Search Results

open access

Light, Bright, and Out of Sight: Hollywood’s Representation of the Tragic Mulatto

Description: The purpose of this research is to examine the longevity of the stereotype of the tragic mulatto in American film history. Specifically, my research focuses on the portrayals and perceptions of biracial actresses. Media informs, entertains, and influences how we, and especially youth, self-identify and interact with others. This research focuses on the portrayal of biracial actresses throughout film history. It is also important in its investigation of the perpetuation of the one-drop rule. I… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: Brunson, Alicia
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
open access

Religious Identity and Interreligious Communications: Predicting In-Group and Outgroup Bias with Topic-Sentiment Analysis

Description: Intergroup relations and the factors affecting them constitute a subject of recurring interest within the academic community. Social identity theory suggests that group membership and the value we assign to it drives the expression of in-group favoritism and outgroup prejudice, among other intergroup phenomena. The present study examines how (ir)religious identities are related to topic-sentiment polarization in the form of positive in-group and negative outgroup bias during interreligious deba… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Grigoropoulou, Nikolitsa
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Educational Degree and Career Satisfaction: Moderating Effects of Educational Expectations

Description: Prior research supports the relationship between education and status attainment, mobility, and occupational attainment. Today, within an increasingly bifurcated labor market, where education is important for occupational attainment and the associated income and benefits, understanding the processes of status attainment is important. Educational expectations shape educational attainment, while educational attainment influences occupational attainment and satisfaction. Utilizing the National Lon… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Knudsen, Jennifer
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Exploring the Transnational Meaning of Home Amid Insecure, Hazardous Housing

Description: This project examines refugees' experiences of insecure housing and perceptions of home in the U.S. Many scholars of migration have focused on the resettlement experiences of refugees, including access to housing, yet refugees' experiences with housing in the U.S. remain largely undocumented. The following analyzes a case study of an apartment fire that displaced 16 refugee families in Dallas, Texas. Based on 18 in-depth interviews with tenants and members of refugee support organizations and n… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Fessenden, Deborah June
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Mediational Pathways between High School Extracurricular Participation and Young Adult Educational Attainment: A Structural Equation Analysis

Description: Little is known about the mechanisms by which extracurricular participation in high school influences educational attainment in young adulthood. Also limited is an understanding of the different types of extracurricular participation and how various activities may manifest within the relationship. The purpose of this study was to examine the link between high school extracurricular participation and educational attainment, with social capital, parental expectations, and academic achievement pre… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Long, Roxanne
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

As the Need Presents Itself: Social Identity Theory and Signaling in Online Crowdfunding Campaigns

Description: As social interactions increasingly become exclusively online, there is a need for research on the role of identity and social identity in online platforms. Drawing on Symbolic Interactionist approaches to identity, namely Social Identity Theory and Identity Theory, as well as Signaling Theory, this study argues that actors will selectively use religious language to signal their credentials to an audience for the purpose of garnering prosocial behavior in the form of donations to their fundrais… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Hamilton, Scott J
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Stepparent-Child Relationship Quality and Young Adult Outcomes

Description: This study set out to test the effects of relationship quality with a stepfather on other familial relationships, romantic relationships, and usual outcome measures for products of parental divorce. OLS regression tests were conducted using responses from over a thousand participants from the New Family Structures Study (N=1,696). Respondents were organized by self-reported level of relationship quality with their stepfathers. Various qualities of stepfather families were then regressed agai… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Underhill, Marissa M
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Our Own and the Others: What Happens to Perceptions of Immigrant Threat when Value Priorities Collide?

Description: With immigration controversies increasingly found at the forefront of the European public arena, understanding the social and cultural forces driving negative perceptions of immigrants becomes a pressing task of academic scholarship. Situated within the broader theoretical framework of group-conflict theories, human values theory and social identity theory encourage different interpretations of how our interest to the welfare of the people closest to us (benevolence) and the broader human commu… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Grigoropoulou, Nikolitsa
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
open access

Religiousness and Spirituality: How Are They Related to Moral Orientations?

Description: This dissertation examines correlations between religiousness and spirituality, to moral orientations using moral foundations theory as a framework. Using the 2012 Measuring Morality dataset, which provides a representative sample of the population of the United States, I create linear regressions which test associations between religiousness, spirituality, and each of the five moral foundations ((harm/care, fairness, in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity). I find that religiousne… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Gabhart, Elizabeth A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Racial Stereotypes and Racial Assimilation in a Multiracial Society

Description: Interest in a multiracial society has increased in recent years and including on racism and prejudice and in the propensity to stereotype out-groups. Theories on racism help explain the dominant group's prejudice toward subordinate groups. Yet they only explain why dominant group members stereotype subordinates or if the dominant group's propensity to stereotype is different from that of subordinate groups. Recent assimilation theories suggest that some minorities are assimilating with Whites b… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Youngblood, Thomas
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Spiritual But Not Religious: Who Are They, and Who Is More Likely to Be One?

Description: The “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) are a rising social group in America in the past two decades, but social scientists and the general public know quite little about this group. Using the pooled 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 GSS data, this study examines who the SBNR are and who is more or less likely to be SBNR controlling for other variables. Descriptive analysis reveals that, compared to the general U.S. adult population, the SBNR group has slightly more males, is slightly younger, has f… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Gabhart, Elizabeth A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Exotic Femininity: Prostitution Reviews and the Sexual Stereotyping of Asian Women

Description: Studies on prostitution have typically focused on the experiences, problems, and histories of prostitutes, rather than examining men who seek to purchase sex. Race has also been overlooked as a central factor in shaping the sex industry and the motivations of men who seek to purchase sex. This study utilizes online reviews of prostitutes to examine the way men who purchase sex discuss Asian prostitutes in comparison to White prostitutes. This paper traces the history of colonialism and ideas of… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Dougherty, Devyn T.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Socioeconomic Status and Prosperity Belief in Guatemala

Description: A popular belief in the exploding Pentecostal movement in the global South is the idea that if an individual has enough faith, God will bless them with financial prosperity. Although historically Pentecostalism has been identified as a religion of the poor, this study examines recent arguments that the current Pentecostal movement in Guatemala is a religion of the socially mobile middle and elite classes. Data from the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life’s 2006 survey Spirit and Power: Surve… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Johnson, Lindsey A.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Effect of Group Status on Moral Relativism and the Stigmatization of Mental Illness: a Social Dominance Theoretical Model

Description: This dissertation created a model to explore the effect of dominant group status on stigmatization of mental illness and on moral relativism and the interactive effect of dominant group status on stigmatization of mental illness through moral relativism. The model was conceptualized according to social dominance theory. Latent variables were created to measure moral relativism and stigmatization of mental illness. The latent measures were conceptualized according to current theories in the fiel… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Cincotta, Julie Passmore
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Children of Incarcerated Parents: An Application of the Stress Process Model.

Description: The purpose of this qualitative interview study is to examine the lives and experiences children of incarcerated parents from a theoretical perspective through an application of the social stress process. Previous research on children of incarcerated parents has neglected to add a theoretical component to their research, which is the intention of this research. The results will be organized around the theoretical domains of the stress process applied to findings from the analysis of eleven qual… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Jarvis, Ashley
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Impact of the Media on Biracial Identity Formation

Description: Biracial individuals undergo a developmental process that is different than monoracial individuals. Not only do they have to develop a strong and cohesive self-esteem, but also develop a strong and cohesive racial identity to have a healthy self-concept. The media is a social structure that has infiltrated into many aspects of American lives, including their racial identity. The media perpetuates current beliefs concerning race and racial identity. This research investigates how biracial identi… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Edison, Alicia
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the Us

Description: This dissertation is a qualitative study of racially ambiguous people and their life experiences. Racially ambiguous people are individuals who are frequently misidentified racially by others because they do not resemble the phenotype associated with the racial group to which they belong or because they belong to racial/ethnic groups originating in different parts of the world that resemble each other. the racial/ethnic population of the United States is constantly changing because of variation… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Smith, Starita
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Factors Associated with Risky Sexual Behavior Among Homeless Youth

Description: Homeless youth face numerous risks. Data on 602 homeless youth from the Midwest Homeless and Runaway Study and binary logistic regression were used to identify factors associated with their participation in risky sexual behaviors. Specifically, the effects of abuse/neglect and three potential moderating resiliency indicators, namely self-esteem, parental warmth, and parental monitoring, on having sex before adulthood and thinking about trading sex for food or shelter were examined. While none o… more
Date: May 2011
Creator: Cooksey, Christy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Hierarchy Attenuating/Enhancing Organizational Environments and Intergroup Attitudes: Relationship of Racism, Classism, and Sexism in Multiracial and Monoracial Churches of the United States

Description: As Yancey (2003) has pointed out, the intentional character of racially integrated churches tends to lessen the social distance between Whites and minorities. The purpose of this study is to examine how racially hierarchy-attenuating and hierarchy-enhancing environments affect classism and sexism attitudes among congregations. The finding shows that multiracial churches promote H-A environment for class and race diversity, but not for gender equality. The class and race diversity is affected by… more
Date: December 2005
Creator: Kim, Ye Jung
Partner: UNT Libraries
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