Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Questioning The Use Of Race And Sex-Based Statistics In Economic Loss Valuations In Tort Litigation: A Comparison Of Mississippi To New York, Caitlin Phillips

Honors Theses

In tort litigation, specifically catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, forensic economists are employed to determine a plaintiff’s projected worklife and life expectancy, which is then presented to a jury as lost income. Often, projections of life expectancy and worklife use race and sex-based statistics. For example, a white female, on average, may live a significantly longer life than a black male. Additionally, said white female may, on average, work for fewer years than her male counterparts. In this research, case law of Mississippi and New York were read closely for mentions of race and sex-based statistics in forensic economics …

An Exploration Of The Correlation Between Body Mass And Skeletal Measurements Of The Long Bone Joints And Diaphyses, Caroline Genius

Honors Theses

Body mass is a characteristic of the human body that can aid in narrowing down potential identifications of unidentified individuals. However, when faced with skeletal remains, body mass is not easily ascertained, especially when the remains are incomplete. This research explores the potential correlation between body mass and long bone dimensions in order to aid in identification efforts. The limited research done prior has been conducted almost exclusively on the lower limbs—therefore, one of the primary foci of this study is to assess the efficacy of using the joint surfaces and shaft measurements of the upper limbs. Five long bones …

Legitimate And Deceptive Media: An Analysis Of Sources Used In Conjunction With #Defundingthepolice Using Twitter Api, Isabel Tilford

Honors Theses

The idea of defunding the police has been circulating on social media for the past few years. This thesis seeks to analyze what types of sources people use in conjunction with the #DefundthePolice hashtag to define their understanding of defunding the police. Using Twitter API to search for #DefundthePolice, Tweets were analyzed and rated based on the credibility of links embedded within each post. Each link was assigned a credibility rating of one through three, one meaning not credible, two meaning somewhat credible, and three meaning credible. Each link was classified into one of eight categories: news, statements, advertisements, advertisements/propaganda, …

A Lost Reference Point: How Placing Our Identities In The State Has Facilitated Social Polarization Among Americans, Dylan Evans

Honors Theses

We are living in a moment of societal breakdown, as America is increasingly plagued with fractious polarization along political and cultural lines. The potential causes of this are complex and exist within a broad spectrum of possibilities, with the potential solutions being even more contentious. However, it is my contention that identity is the central issue here. As people begin to place their identities in a religious devotion to the liberal state as opposed to a transcendent ideal, once simple, agreed-upon premises become harsh divides, and polarization ensues. To fully evaluate how this has happened, and thus how it may …

Opinion & The Insanity Plea: What Can A Little Education Do?, Anna Raker

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The misconceptions regarding the insanity defense have often left bias rampant within the court room. Within this study, the goal was to understand the relationship between education via an expert witness and how it changes one’s verdict on a case where the insanity defense is used. Participants were given a vignette regarding the circumstances of an NGRI defense case, and then randomly assigned to a control video and a myth video. The control video talked about the circumstances around assessment, and insignificant details of the case, while the myth version discussed the common myths and misconceptions regarding the insanity defense. …

A Systematic Review Of The Relation Of Restorative Justice Principles & Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports In K-12 Schools, Katherine Richardson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Alternatives to punitive punishment and discipline have gained popularity as research has supported the advances towards safer and more positive school communities. This includes multi-tiered service models, such as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Additionally, a restorative justice (RJ) approach can offer non-punitive, relationship-centered practices for avoiding and addressing harm, responding to violations of legal and human rights, and collaboratively solving problems. However, limited research has been conducted looking at the connection between RJ practices and frameworks such as PBIS, which are already implemented in a many schools. The purpose of this systematic literature review was to review the …

Applying Functional Analysis In A School Setting, Elizabeth Young

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Literature has implied that the use of functional analysis (FA) procedure within the school setting can be beneficial in determining the function of problem behavior. However, conducting an FA in a school setting can be challenging due to the expertise, resources, and experimental control needed to complete such an evaluation. The purpose of the current study was to examine the feasibility of conducting a FA within the school setting to determine the function(s) of severe problem behavior. The research questions are: (1) Can a multielement FA be used to infer the function of a student’s problem behavior in a public …

Leaders' Virtual & In-Person Communication: The Impact Of Employee Preference On Job Satisfaction, Adalin Mcdaniel

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Communication between supervisors and subordinates has consistently been viewed as a primary element of leadership, and a factor that is important in the leader-subordinate relationship via Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory. Recently, with the massive shift to virtual working, leadership communication has gained greater prominence in research and practical settings. Therefore, examining the role that virtual leadership communication plays in employee job satisfaction is an important first step in beginning to understand the shift to predominant work settings from home. I examined the influence of employee perceptions and preferences of leadership communication on job satisfaction via a panel design in which …

Sexual Self-Concept, Communication Privacy Management, & Relational Dialetcics Among Post-Partum Women, Mary Pitts

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Sexual communication research has long focused on adolescents, though a growing area in need of focus revolves around sexual confidence and view of self, or sexual self-concept. Similarly, research on motherhood often lacks a deep view into postpartum women’s feelings and experiences and how they communicate about them with other people. Relational Dialectics Theory and Communication Privacy Management were used to evaluate how postpartum women experiences changes in their sexual self-concept and how they subsequently communicate about those changes with other people. Through interviewing 10 women through semi-structured interviews surrounding their experiences with sexual self-concept and motherhood, themes connecting open …

When Russia Gets Tired Of Them, They Sell Them To Us: The Russian Five, Us Russophobia, & Cold War Rhetoric After 1991, John Elam

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Through a case study of the Russian Five, the five Soviet-born hockey players who joined the Detroit Red Wings in the 1990s, this thesis offers insights into Russophobic beliefs and sentiment based upon historical memory of the Cold War. Through a loose chronological framework, this thesis considers the background of the Soviet hockey system for contextualization, and looks at the experiences of former Soviet hockey players from their arrival in north America in 1989 through the end of the twentieth century. An analysis of television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, documentaries, and interviews, demonstrates that American citizens continued to promote Russophobic sentiment …

A Review Of Traumatic Brain Injury In School Psychology Journals, Casey Gillispie

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

TBI is the leading cause of childhood injury, death, and disability. School psychologists play a key role in providing students with TBI services within the school setting; therefore, it is essential for school psychologists to be familiar with TBI research. Previous research indicates a lack of TBI literature within school psychology journals. The current review examined TBI publications in school psychology journals over the past 38 years to provide an update on issues raised by Smith and Canto (2015). Eight school psychology journals were examined to gather data about the frequency of articles related to TBI, types of TBI articles, …

Sexism's Effect On Female Suicide Ideation & Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Through Body Surveillance & Self-Esteem, Caitlin Gregory

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research has shown that women face an average of three sexist events per week (Fischer & Holz, 2010). These sexist experiences can present within domains of daily living, social media usage, workplace discrimination, psychological distress, and sexual objectification (Baires & Koch, 2020; Duggan, 2014; Oswald, et al. 2019; Perez, 2019; Rollero, 2013). Additionally, the literature has shown that types of sexist experiences can determine the severity of the impact on mental health outcomes, as benevolent sexism has showcased significant consequences on females’ self-esteem and body objectification and hostile sexism has been shown to impact selfevaluation and self-worth (Calogero & Jost, …

A Systematic Review Of Cultural Adaptations Of School-Based Social, Emotional & Behavioral Interventions For Students Of Color: A Replication & Update Of Brown Et Al, 2018, Courtney Coleman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Underrepresented minority students are excluded from schools for disciplinary reasons at a higher rate than majority students. School-based positive social, emotional, and behavioral interventions could be implemented to support URM students who have behavioral needs. These interventions might need adaptations to meet the needs of diverse students in K-12 schools. However, there have been limited syntheses of these adaptations. The purpose of this review is to update Brown et al.’s (2018) systematic review of culture adaptations to social, emotional, and behavioral interventions. The current article pool consisted of seven articles from 2016 to 2021. The seven articles for the current …

Poverty, Flooding & Grassroots Organizing: An Analysis Of The War On Poverty & The 1977 Flood In Central Appalachia, Brooklyn Lile

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

There is a long history of environmental exploitation and disastrous flooding in Central Appalachia. The region has long been plagued by exploitative practices such as strip mining and mountaintop removal which have stripped vegetation from land, leading to more disastrous floods and more frequent floods. With repeated floods comes a vicious cycle of substantial damage and destruction, as well as inadequate time and resources for full recovery before the next flood strikes. Consequently, floods and poverty have been cyclical, interlinked, and inseparable. Thus, this paper explores the relationship between poverty, flooding, and relief by analyzing the connections between the War …

The 1985 Move Bombing: A Study In Perspectives, Kaci Delisle

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a military grade bomb on 6221 Osage Avenue, a row house in a Black neighborhood in West Philadelphia. This home was occupied by a revolutionary group called MOVE. The bomb started a fire that the police and firefighters decided to “contain” rather than put out, resulting in the deaths of eleven people and the destruction of sixty-one homes. Only two MOVE members survived the fire. Using court records, documents from the investigation conducted by the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (PSIC), and other interviews regarding MOVE and the bombing, this paper reconstructs different perspectives …

Impact Of Students' Off-Task Technology Use During Instruction On Teachers, David Lancaster

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The increase of technology in educational classrooms has changed the way instruction is delivered and received, positively and negatively. When technology is used for off-task purposes, negative effects on student learning are well-documented. However, little research has been conducted on the effect of student off-task technology use on teachers. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of off-task technology use during instruction on K-12 teachers, while including more modern devices. Two hundred sixty-two Kentucky K-12 teachers completed online surveys in which their perceptions of multitasking, views of the impact of off-task technology use on students, and on …

"I Think It's Biblically Wrong, But Temptation Gets The Better Of Me": A Survey On Out-Of-Control Sexual Behavior In A Christian Cohort Of Men In The Uk, Timothy C Y Lau, Glenn M. Miles

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The current study aims to better understand influences on men within the UK Christian community on their engagement with pornography and prostitution. The authors utilized the Carnes (2012) survey to examine the landscape of sexual knowledge and behaviours, and to identify symptoms, and the propensity towards, “out-of-control sexual behavior” among participants. Data from a survey sent to the Christian community through church networks and word of mouth was used for this study. Of the 491 men who participated, the majority (94%, 460) described their personal Christian faith as “strong.” Despite the Christian faith community's moral code of conduct, the survey …

Adapting Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Ro-Dbt) For Adolescents: Preliminary Testing Of Mechanisms Of Change, Molly Fennig

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Overcontrol is a phenotype characterized by inflexibility, perfectionism, and a need for control or structure, which increases risk for disorders such as anorexia nervosa, social anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Given high comorbidity and limited efficacy of current treatments for these disorders, Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adolescents (RO DBT-A) attempts to improve outcomes by targeting overcontrol as a transdiagnostic mechanism. This study aimed to test preliminary efficacy of telehealth-delivered RO DBT-A in targeting overcontrol as a mechanism of psychopathology in a heterogeneous clinical sample.

Method: Participants were female adolescents (ages 13-21; 83% white; 80% non-Hispanic/Latino) who presented with …

Emerging Transformations In Material Use And Waste Practices In The Global South: Plastic-Free And Zerowaste In India, Katie Conlon

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study uses a qualitative approach to address limitations and blockages to current plastics reduction via semi-structured interviews with zero waste business practitioners in India. Although they are nascent, India is home to a budding zero waste community that is grappling with how to reduce plastics—via trial and error—and these stakeholders hold insights from lived experience on how plastic reduction can actualize in the Indian subcontinent. This research involved interviewing zero waste businesses and consultants and makers of plastic alternatives in India to understand their experiences with plastic reduction strategies. The key stakeholder interviews reveal key insights for moving forward …

Low-Income Caregivers With Young Children Experience Risk And Resilience Through Pandemic-Related Stressors, Nicole Kingdon, Molly Dubuc, Rosemarie Dibiase

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In March 2020, United States government implemented health and safety mandates, including school closures, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). As a result, some caregivers with young children were forced to take on new roles. Low-income households with young children appeared to be more highly impacted than other groups, experiencing acute pandemic-related stressors on top of previous vulnerabilities. Using qualitative analysis, this study examined how low-income caregivers with young children adapted to pandemic-related stressors and how stressors may have altered relationships and well-being in the household (Daks et al., 2020). Two research questions were examined: (1) how …

Authoritarian Propaganda Campaigns On Foreign Affairs: Four Birds With One Stone, Andrew Chubb, Frances Yaping Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why do authoritarian states sometimes play up dangerous internationalcrises and embarrassing diplomatic incidents in domestic propaganda? Isit to mobilize, threaten, divert or pacify? Recent studies in comparativepolitics have focused on regime legitimacy and stability as key drivers ofauthoritarian propaganda practices, overlooking other possiblemotivations such as mobilization of the regime’s domestic allies orstrategic signaling aimed at foreign audiences. Foreign policy analysts,meanwhile, have emphasized international dimensions of thepropaganda behavior of China — the contemporary world’s mostpowerful and technologically sophisticated authoritarian state — but haveoften mistakenly framed complementary theories as competingalternative explanations. Paying attention to the multiple domestic andinternational audiences for authoritarian propaganda, …

Discrimination And Cognitive Failures In Singapore And The Us: An Investigation Of Between- And Within-Persons Associations Through Multilevel Modelling, Nadyanna Binte Mohamed Majeed, Kasturiratna Tennakoon Appuhamillage Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Verity Yu Qing Lua, Mingyao Li, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Experiencing everyday discrimination can have a significant negative impact on an individual’s wellbeing. While much attention has been paid to the physical and mental health consequences of discrimination, less is known about how discrimination can affect cognitive health, and most existing work has been conducted in laboratory settings where participants recall discrimination retrospectively. Given the artificial environment and susceptibility to recall bias in such procedures, the current study utilised two daily diary studies, consisting of young adults in Singapore (Study 1; N = 484) and midlife adults from the US (Study 2; N = 3577), to examine the association between …

Does Watching Videos With Natural Scenery Restore Attentional Resources? A Critical Examination Through A Pre-Registered Within-Subject Experiment, Andree Hartanto, Nicole Lee Anne Teo, Verity Y. Q. Lua, Keith Tay, Nicole R. Y. Chen, Nadyanna M. Majeed

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Existing studies have shown that direct exposure to a real nature environment has a restorative effect on attentional resources after a mentally fatiguing task. However, it remains unclear whether virtual nature simulations can serve as a substitute for real nature experienced in the outdoors to restore executive attention. Given the mixed findings in the literature, the present study sought to examine if viewing videos with natural scenery (vs. a control with urban scenery) restores participants’ working memory capacity – measured by an operation span task – in a high-powered pre-registered within-subject experimental study. Overall, our within-subject experiment did not find …

A Comparison Of Regional Food Systems And Food Security In Rural Mississippi And Italy, Reinhard Matthew Knerr

Honors Theses

Food insecurity has strong links to worsened overall health outcomes, specifically, increased prevalence of chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and obesity. Food insecurity in developed nations is primarily characterized by reduced access to nutritionally dense foods. This problem is especially prevalent in the Mississippi (MS) Delta region, where greater than two in five people are food insecure and community health outcomes are among the worst in the nation. Recent literature has placed emphasis on solutions to urban food insecurity, but urban resolutions cannot be fully extrapolated to rural food systems, where insecurity is characterized by a multifactorial lack …

The Relationships Between Academic Entitlement, Grit, Prospective Memory, Retrospective Memory, And Undergraduate Gpa, Kathrin Underwood

Honors Theses

The present study was conducted in order to investigate the relationships between academic entitlement, grit, prospective memory, retrospective memory, and GPA. To investigate these relationships, participants were asked to fill out multiple questionnaires including the AEQ, PRMQ, and the Grit Scale survey. GPAs for participants were taken from the Institutional Research, Effectiveness, and Planning office. The results of this study showed that students with high grit scores were more likely to have lower academic entitlement, higher GPAs, and higher prospective and retrospective memory scores. Ultimately, these results suggest that certain traits and abilities may be predictive of academic success. Looking …

The Impact Of Epilepsy And The Evolution Of A Nonprofit: "The Epilepsy Connection", Logan Thomas

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the diagnosis, symptoms, and consequences of epilepsy along with the author’s personal journey that promoted the creation of a successful epilepsy service club on the University of Mississippi campus, later evolving to a nonprofit organization off campus. Epilepsy is defined as having at least two seizures without a known trigger that are recurring and may include uncontrollable jerking of muscles or staring blankly with significant risk for short-and long-term consequences. These consequences include social isolation, problems at school, reduced physical activity, increased risk for injuries, social stigma, anxiety, depression, attention issues, and other consequences. An independent online …

Peer Perceptions Of Parent-Students Seeking Higher Education, Alexandria M. Wall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With a growing number of parents pursuing academia, it is imperative that researchers understand the social environment in which parent-students function. Stereotypes of parent-students may be held by peers, faculty, and other educational supervisors. Across two previous independent studies, evidence and rationale were provided to suggest that both positive and negative perceptions of parent-students exist, with noted differences between gender. The purpose of the current 2x2x2 between-subjects study was to analyze the social perceptions of students enrolled in higher education as varied by parenthood status, age, and gender. The social perceptions included measures accounting for perceptions of intelligence and academic …

The Future Of Socialization: Linking Socialization To Employee Engagement, Alexander Michael Dechurch

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between socialization and engagement. In doing so this study investigates and measures the impact that social integration, task mastery, autonomy, role clarity, satisfaction with socialization, job embeddedness, network characteristics, network capital, and online socialization have in linking socialization to engagement. The sample for this study utilized data from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results suggest that institutionalized socialization tactics relate to higher reported engagement. In addition, social integration, autonomy, job embeddedness, network strength, and network capital each play a significant role in the observed relationship

The Relationship Between Self-Rated Circumplex Traits And Other-Rated Job Performance, Michael Robert Sawdy

Theses and Dissertations

The Big Five has emerged as the dominant personality model in the researcher literature (Judge & Bono, 2000), yet there is still debate about how personality should be modeled within the Big Five framework as well as which personality traits relate most strongly to important outcomes across domains (DeYoung et al., 2007; Digman, 1997; Hofstee et al., 1992; Judge et al., 2002). The purpose of this study was to compare complex personality traits as defined by the circumplex personality approach to simple, hierarchical personality traits as defined by the standard personality model approach in relation to other-rated job performance. Overall, …

The Examination Of Factors That Influence Trust In A Multi-Agent Team Context, Cherrise Ficke

Theses and Dissertations

Current dyadic teams in the human-agent teams literature demonstrates that Propensity to Trust in Technology (PTT), previous experience with an agent, levels of autonomy (LOA), workload, and mission performance affect trust and mission performance to some capacity. However, the purpose of this study was to expand this line of research by examining how these factors influence trust and mission performance in a multi unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) context. To investigate the relationship between these factors and trust, an archival study was conducted using data from a previously-conducted, multi-UAV study. The previous study utilized a within-subjects repeated measures design in which …