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Now showing 1 - 20 of 57
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    Count MENA: Clarifying the Impact of U.S. Hate Crimes on the Middle Eastern & North African Community
    (2021-12) Zakhari, Nivine K.
    Frequent racial, ethnic, and/or religious miscategorization of Arabs, Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENA), Muslims, and Sikhs has downstream impacts in general census reporting and hate crime statistics, among other government programs relying on accurate racial/ethnic or religious population data. This research analyzes U.S. hate crime statistics since 1991, along with the latest U.S. Census and religious population estimates, to determine the impact of inconsistent victim identification and their approximate per capita hate crime victimization rates. Analysis shows it is still highly likely that the MENA population in the U.S. is significantly undercounted, as well as the incidents of hate crimes targeting persons of MENA descent and/or Muslims or Sikhs, which are often conflated. Unless government race and ethnicity reporting standards are updated, along with enforcement of Uniform Crime Reporting standards to improve hate crime motive accuracy, efforts to address challenges impacting the MENA community will continue to fall short.
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    Rodnovery and the Russian Language: Linking Ancient Religion with the Evolution of East Slavic Languages
    (2021-05) Green, Demetria K.
    The origin, formation, and evolution of language has been an ongoing topic since the beginning of linguistics itself. This research aims to demonstrate and explain the relationship between the Slavic Native Faith, Rodnovery, and the development of the Russian language, as well as the impact of this relationship on the survival and ultimate comeback of the Native Faith in Russian society. To assess these two dimensions, a combination of both demographical data and lexical data have been used to perform multivariate regression analyses. The demographics data encompass the role of religion in modern Russian society, including non-Orthodox faiths like Rodnovery, and provide insight not only into presence of the faith but also its importance. The lexical data are comprised of 564,493 words taken from the modern Russian language, which were subsequently filtered to remove non-Slavic loan words and categorized by root word. The most important root word analyzed was rod, the name of the primary Rodnover god, and compared with the English language and its equivalent word, god. The results showed that overwhelmingly, the Russian language is far more heavily centered around religious terms than is English. Additionally, comparison between the two types of data allows for the secondary inference to be made—that it is plausible that Rodnovery survived a thousand years of repression due to its tenants being embedded within the Russian language itself.
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    How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Far-Right Populist Sentiment in the United States: An Empirical Analysis
    (2021-05) King, Jeremiah W.
    Current literature identifies wide-ranging predictors for populist and conspiratorial sentiment like nativism, economic inequality, social isolation, and other mental health issues. This paper presents an empirical analysis investigating how COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) measures affected far-right populist sentiment in the United States. This study conducts logit regression using American National Election Studies (ANES) data from 2016 and 2020 to make the novel assertion that hopelessness and pride are both strongly associated with populist sentiment. It also reveals that other socioeconomical and political factors have greater influence than COVID-19 social restrictions. Logit regression of state-level data suggests that lifting NPI measures decreases feelings of anxiety and depression, feelings that prior research associates with being more vulnerable to extreme sentiment. These findings both compliment and contradict current literature and, despite this study not presenting causations, it does provide a theoretical framework for future analysis.
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    A Study of Recreational Boating Public Interventions, Regulations and Accidents Utilizing Federal and State Data
    (2020-05) Hsieh, Jonathan C.
    Existing research on public regulation for recreational boating focuses on the use of personal flotation devices or drunkenness while boating. This study takes a different approach by evaluating a combination of public data available from the State of Florida on the maritime domain, public interventions such as aids to navigation and public regulations like boating safety education. These data are examined with boating accident data to determine if a relationship exists at both a county level and at the accident-level. This study fills a prominent void in scholarly literature regarding boating safety public regulation and its relationship to boating accidents. The result of the analysis was surprising in that public service actions such as the placement of Aids to Navigation like buoys and channel markers and the issuance of boater safety cards as a result of education completion which are designed to reduce the boating accident rate seemed to have a reverse effect at the county level. Further, when evaluated at the accident level, age, experience and education of a boat operator had a noticeable effect on the probability of injuries and fatalities in boating accidents. Findings from this research have a potential to be incorporated into state level risk-based decision making, actuarial modeling and budgeting on public regulation programs.
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    Measuring Chronic Food Insecurity with Food Bank User Data: Implications for Gender Disparities in Chronic Health
    (2020-12) Sherwood, Andrew J.
    Food insecurity is a key social determinant of health and an important risk factor in numerous health conditions. Evidence indicates that food insecurity impacts men and women differently with women experiencing higher rates of reported food insecurity and a higher correlation of that insecurity with chronic health conditions like diabetes and obesity. One possible explanation for this difference could be that women are more likely to find themselves in a chronic, predictable state of food insecurity while the male experience is more likely to be unpredictable and transient. Yet, the traditional reliance of food security research on the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement has limited the investigation of these temporal dynamics. Using food bank usage as a proxy for food insecurity, the cumulative number of food bank appearances and the average interval between appearances were compared between men and women. Multivariate ordinary least squares regression analyses were performed, and after controlling for family size and composition, access to food bank services, and socio-economic estimates, households headed by women were found to have significantly longer average intervals, and after controlling for average interval length, more cumulative visits to the food bank. Taken together, these facts suggest that female-headed households are more likely to experience chronic food insecurity.
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    The Cause of Economic Freedom - A Model of Prosperity
    (2020-08) Akers, Philip R.
    Economic freedom in the form of open markets and minimal government intervention has been demonstrated in numerous studies to be the most effective approach for achieving wealth and prosperity around the world. This paper examines various sociopolitical and geographic variables as well as changes in their values over time to determine their potential causal impact on the level of economic freedom across a large array of countries. It hypothesizes that democratic governance is of prime influence on free market growth. Having been established as a beneficiary of free markets, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) levels are analyzed for reciprocal causality regarding economic freedom levels, while corruption, civil rights, religiosity, and geography are also explored as potential economic freedom determinants. Of the variables explored, only democratic governance, corruption, and changes to GDP were found to be statistically significant, along with certain regional categories primarily located in Africa. The other variables of interest, initial GDP levels, fundamental rights, and religiosity were not found to be significantly related to economic freedom. This study also found that changes in economic freedom ratings over time were significantly related only to changes in GDP levels, of all the variables studied. The lack of statistical significance found in the initial GDP variable was an unexpected result that potentially calls into question prior research indicating a stronger relationship to economic freedom.
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    The Great Chasm: China's Defense Strategy and United States Public Opinion
    (2020-08) Sullivan, Rachel
    China represents one of the most pressing modern threats to the United States’ national security. This threat is best characterized by the opacity of China’s defense strategy, increasing uncertainty surrounding its intentions. While existing literature expounds global perceptions of China and determinants of public opinion, there is a gap when it comes to the nature of the relationship between China’s defense strategy and United States public opinion – one that has significant implications for United States policymaking and national security. Using sentiment analysis and topic modeling of China’s national defense white papers, this research examines (1) the tone and (2) the contents of China’s defense strategy as each relates to United States public opinion of China. The findings show no statistically significant relationship between either facet of China’s strategy and American public opinion, mitigating the risk posed by China’s influence campaign to the United States’ national interests.
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    The Surprising Interactive Effect of Race and High Poverty on Food Insecurity
    (2020-08) Khan, Ahmed Jehangir
    Existing research has identified multiple factors contributing to food insecurity in the United States – notably, among others, race and poverty. However, it is unknown how these factors interact to create variations in food insecurity by demographic. Using data from the 2018 Current Population Survey’s Food Security Supplement in probit regression, this analysis finds that race and poverty significantly interact. Further, the direction of the interaction runs counter to expectation. Although, as expected, minorities remain at a higher risk of food insecurity than (non-Hispanic) Whites do overall, for minorities the interaction is associated with lowering the probability of food insecurity by 0.74% and for Whites the interaction is associated with increasing the probability by 0.21%. This surprising finding potentially impacts hundreds of thousands of people. It also carries important implications for food-aid programs and opens up avenues for further research to understand the impact of race and culture on food insecurity.  
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    Does Healthcare Availability Impact the Veteran Suicide Rate?
    (2020-05) Diaz, Fredy
    Past research on a recent veteran suicide spike phenomenon has focused on Post-9/11 combat veterans suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. This article presents a different approach by looking at the importance of healthcare accessibility – measured through state uninsured rates – as a possible way to reduce the veteran suicide rate. The Veterans Affairs (VA) only provides healthcare services to honorably discharged veterans, leaving those veterans who received an administrative or punitive military discharge – commonly referred to as “bad paper veterans” – to turn elsewhere for mental health services. This analysis uses VA suicide data covering the 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2011 to 2017 to determine whether post-Affordable Care Act state actions to lower the uninsured rate have impacted veteran suicides. The analysis offers strong support that the uninsured rate explains and influences the veteran suicide rate.
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    Climate Change Policy Adoption in US States: A Cluster Analysis
    (2020-05) Woods, Melissa
    While the United States steps back from taking action on climate change at the federal level, many are looking to the states for leadership. Existing literature examining enactment of climate legislation in the United States often aims to identify causal mechanisms or quantify relationships driving the enactment of specific policies like renewable portfolio standards. This study takes a different approach by using clustering algorithms to identify commonalities among states in terms of: their legislative behavior; impacts of climate change; political, economic, and demographic characteristics; and energy generation and emissions. The clusters identify nuanced groups such as politically conservative coal states encouraging carbon sequestration, politically liberal states with low emissions and low policy adoption rates, and states generating large portions of their energy from natural gas also proposing renewable energy legislation. These insights highlight opportunities for future research and potential strategies for political advocacy organizations working to enact climate legislation.
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    Improving Community College Graduation Rates by Identifying Predictors that Matter
    (2020-05) Stettenbenz, Brian
    Hundreds of thousands of students across the country begin their postsecondary education at community colleges each year, but less than half graduate. The goal of this research was to identify key predictors of credential completion for first-time, first-year postsecondary students at community colleges. Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data from 2015 was used for the present study. A total of five linear regression models were developed to analyze the graduation rates at two-year public sector institutions. The models provide insight into statistical significance of relationships between demographics, endowment assets, dual-credit, instructor-type, and federal-grant scholarship. The analysis found that there is a statistically significant relationship among specific demographic groups. Across all models, the presence of a dual-credit program has a statistically significant relationship to graduation rates.
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    Managing For Results: How Higher Municipal Credit Ratings Increase Data Driven Management in Cities
    (2020-05) Herrmann, Jed
    Data driven management is a powerful tool to help cities better address the needs of their residents. The current study examines the relationship between cities use of data as a management tool and municipal credit ratings, which research shows have important implications for the services that governments are able to deliver for their residents. While there has been extensive study of the fiscal aspects related to cities’ bond ratings, there has been little investigation of the relationship between municipal managerial factors and credit ratings. The current analysis takes a completely new approach by examining cities’ credit ratings and the specific approach of city management that prioritizes data to inform policy and operations. This analysis examines the management aspects of municipal credit by performing a linear regression on a unique dataset of city bond ratings, city fiscal information, and an independent rating of cities’ use of data-informed management. It finds that cities with higher credit ratings are more likely to have a data-driven approach to management, even when controlling for the fiscal and demographic factors identified in previous research. This newly established relationship between bond ratings and the use of data as a management tool has important implications for how credit ratings influence city management, how cities invest in data as a management tool, and for future research about the management aspects of city government.
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    Opioid Industry Meal Payments and Associated Physician Prescibing
    (2018-12) Pfeiffer, Christopher
    An extensive literature demonstrates a relationship between promotional activity towards physicians from drug manufacturers and subsequent prescribing of marketed products. A similar association has been demonstrated in a recent study focusing on opioid payments and opioid prescribing using multivariate linear regression (Hadland et al.) This article replicates this recent study by using updated meal payments and claims data and extends the research by examining whether a physician’s specialty, gender, and geographic region of practice help better explain the relationship between opioid meal payments and prescribing. An association was found between opioid meal payments and opioid prescribing, which confirms prior study findings. The analysis found that specialty was an important predictor of opioid claims and that pain management specialists and physicians in rehabilitation-based specialties are associated with higher opioid claims. The analysis did not find evidence to suggest this relationship is different based on physician gender or region of practice.
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    Compact Growth and Smart City Development: The Unsustainability of Urban Sprawl
    (2019-12) Pacilli, Dean
    As cities become more populated, are municipal governments struggling to manage the influx of demand in the realm of power usage and city resources regarding critical infrastructure and energy management? Contemporary research centers on a prevailing view of the benefits of the compact growth smart city model over the outdated urban sprawl model regarding energy and environmental sustainability. In this study, data was collected and analyzed to provide meaningful insights for city planners and government leaders to weigh the costs and benefits of adopting the compact growth model of urban development in lieu of the urban sprawl model of expansion. Through collecting municipal data of high population cities in America, regressions were run to examine how density has an effect upon various factors supporting a city’s operational efficiency. The results of this study indicate that the urban sprawl model, popularized during the 20th century, is less sustainable than the compact growth model of smart city development, especially with increasing populations. Furthermore, future urban development plans can employ the compact growth model of smart city development to maximize infrastructure and improve energy efficiency. This paper will delve into the contention that urban areas will need to adopt the compact growth model for sustainable operations.
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    Child Pornography Crimes as Reported to Law Enforcement Agencies
    (2019-12) Idle, Megan
    Past studies have shown that child pornography is associated with multiple, violent offenses. This article presents a current picture of child pornography incidents as reported to law enforcement agencies. The analysis presents a multinomial logit regression on data from the 1991 to 2016 National Incident-Based Reporting Software (NIBRS) confirming findings that child pornography is associated with violent offenses. However, it also identifies clear differences between child and adult pornography crimes, such as ages for offenders and victims that are younger than expected, an association with gang activity and violent offenses, and suspected computer use by offenders. Many child pornography offenders are minors, rather than older adults; most victims are pre-teens (10 to 14), not young adults; and child pornography offenses are more likely to include victims than adult pornography. The updated information provided in this analysis can assist in the prevention of child exploitation nationwide.
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    Quantifying Preventive Maintenance Efficacy: A Baltimore City Use Case
    (2019-04) Battle, Maria
    Existing preventive maintenance efficacy research heavily focuses on quantifying system degradation in deterministic, probabilistic, and policy-based models, yet in a data centric age they inadequately address data requirements, the linchpin for improving preventive maintenance and graduating to predictive maintenance. Using Baltimore City’s public facility maintenance work orders, this study demonstrates the impact of data requirements on frequency, time and cost key performance indicators (KPI) and addresses omitted variable bias introduced by lack of condition-based data. Overall results show that maintenance cost has annually increased by $6,520 despite a sharp drop in 2018. Facilities in poor condition with persistently high repair needs present an opportunity for Baltimore to tailor its preventive maintenance strategy using condition-based data and separating money for a narrower definition of functional maintenance, potentially making better use of up to $14 million. Data requirements such as tracking corrective and preventive maintenance work for the same system and parts, combining facilities condition index (FCI) scores with work order frequency, prioritizing which facilities get preventive maintenance using return on investment thresholds, and enforcing data quality discipline compose the road map to these insights.
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    Smoke and Mirrors: The Unintended Public Safety Effects of Marijuana Legalization
    (2019-08) Trumpetto, Brynna
    Existing research on the indirect societal impacts of marijuana legalization is piecemeal and tends to under-emphasize the strains placed on the public safety apparatus as a result of increased access and availability to a federally unregulated substance. To examine the effect geographic proximity to marijuana dispensaries has on Colorado’s state-wide crime rates, this paper conducts clustering analyses on public safety data from the years following Colorado’s legalization policy enacted in 2012. The analyses targeted reported crime from 2013-2018 throughout Colorado to determine the predictive power of geographic inputs for crimes specifically associated with the growing legal marijuana industry. There is an historic over-emphasis placed on the primary health effects resulting from marijuana legalization with minimal insight to how secondary criminal activity, directly linked to a growing legal market, impacts communities differently. The results offer strong support for the hypothesis that, in the absence of strategic planning addressing the sociocultural vulnerabilities of a community, marijuana legalization policy heightens criminal activity proximal to the densest areas of legal marijuana dispensaries where availability and accessibility are highest.
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    Equivalency Analysis of State-Level Air Pollution Emissions Estimates from an Integrated Assessment Model: GCAM-USA
    (2019-08) Besch, Brianna
    The use of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) has expanded from their primary application, global climate assessment, to examine broader environmental trends such as air pollution emissions, including those at sub-national levels. While most IAMs are evaluated for internal validity, little literature evaluates IAM performance against real-world data. In this paper, 2015 estimates from the Global Climate Assessment Model (GCAM), an IAM, of state-level air pollution from five macro-economic sectors and six air pollutants, are tested against EPA data using two equivalency analysis tests. One-sided t-tests and regression analysis determine if modeled emissions fall within 20% of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data. The results are mixed, showing that GCAM emissions estimates from only one sector and one pollutant pass both tests, and two sectors and two pollutants pass neither test. This indicates that GCAM-USA is more appropriate for examining national trends than specific sectors or pollutants at the sub-national level.
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    Uncertain Development: Chicago's Economic Incentives Slowly Decrease Homicides
    (2019-08) Morgia, Jessica
    Chicago’s homicide rates remain elevated, with many interventions focused on improving neighborhood conditions. This research examines economic causes from the social disorganization theory model, which posits that a neighborhood’s socioeconomic factors shape its crime rates. Data for homicide rates and economic development activity from two city programs, Micro-Market Recovery Program (MMRP) permits and Tax Increment Financing (TIF) grants, was paired to each of Chicago’s 50 wards to study the relationship at a local level from 2003 through 2018. Using a fixed-effects panel regression model to understand effects in each ward over time, this study found that both programs decreased homicides. Despite having an effect realized 2 years later, for every 100 MMRP permits issued, homicides decreased by nearly two. TIF grant activity had the most robust effect; the program decreased homicides by 36 for every 100 TIF grants issued, realized after nearly a decade. Moreover, as homicides decreased, permits and grants increased, suggesting that the city limits economic development in wards continuously plagued with homicides.
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    The Impact of the Internet on Social Capital: Broadband Access and Influences on Voting Turnout
    (2019-08) Pisciottano, Nickolas
    The existing scholarship into the study of social capital in the United States and elsewhere has sought to apply standards and methods to measure civic participation in diverse groups of people. Critics of Robert Putnam’s 1995 article Bowling Alone and the scholarly debate since has focused on the criteria used to calculate social capital as well as the methods used to measure trends in social capital over time. This study seeks to answer Putnam’s critics by including variables related to race and economic status, as well as incorporating measures of virtual connectivity through access to reliable, highspeed broadband internet as a newer source of social capital. This analysis quantifies social capital levels by comparing voter turnout in primary and general elections using detailed voter registration data to economic statistics, demographics, and broadband internet access for all 67 counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The results of this analysis identified access to broadband internet as having a positive effect on voter turnout resulting in higher social capital. Additionally, variables representing socioeconomic factors and the public profile of each election were shown to impact voter turnout, illustrating the complexities of measuring social capital. These findings show that metrics tracking the adoption of new technologies as well as traditional measures of economic health and political participation are key to understanding the evolution of social capital in the modern age.