side management with automatic controls enables residential loads to participate in demand response …

Investigating Cranial Variation In Japanese Populations Using Geometric Morphometrics, Beatrix Dudzik

Doctoral Dissertations

The Japanese archipelago exhibits an immense amount of variation in culture and history, despite the lay population mostly considering the modern Japanese a homogeneous population. Japan has experienced an amazing amount migration activity. These migration events are well represented in the archaeological record and have provided fodder for hypotheses proposed for peopling of the new world.

Biological anthropologists have tested hypotheses surrounding the initial peopling of the islands using linear data in conjunction with non-metric traits of the skull. Recent molecular studies have provided evidence for population substructure, which suggests an original founding group of North Asian descent, and a …

Economic Development Policy And Foreign Direct Investment In The American States: Assessing Their Impact On Private Sector Unionization, Sarah Lynn Young

Doctoral Dissertations

Most previous research on the role of U.S. state policy in shaping unionization outcomes has emphasized presence or absence of “right-to-work” laws as the key explanatory factor. This dissertation emphasizes the role of state economic development programing in driving the variation in unionization observed across the American states. It also revisits the role that foreign direct investment plays in regard to union power.

I first discuss the variation in private sector unionization levels among the 50 states. I then provide a literature review on two key types of economic development policy, entrepreneurial and locational. I revisit previous scholarship on foreign …

Public Service Motivation: A Cross-National Examination Of East Asian Countries, Jin Gao

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of public service motivation (PSM) has been thriving since Perry and Wise firstly defined the concept in 1990. The United States and developed European nations have dominated the researches in this area, while empirical studies outside Western societies are less common. Furthermore, most studies are based on a single-nation analysis. Is public service motivation also relevant in East Asia? To what degree do East Asian cultures cultivate public service motivation? Do the national contexts affect the extent of public service motivation? The purpose of the current research study is to investigate the theoretical and practical plausibility of public …

Proactive Communication: An Investigation Of Employee Reactions To Organizational Communication Problems, Katie Marie Reno

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explored how employees proactively responded to perceived communication problems and what employees considered when proactively responding. The study utilized semi-structured interviews to gather data, resulting in 15 interviews. The interviews were transcribed yielding 130 single-spaced pages of data. Template analysis was used to code the data for themes. This analysis was chosen because it allowed the researcher to utilize previously established literature to develop a codebook, which could then be modified on the data.

The findings demonstrate that employees will enact many types of proactive behavior to correct perceived communication problems in an organization. Findings also demonstrated that …

Experiences Of Newly Licensed Registered Nurses Who Stay In Their First Jobs, Lisa D. Kirkland

Doctoral Dissertations

Most newly licensed registered nurses go to work in acute care hospitals, which means they enter an increasingly complex healthcare environment where they experience staffing shortages, high nurse-patient ratios, and workplace violence. The purpose of this study is to attempt to understand the experiences of newly licensed registered nurses who have endured the early years of bedside hospital nursing and continue to work in their first nursing job. The existential phenomenological philosophy of Merleau-Ponty serves as the guiding framework for this qualitative research study. Following IRB approval, criterion and snowball sampling were used to recruit newly licensed registered nurses who …

Cell Towers As Urban Sensors: Understanding The Strengths And Limitations Of Mobile Phone Location Data, Ziliang Zhao

Doctoral Dissertations

Understanding urban dynamics and human mobility patterns not only benefits a wide range of real-world applications (e.g., business site selection, public transit planning), but also helps address many urgent issues caused by the rapid urbanization processes (e.g., population explosion, congestion, pollution). In the past few years, given the pervasive usage of mobile devices, call detail records collected by mobile network operators has been widely used in urban dynamics and human mobility studies. However, the derived knowledge might be strongly biased due to the uneven distribution of people’s phone communication activities in space and time.

This dissertation research applies different analytical …

Mobility And Activity Space: Understanding Human Dynamics From Mobile Phone Location Data, Yang Xu

Doctoral Dissertations

Studying human mobility patterns and people’s use of space has been a major focus in geographic research for ages. Recent advancements of location-aware technologies have produced large collections of individual tracking datasets. Mobile phone location data, as one of the many emerging data sources, provide new opportunities to understand how people move around at a relatively low cost and unprecedented scale. However, the increasing data volume, issue of data sparsity, and lack of supplementary information introduce additional challenges when such data are used for human behavioral research. Effective analytical methods are needed to meet the challenges to gain an improved …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Athletic Satisfaction And Student Adaptation To College, Brian C. Russell

Doctoral Dissertations

Research on the experience of student-athletes at the collegiate level suggests that they may face challenges and hurdles in adjusting to college differently than those faced by students of the general student population. Additionally, research on student satisfaction suggests that a student’s satisfaction has an impact on the academic experience and retention of students, while research on athletic satisfaction suggests a relationship exists between athletic and academic satisfaction for student-athletes. However, it remains unclear whether there is a positive or negative relationship between the experiences of adjustment to college and athletic satisfaction of a student-athlete.

The purpose of this study …

The Roles Of Self-Affirmation And Introspection In Correction For Automatic Prejudice, Kevin Lee Zabel

Doctoral Dissertations

Egalitarian-oriented Whites tend to employ the strategy of “liking everyone,” as opposed to correcting for their automatic prejudices, as a means of avoiding prejudiced reactions (Zabel & Olson, 2014). Congruent with motivational theoretical perspectives regarding prejudice (i.e., Aversive Racism; Gaertner & Dovidio), I contend that a lack of introspection into one’s automatic prejudices due to a self-image threat may be driving this tendency. In the experiment I report here, I assessed the automatic racial attitudes of egalitarian- (high Concern) and conflict avoidance-motivated (high Restraint) Whites. Then, participants were randomly assigned to introspect (or not) on their automatic racial biases, as …

Is Quantitative Ultrasound A Valid Technique For Assessing Bone Quality In Deceased Infants?, Miriam Elizabeth Soto Martinez

Doctoral Dissertations

There is no quantitative method for evaluating infant bone quality that is non-invasive, portable, brief in scan duration, and does not use ionizing radiation. This study investigates the relationship between components of infant bone quality and a measure of quantitative ultrasound (QUS), speed of sound (SOS), to provide insight into the validity of QUS as a diagnostic tool for evaluating infant bone quality. The study sample was comprised of 78 infants between the age of 30 weeks estimated gestational age and 12 postnatal months receiving an autopsy at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences and Texas Children’s Hospital. Bone …

Russian Anti-Americanism, Public Opinion And The Impact Of The State-Controlled Mass Media, Natalie Manaeva Rice

Doctoral Dissertations

From 2011 to 2015, a rise in anti-Americanism was strongly reflected in Russian public opinion during President Vladimir Putin’s third term. The study examined the phenomenon of anti-Americanism in Russia and the role of state-controlled mass media in promoting anti-American attitudes. Statistical analysis of polls conducted in Russia by the Pew Research Center in 2012 demonstrated that anti-Americanism in Russian society should not be treated as a monolithic phenomenon. A segment of the Russian populace held a strong and deep-seated anti-American ideological bias that affected its perception of everything related to the United States. Other sentiments, however, fit a more …

Spectator Attendance Strategies: A Best Practices Examination Of Mls Expansion Franchises, Bryce Schomburg

Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration

The expansion of Major League Soccer (MLS) has dramatically raised league awareness throughout the nation. This impact was influenced by the additional consideration organizations have paid to the role of spectator attendance within professional sports. The purpose of this study was to examine the best practices for spectator attendance strategies employed by recent MLS expansion franchises. The following organizations were evaluated for the comparative analysis: Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, and New York City FC. These organizations were analyzed through a best practices comparison guide developed by the researcher. Data were collected from the selected teams’ websites, third party organization analysis, …

Multi-Dimensional Assessment Of Transit System Efficiency And Incentive-Based Subsidy Allocation, Xin Li

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past several decades, contending with traffic congestion and air pollution has emerged as one of the imperative issues across the world. Development of a transit-oriented urban transport system has been realized by an increasing number of countries and administrations as one of the most effective strategies for mitigating congestion and pollution problems. Despite the rapid development of public transportation system, doubts regarding the efficiency of the system and financing sustainability have arisen. Significant amount of public resources have been invested into public transport; however complaints about low service quality and unreliable transit system performance have increasingly arisen from …

Financing Government Programmes In Economic Downturn: A Comparative Analysis, T. Oshikoya

Economic and Financial Review

This paper examines the experience of Nigeria and other oil exporting countries in adjusting to lower oil prices and financing government programmes during economic downturn.

Non-Oil Exports, Economic Growth And Macroeconomic Stability, T.A. Oyejide

Economic and Financial Review

The author discussed the role of non-oil exports in the structural transformation and sectoral diversification processes which are inherently associated with sustainable growth and development outcomes as well as the focus of the analysis shifts to an examination of the role of non-oil exports in promoting economic growth and development.

Mens Life History, Testosterone, And Health, Louis Alvarado

Anthropology ETDs

Testosterone is hypothesized to mediate life history trade-offs between reproduction and survival in men, promoting mating effort over other forms of investment, which entails energetic and mortality costs. Sexually dimorphic musculature represents one form of somatic investment in mating. Favorable energy availability is posited to promote preferential investment in mating effort through upregulated testosterone production and augmented musculature, whereas nutritional constraint is predicted to downregulate testosterone to facilitate a diminished, thriftier phenotype. Furthermore, life history trajectories influencing mens testosterone levels have important health implications for androgen-sensitive disease. Here, I examine broad features of men's life history and health, and their …

Get Clear. Get Close. Get Clean., Becky St. Clair

Lake Union Herald

No abstract provided.

Messiah Sing-Along: Come And Sing Favorite Messiah Choruses, Samuel Fry

Andrews Agenda: Campus News

The Pioneer Memorial Church Sanctuary Choir performed Handel’s “Messiah” at Pioneer Memorial Church on Dec. 13, 2015. Any audience members who wished to sing along were invited to do so.

The Center For Teaching & Learning: July 1, 2014 - December 2015, Liz Mikita

Annual Reports & Administrative Documents

Contents:

• From the Director
• New Center Supports Teaching and Learning
• CTL Supports Scholarly Publishing
• iCE Platform Fosters Interactive Learning Experience
• A Physical and Virtual Makeover for Scott Library
• Reaching Out to Our Users
• Exhibits & Special Events
• Staff Highlights

Public Preferences For Investments In Renewable Energy Production And Energy Efficiency, Caroline L. Noblet, Mario F. Teisl, Keith S. Evans, Mark W. Anderson, Shannon Mccoy, Edmund Cervone

Publications

In this paper we investigate the choices citizens make when asked to express willingness to support a proposed energy policy and are then compelled to allocate the program funds to either renewable energy or energy efficiency. In a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of Maine, USA, we find that citizens have preferences for specific types of renewable energy but these preferences do not yield significantly different allocation of investment funds between renewable energy and energy efficiency. We find that preferences are generally consistent regardless of presentation of options (i.e. limited ordering effects). Our …

Minerva 2015, The Honors College

Minerva

This issue of Minerva includes an interview with Honors alumnus and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bernard Lown; a celebration of retiring Assistant Dean, Barbara Ouellette; and memorial articles celebrating the lives of notable Honors supporters, Betsy Leitch and Dennis Rezendes. Other highlights include a spread on Honors student travel and community engagement; and an article on Honors graduate, Jill Pelto, whose artwork graces the front and back covers of the 2015 Minerva.