Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mindfulness And Its Impact On Adaptive Coping And Psychological Well-Being: An Intervention For Undergraduate Students, Charles Bradley Freligh

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The concept of mindfulness has been shown to positively impact psychological well-being, and one application of mindfulness-based interventions has been the development and implementation of courses specifically for college students, a population that has been shown to be particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of stress. While these interventions have displayed beneficial outcomes, the mechanisms of how mindfulness exerts its impact remain unclear. One potential mechanism of mindfulness’ enhancement of well-being may be through its cultivation of an adaptive coping style in which an individual becomes more likely to approach and investigate stressors rather than avoid them. In this study, …

Counselor Education Doctoral Students’ Research Self-Efficacy: A Concept Mapping Approach, Zahide Sunal

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Research self-efficacy (RSE) is a key concept not only for counselor educators as successful researchers but also for the advancement of counselor education field. In the literature, researchers have studied multiple factors (e.g., research interest, productivity) to understand the complex nature of RSE phenomenon. Despite being informative, these studies only focused on partial aspects of the multilayered RSE, showing methodological and conceptual limitations. Particularly, we do not have a holistic understanding of RSE and the interrelated relationship among the factors informing RSE. In the current study, the researcher used a mixedmethods design, Concept Mapping (Kane & Trochim, 2007) to explore …

Governance Impact On Public-Private Partnerships For Member Countries Of The World Bank Group, Kouliga Koala

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Member countries of the World Bank Group (WBG) increasingly turn to public-private partnerships (PPPs) to finance their transportation infrastructure projects due to the financial burden of undertaking big projects on their own. The World Bank coordinates the PPPs between investors and recipient countries. PPPs are expected to produce positive outcomes that respond to policy objectives. However, the outcomes and benefits of PPPs not only depend on several factors, but more importantly on how those factors interact with one another to yield the expected outcomes. This dissertation has identified good governance, PPP governance, and PPP outcome as the key concepts in …

Accessibility In Institutional Repositories, Laura Waugh, Colleen Lyon, Abigail Shelton, Kristi Park, William Hicks, Nerissa Lindsey

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Purpose

Institutional repositories (IRs) are widely used for archiving, preserving, and disseminating scholarly works and making them available on the web. Much of the research and development in IRs has focused on platforms, workflows, and policies for adding content. In this study, the focus is to gauge practices to ensure accessibility of the digital content made available in IRs.

The purpose of this study is to:

1. Understand the current landscape of accessibility practices in institutional repositories in academic libraries.

2. Identify the average level of content accessibility implemented in institutional repositories in academic libraries.

For the purpose of this …

Isotopic Analysis Of Human Migration Among The Ancient Maya Of Ambergris Caye, Belize, Rachel L. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the isotopic composition of tooth enamel from two Maya sites on Ambergris Caye Belize, to identify basic patterns of population movement among the Classic period Maya. Three individuals from San Juan and ten individuals from Chac Balam will shed light on the origin of individuals buried at the sites, including those with nonlocal grave goods. Strontium and oxygen isotope values provide new information on Maya coastal populations and suggest that at least one individual with a distinct body position had a nonlocal origin. Carbon isotope values reveal a childhood diet related to, but not the same as, …

Knowing Your Rights In Trump’S America: Paper Trails Of Community Empowerment, Ruth Gomberg-Munoz

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay traces the circulation and changing meanings of documents in community education and empowerment campaigns in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election. In particular, I examine how advocates use community education to create and exploit legal gray areas as they advance competing interpretations and uses of documents in sociolegal arenas. I also explore how local campaigns for “sanctuary” seek to sever paper trails of documents that can expose immigrant community members to federal immigration agencies. Finally, as documents form new paper trails through deportation, I attend to their changing meanings as they travel in new directions, traverse jurisdictional boundaries, …

A Protestant Revolution In Germany, 1989?, Katharina Kunter

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

"It may be just a regional coincidence–or not. In any case, it is noteworthy that two of the most successful turning points in modern German history took place here, in the middle of Germany.1 The former German Democratic Republic, usually called "East Germany," is the area from which Martin Luther began the Reformation in the 16th century. Wittenberg, the site of Protestant turmoil in the early modern period, is only about 60 km from Leipzig, which was the city of the Monday demonstrations in the autumn of 1989. Are there historical connections and cultural references? While there is no doubt …

Restless Hungary, András Máté-Tóth

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

"Nowadays, many people ask what is happening in Hungary. Especially people who came to know and appreciate our country as the happiest barrack in the Eastern bloc and who knew from their own experience that it was an island in the great communist Red Sea, the Archipelago Goulash (alluding to the Archipelago Gulag in the Soviet Union). After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Hungary was for a while still a pioneer in the transformation to the market economy, to democracy, in short–in the direction of freedom. And now the economic data shows that Hungary is no longer …

Report On The Visit Of Prof. And Mrs. Josef Hromádka To The U.S.A., 1966, John Heidbrink

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Professor Josef L. Hromádka (referred to as JLH in the report) was a theologian of the Church of the Czech Brethren who took refuge in the USA during the Nazi conquest of his native Czechoslovakia and taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. He made what for many seemed a surprising decision to return to Prague after the communist coup d’etat in 1948. Soon he became the best known Protestant theologian on the other side of the “Iron Curtain” as he interpreted communism as a wave of a promising future to which Christians need to adjust in order to assist in the …

Book Review: Isolde Thyrȇt, Saint-Making In Early Modern Russia: Religious Tradition And Innovation In The Cult Of Nil Stolobenskii, Paul Crego

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Variations In Confession Evidence And Need For Cognition On Jurors' Decisions, Kelsey S. Henderson, Lora M. Levett

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

The reliability of a confession partially depends on the interrogation methods used and the confession’s content. Confronting suspects with evidence gives a suspect knowledge of nonpublic details, increasing the likelihood of a false confession (Gudjonsson & Pearse, 2011; Leo, 2009), and makes the confession harder to judge as more or less reliable. That is, if a confession is consistent with case facts but details of the crime were communicated to the suspect during interrogation, it is difficult to judge whether the confession is a product of the suspect’s knowledge of the crime or the details that were communicated during the …

Ethnic Fractionalization, Corruption, And Trust In The Courts, Sinan Nadarevic

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Prior research has examined the effects of ethnic fractionalization on trust in political institutions. However, most of the literature focuses on a general understanding of political trust, disregarding the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and individual trust in the legal system. I argue that high levels of ethnic fractionalization decrease trust in the courts. To provide empirical support for my theory, I use individual-level survey data from 32 African and Latin American countries from 2013 and I produce two findings. First, using multiple OLS fixed effects regression analysis, I find that ethnic fractionalization decreases trust in the courts. Second, using mediation …

Towards Unifying Grounded And Distributional Semantics Using The Words-As-Classifiers Model Of Lexical Semantics, Stacy Black

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Automated systems that make use of language, such as personal assistants, need some means of representing words such that 1) the representation is computable and 2) captures form and meaning. Recent advancements in the field of natural language processing have resulted in useful approaches to representing computable word meanings. In this thesis, I consider two such approaches: distributional embeddings and grounded models. Distributional embeddings are represented as high-dimensional vectors; words with similar meanings tend to cluster together in embedding space. Embeddings are easily learned using large amounts of text data. However, embeddings suffer from a lack of "real world" knowledge; …

No Dogs Allowed: A Qualitative Study About Invisible Barriers Faced By Those With Disability, Kory Gaona

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Service Animals (S.As.) are becoming more common throughout the United States and are seen more frequently on college campuses. This study uncovers the lived experiences of S.A. handlers on college campuses nationwide, to further understand the exclusion or inclusion that S.A. handlers experience throughout their everyday life. Utilizing Critical Disability Theory and Organizational Communication lenses through a series of open-ended questions, this study analyzes a handler’s experience with their S.A. Adopting a qualitative lens, I conducted one on one interviews. It filled a need for academia as present research on S.As. typically focuses on quantitative research. I was able to …

Redeeming The Monster: The God Of War Subreddit's Narrative Of Rebirth For Hegemonic Masculinity, Mario Sanders

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In a 2019 documentary on the development of the video game God of War (2018) for the Playstation 4, Cory Barlog, the game’s creative director, openly discusses his desire to give the toxic, hypermasculine protagonist, Kratos, a “second chance” after nearly a decade since the franchise’s previous installment. In giving Kratos his second chance, Barlog decided to make him a father, claiming that becoming a father changes one’s perspective on everything. Video games scholars have argued that games are a noteworthy element of players’ identities and interactions due to their promotion of the manufacture of player narratives. The following research …

Hip-Hop's Diversity And Misperceptions, Andrew Cashman

Honors College

The misperception that hip-hop is a single entity that glorifies wealth and the selling of drugs, and promotes misogynistic attitudes towards women, as well as advocating gang violence is one that supports a mainstream perspective towards the marginalized.1 The prevalence of drug dealing and drug use is not a picture of inherent actions of members in the hip-hop community, but a reflection of economic opportunities that those in poverty see as a means towards living well. Some artists may glorify that, but other artists either decry it or offer it as a tragic reality. In hip-hop trends build off of …

The Housing Department Rent Stabilization Program In The City Of San José: Has The Tracking Of Tenant Protection Ordinance Eviction Notices Been Successful To Understand Rent And Eviction Trends From 2019 To 2020?, Viviane Nguyen

Master's Projects

This study is a two-part process evaluation of the RSP’s tracking of TPO (2017) just cause eviction filings. This study also intends to understand the RSP’s collected data when it is properly processed. This study’s research questions are as follows: Was the RSP’s process for tracking just cause evictions working to achieve the program’s goal in determining eviction outcomes? At what levels did landlords pursue just cause evictions for failure to pay rent? Is there a significant disparity between market-rate property managers’ eviction filings and rent-controlled apartment landlords’ eviction filings?

Compensating For Development At The In-Between And Edges Of Extractive Capitalism: Socionature And Cultural Erasure In The Northeast Caribbean Colombian Coal Mining Region, Tamra Gilbertson

Doctoral Dissertations

In northeast Caribbean Colombia, Indigenous Wayúu, Afro-Colombian, campesinos and fishing communities struggle against the socio-environmental impacts of multinational operated legal coal mining operations. This dissertation questions how the multinational coal mining industry has been able to cause direct, structural and cultural violence against human and nonhuman nature over the last thirty-five years. The systemic character of the longer material history of capitalism, war, violence and US military intervention in Colombia is connected to and continues in the 21st century in the name of development. The central argument put forth is that multinational coal mining corporations in Colombia, like extractive industries …

Potty Politics: Investigating The Policymaking Processes Of Sanitation Service To The Urban Poor In Delhi, Tanushree Bhan

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates why sanitation outcomes vary across urban poor communities in Delhi, India. Unequal access to quality sanitation has serious implications for the health, dignity, and economic well-being of the poor and public health in general due to risks of environmental contamination. For this multiple-case study, a sample of 15 communities is drawn from slums, public housing, homeless shelters, and the streets. The database comprises of direct observations of sanitation outcomes in these communities, interviews with 95 key policy informants, official documents of relevant government agencies, newspaper articles, and a perception-of-the-poor survey of 30 sanitation bureaucrats. Thematic analysis of …

“We May Have Profitable Commerce And Trade Together”: An Analysis Of 17th-Century Ceramics In Plymouth Colony, Elizabeth G. Tarulis

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes the formation of early English colonial trade networks through an examination of three Plymouth Colony sites. This research compares the 17th-century ceramics from Burial Hill (a recently discovered section of the core of the initial settlement, 1620-c. 1660) to two homesteads established later by Plymouth colonists, the Alden First Home Site (c. 1627- c. 1697) and the Allerton/Prence/Cushman Site (1631-c. 1691). A minimum number of vessels was established for each site and the country of origin was established for each vessel to determine the origin of consumer goods, specifically ceramics, in Plymouth Colony. These vessels were then …

Form, Function, And Context: Lithic Analysis Of Flaked Stone Artifacts At A 17th-Century Rural Spanish Estancia (La 20,000), Santa Fe County, New Mexico, Clint S. Lindsay

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the flaked stone artifact assemblage recovered from LA 20,000, a 17th-century (ca. 1630-1680 AD) rural Spanish colonial estancia located near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Settlements like LA 20,000 were important locations of cultural interaction between Spanish colonists and local Indigenous peoples who often worked and lived together in multi-cultural households. By analyzing the procurement, production, and use of flaked stone artifacts to identify choices and activities performed at the site by the people who lived and labored there this study helps to fill gaps in the knowledge and understanding of 17th-century flaked stone artifact production and use …

Small Towns And Mining Camps: An Analysis Of Chinese Diasporic Communities In 19th-Century Oregon, Jocelyn Lee

Graduate Masters Theses

Chinese Diaspora archaeology has focused historically on urban contexts or in-depth case studies, with minimal comparative studies. To expand such research, this thesis is a multisited analysis in Oregon using archaeological assemblages from the Jacksonville Chinese Quarter and four remote Chinese mining camps, museum material collection from a Chinese store in John Day, and store ledgers written in Chinese and English dating to the late-19th century. By situating the research in the framework of race, this thesis seeks to understand the ways that race and racialization impacted market access and affected consumption choices for Chinese immigrants in different classes. Chinese …

Consumer Preferences For Environmentally Friendly Disposable Dinnerware Alternatives, Mackenzie Gill

Masters Theses

In the context of growing concern surrounding the environmental impact of single-use paper and plastic waste, demand for alternatives to conventional disposables has recently increased. This study investigates factors driving consumer preferences for ecofriendly attributes in disposable dinnerware. The study subsequently measures willingness to pay for such an alternative; specifically, dinnerware molded from wheat straw. Data was collected from an online survey of 206 Tennessee consumers aged 18 and older who consider themselves to be the primary household food shopper.

The first part of this investigation uses a Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model to estimate the effects of demographics, …

Satisfaction With Life Scale In American Sign Language: Validation And Normative Data, Josephine F. Wilson, Jared Embree, Deb Guthmann, Steven R. Sligar, Janet C. Titus, Kathryn C. Taylor

JADARA

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is a brief instrument that assesses a person’s global life satisfaction. Using state-of-the-science techniques, the SWLS was translated into American Sign Language (ASL). A national sample of 350 deaf and hard of hearing individuals who preferentially use ASL completed the ASL version of the SWLS (SWLS-ASL) online. The individuals in this sample had a mean SWLS score of 23.4, well within the range of mean scores reported for samples from general populations of hearing individuals. No significant differences were identified in SWLS-ASL scores due to gender, cultural identification (identified as culturally Deaf or not), …

Identifying School Climate Predictors Of School Absenteeism, Victoria Bacon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Attendance is a crucial component of the education system and may be addressed utilizing Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) models. To effectively utilize such models, clear demarcations between tiers must exist to classify students appropriately. Additionally, relevant risk and protective factors must be identified as targets for intervention and prevention efforts at each tier. Little research exists that identifies school climate factors, and other student-based contextual factors such as academic mindset and social emotional learning, that impact absenteeism. The present study aimed to identify suitable tier demarcations as well as school climate and student-based contextual factors relevant at each tier. …

Network Analysis Of Cognitive Symptom Domains In Alzheimer's Disease (Ad), Abigail Rose Baily

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a degenerative neurological disease process that results in cognitive and functional declines and ultimately results in death. The pattern and course of cognitive and functional decline has been well characterized in AD, however little is known about the interactions between the symptoms. Network Analysis is a recently developed mathematical approach of examining the interactions between symptoms, by exploring the covariance of symptoms. The current study utilized network analysis to examine the multivariate structural dependencies among cognitive domains known to be affected in Alzheimer’s disease. The sample consisted of 864 older adults (60-90 years old), selected from …

The Factor Structures Of Ability And Trait Emotional Intelligences Relative To General Intelligence And Personality, Nicholas Carfagno

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Emotional Intelligence is a popular term used to describe one’s experience with their own emotions and awareness of others’. Although emotional intelligence is thought to be a helpful predictor of various variables such as work performance and wellbeing, there is disagreement within the field of the precise definition and method of measurement. The current study examines two of the most popular models of emotional intelligence, ability and trait models, to determine if they are the same construct or two different constructs that share a moniker. Additionally, both ability and trait emotional intelligences’ factor structures are examined through hierarchical and bifactor …

Temporal And Spatial Analysis Of The Wage Gap For Women And Underrepresented Minorities In The Architecture, Engineering, And Construction (Aec) Workforce, Saba Nikkhah Manesh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry has failed to solve persistent labor shortage problems or to fill the labor demand in the workforce by recruiting from untapped/underrepresented groups such as Women and Underrepresented Minorities (WUMs). There have been several studies on diversity and inclusion in the AEC industry, but the issue still persists, as the AEC industry has failed to solve these issues. If the industry better understands the status of wage gaps by gender and race, as well as how the industry has performed in terms of providing comparable wages for the workforce over time, along with the …

Examination Of Factors Reported By Athletes To Interfere With Their Lives Outside Of Sports, Jesse Scott

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The original Sport Interference Checklist (SIC) is a mental-health screening instrument designed to assess the extent to which mental health factors interfere with athletes’ performance during sport training or competition. In addition, the SIC appraises whether athletes are interested in pursuing psychological treatment for the aforementioned factors. Although validated, the SIC does not assess how the aforementioned factors affect athletes’ performance outside of sports. Doing so would permit professionals to examine the influence of these factors across sport training, sport competition, and life outside of sports.

The purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric properties and clinical utility …

Resilience And The Mental Health Of Bullying Victims: The Role Of Peer Relationships On The Relation Between Bullying Victimization And Social Anxiety, Michelle Catherine Zochowski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Bullying is a pervasive issue in today’s schools that has a significant impact on the mental health of students. Resilience has a positive impact on the outcomes related to facing adversity including bullying. The following dissertation study asks whether the relation between bullying victimization and social anxiety differs as a function of resilience and gender. It was hypothesized that bullying victims with increased resilience would show lower levels of social anxiety, as would students that report their gender as female. Chapter one discusses the significance of the problem, defines relevant constructs, and introduces the problem statement. Chapter two outlines the …