Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Digital Environments Of Reception And Governance: A Landscape Analysis Of Immigration-Related Webpages On U.S. State Websites, Orunima Chakraborti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American state governments occupy unique political roles when it comes to critical public-facing policy areas like education, health, transportation, and commerce, and therefore they administer many public services and benefits that affect immigrants and their communities. This study expands the existing knowledge of the ways in which U.S. state governments digitally engage with their immigrant populations, doing so through a landscape analysis that maps the information and resources provided for and about immigrant communities on 413 immigration-related webpages across all 50 U.S. state governments’ official websites. Data was collected in four categories for each webpage: its bureaucratic orientation, the government …

Addressing Transportation Construction Workforce Needs Through Innovative Policies And Practices, Thomas O'Brien, Ben Olson, Devin Martinez-Flores

Mineta Transportation Institute

A 2019 survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, found that construction firms across the country are struggling to fill open positions. Eighty percent of survey respondents indicated they have difficulty filling jobs in occupations that are essential to highway construction. This includes heavy equipment operators, cement masons, and iron workers, among others. This workforce shortage in California will become more problematic as public agencies and their contractors seek to implement projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). In California there are …

Who Are You Rooting For? T20 Cricket World Cup 2024, Usa & Wi, Purvesh Desai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The T20 Cricket World Cup '24 played in USA & WI will bring immense excitement to the cricket lovers around the world and have a question to themselves “Who shall I Root for?” How do people or fans support their favorite teams and on what criteria do they pick these teams will discuss in here.

Patriotism, tradition, and favorite individual players, are the main reasons for the fans to choose their and support the team. Nation is the biggest pride of an individual and many people choose their pride over everything. People celebrate when the home team plays on the …

Access To Justice As Access To Data, Tanina Rostain

Northwestern University Law Review

This Keynote Address, delivered in celebration of the launch of SCALES, discusses the importance of making local and state court data available for research on the functioning of the American civil justice system. It describes the regulatory and administrative challenges of obtaining high-quality data from courts. It calls for a concerted effort among researchers and policymakers to develop open-source technologies for the development of case management systems and data infrastructure. And it urges researchers to foster a collaborative research ecosystem based on broadly sharing court data.

Settlement As Construct: Defining And Counting Party Resolution In Federal District Court, Charlotte S. Alexander, Nathan Dahlberg, Anne M. Tucker

Northwestern University Law Review

Most civil cases settle. Yet generating a definitive settlement rate presents complex definitional and empirical problems, both in what should count as a settlement and how to count it. This Essay makes three contributions to better understanding and defining settlement. First, we propose a flexible, empirically informed, operationalizable definition of settlement as party resolution. Second, we exploit a new federal litigation data source to count party resolutions using machine learning models trained on 11 million docket sheet entries. Third, we offer new findings on party resolution frequency and distribution in the federal courts. Settlement is more widely and differently deployed …

Prosecutorial Data Transparency And Data Justice, Caitlin Glass, Kat M. Albrecht, Perry Moriearty

Northwestern University Law Review

The U.S. criminal legal system is notoriously racialized. Though Black and Latinx people make up less than 30% of U.S. residents, they constitute more than 50% of the nearly two million people currently in U.S. prisons and jails. For decades, research has indicated that one group of decision-makers has had an outsized influence on these numbers: prosecutors. From whom to charge to what sentences to recommend, no actor plays a greater role in determining who goes to prison in this country. Highly subjective and lacking in formal guidance and accountability, prosecutorial decisions are especially vulnerable to racial bias. They are …

Lawyerless Litigants, Filing Fees, Transaction Costs, And The Federal Courts: Learning From Scales, Judith Resnik, Henry Wu, Jenn Dikler, David T. Wong, Romina Lilollari, Claire Stobb, Elizabeth Beling, Avital Fried, Anna Selbrede, Jack Sollows, Mikael Tessema, Julia Udell

Northwestern University Law Review

Two Latin phrases describing litigants—pro se (for oneself) and in forma pauperis (IFP, as a poor person)—prompt this inquiry into the relationship between self-representation and requests for filing fee waivers. We sketch the governing legal principles for people seeking relief in the federal courts, the sources of income of the federal judiciary, the differing regimes to which Congress has subjected incarcerated and nonincarcerated people filing civil lawsuits, and analyses enabled by SCALES, a newly available database that coded 2016 and 2017 federal court docket sheets. This Essay’s account of what can be learned and of the data gaps demonstrates the …

Felony Disenfranchisement And Voter Turnout: Randomized Trials In Iowa And Washington, Alexander Billy, J.J. Naddeo, Neel U. Sukhatme

Northwestern University Law Review

Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, we conducted large-scale randomized controlled trials in Iowa and Washington aimed at increasing voter turnout among newly enfranchised individuals with past felony convictions. Alongside national and grassroots partners, we designed and implemented experiments to ascertain the effectiveness of alternative outreach mechanisms, including targeted mailers and digital ads. We did not detect statistically significant or economically meaningful effects on voter registration or turnout; most observed effects were precise nulls. The absence of measured impact is likely attributed to low digital engagement with our online ads as well as extensive voter outreach already conducted by our …

Challenging Beliefs: Examining The Efficacy Of Corrections For Conspiratorial And Partisan Misinformation, Ava Zwolinski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The threat of misinformation is widely acknowledged among researchers and laypeople (NORC, 2021). When misinformation coalesces with conspiracy theories, the repercussions can be especially dangerous, sometimes even fatal. Events such as the January 6th insurrection and the Buffalo Tops Supermarket shooting were both, in part, inspired by misleading information and conspiracy theories (Burke, 2022; Dawsey, 2023). While misinformation involving conspiracy theories is recognized as possibly posing a greater threat to correction efforts (Lewandowsky, 2021a), no study has yet experimentally manipulated the presence or absence of conspiratorial elements within misinformation. This dissertation explores whether conspiratorial misinformation is more difficult to correct …

The Beautiful And The Bullshit: Speaker And Listener Mental Representations Influence Bullshit Receptivity, Ryan Tracy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bullshit is a topic that has enjoyed an explosion of attention in both cognitive and social psychological research domains. While the picture painted thus far suggests that receptivity to such statements (i.e., perceiving meaning where none exists) hinges upon an individual’s ability to engage in reflective (vs. reflexive) cognitive processing, little attention has been paid to how purveyors of bullshit influence one’s willingness to engage with the message. This is critical to explore, given the status of misinformation in today’s media climate. A critical step involved in determining characteristics of speakers that predict bullshit receptivity is to understand how people …

Just Transitions: Critical Exploration Of Environmental Policy And Decision-Making Through The Lens Of Lived Stories, Mariya Marinova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research explores perspectives on just transition, what transitional policies and practices are already set in motion, the conditions necessary to achieve it, and how this knowledge can inform environmental policy. Focusing on West Virginia, it employs qualitative methodology with open-ended interviews and develops life sketches of transitions to demonstrate how deeply intertwined just transition is with the lives of the people in places marked by extractive industries. Combining guiding principles from environmental and landscape justice, energy justice, feminist energy systems framework, and place attachment theory, the findings reveal that just transitions need to be transformative, focusing on understanding how …

What Supports Are People With Intellectual Disability Living In Group Homes Provided To Access Health Care? A Case Study, Rachel Skoss, Paola Chivers, Glenn Arendts, Caroline Bulsara, Rena Vithiatharan, Jim Codde

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: People with intellectual disabilities living in group homes often have complex health needs, are high health service users and need support from their service provider to access health services. In Australia, little is known about the types and amounts of these supports. Methods: A case study was conducted on a large Western Australian disability provider of group homes to 160 people with intellectual disability. Over an 18-month period, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, the study quantified health service use in hospital- and community-based settings, ways by which the person was supported to access health care and the impact on …

Physical Decline Rates: Men Versus Women, Ray C. Fair

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper uses world records by age in running, swimming, and rowing to estimate a biological frontier of decline rates for both men and women. Decline rates are assumed to be linear in percent terms up to a certain age and then quadratic after that, where the transition age is estimated. The use of world records avoids the possible problem of survivor bias in a sample. The decline rates are smallest for rowing, followed by swimming and then running. Decline rates for women are roughly the same as those for men for the swimming events. They are slightly larger for …

Controlling Emotional Text To Speech Using Complex Adverbial Phrases, Zainab T. Akande

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigates the usage of adverbial modifiers from audiobook data as a resource for training speech synthesizers with a greater range of speech descriptions. The Tacotron2 text-to-speech (TTS) model was used for the purposes of this study. Utilizing the LibriTTS dataset, the Tacotron2 model is trained under two experimental conditions: one incorporating adverbial modifiers into the input text and the other without. The dataset preprocessing involves embedding descriptions using word embeddings and encoding speaker IDs with machine learning techniques. Additionally, the model architecture includes a prosody encoder inspired by prior research. Evaluation of the trained models involves subjective assessments …

Brain Injury And Psychosocial Trauma: Outcomes Among Justice-Involved Individuals, Mahathi D. Kosuri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Justice-involved individuals experience disproportionately high rates of both traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and psychosocial traumas. However, these traumas have yet to be conceptualized together, leaving a chasm of research on how they interact and influence this population. The current study was the first to measure the effects of TBIs as well as psychosocial trauma among justice-involved men, within the context of executive functioning, history of justice involvement, and recidivism. A sample of men (N=95) from a private correctional facility were given the Ohio State University Traumatic Brain Injury Questionnaire (OSU-TBI-ID), the Lifetime Stressor Checklist- Revised (LSC-R), along with …

On The Lower Levels Of The Ivory Tower: What Color Collars Do Adjunct Faculty Wear?, Frederick Tucker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Institutional reliance on tenure-line faculty reached a historic low after the Great Recession in 2009, remaining at approximately a third of all faculty through 2022. Postsecondary institutions have steadily increased their reliance on full-time adjunct faculty over the last two decades. Part-time adjuncts, meanwhile, were hired in great numbers before and during the Great Recession, as student enrollment increased, but have steadily declined since 2012, as college enrollment waned. Almost all evidence suggests that tenure expansion would benefit both the recipients of tenure and their students, but would come at a cost. There are few studies, however, that distinguish between …

United States Foreign Policy Towards South Africa: From Constructive Engagement To Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act Of 1986, Jennifer J. Squires

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

U.S. domestic pressure groups have historically utilized the tactic of lobbying Congress as a tool to pressure the legislative body to make specific foreign policy decisions. My research findings suggest that over various periods of time, in total spanning approximately four decades, first heralded by African American human rights leaders and organizations, the actions of six separate domestic anti-apartheid economic sanctions and divestment organizations, influenced by episodic anti-apartheid protest actions in South Africa, used their varied American protest actions to remind and to admonish Congress that apartheid is synonymous with racism. Thus, apartheid had to be dismantled. An important number …

Musical Semiotics In Kate Soper’S Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016), Scott A. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the six parts of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016). While individual parts have received some music theoretical attention, this is the first analysis of the entire Pulitzer Prize-nominated work. Ambiguity and contingency are major themes of Ipsa Dixit, and by treating each part independently and in combination, I hope to honor Ipsa’s contingent status as a unified work comprised of six complete works. Soper’s libretto unifies an assemblage of texts with adaptations of Aristotle to investigate the intersections of language and music with authority, veracity, and (un)intelligibility.

I theorize that Soper’s “philosophy-opera” dramatizes the formation of …

History & Evolution Of Plastic Mulching Technology: An Ehnography Of California Strawberry Plasticulture, Kalea Conrad

Master's Theses

This ethnography draws on key informant interviews and participant observation to produce a case study about plastic mulching as an important industry standard in specialty crop production. It documents the historic adoption and present role of plastic mulching technology in California strawberry production and addresses the characteristics of commercial standard management that inhibit the adoption of alternative mulching practices. It complements extensive research on strawberry pathology and fumigation, breeding innovations, fertilizer and pesticide treatments, and maximization of yields to incorporate participants’ lived experiences and knowledge of mulch origins, the technology adoption process, mulch benefits and drawbacks, the state of agricultural …

Féminas Speaking Up: Three Papers On Feminine Transgender Identities, Gender Identity Activism, And Language Reform In Lima, Peru, Ernesto Cuba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this three-paper dissertation, I explore the linguistic and discursive practices of Féminas, a leading transgender rights activist organization based in Lima, Peru. Building on scholarship on language ideologies (Irvine & Gal, 2000), queer linguistics (Motschenbacher, 2011), and socio-onomastics (Ainiala & Östman, 2017), I analyze the role that language beliefs and language-in-use plays in performing local (trans)gender identities and shaping grassroots politics within this specific community of practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992). Based on an extensive corpus of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic material gathered during my long-term investigation with Féminas, I present three studies exploring distinct –though related– ideologically-driven sociolinguistic …

Claiming The Right To Belong: Diversity And The Politics Of Inclusion In Queens, New York, Susan J. Tanenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines social integration in a diverse civic and political mainstream. The social science research on intergroup contact in U.S. cities undergoing significant demographic change tends to focus on encounters between members of majority “in-groups” and minority “out-groups” in the context of workplaces, neighborhoods, and families. I contend that civic politics is another compelling strategic site for observing intergroup contact between emerging and established players. My study presents three cases of claims-making activity during the post-9/11 period in New York City’s borough of Queens, where close to 50% of the population is foreign-born and no single racial group predominates. …

Late-Life Depression: The Interplay Between Cerebrovascular Risk, Cortical And Subcortical Atrophy, And Treatment Response, Dakota Egglefield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Late-life depression (LLD) is associated with poor response to antidepressant medication treatment, cognitive impairment, cerebrovascular disease, and brain changes both in white and gray matter. Of particular interest is the vascular subtype of LLD, vascular depression (VD). Although LLD and VD have received considerable research attention, there are still areas that must be further clarified to adequately characterize aspects of LLD and VD that provide valuable information for possible interventions. Such areas include a stronger understanding of the moderating role of brain atrophy and changes in cognition in treatment response in LLD. This dissertation consists of three separate studies aimed …

Assessing Staff-Youth Interaction Quality: Using The Class To Evaluate Afterschool Programs, Joel M. Hektner, Debarati Kole, Vimbayi Chinopfuktwa, Shawn L. Carlson

Journal of Youth Development

No abstract provided.

Loneliness And The Urban American (Non-)Romantic, Sarah C. Cook

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Loneliness, also known as ‘perceived social isolation,’ is an increasingly common feeling among Americans. It can be critically unhealthy when chronic, and recent revelations about its health effects have garnered a significant amount of media attention. Although statistical evidence tells us that marriage is the strongest defense against loneliness, over a third of Millennials and Gen-Zers say marriage is outdated; and census data shows that living alone is both one of the fastest-growing demographics in America, as well as a relatively stable housing arrangement. After examining existing research and media reports on loneliness itself in some depth, including factors that …

The Film, The Stadium And The Jail: The Post-Industrial Transformation Of Downtown Durham, Seth Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By the late 1980s, Durham, North Carolina’s downtown-based industrial economy had been replaced by a powerful knowledge economy in the city’s peripheries. Downtown Durham’s vast array of tobacco and textiles manufacturing buildings stood empty, along with most of its commercial spaces, offices and sidewalks. This thesis argues that the local development of two major public works, a baseball stadium (the Durham Bulls Athletic Park) and a jail (the Durham County Detention Center), conceived and constructed on similar timelines in close physical proximity, was indicative of how—and for whom—city and county officials envisioned a revitalized downtown. The first chapter examines the …

Enhancing The Accuracy Of The Mild Cognitive Impairment Diagnosis In Community-Based, Racially/Ethnically Diverse Older Adults, Katherine H. Chang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is thought to represent an intermediate stage of cognitive impairment that is often, but not always, a transitional phase between normal aging and dementia. Diagnostic criteria for “MCI” and international consensus criteria have been developed and refined over decades beginning in the 1990s, but the definition is still debated. Moreover, the operationalization and measurement of one of the criteria for MCI (i.e., subjective cognitive concerns, SCC), which is included in most classification approaches, is highly variable and there is great inconsistency across the literature. Some research efforts even support the removal of this criterion on the …

The Effect Of Working Memory Performance Under Stress On The Relationship Between Trauma History, Ptsd Symptoms, And Intimate Partner Violence, Gabriella Robinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Over 12 million people annually experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in the United States. Emerging adulthood has the highest rates of IPV across the lifespan. While many theories attempt to explain why IPV rates are markedly increased during this age period, researchers call for more empirical studies to understand processes occurring during this period that result in increased IPV perpetration. Of the studies that assess IPV perpetration, samples generally consisted of male batterers that perpetrated severe IPV. Trauma history and PTSD symptoms have been seen as risk factors for IPV perpetration. Cognitive risk factors for IPV perpetration, such as …

Living Color: Aesthetic Surfaces And Political Life In Brazil, Samuel E. Novacich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about the manipulation of appearances – of both the human body and the built environment – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Focused on Afro-aesthetic makeup and tanning practices as well as urban renewal projects, this ethnographic study reveals how the making over of both the skin and the urban landscape shape social inequalities and contribute to productions of race, gender, and national belonging. While some of the aesthetic technologies examined herein may be characterized as “bottom up” – or as the self-fashioning tactics of marginalized Afro-Brazilians – others constitute “top down” infrastructural interventions led by the state …

Misrecognition And Misrepresentation: A Critical Analysis Of The Trajectory Of Migrant Students - F1 Students, In The U.S., Domitila Dos Santos Bicudo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The influx of migrant students in the United States is reported to have increased considerably between 2022 and 2023. They are a significant asset to higher education in the U.S. and are authorized to study by the Department of Homeland Security. Despite their migratory legality, restrictions in their category as F1 students place them in a position of significant vulnerability and injustice This research analyzed how migrant students navigated and negotiated their mobility from the beginning to the end of their F1 visa status, examining their perseverance in staying on a challenging pathway toward a different migratory status or a …

Health Behaviors And Physical Health Among Young Adults With Varying Psychometric Schizotypy, Christopher Liong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Schizophrenia has consistently been associated with increased rates of physical illness and early mortality. One explanation for this association might be poor health behaviors, as people with schizophrenia are more sedentary, less physically active, and more likely to engage in substance use compared to the general population. Schizotypy may be conceptualized as the phenotypic expression of increased risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and dimensional models of schizotypy suggest that it varies on a continuum ranging from non-clinical (i.e. low schizotypy) to clinical (i.e. high schizotypy and dysfunction, as in schizophrenia). Though schizotypy and schizophrenia appear to share similar deficits and …