Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Twice As Good: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study On The Socialization Process Of Black Middle-Class Families And How This Shapes The Parent-Child Relationship, Dominique Nicole Walker

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the socialization process of Black middle-class families and explore how this shapes the parent-child relationship. The methodology that was used for this study was constructivist grounded theory. Also included within this methodology were theories and frameworks such as: Narrative Family therapy, contextual therapy, and the Intersectionality framework. Using semi-structured interviews, participants were asked to reflect upon their middle-class upbringing and to share how their socialization process shaped their relationship with their parents, both in the past and currently. There was an array of themes that were discovered from the results. …

Queering The Nation Or Nationalizing Queerness?: How Lgb-Identified Soldiers Experience Belonging And Service Post-Dadt, Aaron Blasyak

Dissertations - ALL

At the core of this dissertation project lies the question: What forms of belonging and inclusions are made possible through liberal shifts in the laws governing the institutional contexts of sexual minorities? To answer this question, I draw upon 22 in-depth interviews with gay, lesbian, and bisexual (LGB) soldiers about their experiences of serving after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). More specifically, this dissertation focuses on three broad research questions to address these issues. First, I ask: What are the experiences of inclusion and acceptance of LGB-identified soldiers within the context of military service? How might these …

Ace Invisibilities: Asexual Social Identity Through Podcasting And Digital Media, Kyle Kreye Webster

Dissertations - ALL

Asexuality is a growing topic of sexuality and media scholarship as representations and expressions of asexual identity have seen a small but significant rise in traditional and digital media throughout the 21st century. However, much of the existing media and scholarship has focused on the definition and self-identification of asexuality. This emphasis has lead to a research gap in the consideration of asexual social identity and its expression in media spaces. To address this gap, this textual analysis study examined the content and social media fan reception of the asexual conversation and interview podcast Sounds Fake But Okay through the …

Investigations Of Sorting And Non-Wage Market Clearing: Three Essays In Labor Economics, Andrew Smith

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation is comprised of three essays in labor economics. The first investigates a natural experiment in the internal labor market policies of the US Air Force. The second bounds the causal effects of attaining a college double major. The third studies the causes and consequences of queueing for government sector jobs in Brazil. The US Department of the Air Force, like many large organizations with rigid and central- ized internal labor markets, has recently introduced an algorithmically-assisted person-job matching system to replace their older, manual procedure. This change has been touted as a way to improve both organizational efficiency …

Essays On Foreign Direct Investment, Trade, And Export Quality, Yinhan Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the exports of developing countries, drawing on evidence from China. It is composed of two chapters. In Chapter 1, I analyze the effects of R&D FDI on export quality, where R&D FDI is investments aimed at establishing offshore research facilities. I construct a novel dataset on China's outbound FDI using supervised machine learning. I analyze over 26,000 pieces of textual information on the primary business activities of Chinese overseas subsidiaries collected by the Ministry of Commerce and identify the objective of each outbound FDI project. I find a positive …

Three Essays On The Policy Process Of Subnational Industrial Policymaking In China, Shiyang Xiao

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation consists of four chapters that focus on the policy process of provincial industrial policymaking targeting the manufacturing sector in China. In the first chapter, I introduce an original dataset called the "Chinese Industrial Policy Attention Dataset" (CIPAD). CIPAD contains 612 central-level and 1907 provincial-level Chinese industrial policies issued between 2001 and 2019. A novel design of CIPAD is that the full text of each industrial policy is transformed into a distribution-of-attention vector which records the attention allocation of each policy among 155 finely segmented industrial categories in the manufacturing sector. By transforming industrial policies into distribution-of-attention vectors, CIPAD …

Explaining Authoritarian Populist Behavior During Episodes Of Democratic Backsliding, Samantha Call

Dissertations - ALL

The world has seen an increase in backsliding states in the past 15 years, with authoritarian populist leaders concentrating power through executive aggrandizement and limitations on civil liberties (Bermeo 2016). Democratic institutions are often targeted by an authoritarian populist during episodes of democratic backsliding either directly through taking away powers from the institutions or indirectly through using rhetoric to weaken public trust in the institutions. Scholars have identified patterns that suggest targeting the court and legislature first is the most common strategy of backsliders, while other institutions are targeted later. However, there is variation among these cases, with not all …

(Crip)Ping Art Therapy: Imagining Alternatives To Ableism In Mental Health Treatment, Sara Bessette

Theses - ALL

This paper explores how the lived experiences of disabled art therapists can inform, through a qualitative and arts-based research approach, a theory and possible applications for improving accessibility within the field of art therapy for both disabled persons seeking intervention and for disabled professionals working in the field. The student researcher collected data through interviews with three self-identifying disabled art therapists or art therapists in training. The interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed to develop a definition of accessibility, along with a grounded theory on how accessibility can be improved within the field of art therapy. The study explored possible …

Beyond The Brush: How Women Artists Navigate Communication And Creativity Amidst The Rise Of Ai, Carrie Welch

Theses - ALL

Women artists who use physical paints, canvases, charcoal, and pencils to create their work represent a marginalized group in the art world who may be perceived as distanced or removed from artificial intelligence (AI). While AI, art, feminist aesthetics, and media representation are each areas of rich research, they have not yet been brought together. As art itself is reconsidered alongside the rise of AI, this study conducted 20 in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews with women artists to understand the implications of choosing to incorporate AI into their work, changes to their artistic processes, adjustments to their communications about their work, …

Performance As Preservation: Constructing Queer Love In Public Memory, Aevyn Barnett

Theses - ALL

Abstract This thesis explores the intersections of queer vernacular photography, queer history, and performance as a means of preservation. The artifacts that are analyzed include a selection of vintage, queer, vernacular photographs (VQVPs) that come from three published collections, as well as The Gay Gala, a performance installation that took place on February 13, 2024, at Syracuse University. The Gay Gala offered a gallery style installation with original photographs and recreated photographs, as well as costume pieces and an area for attendees to recreate their own photographs. Anonymous, written feedback was gathered from attendees during the Gala, which is used …

Contextual And Positional Associations In Free And Serial Recall, Nathan Burns

Theses - ALL

The research in this thesis presents a novel experiment and analyses to characterize effects in episodic memory which have classically been developed using different classes of theories. An encoding design was used which typically offers support for positional coding theory, phonological similarity among words in a studied list, with a recall paradigm which typically offers support for retrieved context theory, free recall. This experiment manipulated recall task, serial recall and free recall, as well as the presence and order of similar items across three possible list types. Analyses focused on differences in recall probability, recall errors, and recall transitions by …

Remembering The Historical Injustice Of Comfort Women And Be(Com)Ing A Witness: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The War & Women’S Human Rights Museum And The Liji Alley Comfort Station Museum, Xinyue Tao

Theses - ALL

In this thesis project, I explore two museums that memorialize the history and trauma of comfort women, which are the Liji Alley Comfort Station Museum in Nanjing, China, and the War & Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul, South Korea. I seek to bring these concepts of public memory, museums, materiality, witnessing, and trauma together to think about the ways the memory of comfort women is constructed and conveyed to patrons of museums in China and Korea. This project will add an important global dimension through its comparative focus on spaces in China and Korea. Although China and South Korea …

From Haiti To Durban: Repairing The Crime Against Humanity, Aimee Beatrice Shukuru

Theses - ALL

Black people have been at the center of the liberation struggle since the transatlantic slave trade that saw black people as property. The various forms of resistance within the struggle have taken many shapes, from jumping off the slave ships in the Atlantic to breaking tools and refusing to work to outright organized resistance that led to a revolution in Haiti that defeated slavery, colonization, and white supremacy that made capital accumulation based on the dehumanization of black people possible. Because the transatlantic slave trade was a global project, black people have demanded nothing short of an international recognition of …

Unraveling Tensions: A Study Of Montenegro's Interethnic Dynamics And Sociopolitical Shifts In The Wake Of The 2019 Law On Religious Freedom, Teodora Brnovic

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Politics Of Urban Design: Racist Agendas Built Into The Environment, Chassidy Titley

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Classification Versus Observation During Category Learning, Enoch Sarakpo

Theses - ALL

We report a category-learning experiment that examines the learning outcomes of classification and observational training methods across three category structures. Thus, we crossed training (classification vs. observation) and category type (natural vs. featural vs. relational). Some subjects classified the stimuli (side-by-side bird pairs) and received corrective feedback after each response, whereas others studied these stimuli, wherein they were presented with the corresponding category label. The posttest was an endorsement task made up of repeated and novel items. We did find an observation training advantage, as subjects in the observation training were better in the natural and relational categories for the …

Examining The Effects Of Writing Interventions On Third-Grade Students’ Reading Comprehension, Monique Antoine

Theses - ALL

Writing interventions have proven to be effective in improving students’ reading skills (Graham & Herbert, 2011) but are generally underacknowledged. In the current study, data from a randomized controlled trial examined whether there were differences in third-grade students’ reading comprehension based on whether they received a Performance Feedback + Cover, Copy, Compare intervention (n = 47) or a Performance Feedback intervention (n = 48). Results indicated that students assigned to the Performance Feedback + Cover, Copy, Compare intervention did not improve their reading comprehension to a greater extent than the Performance Feedback intervention. No statistically significant differences were observed in …

Building A Cinematic World For Queer: Ways Of Winking Back At Barbie (2023), Diana Durk

Theses - ALL

This essay examines Reddit commentary of the new Barbie film that gave a space for some audience members to connect themselves to the film through queering its plot and characters. Through Reddit commentary, users explored the character design and how characters perform identity within this film and how it relates to their own experiences of gender and identity. This essay excavates how gender identity is communicated within popular culture and the need to queer a film to create one’s own representation. Through the importance of understanding the harm of a binary lens and how the binary gaze creates a stereotypical …

Information Structure By Phase: An Analysis Of Rural Palestinian Arabic, Mahmoud Alawneh

Theses - ALL

This thesis analyzes how the information-structural constituents topic and contrastive focus are syntactically encoded in Rural Palestinian Arabic. In doing so, two original proposals are argued for. First, the syntactic encodement of information-structure is recursive and domain-bound. That is, the same information-structural movements are repeatedly available within multiple domains that differ incrementally from one another in terms of locality: they are available at DP, PP, vP, AspectP, FinP, and ForceP. Second, I argue that, at least in Rural Palestinian Arabic, the information structure literature and the phase theory literature essentially describe the same phenomena, with the central argument being that …

Scared To Give? A Look Into How Terrorism Affects The Flow Of Foreign Aid, Madelyn Jarjoura

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of formal ties to terrorism and its effect on foreign aid

from donor countries considered either democratic or not. I hypothesize that as more seats are occupied in a recipient country’s government by a known terrorist organization, the less total aid democratic donor countries will send to that country (vice versa for non-democratic donors). However, with stronger ties to terrorism, the more aid democratic donors will bypass through NGOs (vice versa for non-democratic donors). To test this, I used Hezbollah’s seats in Lebanon’s Parliament from the years 1995 – 2021 as a case study for …

Essays On The Political Economy Of Trade Liberalization And Domestic Reforms, Zeyuan Xiong

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies the interaction between domestic reforms and trade policies in developed and developing economies. It is composed of three chapters, covering topics of privatization reform and trade liberalization in China, trade liberalization of the United States after the Smoot-Hawley Act, and the evolution of labor market distortion in contemporary China.

Autism Diagnosis Effects On The Relationship Between Communication Skills And Nonverbal Intelligence: A Moderation Analysis, Emily Watts

Dissertations - ALL

School psychologists have a responsibility to find, identify, and assess children with disabilities (IDEA, 2004) using assessment tools that are culturally responsive and developmentally appropriate (NASP, 2020). As autism is a neurodevelopmental condition listed as an educational disability category (IDEA, 2004) that impacts one in 31.25 people (Wallis et al., 2023), it is crucial that popular assessment tools be examined for suitability for the autistic community. Most school psychologists use the Weschler scales of intelligence to assess their autistic students (Aiello et al., 2017), despite previous research indicating that Weschler scales of cognitive abilities underestimate the intelligence of people with …

"When The Water Stops But The Bills Never Do”: Contentious Water Politics And Collective Action In El Salvador, Claudia Isabel Diaz-Combs

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation explores the water crisis in El Salvador, a small Central American country surrounded by abundant freshwater resources that is nonetheless plagued with chronic water shortages, contaminated drinking water, and expensive water bills. For nearly two decades, competing groups pursued water legislation intended to address these multi-faceted issues. Finally, in December 2021, President Nayib Bukele codified the Law of Water Resources, bringing the protracted struggle to a conclusion. Yet a few years later, water issues persist, and no one is satisfied with the policy. I approach this issue through the perspective of five different social groups: the environmental movement, …

Three Essays On Teacher Retention And Minority Health In The U.S., Kyuhan Choi

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies several key issues related to teacher turnover, mentorship, and discrimination. The first chapter examines the impact of misbehaving students on the likelihood of novice teachers leaving their positions within the first five years. Utilizing data from North Carolina between 2007 and 2015, the study employs quasi-random variation and instruments the grade-by-school level share of misbehaving students to address potential sorting issues. The findings reveal that teachers with more misbehaving students are more likely to leave their positions within the next three years. Additionally, there is suggestive evidence that stronger school leadership can mitigate this adverse impact on …

Public Lands And Capitalism: The Case Of The Adirondack Park, Weston (Trent) Fenner

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the tensions that surround land management in the Adirondack Park of New York State (NYS), while paying special attention to how the market intrudes into these conflicts. To look at these tensions, this project explores contests over the regulation of public and private land, conflicts over how wilderness is imagined and managed, and the controversies that flow from efforts to alleviate high-use problems in the Adirondack Park. These contests are the basis of the following research questions which reveal the impact of land management conflict in the Adirondack Park, and expose how the market influences park management …

Disability And Sibling Identity: An Arts-Based Inquiry, Linnea Franits

Dissertations - ALL

This exploration into how sibling disability impacts identity utilizes qualitative, arts-based methodologies to generate data and situates this knowledge in an examination of other text-based and visually-based sibling memoirs. I rely on autoethnographic techniques with photography, assemblage and photo-elicitation using family photographs and medical images to explore my narrative identity and how my sister’s impairments and disability have impacted that. Five themes became crystalized as I recursively examined the data, led by the most expansive finding that sibling disability can create an epistemology or unique way of knowing that is different from other examples of embodied knowledge. Qualities of this …

Self-Care Practices, Perceived Wellness, And Professional Identity Among Counseling Graduate Students, Seydem Yesilada

Dissertations - ALL

Counseling students tend to experience high levels of stress during their training (Coaston & Lawrence, 2019). It is known that they can be at high risk of burnout, incompetence, or impairment if they neglect to engage in self-care and wellness practices (Dye et al., 2020; Prikhidko et al., 2020). While these findings have been validated for professional counselors (Rummell, 2015), as well as studied separately in counseling students (Prikhidko et al., 2020), there have not been any studies on how counseling students’ self-care practices and perceived wellness impacts their professional identity. This research study helped to fill the gap in …

The Effects Of Multitasking On Reading Retention, Kylie Dillner, Shannon Kraemer, Joel Frederickson

Science Symposium

Research has shown that multitasking depletes students' working memory and task efficiency. Our study analyzes the effect of media multitasking on students' reading retention results. Our hypothesis is that studying while multitasking results in a greater amount of energy spent on work and decreases in the quality of work.

Gender And Student Satisfaction: Men & Women Are More Similar Than Expected, David Grant, Joel Frederickson

Science Symposium

Research on national norms show alarming gaps in academic performance and engagement between genders, with men and boys performing worse (Reeves, 2022). The Student Satisfaction Inventory is a tool used by universities across the U.S. to measure different aspects of student satisfaction. An examination of gender differences between Bethel found far more similarities than differences in satisfaction, importance and academic performance.

Estimation Of Anagram Solving Abilities For Peers And Self, Amia Hall, Joel Frederickson

Science Symposium

Participants predicted personal and peer anagram solving abilities after either solving an anagram or being prompted with an anagram’s answers. Then, participants in the latter group solved an anagram as the former group had. We hypothesized there would be a greater mean difference in prediction of performance and actual performance among participants who made predictions after being provided anagram answers than after solving an anagram. Additionally, we hypothesized that participants would overestimate personal and peer abilities.