Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Politics Of Feminist Citizenship: Violence, Law, And Affect In Post-Revolution Tunisia, Ola Galal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Taking a historical and ethnographic approach, this dissertation examines citizenship as a historical, political, and ethical problem in Tunisia during a turbulent yet hopeful time of transition. It examines changes in the conceptualization of citizenship from one that is construed as a favor to one that is rights-based, and the political, ethical, and material effects of that shift in both official and popular discourses. I home in on the central and sometimes uneasy role feminists play in articulating and consolidating that discursive, legal, and affective transformation in citizenship by mediating between different legal and moral frameworks and attempting to reconcile …

Carceral Calisthenics: Physical Culture In The Hood, Albert L. De La Tierra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How do racialized men who reside in structurally marginalized locales that are putatively regarded as “the hood” navigate and manage their social conditions? This dissertation sheds light on this question by treating “street workout,” a physical culture centered around calisthenics exercises performed in public space, as an empirical site for generating a situated understanding of how some Black men assert themselves in social space at the same time that they are asserted upon by social forces. Taking an ethico-onto-epistem-ological stance that refuses the colonial gaze (a ubiquitously employed optic that dehumanizes racialized people), this dissertation asks: (1) What embodied practices …

The Impact Of Cannabis Use On Neuropsychological And Neural Biomarkers Of Treatment Response In Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Melanie B. Thies

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cannabis use among patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD) is at significantly greater levels than in healthy populations but the impact of cannabis on neural mechanisms of clinical improvement is poorly understood. Cognitive functioning and neural connectivity are disrupted as a result of both SSD and cannabis use, and research indicates that neuropsychological capacity and connectivity of the striatum, a region involved in salience and reward processing, may be integral to effective antipsychotic drug (AP) treatment response. Despite this overlap, no previous research has investigated the effect of cannabis on the brain functions implicated in AP treatment response. The present study …

Consciousness, Culture, And Comradeship: Narratives Of South African Exile And Anti-Apartheid Activism In West Berlin, Claudia R. Crowie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Exile is still an emotionally and politically charged topic and experience in South African history. It evokes emotional and contrasting responses in relation to its role in the struggle for liberation of the Black majority, and reveals tensions along organizational lines in relation to the contributions, influences, and outcomes of the ANC, PAC and the BCM. In this dissertation, I focus on a small group of exiles of various political persuasions in the 1980s, who arrived in West Berlin as exiles in the late 1970s and 1980s, most remaining until the ANC came to power in the first democratic election …

Neuroanatomy In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Functional Skills, Treatment Expectancy, And Comorbid Depression, Sara Rushia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a neurocognitive disorder defined by cognitive decline in older adults. Although MCI has been studied for decades, there remain important areas to be explored in order to adequately characterize aspects of this disorder that provide information valuable for possible interventions and disease progression to dementia, including a better understanding of the neuroanatomical variables relevant to this disorder. Such neuroanatomical variables include cortical thickness, hippocampal volume, and white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). This dissertation consists of three separate studies aimed at addressing gaps in the literature on MCI in relation to brain morphometrics and under-studied characteristics involved …

A Labor Of Livingness: Oral Histories Of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women, Robin Mcginty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anchored in the political subjectivity of formerly incarcerated Black women, “A Labor of Livingness: Oral Histories of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women” is a project situated at the intersections of Black geographies and Black Feminist thought that considers a re/imagination of the ‘living prison’ experiences of formerly incarcerated Black women. I offer the term “a labor of livingness” as the liberatory articulation and everyday practices of resistance to the prison as a site of ‘living death’ that is reflective of the carceral experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated Black women. Attentive to the prison as a repository of epistemological knowledge production, …

Gospels Of (Anti)Inequality: The Politics Of Biblical Interpretation In The New Poor People’S Campaign And Capitol Ministries, Jonathan Peter Tschudy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the role of biblical interpretation in the politics of inequality in the United States. Building on scholarship in American Political Development that identifies ideas as integral to institution building, I analyze the interplay between biblical interpretations, organizational structures, and political strategies within two contemporary religio-political groups: the New Poor People’s Campaign (NPPC) and Capitol Ministries (CM). Methodologically, I combine in-depth, interpretative readings of primary source documents with an historical institutional analysis of the secondary literature on the role of religion in American politics. I argue that the two organizations’ elite leaders – Reverends William Barber II and …

Linguistic Abstractions In Children’S Very Early Utterances, Qihui Xu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How early do children produce multiword utterances? Do children's early utterances reflect abstract syntactic knowledge or are they the result of data-driven learning? We examine this issue through corpus analysis, computational modeling, and adult simulation experiments. Chapter 1 investigates when children start producing multiword utterances; we use corpora to establish the development of multiword utterances and a probabilistic computational model to account for the quantitative change of early multiword utterances. We find that multiword utterances of different lengths appear early in acquisition and increase together, and the length growth pattern can be viewed as a probabilistic and dynamic process.

Chapter …

Serial Position Effect Profiles And Their Neuroanatomical Correlates: Predictors Of Conversion To Alzheimer's Disease, Isabelle K. Avildsen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current study was designed to determine whether targeted, premorbid, neuropsychological measures of the serial position effect (SPE) can detect and explain risk for later development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The study tested the utility of SPE measures in healthy controls (HC) and individuals already diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD. Aim 1 was to determine whether these sensitive, valid neuropsychological measures can explain disease risk. SPE of list-learning are highly sensitive cognitive markers that capture important elements of both linguistic and amnestic mechanisms of encoding, learning, and retrieval. Using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), we …

Essays In Asset Pricing, Muhammed Yonac

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays in asset pricing with the common theme of return predictability.

Chapter 1: This chapter introduces the motivation, results, and structure of the dissertation.

Chapter 2: I examine the relation between the social ties between firms' headquarters locations and co-movements between their fundamentals and stock returns. The evidence indicates that firms in the same industry with socially connected locations exhibit co-movement in fundamentals and stock returns that exceed those without socially connected locations. However, the stock returns reflect the location information with a lag. To exploit this lagged relationship, we form portfolios that buy (sell) …

Workforce Diversity And Health Equity: The Role Of Schools Of Public Health, Adashima Oyo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal to eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity has remained a consistent public health and social welfare challenge for the United States. Schools of public health, despite being disproportionately White, are charged with the important task of training a diverse workforce of master and doctoral-level public health students to protect and promote the overall health of the nation with research, policy, and practice. Experiences and practices related to the recruitment, admission, enrollment, and graduation of students of color, specifically Blacks and Latinx, warrant further research. Positive deviance theory, critical race theory, and organizational culture theory informed this research. …

Assessing The Leverage Of Islamist Groups And Opposition Parties Alliance In Indonesia’S Regional Electoral Contest, Ari Ganjar Herdiansah, Arie Surya Gutama, Widya Setiabudi Sumadinata

Jurnal Politik

This article tempts to verify the intricate dynamics of political alliances between Islamist groups and opposition parties in Indonesian elections, focusing on the 2018 West Java gubernatorial contest. The study employs exit poll data, investigating the relationship between religiosity, politico-religious narratives, and voting behaviour. While the mobilising power of Islamist groups appeals to political parties, creating a temporary alliance, these do not guarantee electoral triumph even in a conservative region. The politico-religious propaganda, in principle, consolidates Islamist-inclined voters. Despite high levels of religiosity among voters, the alliance's strategies fail to convey this religious mobilisation into broad electoral success. This underscores …

Historical Ecology Of Norse Greenland: Zooarchaeology And Climate Change Responses, Konrad Smiarowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis invokes Historical Ecology approach to better understand human impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the creation of cultural landscapes and seascapes in Norse Greenland. It also investigates climate impacts on human economic strategies, as they vary substantially by island and region in the North Atlantic but were especially important in arctic Greenland.

The analysis centers on the animal bone data and uses both existing and newly generated zooarchaeological collections to contribute to the study of Norse Greenland and its place in human ecodynamics research. The newly analyzed archaeofauna shows that the culturally Nordic European settlers used to …

An Interdisciplinary Approach To The Epistemic Value Of Moral Ambiguity, Jordan Wylie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morality is a critical aspect of life––it influences how we think, design political and legal systems, who we connect with, our norms, and the types of stories we tell. Yet, even with the well documented influence of morality on many aspects of life, exactly what makes moral themes so fascinating remains elusive. This dissertation aims to introduce Moral Worldbuilding as a theory for understanding our epistemic drives toward morally ambiguous and morally bad content.

In Chapter I, we introduce the problem of moral badness, which is not well handled by extant moral literature. To combat this, we offer a new …

“The Broker Of Reality”: A Scoping Review Of Moral Reconation Therapy, Sam Harrell, Constance Johnson, Chandler Boys, Brianna Suslovic, Ben Anderson-Nathe, Kassandra Botts

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: This scoping review aims to identify the evidence-based literature supporting Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT), a cognitive-behavioral treatment program created in 1987 and implemented in correctional-treatment settings across the US. Social work students and practitioners are among MRT’s facilitators.

Method: We analyze the reliability and validity of the most recent meta-analysis of MRT, covering studies published between 1988 and 2010. We then identify 669 potential publications on MRT published between 2011 and 2021.

Results: Our search across Google Scholar and eleven academic databases yielded zero peer-reviewed studies on MRT’s effectiveness or outcomes.

Citation Sources For Legal Scholarship: Ranking The Top 28 Law Faculties, John R. Beatty

Law Librarian Contributions to Books

Published in The Role of Citation in the Law: A Yale Law School Symposium, Michael Chiorazzi, ed.

This study examines the effects of the data source on citation metrics and faculty rankings by comparing three sources of legal scholarship citation data: Google Scholar, Westlaw, and HeinOnline. It compares six years of citations to works by all of the tenured and tenure-track members of the top twenty-eight faculties as determined by two recent legal citation studies. Rankings generated using the Leiter-Sisk method on the data from the three sources showed moderate to high correlation (0. 77 to 0. 96) to each …

A Modern Guide To Tourism Economics, Chapter 1: Introduction, Robertico Croes, Yang Yang

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This Modern Guide captures the evolution of foundational tenets, theories, frameworks and models that buttressed tourism economics into an evolving discipline, shining light on both new and old approaches. It systematically examines current and future trends and issues related to new economic perspectives, consolidating the notion of tourism economics as a discipline.

A Case Study Of Community Of Inquiry Presences And Cognitive Load In Asynchronous Online Stem Courses, Emily K. Faulconer, Darryl J. Chamberlain Jr.

Publications

The design and facilitation of asynchronous online courses can have notable impacts on students related to persistence, performance, and perspectives. This case study presents current conditions for cognitive load and Community of Inquiry (CoI) presences in an asynchronous online introductory undergraduate STEM course. Researchers present the novel use of Python script to clean and organize data and a simplification of the instructional efficiency calculation for use of anonymous data. Key relationships between cognitive load and CoI presences are found through validated use of NASA-TLX instrument and transcript analysis of discussion posts. The data show that student presences are not consistent …

Emergence Of A Norm From Resistance: Using Simulation To Explore The Macro Implications Of Social Identity Theory, Khadijeh Salimi, Jesse T. Richman, Regina Karp, George P. Richardson, David Anderson

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

We usually hope that social norms discourage injustice. However, we are all witnesses to harmful norms enforced by governments, such as xenophobia, which need to be contested and changed. Previous studies have concluded that it is possible to change a harmful norm through contestation by powerless actors if suitable structural conditions exist. However, these structural conditions have not been sufficiently studied and, as such, are the focus of this paper. Our paper begins with a review of well-established micro-level theories of social identity theory (SIT), recast as a set of 42 discrete theoretical statements. These statements are then re-expressed in …

Learning To Solve Multiple-Tsp With Time Window And Rejections Via Deep Reinforcement Learning, Rongkai Zhang, Cong Zhang, Zhiguang Cao, Wen Song, Puay Siew Tan, Jie Zhang, Bihan Wen, Justin Dauwels

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a manager-worker framework (the implementation of our model is publically available at: https://github.com/zcaicaros/manager-worker-mtsptwr) based on deep reinforcement learning to tackle a hard yet nontrivial variant of Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), i.e. multiple-vehicle TSP with time window and rejections (mTSPTWR), where customers who cannot be served before the deadline are subject to rejections. Particularly, in the proposed framework, a manager agent learns to divide mTSPTWR into sub-routing tasks by assigning customers to each vehicle via a Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN) based policy network. A worker agent learns to solve sub-routing tasks by minimizing the cost in terms of both …

Individual Perceptions Of Climate Anomalies And Collective Action: Evidence From An Artefactual Field Experiment In Malaysian Borneo, Terry Van Gevelt, T. Zamanb, K.N. Chanc, M.M. Bennettd

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

We explore the effect of individual perceptions of climate anomalies on collective action within a context of environmental complexity and uncertainty. To do so, we construct two competing propositions that are theoretically robust but with very different real-world implications. Our first proposition suggests that collective action to adapt to climate change is likely to be more effective when perceptions of climate anomalies converge within a community. Our second proposition suggests the opposite: that convergence is likely to hinder adaptation behaviour. We use a community co-designed measure of perceptions and an artefactual field experiment to test our propositions and explore the …

The Impact Of Fear Of Losing Out (Folo) On College Students’ Performance Goal Orientations And Learning Strategies Insingapore, Haelim Choi, Chi-Ying Cheng, Sheila Xi Rui Wee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The current research investigated the influence of the Fear of Losing Out (FoLO) mindset on learning strategy via performance goal orientation and its interaction with social comparison amongst Singaporean college students. In Study 1, a positive relationship between FoLO and performance goal orientations (i.e., avoidance and approach) was found. Study 2 replicated this finding and further revealed a downstream effect of FoLO on surface learning via performance goal orientations. In addition, social comparison moderated the link between performance goal orientation and surface learning in the mediation model. Specifically, in downward social comparison conditions, FoLO facilitated high performance-avoidance goal orientation, which …

Cultivating Positivity To Achieve A Resilient Society: A Critical Narrative Review From Psychological Perspectives, Andree Hartanto, Kasturiratna Tennakoon Appuhamillage Sandeeshwara Kasturiratna, Xun Ci Soh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

With the rapid speed of globalization and technological breakthroughs, current social issues have become more complex than in past decades. As many issues such as pandemics, terrorism, and interracial conflict are realistically unpredictable, the idea of resilience offers an intuitively plausible and attainable strategy to deal with these potential adversities. The current narrative review explores the cultivation of positive emotions and traits as a plausible way to achieve a resilient society. Based on research in the social and industrial organizational psychology literature, we reviewed the role of positive emotions and traits on resilience. Lastly, we highlight important experiences and interventions …

Local Norms And Gifted/Talented Identification In Arkansas, Sarah C. Mckenzie, Josh B. Mcgee, Bich Tran, Kathryn Barnes, Charlene A. Reid

Policy Briefs

In this brief, we summarize recent research from OEP examining if using school- or district-level norms from state assessments would increase the racial and programmatic diversity of Arkansas students identified as Gifted and Talented (G/T). Using ten years of administrative data to analyze the outcomes of a local norms approach compared to the current G/T identification strategies, we find no consistent evidence that using a local norms approach for G/T identification would improve racial or programmatic diversity.

Heterogeneity In The Prevalence Of Premature Hypertension Among Asian American Populations Compared With White Individuals: A National Health Interview Survey Study, Sina Kianoush, Mahmoud Al Rifai, Anwar T. Merchant, Xiaoming Jia, Zainab Samad, Aneil Bhalla, Ayesha Khan, Dongshan Zhu, Salim S. Virani

Section of Cardiology

Background: Differences in prevalence of risk factors such as hypertension may explain heterogeneity in cardiovascular risk across Asian American populations.
Methods: We used National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data from 2006 to 2018 among White, Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, and 'other Asians' (Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese). Unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence intervals were reported using logistic regression models for the association between race and self-reported premature hypertension (age old). Models were adjusted for sex, education, body mass index, smoking status, diabetes, and coronary heart disease.
Results: We studied 99,864 participants with history of hypertension (mean age, …

First Responder Coping And Its Impact On Resilience, Ptsd Symptomology, And Hypervigilance, Bianca Bullock

Dissertations

The present study investigated coping strategies utilized by first responders and how those strategies relate to resilience, PTSD symptomology, and hypervigilance. The purpose of this study is to help provide more detailed information as to how first responders’ coping impacts their overall functioning. First responders (N = 181), including law enforcement officers, firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, completed online surveys measuring whether engaged or disengaged coping strategies were used to manage stressful situations. Self-perceived resilience, PTSD symptoms, and hypervigilance were also measured. A one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance was performed to test the relationships between engaged versus disengaged …

The Impacts Of Problematic Social Media Use On Youths: Evaluation And Treatment Recommendations, Carianne Archer

Dissertations

Youths’ frequency and time spent on social media continues to increase over the years parallel to the growing concern of the status of the mental health of youth. This critical literature review project focuses on the impacts that social media use has on youth (ages 8 to 18 years) and what methods of evaluation and treatment are being used clinically, with recommendations provided to clinicians based on the available literature. The questions that guided this review included: What are the impacts of social media on the self-concept and interpersonal functioning of youths?; What clinical presentations are associated with youths who …

Trauma And Effects Of Being Raised By A Parent With Bipolar I Disorder: A Theoretical Approach Utilizing Internal Family Systems, Daniella Vasquez

Dissertations

Bipolar I disorder (BD) is a somewhat rare mental health disorder that impacts not only the person diagnosed but also their family (Chang et al., 2001; Cook et al., 2005; Wearden et al., 2008). Children of parents with BD may experience complex trauma as inconsistencies in parenting, conflict within the household, and possible neglect or abuse may be present (Chang et al., 2001; Rusner et al., 2009; Wearden et al., 2008). Multiple developmental areas can be impacted for individuals who have endured complex trauma to include attachment, somatic distress, affect regulation, biology, behaviors, cognition, and identity (Cook et al., 2005; …

Impact Of Immigration Parent-Child Separation Policies On Children’S Attachment Experiences, Daisy Casasnovas

Dissertations

This critical literature review (CRP) project explores the consequences of child-parent separation by deportation laws. Considering the number of Latinx immigrant families immigrating to the United States, this review focused on how the unexpected separation by deportation impacted immigrant families and how these separations affect their children’s development, attachment style, and overall well-being. The review explored the short- and long-term consequences for immigrant children and their families, including children who are U.S.-born and remain in the country without their parents. Results from the review indicate an extensive and significant impact on attachment style and overall developmental impairments. The unexpected separation …

The Relationship Between Community Policing, Police Profiling And Brutality, And How It Relates To Minority Communities’ Perceptions Of Police, Tamela Ali

Dissertations

Ethnic communities in the United States are at a greater risk of police-related mortality and experiencing racial profiling by the police and are more likely to report negative perceptions of the police than White Americans. Community policing has been proposed as a viable solution to this problem. Residents’ perceptions of the police seem to be predicted by race, where they live, and other factors. Studies also show that the intensity of racial profiling and brutality by the police differs in urban and suburban areas. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize the perceptions of the police across all communities. This study …