Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Moving Cleveland Above The Trend: Entrepreneurship Policy, Iryna V. Lendel, Merissa Piazza, Molly Schnoke, Shneur Kushner

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

A recent report conducted by the Center for Economic Development discussed the structural and policy factors of economic growth in mid-sized U.S. economies and included an analysis of similar regions. The Center used factor analysis as a data-reduction technique and identified five factors influencing mid-sized regional economies: 1) Innovation and Talent, 2) Entrepreneurship in High-Cost Areas, 3) New Residential Centers, 4) Retirement Destinations, and 5) Polarization. An analysis determined the relationship between these factors and the changes in regional employment, gross regional product (output), and per capita income. This brief outlines the initial analysis primary takeaways as it relates to …

Emergence Of The Connectivist Leadership Paradigm: A Grounded Theory Study In The Asia Region, Frederique Covington Corbett

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative, grounded theory study focused on the exploration of leadership arising within the Asia region. While enduring leadership qualities like strength, humility, resolve, and trust have been foundational in leadership practice globally, scholars have demonstrated that leadership does not exist in absolute terms; it is shaped by the values of local culture, which set expectations for leadership behaviors. This study explored the conceptualization of a more collective and connected form of leadership in the context of a region leading the world with highly networked digital social practices. The question the study explored was, if, and to what extent, leaders …

Japanese American Internment Experience And The Impact On Parent-Child Relationships, Jazmine Miyoshi Miyake

Theses and Dissertations

During World War II and after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the United States confined 120,000Japanese Americans in internment camps. The current study examined the incarceration of Japanese American citizens and its effect on parenting across generations. Specifically, the study examined parent-child relationships and the possible emergence of the relationship-directed parenting orientation across generations within this specific population. In order to examine the research objectives, the proposed qualitative research study utilized archived interview data. The interviews were conducted with participants of Japanese American descent who were incarcerated in camps during World War II and/or their family members. A hermeneutic phenomenological …

Good For You Or Good For Us? A Field Experiment On Motivating Citizen Behavior Change, Syon Bhanot

Economics Faculty Works

In recent years, public sector agencies have increasingly been moving citizen services online to reduce administrative burdens for citizens and costs for governments. However, motivating citizens to make the transition to online services can be difficult. In this paper, I report on a randomized control trial with the Philadelphia Licenses and Inspections Department, testing a letter intervention with 11,579 rental license holders designed to encourage them to register for an account and renew online. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a control group that did not receive a letter or one of three treatment groups: 1) Standard (a simple reminder …

Introductory Mathematics And Stem Persistence: Examining The Differences Between Online And In-Person Performance At A Hbcu, Wendy Dixie

Online Theses and Dissertations

The United States is losing its position as an innovative global leader because of a shortage of skilled workers in STEM. This decline is due in part to the US producing a lower number of graduates from STEM related fields. One reason for the shortage is that US students are selecting or graduating with STEM majors at a lower rate than those of competing countries. As a result of these shortages, the US has undertaken several initiatives to increase public awareness of and training in STEM that will ultimately produce STEM degrees.

The purpose of this research was to examine …

Individualism And Collectivism: Well Being Within The African American Community, Tajana Graves

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study is to examine how cultural values are linked to well being among African Americans and the generational differences that moderate those links. It is hypothesized that a) that the older generation of African Americans will score higher on allocentrism than idiocentrism, younger generation of African Americans will score higher on indiocentrism than on allocentrism, b) the older generation of African Americans will score lower on well-being than younger generations of African Americans,c) allocentrism will be a stronger predictor of well-being than indiocentrism, d) the link between allocentrism and well-being will be stronger for younger …

Forgotten In Local Jails: A Carceral System Created To Fail Women., Hayley Jackey

Online Theses and Dissertations

The United States has seen an influx of incarcerated women since the 1980s with a 750% increase between 1980 and 2017. There is a substantial amount of literature about how women experience prison and the unique challenges they face as they reenter society such as motherhood, previous abuse, mental health, and housing. Conclusions drawn suggest that the current structure fails to prepare women for a society that denounces women who have been incarcerated. What is less known is how this research translates to the jail environment. For reasons to be discussed, it is likely that local jails are even less …

Examining Cpe's Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Policy And Its Impact On Hr Directors To Recruit And Hire Faculty Of Color At Associate-Level Colleges In The Commonwealth Of Kentucky, Dr. Adarrell Lafawn Owsley

Online Theses and Dissertations

Strategies to recruit and hire faculty and staff of color to the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s population levels have continued for 57 years. From Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Kentucky Plan in 1982 to the Strategic Plan for Kentucky Higher Education from 1982 to 1995, to the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s 2010-2015 Policy and Framework for Institution Diversity Plan to its current 2016-2021 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy. Despite five policy implementations, a problem still exists in recruiting and hiring faculty of color at associate-level colleges in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.The need for public …

Special Considerations In Gifted Identification: Increasing Access And Equitable Practices For Underrepresented Populations In An Urban School District, Veda Stewart

Online Theses and Dissertations

Low-socio economic and/or minority students are substantially unidentified for gifted education programs. The disparities in gifted education for underrepresented students persist despite the growth in schools across the country of low income and minority students. Despite efforts to tackle equity issues in gifted education the large gaps of disproportionality persist. Explanations for this occurrence of underrepresentation is linked to the general processes for identifying gifted students, which are based largely on norm referenced standardized tests, with a single score criterion and a referral process that relies heavily on teacher and parent nominations. These identification processes tend to overlook the cultural …

The Examination Of Attendance Support Teams In Urban Middle Schools, John Christopher Young

Online Theses and Dissertations

The research study was conducted to analyze effect of an attendance support team in urban middle schools. The study utilized a six-month time window using students in three middle schools that accumulated five unexcused absences. The attendance support team was comprised of a school social worker, a family resource student support coordinator, a district-level director of pupil personnel, and a court-designated worker from family court. The function of this team was to share attendance policies, requirements, and mitigate barriers through system support to increase regular attendance for students. The research was analyzed to measure the effect on gender, grade level, …

A Randomized Controlled Trial Of The Echeckup To Go For High School Seniors Across The Academic Year, Diana M. Doumas, Susan Esp, Rob Turrisi, Laura Bond

Counselor Education Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Among high school students, seniors report the highest levels of alcohol use and hazardous drinking. Technology-based interventions are a promising approach for reducing alcohol use among this age group. Objectives: This randomized controlled trial investigated the efficacy of the eCHECKUP TO GO, an online personalized feedback intervention, on reducing alcohol use among high school seniors across the academic year (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT03613818). Drinker risk status, with students classified as high- or low-risk drinkers based on baseline reports binge drinking, was examined as a moderator of intervention effects. Method: Participants (N = 311) were recruited from two high schools. …

Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, for the first time in the history of U.S. capital markets, passive funds surpassed active funds in terms of total assets under management. The continuous growth of passive funds at the expense of active funds is a genuine cause for concern. Active funds monitor the management and partake of decision-making in their portfolio companies. Furthermore, they improve price efficiency and managerial performance by engaging in informed trading. The buy/sell decisions of active funds provide other market participants reliable information about the quality of firms. The cost of active investing is significant and it is exclusively borne by active …

Reckoning With Race And Disability, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

Our national reckoning with race and inequality must include disability. Race and disability have a complicated but interconnected history. Yet discussions of our most salient socio-political issues such as police violence, prison abolition, healthcare, poverty, and education continue to treat race and disability as distinct, largely biologically based distinctions justifying differential treatment in law and policy. This approach has ignored the ways in which states have relied on disability as a tool of subordination, leading to the invisibility of disabled people of color in civil rights movements and an incomplete theoretical and remedial framework for contemporary justice initiatives. Legal scholars …

The First Amendment, Common Carriers, And Public Accommodations: Net Neutrality, Digital Platforms, And Privacy, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Recent prominent judicial opinions have assumed that common carriers have few to no First Amendment rights and that calling an actor a common carrier or public accommodation could justify limiting its right to exclude and mandating that it provide nondiscriminatory access. A review of the history reveals that the underlying law is richer than these simple statements would suggest. The principles for determining what constitutes a common carrier or a public accommodation and the level of First Amendment protection both turn on whether the actor holds itself out as serving all members of the public or whether it asserts editorial …

Emotion Disclosure In Spanish And English Bilinguals, Maya Cohrssen-Hernandez

Scripps Senior Theses

Previous literature has identified a difference in emotion comprehension and production of bilinguals. This study aimed to explore differences in emotion expression in the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) among Spanish and English bilinguals. The bilingual participants were interviewed and asked to recount two frustrating events, one in their L1 and one in their L2. These interviews were analyzed for the occurrence of four semantic categories: emotion words (with a subcategory of negative emotion words), emotion-laden words, expressive interjections, and intensifiers that strengthen content words. The data indicated that Spanish and English bilinguals both used more emotion …

U.S. Presidential Election Portrayed By Foreign Media: Costa Rica And Nicaragua Comparative Study, Emily Neumann

Honors Program Theses

The U.S. presidential election not only grabs a lot of media attention from the United States, but it also catches the attention of media from around the world. How does the foreign media portray the U.S. presidential election? This study seeks to answer a piece of this question through an analysis of media sources in Costa Rica and Nicaragua in the hopes of better informing audiences on the potential frames their media be constructing their information through. The analysis considers the tone, along with the articles’ conversations of policy and personality of the candidates. After selecting 10 articles from each …

Reasons For Self-Mutilating Behavior In The 21st Century, Zhiqing Yaw

Honors Program Theses

Self-harm, also known as Self-Mutilating Behavior (SMB) has emerged as a major concern in this era of globalization as the prevalence rate of self-mutilating behavior has increased drastically. The statistic usually depends on self-report as SMB are often done in private. There was a total of one hundred and six participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) and each participant was given $1.00 for their time. The survey was administered via Qualtrics. In the result, 90 participants have reported to be involved in SMB and 67 were males while 28 were females. The age range of the participants were …

A Time And Place: Structures Of Knowledge At An Archeological Field-Site, Joseph Renow

Dissertations

In regards to the places where it happens, our shared beliefs about science encompass two seemingly contradictory positions. On the one hand, scientific-knowledge is understood as universal, and as being tied to nowhere in particular. On the other hand, we believe science cannot happen just anywhere, and more often than not, we imagine it at home in the highly controlled and cleansed environments of laboratories. In this dissertation I utilize ethnographic data collected at Angel Mounds (an active archeological field-site and museum) to describe somewhere very different than where we typically imagine science occurring. At Angel Mounds science is deeply …

Promoting Early-Adolescent Dual Language Learners' Language Use & Reading Skills, Holly Griskell

Dissertations

Most studies of Dual Language Learners’ (DLLs’) literacy development focus on the early childhood years. As such, this three-study dissertation sought to advance our knowledge of DLLs’ English language and reading comprehension skills during early adolescence, a developmental stage when many students struggle with reading. Study 1, “Classroom Discussion and Early-Adolescent Dual Language Learners’ Motivation and Reading Comprehension”, considered how features of the classroom language environment promote DLLs’ reading comprehension skills. We examined relations between students’ (N = 413; M age = 11.66-years-old) engagement in high-quality classroom discussions and reading comprehension as a function of their motivation to participate in …

Two Essays On Governments Devolving Fiscal Authority To Lower-Level Actors, Jinsol Park

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Over the past decades, there have been efforts across the globe to break the grip of the centralized power of government and devolve authority to lower-level actors. The devolution of authority in the governance system can take place in various ways: the central government can devolve authority, responsibility, and functions to local governments; or a local government can delegate its authority to make policy decisions to the citizenry, for example, as a form of public participation. In a broad sense, we can group all these government activities to devolve power to lower-level actors and call it “decentralization.” This dissertation attempts …

Does Manipulating Source Gender Predict A Person's Open-Mindedness As A Function Of Sexism?, Tanyelle Annette Galman

Master's Theses

The present research examines whether Communication Source Gender influences a message recipients' level of Open-Minded Cognition, and whether Ambivalent Sexism moderates this effect. Participants were asked to think of themselves as part of a military panel which considers proposals to military spending. Then after reading a proposal from either Cassandra Smith or David Smith, participants were asked to indicate whether they would be open to hearing more from the author. Participants were then instructed to complete the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996). In total there were 395 participants in this study. Results show that there was no main …

Menstrual Pain Trajectories And Their Psychological And Behavioral Predictors, Hannah Marie Alves Hagy

Master's Theses

Despite the high prevalence of menstrual pain (i.e., dysmenorrhea) and the negative impact on quality of life, there is a dearth of research on how menstrual pain changes over time. There is also a critical need to understand psychological and behavioral predictors of these menstrual pain trajectories because dysmenorrhea is a known risk factor for the development of chronic pelvic pain (CPP) and chronic non-pelvic pain (CNPP). Given that current treatments for CPP and CNPP have had limited success, developing preventative strategies for dysmenorrhea is of high importance. Relying on longitudinal survey data collected as part of a larger investigation, …

The United States’ And United Kingdom’S Responses To 2016 Russian Election Interference: Through The Lens Of Bureaucratic Politics, Katherine Davidson

Honors Projects

Russia’s 2016 disinformation campaign during the U.S. elections represented the first large-scale campaign against the United States and was intended to cause American citizens to question the fundamental security and resilience of U.S. democracy. A similar campaign during the 2016 U.K. Brexit referendum supported the campaign to leave the European Union. This paper assesses the policy formation process in the United States and United Kingdom in response to 2016 Russian disinformation using a bureaucratic politics framework. Focusing on the role of sub-state organizations in policy formation, the paper identifies challenges to establishing an effective policy response to foreign disinformation, particularly …

It’S #Prisonabolition Until The Bad Guys Show Up: Conflicting Discourses On Twitter About Carceral Networks In 2020, Tam Phan

Honors Projects

“Twitter Revolutions” in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and Moldova illustrate social media’s capacity to mobilize citizens in uprooting systems of injustice. As non-democratic regimes, these “Twitter Revolutions” offer insight into how Twitter’s microblogging, hashtags, and global user connections help broker relations between activists hoping to challenge the government. However, this thesis focuses on the democratic regime of the US and how Twitter plays a role in aiding the prison abolition movement in their effort to dismantle carceral networks that inflict racial and political violence on Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color. The thesis outlines how, under the US’ classification as …

Jigs, Reels, And “Realness”: An Investigation Of Ideas Of Authenticity And Tradition In New England French Canadian Music, Lowell Ruck

Honors Projects

Franco-American culture is increasingly recognized as an integral part of the heritage of Maine and New England, and has attracted growing academic attention in recent years. But while many scholars and cultural promoters focus on the French language in their work on this subject, few studies have considered the position of traditional music in Franco-American communities in the 21^st century. This thesis examines French Canadian traditional music as it is played in New England and the ways in which musicians think about authenticity and tradition in their art. Using material from ethnographic interviews, it illuminates how musicians draw from …

Can Small Donations Have Big Consequences? Candidate Ideology, Small Donations, And Election Results In The 2016 And 2018 Congressional Cycles, Michael Borecki

Honors Projects

Small donors have provided an increased share of total campaign contributions in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 U.S. federal election cycles, including about $3 billion of the $14.4 billion raised in 2020. Campaign funding is still dominated by an influential set of large donors, but small donations may be the basis for an effective response to the disproportionate amount of “big money” in politics. This study investigates whether candidates who are more extreme perform better with small donors, and then examines the impact of small donations and overall funding on election results. These analyses were performed using linear sum-of-squares regression …

Localizing Resistance: How Southern Women Locate Sexual And Bodily Autonomy And Strategically Resist The Institutions Aiming To Shape Them, Gillian Raley

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the methods of resistance enacted by women-identifying people in Mississippi against the institutions seeking to police how they understand their own sexuality and bodily autonomy. This analysis draws upon a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in the summer of 2020 focused on construction of community, intersectional identity, relationship with the body, and what inputs frame how women in Mississippi understand sex. This project puts these interviews in conversation with literature from a variety of subfields, including resistance studies, the Sociology of the South, and the Sociology of sexuality, all of which help bring the argument behind …

A Moderated-Mediation Model Of Emerging Adult And Parent Religiosity, Externalizing Behavior, And Parenting Style, Benjamin M. Simonds

Honors Projects

The present study investigated whether emerging adult religiosity mediated the relationship between high parental religiosity and low levels of offspring externalizing, and whether these pathways are moderated by aspects of authoritative parenting (i.e., acceptance, firm control, and psychological autonomy). Surveys were completed by 275 emerging adults aged 18-25, including scales assessing their religiosity, the religiosity of their parents, the style of parenting in which they were raised, and their own engagement in externalizing behaviors. Results indicated a correlation between high levels of parental and emerging adult religiosity, and a marginal relationship between high parental religiosity and reduced offspring externalizing. However, …

The Place And Role Of Pharmacy Benefit Management (Pbm) Companies In Us Healthcare System, George Mattis Ii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On average, prescription drugs cost US consumers more than any other developed country in the world. US drug makers claim that intermediaries in the prescription drug supply chain, companies called pharmacy benefit managers (PBM), are forcing them to increase their drug prices. PBMs counter that the discounts they receive from drug makers are channeled to insurers. This thesis will examine the role that PBMs play in the prescription drug supply chain and determine what effect they have on drug prices. This thesis will utilize a comparative static model, Structure, Conduct, Performance (SCP) framework to analyze the pharmaceutical manufacturing and the …

Challenging The Limitations Of Asserting Jurisdiction: A Case Study Of The South China Sea, Joshua Villanueva

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The South China Sea dispute challenges the future development of maritime legal order and international law. China’s behavior in the South China Sea challenges widely accepted rules governing maritime jurisdiction worldwide as it tries to expand the limits of its jurisdiction. In China’s view, the Arbitral Tribunal in Philippines v. China also challenged the jurisdiction of the UNCLOS by taking a highly political issue related to sovereignty. This thesis argues that mere rhetorical rejection of China’s actions in the South China Sea will not determine the resolution of the dispute. China’s behavior will be dependent on striking the right balance …