Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Comparative Political Analysis Of Finland And Belarus Based On The 2022 World Happiness Report, Anastasiya Tsapenko

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

This analysis is in the field of Political Science, specifically Comparative Politics. This paper analyzes the scores of two countries Finland and Belarus on the 2022 World Happiness Report. Finland, known as the happiest country in the world is highly esteemed as a leader in democracy, healthcare, and education, and ranks number 1 on the World Happiness Report with a score of 7.821. Belarus*, a former Soviet Republic famously known for its lack of free and fair elections, ranks number 65 with a score of 5.821 (Helliwell et al., 2022). According to the report, the asterisk near Belarus signifies that …

Exploring The Evolution Of Gender-Based Violence In India And Its Contributing Actors, Angel E. Reji

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

Violence against women is an issue worldwide; however, this paper focuses on India, where women are at greater risk of becoming victims of violence from a range of perpetrators - including their own families, to a certain extent. Although there are various forms of violence, dowry-related domestic violence and rape are comparatively abundant, especially in coverage in the Indian news media. Despite the first feminist efforts against the violence and degradation of women nearly 50 years ago, there have yet to be any substantial changes. Throughout the history of the subcontinent — first as the Indus Valley civilization and later …

An Examination Of The Ways In Which Transdisciplinary Research Could Be Used To Incentivize Local Communities To Combat The Illegal Wildlife Trade, Jessica Rios

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is currently one of the most critical conservation concerns, given its direct impact on biodiversity loss, endangering local ecosystems, and adding pressure to all species at a point when they face dangers like deforestation and mass extinctions. This industry also significantly impacts local communities, many of which are compelled to engage in it as a result of their precarious socioeconomic conditions. While effective countermeasures to this global issue have been identified, successful implementation of these countermeasures require diverse disciplines and collaborators. This paper argues that a transdisciplinary approach that converges knowledge and skills from social …

Sustainability In Action: Green Infrastructure As A Marker Of Sustainable Urban Development, Brianna Nadine Santiago

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

The current form and pace of urbanization is an ongoing threat to sustainable urban development. As these problems span social, environmental, and economic realms, it is imperative that any proposed solution is able to address these problems holistically. Although a number of silver-bullet solutions such as electric vehicle adoption have been introduced, they do not respond to the problems with an integrated approach. Tackling this problem will require a solution that can be changed and applied on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, the development of green infrastructure is the most efficient solution when responding to the problems threatening urban sustainability. The …

Benefits Of Time Spent Outdoors In Early Childhood Education: A Systematic Review, Crismely Fermin, Monica Perez, Averill F. Obee, Katie C. Hart

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

Several studies have provided evidence that time spent in nature (i.e., in natural environments or the outdoors) plays a beneficial role in child development by positively influencing children’s cognitive processes and states (Bowler et al., 2010; Bratman et al., 2012; 2014; Cameron-Faulkner et al., 2018; Kaplan, 1995; Mitchell et al.). However, to date, no study has looked systematically at the overall literature addressing the benefits nature plays in early childhood education, primarily through outdoor learning or time spent outside in natural environments. The purpose of the current study is to provide a systematic review of the empirical literature evaluating outcomes …

Cedarville's Oberbrunner Highlights "Easy Ip" In Blockchain Talk, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Dr. Kary Oberbrunner, the Berry chair of entrepreneurship at Cedarville University, will be speaking at the London Blockchain Conference on May 21-23. The international conference is expected to draw more than 12,000 participants.

05-13--2024 Orsp Newsletter, Liz Williamson

ORSP Newsletter

Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award, Center for Practical Ethics, DARPA Connect, Air Force Internship

Sex Offenders’ Cognitive Self-Change In Group Treatment: A Pre-/Posttest Study, Malinda Rae Peterson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Wisconsin policy makers implement sex offender treatment programs with the purpose of decreasing reoffending while increasing safety for victims and communities. Research has suggested that the cognitive behavioral therapy group curriculum, Thinking for a Change (T4C), has been effective for offenders; however, this program’s key component of cognitive self-change among sex offenders has yet to be researched. The purpose of the current study was to fill a gap in T4C research and, specifically, explore whether sex offender probationers gained the T4C component of cognitive self-change as compared to non-sex offender probationers from Wisconsin. Beck’s cognitive behavioral theory was used as …

Symbolic Play And Imagination In Child-Centered Play Therapy, Stephanie Anderson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Child-centered play therapy (CCPT) is based on the theory that a child’s natural means of communication is through play. However, there is a lack of research into how this communication occurs in CCPT sessions. This grounded theory study explored the processes utilized by child-centered play therapists and their clients to communicate with each other using symbolic play and imagination. Data were gathered through semi structured interviews with six child-centered play therapists and three archival videos of CCPT sessions to gain a holistic understanding of how communication occurs in sessions. This study’s data analysis revealed 20 selective and six subcodes associated …

Experiences Of Online Faculty When Peer-To-Peer Incivility Is Observed, Juliet Lockwood

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Incivility in the college classroom distracts from the learning process. Students who are uncivil to their peers often shame and embarrass them in front of others, and uncivil students distract from learning opportunities by arguing with professors and coercing them for grades that were not earned. Incivility by students is counterintuitive to the goals of higher education which include offering a space for meaningful learning. The literature describes incivility by students in the physical classroom, yet lacking from current research is how peer-to-peer incivility in the online classroom affects student learning. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to …

Ouachita's Batson Honored By Arkadelphia Chamber Of Commerse, Addie Woods, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

Arkadelphia native Blaise Batson, a freshman communications & media and political science double major, received the President’s Accomplished Youth Award from the Arkadelphia Regional Economic Development Alliance and Area Chamber of Commerce. Batson was presented her award during the 2024 Arkadelphia Alliance and Chamber Annual Banquet, held Thursday, April 11, in the Garrison Center Grand Ballroom at Henderson State University.

The President’s Accomplished Youth Award recognizes a young person in Arkadelphia who has been involved in helping the community through leadership and service. As a student at Arkadelphia High School, Batson was the women’s soccer captain and cheer captain. She …

[Re]Thinking Digital Infrastructure: Centering Humans In Integrated Systems Work, Mark Lane, Bodeene Amyot Cairdeas, Rebecca B. French, Jody Condit Fagan

Libraries

In this talk, librarians and archivists from an academic library will discuss establishing and cultivating a Digital Infrastructure Working Group (DIWG). The DIWG was born out of a need to create interoperability between metadata, preservation, discovery, and access systems for archival materials, and demanded a radical rethinking of prior organizational approaches to digital asset curation, including leveraging available APIs and vendor contracted system development. Learn how team members approached technological work by centering each other’s well-being and intentionally making visible the often-invisible human labor invested in developing and maintaining digital infrastructure. We will share how the DIWG challenged organizational silos, …

A Systematic Review On The Efficacy Of Video Modeling On Social Interactions Among Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Miguel Cantu

Masters Theses

This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of video modeling in increasing social interactions with individuals with ASD (IwASD) in transitional or postsecondary educational settings. The study inclusion criteria included (a) quantitative data must be present, (b) an objective or research question must be stated, (c) video modeling must be an intervention in their study, (d) a minimum of one target behavior must focus on social interactions, and (e) all studies must be published within the last six years. This systematic review analyzed the purpose, sample, methodology, settings, discussion, and results to find the effectiveness of the intervention, resulting …

Strategic Succession Planning - Executive-Level Leadership In A Government Agency, Tajah Adams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The Candidate Development Program (CDP) is responsible for the training, development, and succession planning of government senior executive service (SES) members. While not all SES must go through this program, the CDP initiative is operational in 10 out of 24 federal agencies governed by the Chief Financial Officer Act. In this quantitative study, the client organization wanted to know the strategies a government agency may use to increase executive-level employee development to prepare them for executive appointments. In the current study, a self-administered web-based survey was distributed to CDP Current Trainees, CDP Graduates, and CDP Agency Representatives. The findings led …

Unrestricted Versus Regulated Open Data Governance: A Bibliometric Comparison Of Sars-Cov-2 Nucleotide Sequence Databases, Nathanael Sheehan, Federico Botta, Sabina Leonelli

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Two distinct modes of data governance have emerged in accessing and reusing viral data pertaining to COVID-19: an unrestricted model, espoused by data repositories part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration and a regulated model promoted by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza data. In this paper, we focus on publications mentioning either infrastructure in the period between January 2020 and January 2023, thus capturing a period of acute response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a variety of bibliometric and network science methods, we compare the extent to which either data infrastructure facilitated collaboration from different countries around …

Mending Trust In Ai: Trust Repair Policy Interventions For Large Language Models In Visual Data Journalism, Hangxiao Zhu

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Trust in Large Language Models (LLMs) emerged as a pivotal concern. This is because, despite the transformative potential of LLMs in enhancing the interpretability and interactivity of complex datasets, the opacity of these models and instances of inaccuracies or biases have led to a significant trust deficit among end-users. Moreover, there is a tendency for people to personify AI tools that utilize these LLMs, attributing abilities and sensibilities that they do not truly possess. This thesis exploits this personification and proposes a comprehensive framework of trust repair policies tailored to address the challenges inherent in LLM annotations within data journalism …

Researching Emotional Experiences As Discursive Elements – A Suggested Qualitative Method, Magnus Danielson

The Qualitative Report

As scholars in the fields of political science, media research, and social psychology endeavor to understand crucial aspects of emotionality in the media, there is a growing need to methodologically address the communicative and discursive aspects of affective constructions in media texts. This article argues that by breaking down mediated emotional experiences represented through language in a set of identifiable elements, such as subject, emotion type, valence, intensity, proposed action, and object, those experiences could be used as workable and potent units of analysis when studying discursive and ideological media constructs of emotionality. By connecting insights from emotion science, the …

Factors Influencing Fans To Attend Matches Amid Pandemic: Exploring The Role Of Trio Of Team Affiliation, Sportscape, And Team Quality, Shani Bashiru, Ahmed Jamal Iddrisu, Cyracus B. Bapuuroh, George Anane Takyi, Alhassan Bunyaminu, Zakari Bukari

The Qualitative Report

Football is a sport that has attracted global attention. Individuals who attend competitive football associate with teams and athletes to a point where they become ardent attendees. Post-pandemic, fans have returned in droves to watch live matches at stadiums following the relaxation of strict observance of safety protocols. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to determine the factors that prompt fans to attend matches during games by focusing on three main factors including team affiliation, sportscape and star players. We used a qualitative phenomenological approach to obtain deeper comprehension regarding factors that influence fans to crowd at stadiums to …

Health Prompts Affect Consideration Of Health But Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices, Olivier Tuyizere, Christopher Gustafson, Devin J. Rose

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

Diet-related diseases impact populations across the globe. While intertemporal preferences—a fundamental preference for the distribution of benefits across time—have been used to explain low-quality food choices, the recent literature proposes another cause: inattention to the future implications (or opportunity costs) of the options faced. Food choices tend to become habitual to conserve cognitive resources, rather than carefully modeling future health impacts. Both low discount rates for future benefits and attention to future health impacts predict healthier decisions. While intertemporal preferences are stable, attention may provide an opportunity to intervene in the decision process to promote healthier decisions. In this study, …

A Systematic Review Of The Acceptability Of Functional Behavior Assessments And Behavior Intervention Plans, Siani Ym Amidon

Theses - ALL

Functional Behavior Assessments (FBA) and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIP) are assessment and intervention procedures that are used to address maladaptive behaviors among school children and youth. Kazdin (1977) defined intervention acceptability as the subjective evaluation and judgment of intervention success, which can impact intervention development, effectiveness, and usage. Given the limited research in the field, the purpose of this systematic review was to explore the extent to which acceptability assessments have been conducted regarding FBAs and BIPs and how this information may be used to inform intervention development or modification. PsycINFO and ERIC(EBSCO) database searches identified 11 studies, including a …

Finding A Spiritual Home: Cultural Context And Literary Interpretation, Linziyu Lu

Theses - ALL

Centered around the concept of “spiritual home” and the enduring human quest for it, this thesis explores how individuals seek a sense of belonging and meaning from the perspective of cultural evolution and literary expression. This thesis first examines the impact of social change from the Industrial Revolution to the present day on people’s sense of belonging, meaning, and identity, and discusses the factors that have influenced the stabilization of the spiritual home. Then, drawing on literature, this thesis investigates several typical ways in which people find their spiritual home, including in nature, the divine presence, love and relationship, and …

Anti-Automobile Supremacy: Social Media Narratives And The Popular Resistance Against Car-Centric Urban Landscapes, Allen Huang

Theses - ALL

The purpose of this research paper is to discover the content strategies employed by social media content creators living in North America who try to use their platforms and voices to build a popular counternarrative against the systemic framework of automobile supremacy. Automobile supremacy refers to the systemic prioritization of automobiles as the predominant mode of transportation through intentional design that justifies compulsory consumption while downplaying dangerous consequences. To understand content creator strategies, this study interviewed 25 adult social media content creators who live in North America who regularly share anti-automobile supremacy content and asked them 15 semi-structured questions to …

Emotional Perception Of Presidential Candidate Debate Statements: An Examination Of The 2016 U.S. Presidential Debates, Peta-Ann Cherie Long

Dissertations - ALL

Presidential campaigns mainly focus on political communication to gather voters’ support for their candidates. Candidates’ ultimate aim is to convince voters to vote for them and not their opponents. Campaign debates are one way to evaluate candidates. Debates provide the candidates a platform to persuade voters to support them over their opponent(s). The candidates stand together and can be analyzed on important issues to the viewers. The statements made by candidates are aimed at winning the elections. James B. Lemert (1993) addresses the question of whether television presidential debates help to inform voters. He argues that while there are arguments …

Using A Digital Entertainment Tax To Strengthen Local Information Infrastructure In The United States: A Conceptual Exploration, Lee Shaker, Antoine Haywood

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

As traditional local media decline, how might state and local governments provide support for local information infrastructure? We offer a proposal for states (or communities) to tax digital entertainment and then leverage existing community media centers (CMCs) to facilitate the distribution of the proceeds to local media outlets. Compared to other public subsidy plans, this approach is viable nationwide without federal action and offers several advantages that could lead to more immediate and durable support for local information infrastructure. To contextualize our proposal, we model both the possible revenue generation and distribution of funding that would result from its implementation.

Examination Of The Relationship Between Adhd-Related Symptoms And Pre-Attentive Auditory Processing In A Sample Of Autistic Children And Adolescents, Connor K. Mackenzie

Theses - ALL

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are two of the most prevalent neurodevelopmental conditions that also exhibit a high rate of co-occurrence. This co-occurrence leads to decreased efficacy of interventions and increased levels of impairments. This suggests that it might be relevant to examine the impact of ADHD symptoms on ASD research findings. Given that both these disorders have neurodevelopmental origins that share differences in sensory processing, the study of sensory neurophysiology might be a relevant avenue to explore. Neurophysiology has focused on pre-attentive auditory processing in both conditions compared to the neurotypical population by focusing on a …

Investigating Language Usage In The Language Classroom: A Comparative Analysis Of Operationalization Methods And Implications For Educational Research, Manal Bani Humayyim

Theses - ALL

Multilingual approaches in second language (SL) classrooms, where learners use first language (L1) or any other known language beside the target language (TL), is an issue of ongoing research. While various research methods like word analysis, time analysis, and classroom observation exist, a standardized approach to measuring language use is lacking. Examining the same data set, this study analyzed the frequency of L1 English and TL Arabic use in two language classes through three methods: word count, time analysis, and impressionistic judgments from live observations and made comparisons of results generated by three methods as well as the feasibility. Focusing …

Caring For Creation: Catholics, Justice, And Socio-Ecologies In Appalachia, Dominic Wilkins

Dissertations - ALL

Geographers have long studied the challenge of achieving holistic justice. Rather than something found wholly within human relations, in recent years these analyses have increasingly understood justice as socio-ecological. The Catholic Church is a global institution with more than 1.3 billion adherents and millions of employees operating hundreds of thousands of parishes, schools, and other institutions across the world. The Church has long centered justice through both activism and intellectual theorizing. To date, however, geographers have not rigorously engaged this work or the ongoing environmental turn within the Catholic Church and its conceptions of justice. Scholars specializing in religions and …

Women's Wings In Rebel Groups, Heidi Marie Stallman

Dissertations - ALL

The proceeding dissertation is a collection of three articles exploring the phenomenon of women’s wings in rebel groups. The articles ask different questions and utilize diverse methodological tools. The three abstracts are below. Paper 1 exposes the patterns of women’s wings in rebel groups through a large-N analysis of 372 rebel groups existing between 1946 and 2015. Scholarship in rebel governance has begun to identify trends of how women organize and participate in rebel groups. Patterns of women’s participation in conflict vary widely in scope, purpose, and form between, within, and after conflict. This paper focuses on patterns of women’s …

Three Papers On Economic Justice And Fairness, Fan Yang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation comprises three essays on economic justice and fairness. The first chapter investigates the effect of job continuity on new mothers’ labor supply following their first childbirth. The second chapter studies the impact of wages and other factors on women's work duration after childbirth. The third chapter analyzes the effect of disability within the family on the financial satisfaction of the female head or spouse. Chapter 1 investigates the effect of job continuity on the supply of labor of new mothers for the five-year period after their first childbirth. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), we …

Cuban Migration To Syracuse, Ny: "Los Comunicados" And The Evolution Of Social Networks And Cuban Identities, Erika Carter Grosso

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation investigates the phenomenon of Cuban migration and highlights the critical role that social networks play in facilitating the process of emigration, settlement, and the formation of new identities for Cuban migrants in Syracuse. With a focus on the most recent waves of Cuban migrants, the study explores how social networks have become integral in shaping the migration experiences of these new Cubans, enabling them to navigate the challenges and opportunities associated with emigrating and settling in Syracuse, NY, a non-gateway city. This research employs a qualitative approach, drawing on in-depth interviews of twenty-five participants, participant observations, and analysis …