Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2023, Psychology

Familiarity is a psychological concept that can affect many aspects of life, including how we interact with other people daily. We have varying degrees of familiarity to other people and to their experiences. The present work investigates the ways that these variations in familiarity can affect our cognition about others by combining 2 distinct literatures: the person knowledge literature and the mental imagery perspective literature. We aim to show that familiarity affects the types of person knowledge used to think about others, and propose a mechanism for this effect. In study 1, participants rate close friends/family and acquaintances on different types of person knowledge, and similarities between these ratings are analyzed as a function of familiarity. Results show that the type of person knowledge used for low familiarity targets is more trait-based, while the type of person knowledge used for high familiarity targets is more nuanced, based in both traits and cognitive-affective mediating units (CAUs). Upon discovering this difference, we aimed to determine and directly manipulate the proposed mechanism behind the effect. In study 2, we made use of a mental imagery perspective manipulation, which is known to influence processing style to be either more experientially driven (first-person mental imagery) or more conceptually driven (third-person mental imagery). In addition, we manipulated another variable that should influence processing style: shared experiences. Participants read stories of discrimination written by readers with whom they did or did not share a racial background. The stories were written by separate writers who underwent a mental imagery perspective manipulation. Results show that while the perspective manipulation and racial background conditions did not affect the similarities between different types of person knowledge, they did affect the pattern distribution within CAU knowledge. In addition, a marginal effect of shared racial experien (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts in Speech Pathology and Audiology, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Sciences and Health Professions

This qualitative study analyzed student and instructor responses to survey questions regarding the effect of COVID-19 on clinical and academic instruction. Two hundred sixty-three accredited communication sciences and disorders and audiology programs across the United States received the survey. Overall, there were 931 participants, including both students and instructors. These participants responded to 19 content questions on the survey developed to help answer five research questions: (1) how were participants affected in terms of their emotional state? (2) Were students and instructors prepared for Forced Online Instruction (FOI)? (3) Were students and instructors comfortable with the level of education provided online? (4) Were students and instructors comfortable with the technology required for FOI? (5) Did students and instructors miss the socialization of classroom learning? The study found that instructor and student responses differed along the lines of academic instruction. Only 25% of students agreed that they received comparable education online compared to in-person, whereas 40% of instructors felt they provided equivalent instruction online. Furthermore, students also reported that their clinical education was not comparable online to in-person. On the other hand, instructors believed they provided equivalent instruction. Instructors (31%) felt as though they provided equivalent clinical education online, whereas 20% of students felt as though the clinical education they received was equivalent online to in-person.

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), University of Findlay, 0, Education

Ohio middle school teachers have had difficulty getting students to pass the state writing assessment (ODE, 2019b). A critical discourse analysis was conducted to examine the intertextuality of current compositional theory use in the IRA/NCTE's Standards for the ELA, Ohio's Learning Standards for ELA, and Ohio's State Test in ELA to search for possible misalignment. It was found that both sets of standards align with current compositional theory; however, the Ohio writing assessment, constructed by Ohio Department of Education (ODE) and American Institutes for Research (AIR), lacks sociocultural characteristics and diverges from the Ohio ELA standards due to the lack of inquiry, the inability to practice adequate attention to audience, and insufficient time to implement writing as a process effectively. It is recommended that the state use a sociocultural writing assessment that utilizes the social nature of these current compositional theory elements.

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2018, Genetic Counseling

Background: Multidisciplinary clinics have become the standard of care for several chronic diseases. Due to the increased uptake of clinical genetic testing for these disorders, the genetic counselor (GC) has emerged as a new key member of multidisciplinary teams. Prior research has demonstrated the importance of role clarification when new subspecialties are introduced to multidisciplinary teams given that differences in team member expectations may hinder the development of newly introduced professions. This study aims to provide insight into the duties of a GC in a multidisciplinary clinic by highlighting the services that a specific patient population value and the roles that the comprehensive care team members expect of a GC. Methods: Multidisciplinary team members working in four pediatric hematology/oncology clinics were recruited to complete a 48-question survey assessing their perception of a GC's role in clinic. Patients over age 18 or their guardians seen in the same clinics were recruited to complete a similar 49-question survey. Demographic, clinical experience and perception data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis tests and chi-squared tests. Results: Providers perceived most GC roles as shared between GCs and other team members (54.0%) and fewer roles as primarily a GC's responsibility (37.2%). Providers perceived roles related to genetic expertise and coordination of care to be primarily the role of a GC significantly more often than roles related to psychosocial skills (p < 0.0001). Conversely, roles related to psychosocial skills were significantly more likely to be perceived as another provider's role than roles related to genetics and coordination of care (p = 0.0002, p < 0.0001). Traditionally psychosocial providers were more likely to perceive psychosocial roles as the role of another provider and more likely to perceive genetic roles as the role of a GC than traditionally medical providers (p > 0.05). Although most (open full item for complete abstract)

MDES, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Design

Some of the products provided a discontented experience for users. Some of the user experience design model can help designers to redesign the product from designer perspective. In order to improve a better experience for users, designers should more focus on the user's perspective and try to figure out the problems in product. The cases studies presented in this paper describe one examples which is about how to adopt hassenzahl model into product design process to improve the user experience.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2014, Judith Herb College of Education

The aim of this study was to allow both college instructors and students an opportunity to give their perspectives on distance learning in the college mathematics classroom. Participants included an eclectic group of college students and instructors with varying years or experience and differing skill sets. Surveys were implemented to gain insight on participants' views on distance learning, while interviews were secondarily implemented to gain deeper understanding. Gaining access to participants was difficult, but ultimately 82 instructors and 143 college students were surveyed using SurveyMonkey®. Thirteen instructors and 14 students were then interviewed, using several different methods including: face-to-face, Skype, telephone, and email. Analysis of the surveys was used to determine both the necessity of implementing the interviews and the nature of the questions involved in the interviewing process. Both the surveys and interviews aided in finding that while both instructors and students believe distance learning will have a large presence in the future, they perceive there to be issues relating to integrity and communication. Concerns about methods which should be implemented to ensure students are honest and trustworthy while taking a course without parameters in place to ensure this is happening was a concern. In addition, both instructors and students were uneasy about communication in online classes. Instructors stressed the importance of the motivation of college students, while students were concerned about gaining deep understanding of content. Additional research in areas regarding integrity, communication, motivation, and deep understanding are encouraged, as these perspectives were most prominent in this research.

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2013, Educational Leadership

This study was designed to identify factors that contribute to undergraduate students' global perspective development. Global perspective is defined as a viewpoint that the world is an interdependent complex system and interconnected multi-reality whereby certain values, attitudes, knowledge, experiences and skills are demonstrated through cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions in an international, intercultural or global environment. This study utilized Larry Braskamp's Global Perspective Inventory (GPI) instrument and surveyed 1,637 students from regional campuses, school of business, and study abroad subgroups of a Midwest university. This dissertation included the much needed study of non-traditional students' global perspective development from regional campuses. GPI was informed by the holistic development theory in cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dimensions by Kegan (1994), King and Baxter Magolda (2005). Accordingly, students' global perspectives were evaluated through the six subscales of Knowing, Knowledge, Identity, Affect, Social Responsibility, and Social Interaction. Hierarchical multiple regression models were utilized in this research after validity and reliability tests. The findings were that students' global perspectives were strongly related with their curriculum, co-curriculum, and sense of community factors, but were not related to most social location and academic factors, such as parents' education and GPA. One surprising finding was that students' global perspectives were not related to their study abroad participation for the all-university dataset as well as business and regional campus subgroups. When using GPI, five of its six subscales (Knowledge, Identity, Affect, Social Responsibility, and Social Interaction) are recommended together with the Global Citizenship subscale. Implications for higher education leaders include cultivating an environment that focuses on quality and aims for long-term eff (open full item for complete abstract)

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Education : Criminal Justice

In attempting to explain male and female delinquency, theorists have taken two distinct approaches. In the first approach, theories that purport to be general have been used. In these theories, the same explanatory concepts are utilized to explain both male and female delinquency. In the second approach, a gendered explanation is used in which different variables are thought to be relevant in explaining male and female delinquency. This disagreement has spurred the development of the generality-specificity debate that centers on the question of whether general or gender-specific theories should be developed and applied to delinquency. In response to this debate, empirical examinations have been carried out to examine if traditional criminological theories can explain both gender's delinquency participation. In addition, feminist researchers have also examined whether females' unique experiences are related to engaging in delinquency. What this body of research has not done, however, is examined the etiology of delinquency across theoretical perspectives. As such, the current study addresses the generality-specificity debate by including variables from the feminist perspective, traditional criminological theory, and the life-course perspective. To meet this objective, data on 3,419 youths from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) was used. Findings from the first stage of analysis revealed that males and females do differ in their levels of involvement in overall delinquency, nonviolent delinquency, and violent delinquency. Results from the multivariate analysis showed that there are some similarities in the predictors of male and female delinquency and substance use. For example, delinquent peers, victimization, and prior delinquent and substance abuse involvement were relatively robust predictors for both males and females. Despite these similarities, differences in the predictors across gender were discovered. For females' delinquency (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Psychology

Causal Uncertainty (CU; Weary & Edwards, 1996) is an aversive motivational state associated with beliefs that one is uncertain about the causes of events. Some people experience CU more often than others and develop chronically-accessible CU beliefs that are resistant to change over time (Weary & Edwards, 1994). In three studies, I examined how memories of uncertain events differed as a function of CU, and how these differences could contribute to the maintenance of CU beliefs over time. I predicted that higher levels of CU would be associated with greater focus on the details of causal events, and hence, inhibit individuals from “working through” past uncertain memories. In Study 1, participants high in CU showed evidence for reliving past uncertain events by recalling them more from the 1st person visual perspective. Study 2 used additional measures of memory perspective to demonstrate greater immersion by high CU individuals when recalling uncertain events. Study 3 directly manipulated whether participants focused on the concrete details or the more abstract meaning of an uncertain event. Findings demonstrated that focusing on the meaning of the event increased feelings of uncertainty, indicative of the initial stages of “working through” a past negative event. Results are discussed in terms of extensions to work on expressive writing, memory perspective, as well as the causal uncertainty model.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Psychology

Visual images can depict the same action or event from multiple points of view. Images from a first-person perspective depict events as seen through the actors' own eyes, whereas images from a third-person perspective depict events through the eyes of an observer who is watching an action take place. This dissertation examines how varying this aspect of images affects level of abstraction, which then leads to different interpretations of the same event. Four experiments tested whether visual perspective is related to thinking abstractly or concretely about actions. Across these studies, actions depicted in third-person images were described abstractly more often than were first-person images, and actions described abstractly were more often paired with third-person depictions of those actions. Two additional experiments tested whether point of view in visual images causes one to adopt either an abstract or a concrete mindset. In these studies, people who had been briefly exposed to third-person images were more likely to describe unrelated actions abstractly and to think that abstract descriptions fit Aesop's fables than people exposed to first-person images. These findings suggest that third-person images are more strongly associated with adopting an abstract processing style. Together, these studies attest to the significance of visual perspective in images and highlight the broader role of perspective in human cognition.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1976, Graduate School

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Sociology

Previous studies have extensively examined women's fertility intentions and contraceptive use, yet research on men's intentions, especially among those in emerging adulthood, remains fairly limited. This study aims to advance our understanding of the relationship between men's fertility intentions and condom use among heterosexual, sexually active young adult males aged 18-29-year-old who are not in coresidential partnerships, using data from the 2015-2019 National Survey of Family Growth. Guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior and the life course perspective, I explore two central questions. First, I investigate the association between fertility intentions and condom use when accounting for sociodemographic indicators. I find that men not intending to have children in the next two years have a higher likelihood of condom use compared to using no method. However, fertility intentions did not significantly distinguish between the use of female-based methods and condoms. Second, I focus on the majority of young adult men who do not intend to have a child within the next two years and examine how sociodemographic characteristics, relationship dynamics, and sexual partnerships relate to their contraceptive use. Among these young adult men, I find that age, relationship status, race, school enrollment, and number of sexual partnerships emerged as significant correlates of contraceptive method choice. By investigating emerging adult men's contraceptive behaviors and fertility intentions, this study offers new perspectives on how emerging adult men navigate pregnancy timing and sexual health.

BA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This thesis project explores the history of human trafficking through credible research and the use of primary and secondary sources in an interactive, website and podcast format. The focus is limited to the twentieth century (1900s) primarily within the United States, with discussions of international legislation. The website contains multimedia and four main sections of content to emphasize the importance and relevance of digital history and interactive research.​ Human trafficking has existed in many forms throughout history as slavery, human bondage, sexual exploitation, etc. The 20th-century issue facing millions today has only been recently studied and documented, but much work remains to be done. Reviewing U.S. and international legal documentation of human trafficking through primary sources and previous definitions is helpful but not sufficient enough to properly trace the history of human trafficking and its societal impact. The historical record of human trafficking is short under its current name but stems thousands of years through its previous aliases and related crimes. The absence of appropriate definition use and clear understanding of the issue has previously contributed to a need for additional human trafficking research and study. Therefore, without definitive knowledge of its history within the twentieth century, particularly in the United States, professionals and the general public alike will face obstacles of foundational knowledge and competency when studying and combating human trafficking as a human right and social and criminal issue in the present.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Master of Landscape Architecture, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Information Technology

Over the past ten years, cyberbullying has become a prevalent issue across various levels of education and society globally. This dissertation delves into the complex landscape of cyberbullying text detection. Through a thorough parametric analysis, it explores the intricacies of cyberbullying text detection research, presenting insights into potential solutions and strategies. A case study is conducted to investigate cultural variations and perceptions of offensiveness, particularly within Ghanaian culture, contributing to a deeper understanding of cyberbullying dynamics. The dissertation also explores strategies for prevention and fostering a safer online environment, along with examining cultural interpretations of technology features. Furthermore, this dissertation focuses on detecting cyberbullying in adversarial text content within social networking site, with a specific emphasis on identifying hate speech. Utilizing a deep learning-based approach with a correction algorithm, this dissertation yielded significant results. An LSTM model with a fixed epoch of 100 demonstrated remarkable performance, achieving high accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and AUC-ROC scores of 87.57%, 88.73%, 87.57%, 88.17%, and 91% respectively. The LSTM model's performance surpassed that of previous studies when compared. Additionally, the dissertation offers recommendations for defense strategies against adversarial attacks on AI-based models, providing valuable insights for future research endeavors.

Specialist in Education (Ed.S.), University of Dayton, 2024, School Psychology

Existing literature has underscored concerns regarding perspective-taking deficits in individuals with ASD, with limited success in achieving long-term effects and skill generalization through evidence-based interventions. This study investigated the extent to which preliminary self-awareness and perspective-taking skills can be taught to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the generalizability of these skills. The research design was a single-subject approach, specifically a multiple-baseline across behaviors design. The dependent variable, self-awareness, was quantified through the measurement of verbal behaviors, including specific, reciprocal, and correct verbal responses to instructional questions. The independent variable was the teaching intervention, which involved stimulus prompting, prompt fading, and positive reinforcement. This study sought to contribute to the research on teaching preliminary self-awareness and perspective-taking skills to individuals with ASD and aims to bridge existing gaps in knowledge and improve intervention strategies for this population, ultimately enhancing the quality of life for individuals with ASD and their families. The implications for this study are also discussed.

Doctor of Education, Ashland University, 2024, College of Education

This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of induction programs from the perspectives of new teachers in urban and suburban school districts. The research uses a phenomenological qualitative research design. The theoretical frameworks for this research are the Motivation Theory and Self-Efficacy Theory. There are eight participants, four from urban schools and four from suburban schools. The study focuses on understanding how new teachers' perceptions of their induction programs influence their decisions to stay in the teaching profession. Data collection involves qualitative research methods, specifically semi-structured interviews, designed to capture participant accounts and insights. The Thematic analysis of the data revealed four key themes: Mentorship and Support, Work-Life Balance, Professional Development, and Institutional Support. These themes highlight the complexities of new teachers' experiences and shed light on the effectiveness of induction programs in different school environments. The research findings revealed significant implications for shaping educational policies and practices in teacher induction programs. Policymakers are encouraged to use this knowledge to make evidence-based induction initiatives. The study emphasizes the need for a positive school culture that prioritizes personalized support for mentors, collaboration, open communication, and mutual respect among all members of the educational community. Adding these insights into policy frameworks can enhance the overall education system and reduce teacher turnover in urban and suburban school districts.