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open access

The Local Organization of Refugee Service Provision: A Qualitative Comparison of Two Resettlement Cities in Texas

Description: This comparative case study examines the organizational variations in refugee services in Dallas and Amarillo, Texas. Engaging sociological theories of organizations, migration, and the state, this study conceptualizes immigrant-serving organizations as brokers that operate within fields of similar entities that channel resources and services to refugees. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews and over two hundred hours of participant observation, this study finds two distinct models of resource bro… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Fessenden, Deborah June
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Gauging Gun-Based Social Movements Frames: Identifying Frames through Topic Modeling and Assessing Public Engagement of Frames through Facebook Media Posts

Description: The lack of success of the gun control movement and the success of the gun rights movement in the United States have prompted research into the root causes. Although the political infrastructure, organizational resources, and public interest prove to be important factors in a social movement's success, how each social movement frames their arguments is extremely important for proposing policy initiatives and garnering support. In order to understand how gun control and gun rights organizations … more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Prasanna, Ram
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The University for Who? Student Narratives of Native Identity, Belonging, and Navigating a Racialized Organization

Description: This qualitative case study aims to understand the ways in which students identifying as Native American, American Indian, and Indigenous navigate attending a university informed by their identities. Through semi-structured interviews with Indigenous students and participant observation with a Native American student organization, this study identified how this demographic of students navigate and conceptualize their identities as Native and Indigenous peoples, the benefits of joining a Native … more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Gaston, Emilia Morgan
Partner: UNT Libraries

Coercion and Consent among Employer-Sponsored and Dependent Visa Holders: A Study of Indian Workers in the U.S. Information Technology Sector

Description: Highly educated and skilled Indian nationals are the largest recipients of H-1B visas in the US. An employer must be willing to sponsor an H-1B work visa for the worker to continue to live and work in the US. This stipulation has granted US employers unprecedented power over H-1B visa holders, which can be understood as status coercion; employers have state-sanctioned power to threaten or discharge a worker from their status, i.e., visa status, which interconnects work and migration status. Whi… more
This item is restricted from view until June 1, 2028.
Date: May 2023
Creator: Jangeti, Neha
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

r/CryptoCurrency: Discussions of Climate Change

Description: In this study, I examine how an online cryptocurrency community discusses the issue of climate change. In particular, I examine distinctive themes present within discussions that occur on the r/CryptoCurrency forum hosted by reddit.com. Existing research has demonstrated that there are significant carbon emissions linked to cryptocurrency. However, cryptocurrency primarily exists as a peer-to-peer system, meaning that the individual perceptions of cryptocurrency adopters may provide insight int… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Brickell, Miles
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Leaving the Community: A Qualitative Study of Hijra Individuals in Bangladesh

Description: The hijra community individuals are one of the most neglected and underprivileged sexual minority groups in Bangladesh. Historically this community has been excluded from mainstream society and was compelled to live and work in separate communal spaces. However, new policies of inclusion implemented by government and non-government organizations have resulted in many hijra individuals leaving their communities. In this research, I focused on how the hijra individuals of Bangladesh come out of t… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Anandita, Prapti
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Cost of Higher Education: Impacts of Student Loan Debt on the Life Course for Hispanic Americans

Description: Student loan debt continues to be an issue in the U.S., with potential long-term effects on loan repayment and potential wealth accumulation. In particular, minorities face barriers in the educational system and accruing wealth. Hispanics occupy a middling position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 geocode data, in this study I examined how Hispanic-White differences in student debt change over time and how student debt influences wealth. In … more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Knudsen, Jennifer L
Partner: UNT Libraries

An Explanation of Racial Attitudes Utilizing Intergroup Threat Theory and Group Empathy Theory

Description: This project examined the effects of threat perceptions and group empathy on racial outgroup attitudes. The relationship between threat perception and increased racial prejudice has been well established within the literature, but the effect of group empathy within this dynamic has been largely undocumented. The following study utilizes data from the American National Election Study 2020 Time Series to analyze racial outgroup attitudes among subsamples of Blacks (n = 726), Hispanics (n = 762), … more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Larrison, KayLynn Marie
Partner: UNT Libraries

Latinos for Trump? National Origin, Nativity Status, and Favorability for Trump in 2016

Description: In this study, I examine the relationship between national origin, nativity status, and favorability toward Donald Trump among Latinos in 2016. In particular, I examine the relationship between Cubans, Dominicans, and "other" Latinos to understand how differences in national origin and nativity status influence Trump favorability. The term "Latino" is a pan-ethnic term used to describe individuals with ancestry from Latin America who share a common language, religion and culture. However, studi… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Moreno, Vianni Alyssa
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Artificial Intelligence at Home: Alexa, Are You Influencing My Family?

Description: The purpose of this research is to measure the social shifts that take place in a home where artificial intelligent (AI) devices like Echo Dot and Google Home are fully integrated into their everyday life. Research is currently limited, being that the widespread use of these devices is roughly seven years old. Three main outcomes of this study were related to how often Alexa is being used in homes to solve everyday problems, the lack of overall privacy and security concerns users had, and the l… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Ra'oof, Jameelah
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Does Experiencing Discrimination in the Workplace Change Opinion? A Mediation Analysis of Identity and Support for Affirmative Action

Description: Affirmative action policies have been a popular topic in U.S. media since their inception in the Civil Rights Act 1964. Previous studies note that race, gender, and political identity are known influencers of support for affirmative action policies; however, this dissertation analyzes the mediating effects of perceived experiences of discrimination in the workplace on a person's level of support for the preferential hiring and promotion of Black Americans based on the intersection of the race,… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Jefferies, Shanae S
Partner: UNT Libraries

Essential and Flexible Expression: Strategies for Pronoun Use among Nonbinary-Identified Individuals

Description: Drawing on in-depth, semistructured interviews with 42 nonbinary-identified individuals in Texas, I examine both the relationship between pronouns and identity and how individuals use pronouns in interaction. Some individuals speak about their pronoun set as a crucial component of their gender identity, adopting what I refer to as an essential expression strategy, while others discuss their pronoun set as more loosely connected to their non-binary identity, adopting what I refer to as a flexibl… more
This item is restricted from view until June 1, 2024.
Date: May 2022
Creator: Moeder, Jessica Elise
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Herb Users' Nondisclosure of Complementary-Alternative Medicine Use to Health Care Providers

Description: Various forms of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are increasingly being used in the United States and globally over time. Among CAM, natural products, including herbal medicines, are the most used type. However, the increase in the use of CAM has gone on with minimal or without a corresponding increase in the rate of disclosure of use to the health care providers. The theories of care-seeking behavior and the behavioral model of health services use guided most of the study. Data fr… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Obiora, Justice Echezona
Partner: UNT Libraries

Public Opinion and Maintaining Political Power: The Case of AKP Government and Social Media in Turkey

Description: This dissertation consists of three chapters, aiming to analyze, understand and discuss how Turkish public opinion fluctuates on social media based on governmental actions and how that fluctuation affects the society and politics in Turkey. Using textual data from social media, I combined natural language processing techniques with statistical methods, to study how Turkish public opinion is shaped by governmental actions in various scenarios. In the first chapter, I created a social network of … more
This item is restricted from view until June 1, 2024.
Date: May 2022
Creator: Demirhan, Emirhan
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

"What we know is how we've survived": Tribal Emergency Management and the Resilience Paradox

Description: In order to more fully inform moves toward equity in emergency management (EM), this research seeks to describe a general landscape of professional Tribal EM, and in particular, to examine how Tribal emergency managers and Tribal Nations are situated in relation to the EM enterprise (EME), and how they are doing resilience in their Tribal Nations. The findings presented in this dissertation reflect efforts to explore and document Tribal emergency managers' descriptions of their work and their p… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Dent, Lauren
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Contradictory Attitudes towards Partisan Issues: Abortion and Gun Control

Description: In this study, I examine how self-reported religiosity predicts political opinion toward abortion and gun control. In particular, I examine how self-reported religiosity relates to individuals' inconsistent attitudes on these two issues where liberal attitudes are held toward one issue, but conservative attitudes are held toward the other. Most commonly, these inconsistent attitudes are found among individuals who hold pro-life (conservative) and pro-gun control (liberal) views. Using data from… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Pinney, Sarah
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Religious Affiliation and Sexual Permissiveness Over Time

Description: In this study, I analyze the relationship between sexual permissiveness and affiliation with a fundamentalist religion and how this relationship has changed over time. I first consider previous research that reviews how religious affiliation, religiosity, and religious fundamentalism shapes sex attitudes and, therefore sexual permissiveness. I then review existing studies that discuss what factors influence permissiveness toward different sexual behaviors. Next, I discuss the mechanisms of reli… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Ward, Emma
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Static or Evolving? The Racial Principal-Policy Gap

Description: Empirical studies have shown that white racial attitudes tend to predict racial policy support. It has also been established that the relationship between whites' espoused racial tolerance and their support for ameliorative racial policies is imperfect, due to the principal-policy gap which characterized misalignment between individuals' espoused values for racial equity and their limited support for policies aimed at achieving those ends. Less consideration however, has been given to how the p… more
Date: December 2021
Creator: Joseph, Curtis Brenon
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Increasing Mother and Child Safety: Social Factors Influencing Help Seeking Behaviors amongst Child Welfare-Involved Women Experiencing Family Violence

Description: The purpose of this study is to determine social factors that influence help seeking behaviors by mothers who are concurrently involved in two social service systems: Child Protective Services (CPS) and family violence advocacy programs. Through the application of the behavioral model (of service use) for vulnerable populations, this study seeks to determine predisposing, enabling and need characteristics that impact help seeking behaviors at a family violence agency after participation in an … more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Baker, Cassidy A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Perdóname, Madre, ¿he pecado? An Investigation of Hispanic Catholics in the United States and Their Attitudes toward Women being Allowed to Enter the Priesthood

Description: Hispanic American Catholics are a growing immigrant population in the United States, with Hispanic cultures and Catholicism woven together in unique ways. This situation presents a window through which can be examined the dynamic between individualism and religiosity. Four logistic regression models were estimated utilizing data from the Pew Research Center 2013 Survey of U.S. Latinos, in order to investigate the correlates of Hispanic American Catholic support for women in the Catholic pries… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Kilgore, William S
Partner: UNT Libraries

Intersectional Analysis of Perceived Racism as a Determinant of Children's Mental Health

Description: Youth in the United States are experiencing a steep increase in mental health issues. Concurrently, unique political, economic and social dynamics in the U.S. make the circumstances of nonwhite children's mental health partially contingent on experiences of racism. In this study, I examine the relationship between racial minority children's mental health and perceived racism, while also examining the moderating effects of gender on this relationship. I first review prior research which suggest… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Monasterio, Ronaldo
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Not Just About a Piece of Cloth: Three Content Analysis of an Online Anti-Mandatory Hijab Movement in Iran

Description: This dissertation investigates the My Stealthy Freedom (MSF) movement, an online movement against mandatory hijab laws in Iran, building on two leading lead social movements' theories, political processes and framing processes theories. Study 1 explores the utility of a tactical approach for explaining the movement's pace of insurgency. I employ a conceptual repertoire focused upon the political process model's core concepts of tactical innovation and tactical adaptations, supplementing these o… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Basmechi, Farinaz
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, and Gender: Analyzing Gender at Raves

Description: Doing, undoing, and redoing gender debates have established the omnirelevance and performativity of gender. Yet, little is known about the ways that individuals "do" gender in spaces that provide the opportunity for norms to be disrupted, such as subcultures. This study offers an empirical investigation into the performance of gender within the subculture known as EDM (electronic dance music) culture. Using 20 in-depth interviews that were conducted virtually, I analyze the way ravers experienc… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Rivera, Zoriliz
Partner: UNT Libraries

Black and White Attitudes toward Interracial Marriage in the U.S.: The Role of Social Contact Characteristics

Description: This research advances the literature on interracial marriage by using variables that align with the social contact hypothesis. The purpose of this project is to accurately gauge the exact social predictors influencing current attitudes towards Black and White interracial marriage. Multiple regression models containing social contact predictors are analyzed using data from the 2018 General Social Survey. The conclusive review of the literature summarizes age, region, and education as essential … more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Coleman, Samuel
Partner: UNT Libraries
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