Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Are Self-Description Scales Better Than Agree/Disagree Scales?, Jerry Timbrook, Jolene Smyth, Kristen M. Olson

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Questions using agree/disagree (A/D) scales are ubiquitous in survey research because they save time and space on questionnaires through display in grids, but they have also been criticized for being prone to acquiescent reports. Alternatively, questions using self-description (SD) scales (asking respondents how well a statement describes them from Completely to Not at All) can also be presented in grids or with a common question stem, and by omitting the word agree, SD scales may reduce acquiescence. However, no research has examined how response patterns may differ across A/D and SD scales. In this article, we compare survey …

Soldiers To Scientists: Military Service, Gender, And Stem Degree Earning, Christina Steidl, Regina E. Werum, Sela R. Harcey, Jacob Absalon, Alice Millermacphee

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The authors use 2014–2018 data from the American Community Survey to answer two questions: To what extent is military service associated with higher rates of earning a bachelor’s degree in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field (vs. a non-STEM field)? To what extent is this relationship gendered? The findings suggest that military service is associated with higher odds of completing a STEM degree and that this association is particularly strong for female veterans. Comparison across multiple STEM definitions suggests that military service does not simply channel women into traditionally female-dominated STEM fields. Instead, the findings show the biggest …

Soldiers To Scientists: Military Service, Gender, And Stem Degree Earning, Christina Steidl, Regina E. Werum, Sela R. Harcey, Jacob Absalon, Alice Millermacphee

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The authors use 2014–2018 data from the American Community Survey to answer two questions: To what extent is military service associated with higher rates of earning a bachelor’s degree in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field (vs. a non-STEM field)? To what extent is this relationship gendered? The findings suggest that military service is associated with higher odds of completing a STEM degree and that this association is particularly strong for female veterans. Comparison across multiple STEM definitions suggests that military service does not simply channel women into traditionally female-dominated STEM fields. Instead, the findings show the biggest …

What Do Interviewers Learn?: Changes In Interview Length And Interviewer Behaviors Over The Field Period, Kristen M. Olson, Jolene Smyth

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Interviewers are important actors in telephone surveys. By setting the pace for an interview, interviewers communicate the amount of time and cognitive effort respondents should put into their task. It is well-established that interviewers vary widely in the time they spend administering a survey, and that this time changes over the course of the data collection period as interviewers gain experience (Bohme and Stohr 2014; Kirchner and Olson 2017; Loosveldt and Beullens 2013a, 2013b; Olson and Bilgen 2011; Olson and Peytchev 2007). In particular, interviewers get faster as they gain experience over the field period of a survey.

The within-survey …

Prospects And Challenges Of Population Health With Online And Other Big Data In Africa; Understanding The Link To Improving Healthcare Service Delivery, Rowland Edet, Bolarinwa Afolabi

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Big data analytics offers promises to many health care service challenges and can provide answers to many population health issues. Big data is having a positive impact in almost every sphere of life in more advanced world while developing countries are striving to meet up. Even though healthcare systems in the developed world are recording some breakthroughs due to the application of big data, it is important to research the impact of big data in developing regions of the world, such as Africa and identify its peculiar needs. The purpose of this review was to summarize the challenges faced by …

Alumni Association Resources For Confronting Racial Injustice, University Of Maine Alumni Association, University Of Maine Career Center

Social Justice: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Screenshot of the University of Maine Alumni Association's webpage with resources for confronting racial injustice.

A screenshot of the Career Center Diversity Resources is included as supplemental content.

A Comparative Study On The Use Of Information Sources Among Undergraduates In Academic Institutions, Sumaira Jabeen Baba, Dr Shabir Ahmed Ganaie

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

In the present era of information explosion, the library, in all forms (academic, public, special etc.) acts as the inseparable part of the society and brain of the academic institution. As the quality of education is mostly judged by the quality of libraries of a particular nation. Besides this these (libraries) can help in the close examination of growth and development. Although with the introduction of world wide web, the position of the library does not appears to be the same. It (web) gives rise to a Generation of users (library users) who now perceive the web technology as the …

An Integrated View Of Data: Application Of Knowledge Modeling To Data Management, Sung-Kwan Kim, Wenjun Wang

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Data management has become an important challenge. Good data management requires an effective approach to collecting, storing, and accessing data across the enterprise. In this paper, a knowledge modeling approach to data management is introduced with an emphasis on data requirements analysis. A knowledge model can provide a high-level view of organizational data by specifying the structure and relationships of the knowledge contents used in business processes. The proposed knowledge modeling approach is business process oriented and decision oriented. The description of the knowledge contents in the model is based on ontological specification. The model is comprised of five elements: …

Uncovering The Depression Treatment Gap: The Role Of Motivation To Change, God Image, And Religious Affiliation, Cyrus Chiasson

Master's Theses

Research analyzing factors that are indicative of treatment seeking for depression is warranted. In the United States, approximately 70% of individuals with depression do not receive treatment. The aim of the current study is to evaluate motivation to change, God image, and religious affiliation as predictors of current treatment engagement for depression. Motivation to change has previously been evaluated as a predictor of treatment outcome for depression but not as a predictor of current treatment engagement. Additionally, previous research indicates religious involvement is associated with less depressive symptomology but is in turn related to negative views towards mental health treatment …

Dear Mama, These Cops Don’T Understand Me: The Influence Of Mental Health Stigma On Youth Incarceration, Ashley Lockwood

Master's Theses

Youth within the juvenile justice system have a higher prevalence of mental illness when compared to the general population, with some literature revealing up to 80% of incarcerated youth possess a diagnosable disorder (Shufelt & Cocozza, 2006; Underwood & Washington, 2016). Today, mental health stigma is widely prevalent and results in prejudice, discrimination, lowered self-esteem, and other negative outcomes for individuals struggling with mental health related issues (Corrigan & Watson, 2002; Dalgin & Gilbride 2003). With this in mind, the role mental health stigma plays in the lives of youth in the juvenile justice system should not be overlooked. Although …

The Adolescent Peer System And Academic Engagement, Carrie Jeanne Furrer, Gwen Catherine Marchand

Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services Publications

Peers are central in shaping adolescents’ development across various domains. This research examined patterns of peer system resources and liabilities, and their association with academic adjustment. A person-centred approach, Latent Profile Analysis, was used to classify students into groups based on characteristics of the peer system: friendship quality, group, and general peer relations. Participants were 443 students in their ninth grade year, 14.7 years old on average, and 57% female. Peer system characteristics formed four profiles. The most common profile had high resources and low liabilities; the three other profiles were mixtures of moderate/high resources and low/moderate liabilities. Students with …

Relationships Between Dress And Gender In A Context Of Cultural Change, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Diana Saiki, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Emoco: Visual Analysis Of Emotion Coherence In Presentation Videos, Haipeng Zeng, Xingbo Wang, Aoyu Wu, Yong Wang, Quan Li, Alex Endert, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Emotions play a key role in human communication and public presentations. Human emotions are usually expressed through multiple modalities. Therefore, exploring multimodal emotions and their coherence is of great value for understanding emotional expressions in presentations and improving presentation skills. However, manually watching and studying presentation videos is often tedious and time-consuming. There is a lack of tool support to help conduct an efficient and in-depth multi-level analysis. Thus, in this paper, we introduce EmoCo, an interactive visual analytics system to facilitate efficient analysis of emotion coherence across facial, text, and audio modalities in presentation videos. Our visualization system features …

Coke And The Digital Age, Tao Deng, Daradirek Ekachai, Jean Grow

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Sampling The Local Fare: Fishes At The Sam Israel House Pit (45gr76), Soap Lake, Washington, Adam Fruge

All Master's Theses

The Sam Israel site is a precontact archaeological complex with numerous fish bones at the north end of Soap Lake, Washington. Excavated in 1976, the fish remains recovered from there were never fully analyzed prior to this research. Since this inland Columbia Plateau site had thousands of fish bones, it contained untapped potential for our understanding of ancient local fish procurement. As such, I conducted a detailed analysis of 2,862 fish bone specimens from the Sam Israel House Pit locus to: study a larger sample of fish bones in greater detail than was done before; compare the distribution of fishes …

The Seasonality And Parasite Richness And Prevalence Of The Weddelli’S Saddleback Tamarin (Leontocebus Weddelli), Krista Banda

All Master's Theses

This study surveyed the intestinal helminths (parasitic worms) of Weddelli’s saddleback tamarins (Leontocebus weddelli), focusing on seasonality in parasite prevalence and richness. The collaborative study with Field Projects International took place at the Estación Biológica Rio Los Amigos (EBLA) in southeastern Peru. Fecal samples were collected by following semi-habituated groups of tamarins, yielding 16 samples in the dry season of 2015 and 11 samples in the wet season of 2015-2016. Findings were interpreted to understand trends for parasite prevalence and richness between the two seasons; however, novel helminths for the study species were observed. Trends were interpreted with …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Open Data In Cultural Heritage Institutions: Can We Be Better Than Data Brokers?, Sl Ziegler

Faculty Publications

Treating collections in cultural institutions as data encourages novel approaches to the use of historic collections. To reframe collections as data is to focus on how digitized collection material, collection metadata, and transcriptions can be used and reused for various types of computational analysis. Scholars active in the field of digital humanities have long taken advantage of computational data. This paper focuses on the work of cultural heritage institutions, which are increasingly offering collections as data. This paper outlines the collections as data project and examines specific examples of cultural institutions active in this space. The paper then details the …

“The Policy Of Intimidation Had Been So Successfully Managed That Many Colored Men Kept Away From The Polls”: Violence In The Reconstruction Era South, Marykatherine Klaybor

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the United States entered an era known as Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877. In this postwar period the federal government faced pressure to reincorporate the former Confederate States back into the Union. In addition, Southern political, economic, and social systems needed to be transformed in the wake of emancipation and the country grappled with the question of political rights for newly freed people. Throughout the era, the Republican Party favored policies that secured the rights of black Southerners while facing opposition from many Southern white Democrats. This opposition often manifested in unchecked …

Employee Satisfaction And Stock Performance, Michael Snyder

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study aims to explore the previously documented relationship between employee satisfaction and superior stock returns. Previous research suggests that firms with higher employee satisfaction also deliver superior stock returns. Furthermore, previous research has established a logical connection from employee satisfaction to superior stock performance. This study constructed an equally-weighted portfolio of the publicly traded companies on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. This performance was compared to the performance of the S&P 500 on a total return basis for the calendar years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. The study also collected fundamental data related to each …

The Effect Of Color, Preference, And The Interaction Of Color And Preference On Short-Term Memory, Shreya Patel

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The link between color and memory has sparked a lot of curiosity over the past few years. Previous research suggests that color can affect short term recall of word lists (Singg, 2017). Other studies have shown that color can generally help increase object memory (Lloyd-Jones & Nakabayashi, 2009). Color increases attention and emotional arousal, which can lead to better memory of certain objects, words, and ideas (Dzulkifli & Mustafar, 2013). This study aimed to determine if there was a relationship between color, color preference, and short-term recall of a list of words. A total of forty participants were randomly selected. …

Women’S Rights As Human Rights: A Study Of Muslim Women’S Reproductive Justice In Contemporary Saudi Arabia And Egypt, Sophia Harris

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Muslim women’s reproductive justice has been formulated through strict applications and interpretations of religious and spiritual texts as well as the legal opinions of Islamic jurists and other trusted members of the Islamic community. I examine a conservative nation’s interpretation of these texts (Saudi Arabia) in comparison to a more liberal nation’s interpretations (Egypt), which are utilized to form policy on Muslim women’s reproductive justice. I also discuss research provided by the United Nations and other international organizations on the subject in each country. The question of justice has been an ongoing and controversial one, especially so for women. When …

Between “Us” And “Them”: Political Subjectivities In The Shadows Of The 2018 Brazilian Election, Charles H. Klein, Milena Mateuzi Carmo, Alessandra Tavares

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article examines political subjectivities, community engagements and voting practices among residents of São Paulo’s Zona Sul peripheries in the three years preceding Brazil’s 2018 presidential election. Building on a 398-person household survey, 46 in-depth interviews, and extensive participation observation over the course of a fouryear study, we argue that although most residents of our study communities across the political spectrum are disenchanted with institutional politics, many maintain political engagement through their everyday lives, including activism centered on intersectional identities and state-sponsored violence/genocide. Our discussion combines statistical analysis and auto-ethnographic inflected vignettes and is in dialogue with two common themes …

Personal And Professional Connections Are Premium: An Assessment Of Mandatory Waiting Periods In The American States, Brittany Head

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The advantages of policy and procedural expertise allow revolving door lobbyists to bypass the costs required of non-revolving door lobbyists. This professional upper hand gives advantages to the special interest groups that these revolvers represent. In a cross-sectional analysis and comparative case study of two American states, I find that a state without a mandatory waiting period for legislators yields a higher number of revolving door lobbyists than a state with a mandatory waiting period. The findings of this research suggest that lobbying laws are effective in addressing the saturated influence and involvement of former legislators in the policy making …

Fashion Corporate Social Responsibility On Instagram, Brittany Bluthardt

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

As defined by researcher and author Kate Fletcher, slow fashion is “where pleasure and fashion are linked with awareness and responsibility” in which a company emphasizes the quality of its products, working conditions, environmental impact, and societal impact. With the rise of slow fashion companies, this research seeks to determine the role of social media engagement, specifically on Instagram, with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) messaging. Over 120 million U.S. users are on Instagram, and companies can use these platforms to directly communicate with consumers no matter their stage in the Consumer Decision Journey of product purchasing. This paper analyzes the …

Do Differences In Teaching Evaluations Really Matter? An Investigation Into What Constitutes A Meaningful Difference In Evaluations Of Professors, Catherine Bain

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study sought to determine what constitutes a minimally meaningful difference in student evaluations of their professors, when students are asked to rate their professors on the traditional 5-point teaching effectiveness item commonly used in higher education. A minimally meaningful difference is the smallest difference between two ratings that: 1) exceeds chance variation and 2) corresponds to a difference deemed meaningful using some external anchor or standard. Data was obtained through a series of surveys given to students at Butler University and to an online nationwide sample. Analysis occurred through both an anchor-based approach, using data obtained from a single …

An Analysis Of The Representation Of Black Men In Modern U.S. Television Commercials., Jackson Borman

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Throughout the history of media, minority groups have been on the losing end of representation, with racist, stereotypical portrayals, or in many cases, no representation at all. This study analyzes the current representation of black men in modern television commercials. To answer the research questions posed about how black men are represented in commercials, a content analysis was conducted. A systematic sample of television commercials was taken from an online directory of television commercials, and the sample (N = 117) was analyzed using a coding instrument to determine the level of involvement and characterizations of the black male characters featured …

Reitz Or Wrong: An Industrial, Environmental, And Political Analysis Of Evansville’S “Lumber Baron”, Jarrod Koester

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

For nearly two centuries, the history of Evansville, Indiana has remained incomplete as historians and the general public have not recognized some of the key factors responsible for the city’s famed past. The generally accepted history of Evansville, the state’s third-largest city, conveys valiant tales of industrialization, transportation, and successful entrepreneurs who overcame insurmountable odds and left everlasting impressions on the people of the region. While the once-prosperous city was a significant national port and participated heavily in transatlantic and transcontinental trade, Evansville’s historical significance has diminished over the course of the twentieth century. What were once bustling factories, streams …

Media & Trust: Exploring The Differences Between Traditional And New Media Forms, Alexandra Jones

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This research seeks to explore how news media, traditional versus new, influences public trust, as well as, what types of consumers use traditional versus new media. My hypotheses are that (A) that those who use primarily new media to access news will have less trust in the news they are consuming and (B) those who have at least a college degree, are below 30 in age, and use, daily, a computer in the course of their work, will use primarily new media to access news. Using an online survey administered through the platform Qualtrics, distributed through Amazon Mechanical Turk, I …