Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Downeast Maine Mat Expansion Project: Year 3 Final Data Summary, Mary Lindsey Smith Phd, Evelyn Ali Bs, Katharine Knight Mph, Tyler Egeland Ba

Substance Use Research & Evaluation

This report summarizes the collaborative effort of Healthy Acadia, its providers, the Downeast Substance Treatment Network, and Downeast Substance Use Response Coalition, to combat opioid use disorder (OUD) in Downeast Maine through multiple evidence-based strategies.

Project goals included the reduction of barriers to accessing medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and the enhancement of MAT services by improving provider capacity through training and implementation of best practice treatment.

For more information, please contact M. Lindsey Smith, PhD, m.lindsey.smith@maine.edu

The Asd Parent Perspective: Stress Contributors And Perceptions Of Feeling Supported And Understood, Chelsea Noble

WWU Graduate School Collection

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience a great amount of stress. Evidence indicates that parent stress is associated with ASD symptom severity and potentially behavior problems. However, there are gaps in the literature examining these associations in fathers and whether these associations differ across mothers and fathers. Additionally, concepts surrounding “support” and “understanding” have been understudied in this context as well as how they are associated with parent stress. The current study addresses these gaps in the literature and expands on the research regarding fathers. We recruited 244 parents of children ages 3-5 with ASD who were …

The Effect Of Cognitive Load On Involuntary Musical Imagery, Kayleigh I. Cutshaw

WWU Graduate School Collection

This research was conducted to understand the effect of cognitive load on the occurrence of earworms. A go/no go task, a typical mind wandering method, was used to create different levels of cognitive load based on the difficulty of the task. We also used a control condition which more closely matched previous earworm studies. Both probe-caught and survey reports were used to measure earworms and mind wandering in the study. Earworms were not found to occur more often in the lower experimental levels of cognitive load but controls reported spending more time with earworms. This finding is mostly inconsistent with …

Public Lands And Climate Change: An Evaluation Of The North Cascadia Adaptation Partnership, Kristen Doering

WWU Graduate School Collection

Public lands in the United States serve critical roles for ecosystems and humans alike, but they have become increasingly vulnerable to climate change. Many agencies have attempted to reduce negative effects of climate change through adaptation planning. This research evaluates the implementation of the North Cascadia Adaptation Partnership (NCAP), which was developed in 2010 to provide science-based guidance to land managers in the North Cascades Ecosystem (Raymond, Peterson & Rochefort, 2013). The NCAP consists of four federal land units: North Cascades National Park, Mt. Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, and Mt. Rainier National Park. Relying on survey and …

Cultural Differences In Emotion Regulation And Social Support Seeking, Vida Pourmand

WWU Graduate School Collection

Given the negative influences of stress on health, it is important to examine beneficial processes like social support, which can promote greater health. However, the willingness to seek social support may be qualified by emotion regulation strategy. Research indicates that there are cultural differences in both social support seeking and emotion regulation processes. In this ecological momentary assessment design, participants (N = 49) reported on their daily stress, whether they sought social support during stressful times, and if they emotionally suppressed (N = 913). They also responded to individual differences measures, including interdependent cultural orientation and ethnicity. Multilevel modeling was …

Understanding The Impact Of Stress On Sexual Behavior: A Study Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Masturbation Habits Of Americans, Holly Edwards

WWU Graduate School Collection

The COVID-19 Pandemic, officially declared on March 11, 2020, has shifted the world in a myriad of ways. Global citizens are now facing an increase in stress, anxiety, depression, and grief as the SARS-CoV-2 virus claimed thousands of lives as well as changed daily life. With every aspect of life different, I set out to understand how the negative emotions caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic influenced the sexual thought and behavior of American individuals, using masturbation as a focus. An online survey was employed using different Likert scale questions and a few qualitative questions, in order to gain opinions about …

Influences On The Path To Life Satisfaction: A Serial Mediation Model Of Adult Attachment, Emotional Intelligence, Emotion Regulation, And Dispositional Resilience, Misa Shimono

WWU Graduate School Collection

Objective: The goal of this study was to explore the mediating roles of emotional intelligence, emotion regulation, and dispositional resilience in the association between adult attachment quality and life satisfaction, because they may be amenable to psychoeducational intervention that increases life satisfaction among people with attachment insecurity. Method: Archival correlational data from a convenience sample of 124 first-year university psychology students in a study on stress and dropout were analyzed using PROCESS (Hayes, 2021) to test the serial impact of emotional intelligence (Trait Meta-Mood Scale; Salovey et al., 1995) and emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale; Gratz & Roemer, …

Systematizing Confidence In Open Research And Evidence (Score), Nazanin Alipourfard, Beatrix Arendt, Daniel M. Benjamin, Noam Benkler, Michael Bishop, Mark Burstein, Martin Bush, James Caverlee, Yiling Chen, Chae Clark, Anna Dreber Almenberg, Timothy M. Errington, Fiona Fidler, Nicholas Fox, Aaron Frank, Hannah Fraser, Scott Friedman, Ben Gelman, James Gentile, Jian Wu, Et Al., Score Collaboration

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Assessing the credibility of research claims is a central, continuous, and laborious part of the scientific process. Credibility assessment strategies range from expert judgment to aggregating existing evidence to systematic replication efforts. Such assessments can require substantial time and effort. Research progress could be accelerated if there were rapid, scalable, accurate credibility indicators to guide attention and resource allocation for further assessment. The SCORE program is creating and validating algorithms to provide confidence scores for research claims at scale. To investigate the viability of scalable tools, teams are creating: a database of claims from papers in the social and behavioral …

Co-Constructing Stigma: Treating Trauma In Adolescence, Isabelle Sanderson

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Public stigma and self-stigma are major factors that impede the seeking of mental health treatment as well as the development of an effective therapeutic alliance. This paper explores the co-creation of stigma dynamics from an intersubjective systems theory lens suggesting these dynamics may play a role for adolescent clients who have experienced significant trauma. Specifically, the potential overlooking and/or misdiagnosis of trauma-related experiences and symptoms often occurring with adolescents diagnosed with ADHD may be contributing to a co-constructed dynamic between the therapist and client to avoid an exploration of trauma that would be experienced as more stigmatizing, more threatening, and …

Stagnation In Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Approach, Kristine Mccormick

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Doctoral training in clinical psychology emphasizes the importance of utilizing empirically supported psychotherapy methods in pursuit of effective psychotherapy. When treatment is stagnant or ineffective, the focus of training and supervision is often geared toward searching the evidence-base for alternative psychotherapy approaches, or referring to a provider with expertise in a specific method. Using a case example, this paper offers guidance on possible roadblocks to effective psychotherapy treatment, and clear areas to explore before concluding whether psychotherapy is the most helpful intervention for a patient.

Urban School Violence Prevention: A Suggested Intervention Utilizing Liberation Psychology, Meghan K. Hogan

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

In the past decades, numerous programs have been developed in attempts to reduce the rates of violence facing students in American schools. The spotlight on these programs have increased since horrific mass shooting events have taken place throughout the country. Many of these programs have utilized varied methods in their attempt to reduce school-based violence, from the implementation of hardline policies meant to act as violence deterrents to the development of risk assessment teams aimed at identifying and intervening against potential threats; however, few of the existing programs have shown substantial efficacy rates. Additionally, several of the violence prevention programs …

Agent-Based Model Of Broadband Adoption In Unserved And Underserved Areas, Ankit Agarwal

Masters Theses

"In the last two decades, demand for broadband internet has far outpaced its availability. The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 2020 Broadband Deployment report suggests that at least 22 million Americans living in rural areas lack access to broadband internet. With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting normal life, there is an overwhelming need to enable unserved and underserved communities to adapt to the “new normal”. To address this challenge, federal and state agencies are funding internet service providers (ISPs) to deploy infrastructure in rural communities. However, policymakers and ISPs need open-source tools to predict take-rates of broadband service and formulate effective strategies …

Communicating Uncertain Information From Deep Learning Models To Users, Harishankar Vasudevanallur Subramanian

Masters Theses

“The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) decision support systems is increasing in high-stakes contexts, such as healthcare, defense, and finance. Uncertainty information may help users better leverage AI predictions, especially when combined with domain knowledge. I conducted two human-subject experiments to examine the effects of uncertainty information with AI recommendations. The experimental stimuli are from an existing image recognition deep learning model, one popular approach to AI. In Paper I, I evaluated the effect of the number of AI recommendations and provision of uncertainty information. For a series of images, participants identified the subject and rated their confidence level. Results …

Detecting Incentivized Review Groups With Co-Review Graph, Yubao Zhang, Shuai Hao, Haining Wang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Online reviews play a crucial role in the ecosystem of nowadays business (especially e-commerce platforms), and have become the primary source of consumer opinions. To manipulate consumers’ opinions, some sellers of e-commerce platforms outsource opinion spamming with incentives (e.g., free products) in exchange for incentivized reviews. As incentives, by nature, are likely to drive more biased reviews or even fake reviews. Despite e-commerce platforms such as Amazon have taken initiatives to squash the incentivized review practice, sellers turn to various social networking platforms (e.g., Facebook) to outsource the incentivized reviews. The aggregation of sellers who …

Constructively Deviant: Examining The Positive Employee Consequences Of Pro-Social Rule Breaking, Su Kyung (Irene) Kim

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Conceptualized as a form of constructive deviance, pro-social rule breaking (PSRB) refers to employees’ intentional violation of a formal organizational policy, regulation, or prohibition with the primary intention of promoting the welfare of organization or one of its stakeholders. The extant research primarily focused on the antecedents of PSRB, and research on the consequences of the behavior is limited. In my dissertation, I adopt a combination of correlational and experimental designs to examine various employee outcomes of PSRB, including employee well-being and behavioral outcomes, as well as evaluative outcomes rated by others. The first manuscript focuses on rule breaking for …

Invisible Wounds: Assessing The Awareness Of Moral Injury Among Toronto Police, Daniel Saugh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Moral injury is believed to exist within the Canadian Police Services though it is difficult to recognize and is usually ignored. The research data emerging from military and first responders (i.e., police, firefighters, and EMS personnel) reveal the effects of moral injury and its implications for mental and spiritual health as it persists throughout the life and career of those affected.

This study investigates how moral injury may emerge from a potentially traumatic event(s) and/or psychological trauma and/or independent from such trauma and how moral injury may come to exist in members of the Toronto Police Service, as well as …

Zone Path Construction (Zac) Based Approaches For Effective Real-Time Ridesharing, Meghna Lowalekar, Pradeep Varakantham, Patrick Jaillet

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Real-time ridesharing systems such as UberPool, Lyft Line and GrabShare have become hugely popular as they reduce the costs for customers, improve per trip revenue for drivers and reduce traffic on the roads by grouping customers with similar itineraries. The key challenge in these systems is to group the “right” requests to travel together in the “right” available vehicles in real-time, so that the objective (e.g., requests served, revenue or delay) is optimized. This challenge has been addressed in existing work by: (i) generating as many relevant feasible combinations of requests (with respect to the available delay for customers) as …

Local Fiscal Adjustments From Depopulation: Evidence From The Post–Cold War Defense Contraction, Timothy M. Komarek, Gary A. Wagner

Economics Faculty Publications

In this paper, we estimate the long-term causal effect of population losses on local government revenue, expenditure, and debt by exploiting a quasi-exogenous change that reduced the number of US military personnel by about 40 percent between the late 1980s and 2000. Aggregating across governmental units within commuting zones, we find that real per capita total revenues and expenditures remained unchanged for remaining citizens. At the same time, however, we note several important compositional effects. First, local governments appear to have offset reductions in state intergovernmental aid by increasing property tax revenues. Second, they significantly shifted the composition of expenditures …

Fixed Costs And The Division Of Labor, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

How market size and the level of coordination costs determine the degree of specialization is studied in an infinite horizon model with the amount of capital determined endogenously. Firms producing the same intermediate good engage in oligopolistic competition and choose the degree of specialization of their technologies to maximize profits. A more specialized technology is a technology with a lower marginal cost, but a higher fixed cost. Interestingly, the relationship between the level of coordination costs and a firm’s degree of specialization is ambiguous. A firm in a country with a larger market size, more patient citizens, or a higher …

Smart Parking Systems: Reviewing The Literature, Architecture And Ways Forward, Can Biyik, Zaheer Allam, Gabriele Pieri, Davide Moroni, Muftah O' Fraifer, Eoin O' Connell, Stephan Olariu, Muhammad Khalid

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The Internet of Things (IoT) has come of age, and complex solutions can now be implemented seamlessly within urban governance and management frameworks and processes. For cities, growing rates of car ownership are rendering parking availability a challenge and lowering the quality of life through increased carbon emissions. The development of smart parking solutions is thus necessary to reduce the time spent looking for parking and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The principal role of this research paper is to analyze smart parking solutions from a technical perspective, underlining the systems and sensors that are available, as documented in the …

Vehicular Crowdsourcing For Congestion Support In Smart Cities, Stephan Olariu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Under present-day practices, the vehicles on our roadways and city streets are mere spectators that witness traffic-related events without being able to participate in the mitigation of their effect. This paper lays the theoretical foundations of a framework for harnessing the on-board computational resources in vehicles stuck in urban congestion in order to assist transportation agencies with preventing or dissipating congestion through large-scale signal re-timing. Our framework is called VACCS: Vehicular Crowdsourcing for Congestion Support in Smart Cities. What makes this framework unique is that we suggest that in such situations the vehicles have the potential to cooperate with various …

Large Scale Subject Category Classification Of Scholarly Papers With Deep Attentive Neural Networks, Bharath Kandimalla, Shaurya Rohatgi, Jian Wu, C. Lee Giles

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Subject categories of scholarly papers generally refer to the knowledge domain(s) to which the papers belong, examples being computer science or physics. Subject category classification is a prerequisite for bibliometric studies, organizing scientific publications for domain knowledge extraction, and facilitating faceted searches for digital library search engines. Unfortunately, many academic papers do not have such information as part of their metadata. Most existing methods for solving this task focus on unsupervised learning that often relies on citation networks. However, a complete list of papers citing the current paper may not be readily available. In particular, new papers that have few …

Understanding The Impact Of Encrypted Dns On Internet Censorship, Lin Jin, Shuai Hao, Haining Wang, Chase Cotton

Computer Science Faculty Publications

DNS traffic is transmitted in plaintext, resulting in privacy leakage. To combat this problem, secure protocols have been used to encrypt DNS messages. Existing studies have investigated the performance overhead and privacy benefits of encrypted DNS communications, yet little has been done from the perspective of censorship. In this paper, we study the impact of the encrypted DNS on Internet censorship in two aspects. On one hand, we explore the severity of DNS manipulation, which could be leveraged for Internet censorship, given the use of encrypted DNS resolvers. In particular, we perform 7.4 million DNS lookup measurements on 3,813 DoT …

Ssentiaa: A Self-Supervised Sentiment Analyzer For Classification From Unlabeled Data, Salim Sazzed, Sampath Jayarathna

Computer Science Faculty Publications

In recent years, supervised machine learning (ML) methods have realized remarkable performance gains for sentiment classification utilizing labeled data. However, labeled data are usually expensive to obtain, thus, not always achievable. When annotated data are unavailable, the unsupervised tools are exercised, which still lag behind the performance of supervised ML methods by a large margin. Therefore, in this work, we focus on improving the performance of sentiment classification from unlabeled data. We present a self-supervised hybrid methodology SSentiA (Self-supervised Sentiment Analyzer) that couples an ML classifier with a lexicon-based method for sentiment classification from unlabeled data. We first introduce LRSentiA …

Review Of Sustainable Enterprise Strategies For Optimizing Digital Stewardship, Rand Boyd

Library Articles and Research

Review of Sustainable Enterprise Strategies for Optimizing Digital Stewardship by Angela Fritz.

Latest Developments Affecting Russian Protestant Seminaries And Churches, Mark R. Elliott

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Excerpt: "Of course, the Russian state assault on Protestant theological education does not occur in a vacuum, as can be seen by an ongoing parallel campaign against individual Protestant congregations. A sample of three cases of direct disruption of Baptist, Pentecostal, and Adventist worship by local authorities in 2019, 2020, and 2021 may illustrate the point."

Is There Discrimination Against Women By The Orthodox Church In The Republic Of North Macedonia?, Aneta Jovkovska

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The growing interest in the issue of gender equality in the past few decades ranks this topic among the main themes of various research and reflection.There does not seem to be much agreement between the numerous studies, which in itself makes it difficult to understand them and again raises questions about the interpretation of fundamental Christian doctrines. In light of the existing and offered considerations, we believe that biblical texts, such as Galatians 3:28 (“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”), have encouraged women to stand up …

Book Review: Orthodox And Greek Catholics In Transylvania (1867-1916): Convergences And Divergences, Beth Admiraal

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

A review of Marcarie Drăgoi, Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Transylvania (1867-1916): Convergences and Divergences, Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbely, Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2015, 289 pp, hardback. ISBN: 979-088141-507-0.

Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky, In Memoriam, James R. Payton

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Global Perspectives On Harmful Algal Blooms: Impacts And Responses, Ryan Mitchell

Sustainability and Social Justice

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) can have devastating effects on aquatic ecosystems, economies, and communities. In general, their effects are also likely to worsen and become more frequent because of climate change. This paper will examine contemporary attempts to predict, prevent, monitor, control, and adapt to HABs.