Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2017, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology PhD

D. G. Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, and Duncan (1998) demonstrated the first use of the channeling hypothesis to show how the explicit personality trait of extraversion channeled one's implicit achievement and affiliation personality to predict important life outcomes. Since then, various implicit and explicit measures of personality have been combined, but moderation analyses have predominantly been the “mechanism of operation” to demonstrate the channeling hypothesis (Bing, LeBreton, Davison, Migetz, & James, 2007, p. 147). The current study had two goals. The first goal was to use implicit and explicit measures of aggression to predict performance of 325 men and women from the United Sates Military Academy in a mandatory boxing course. The second goal was to determine whether or not other statistical methodologies could be established as the mechanism of operation for the channeling hypothesis. Using path analyses of structural equations models, we found that explicit aggression channels implicit aggression to predict boxing performance, but not all facets of explicit aggression were effective channels of implicit aggression. The moderation analysis was the only statistical methodology established as a mechanism of operation for the channeling hypothesis. We found larger effect sizes than are typically found in high-stakes, maximum-performance, or strong situations.

Committee: David LaHuis Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Daniel Smith Ph.D. (Committee Member); Gary Burns Ph.D. (Committee Member); Nathan Bowling Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Personality; Personality Psychology; Psychological Tests; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Ohio State University Nutrition

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder which affects up to 10% of children in the United States, with prevalence rates markedly increasing over the last 2 decades. This population of children is at increased risk of poor academic, social, and long-term health outcomes compared to children with typical development, creating an urgent public health need to understand risk factors contributing to this disorder. The etiology of ADHD is multi-factorial with a significant genetic and environmental contribution. While nutrition is recognized as an important modifiable environmental risk factor for various chronic diseases, it also plays a contributing role in neurodevelopmental disorders, though this relationship is poorly understood. The existing literature suggests that ADHD is associated with mineral deficiencies and increased oxidative stress (OS), both of which may be mediated by nutrition related factors including dietary deficiencies or altered nutrient or energy metabolism. Our lab previously completed a clinical trial evaluating the efficacy of a complete multivitamin/mineral supplement as a treatment modality for children with ADHD and emotional dysregulation, the Micronutrients for ADHD in Youth Study (MADDY). This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial (RCT) enrolled 135 children aged 6-12 years at 3 sites in the U.S. and Canada. The primary outcome demonstrated that 3x as many children on the active multinutrient showed significant behavioral improvements as compared to placebo. However, identifying which subset of children benefited most from this treatment modality and mechanisms of action are unanswered questions that may provide critical insight regarding the pathophysiology of ADHD. Therefore, the objective of this dissertation was to elucidate biomarkers of physiological changes that occurred in response to 8-weeks of multinutrient supplementation in children with ADHD, focusing on the nutr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Irene Hatsu (Advisor); James Odei (Committee Member); Olorunfemi Adetona (Committee Member); Ouliana Ziouzenkova (Committee Member) Subjects: Nutrition

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Psychology

Self-control—the prioritization of valued global goals over immediate local rewards—is typically conceptualized and studied as isolated decisions. Goal pursuit, however, generally requires people to make repeated self-control decisions across contexts. This dissertation adopts a higher-order, strategic level of analysis of self-control and explore, for the first time, people's preferences for abstinence (a pattern of choices in which one never indulges) versus moderation (a pattern of choices in which one indulges when doing so does not harm one's goals or even helps promote the pursuit of those goals). To understand when and why people may opt for one over the other, the present work explores one psychological feature that may support these strategy preferences: the representation of self-control conflicts as inherent (i.e., choice options are mutually contradictory) versus situational (i.e., choice options compete for limited resources). Eight studies document that people associate inherent and situational conflict representations with abstinence and moderation, respectively. By documenting that strategy preferences may differ as a function of conflict representations, this work questions the assumption of abstinence as the primary indicator of self-control success, raises methodological and conceptual questions about how best to assess these strategy preferences, and calls for greater understanding of self-control as a recurrent decision-making process.

Committee: Kentaro Fujita (Advisor); Lisa Libby (Advisor); Dylan Wagner (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Psychology; Social Psychology

MS, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science

Online communities have long suffered from issues caused by a lack of accountability for participants exhibiting toxic behaviors. Difficulty with providing effective moderation, sufficiently dissuading would-be offenders, identifying problem users, and mitigating toxic activity in real-time has led to an unwelcoming environment for users. It's difficult to effectively police communication networks to provide safe environment's when participants are both anonymous and cannot be sufficiently identified as problematic. Our study employs temporal multivariate data mining and pattern analysis, and natural language processing techniques to examine organic conversations across a large collection of online gaming communities' messages. By analyzing instances of toxic behavior, arguments, and profane conversation, our objective is to identify the distinct features that characterize toxicity in digital environments. Our study analyzed conversational data extracted from four video game focused Discord communities. The dataset encompasses a rich collection of 685,432 public messages. Using the Perspective API, messages were classified against six metrics relating to toxicity. To elucidate the temporal dynamics and complex patterns of these interactions, we employed Temporal Multidimensional Scaling and utilized a Shannon Entropy Visualization method. Additionally, manual review was performed on a subset of 140,000 comments' worth of toxic events. We then leveraged BERTopic for cluster analysis to deduce related thematic concerns. For a nuanced representation of these themes, we customized the topic modeling using OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo language model, enriching our understanding of the contextual underpinnings of toxicity in online gaming discourse. Our study found that toxic events occurred without warning and rapidly dissipated as the conversation went on. Toxicity is extremely rare relative to the general activity of the community and is largely contributed by eith (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ruoming Jin (Advisor) Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2024, Psychology

Introduction: This study aims to better understand the psychosocial mechanisms by which individuals who report subjective concerns about their memory (SCI) are at a higher risk for objective cognitive impairments (OCI) over time. It also aims to identify modifiable risk factors that may disrupt this progression. Aim 1 tests if symptoms of affective disorders mediate the relationship between SCI and OCI over time. Aim 2 tests if self-perceptions of aging moderate the relationship between SCI and symptoms of affective disorders over time. Aim 3 tests if self-perceptions of aging moderate the indirect effect of symptoms of affective disorders on the relationship between SCI and OCI over time. Method: Data was sourced from the Health and Retirement Study, a national longitudinal dataset, across 8 years. 4,002 adults, 65 and older, were included in the sample. The moderation, mediation, and moderated mediation analyses were conducted using a path model in Mplus (Version 8 Plus). Relevant covariates including demographic and health variables were controlled for. Results: Analyses confirmed that symptoms of affective disorders partially mediated the relationship between SCI and OCI. For individuals with negative self-perceptions of aging, the relationship between SCI and symptoms of affective disorders strengthened over time, while for individuals with positive self-perceptions of aging, the relationship ceased to exist. Finally, positive self-perceptions of aging weakened, while negative self-perceptions of aging strengthened the indirect effect of symptoms of affective disorders on the relationship between SCI and OCI. Conclusion: Results of the current study clarify the psychosocial mechanisms involved in the progression from SCI to OCI, and add support to literature identifying positive beliefs about aging and mental health as protective factors against cognitive impairment among older adults. This study implicates the need for more interdisciplinary research studying (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Katherine Abbott (Committee Co-Chair); Aaron Luebbe (Committee Co-Chair); Vaishali Raval (Committee Member); Angela Curl (Committee Member) Subjects: Aging; Clinical Psychology; Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Business: Business Administration

Essay 1: In addition to clinical efficacy, safety is another important outcome to assess in randomized controlled trials. It focuses on the occurrence of adverse events, such as stroke, deaths, and other rare events. Because of the low or very low rates of observed adverse events, meta-analysis is often used to pool together evidence from dozens or even hundreds of similar clinical trials to strengthen inference. A well-known issue in rare-event meta-analysis is that part or even the majority of the available studies may observe zero events in both the treatment and control groups. The influence of these so-called double-zero studies has been researched in the literature, which nevertheless focuses on reaching a dichotomous conclusion -- whether or not double-zero studies should be included in the analysis. It has not been addressed when and how they contribute to inference, especially for the odds ratio. This work fills this gap using a comparative analysis of real and simulated data sets. We find that a double-zero study contributes to the odds ratio inference through its sample sizes in the two arms. When a double-zero study has an unequal allocation of patients in its two arms, it may contain non-ignorable information. Exclusion of these studies, if taking a significant proportion of the study cohort, may result in inflated type I error, deteriorated testing power, and increased estimation bias. Essay 2: Statistical methodology for categorical data analysis: quantifying and visualizing partial association between mixed variables. The outbreak of COVID-19 has lowered the well-being of college students across the world according to existing studies. However, these studies base their investigations solely on post-event surveys, and very few conducted the same surveys before the COVID-19 outbreak. Instead, college students were asked to recall their pre-COVID situations, which may likely result in recall bias and focusing illusion. To enable a counterfactual (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dungang Liu Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nanhua Zhang Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yan Yu Ph.D. (Committee Member); Rashmi Adaval Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Honors Theses, Ohio Dominican University, 2023, Honors Theses

Algorithms are used by social media platforms to gather information on users to better suggest updated content to maximize the time spent on their online platforms. The information gathered from the users (browsing history, search history, engaged posts, engaged channels, etc.) is analyzed by these algorithms and used to predict what content and channels to best offer the users for further engagement. Information such as liking patterns, following tendencies, content engagement behavior and more are fed to these algorithms to personalize the user's experience. The goal of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of the algorithms' ability to profile and induce users, in this case employed by Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube by tracking several variables, including interaction time and interaction rates with posts, channels, likes, and follows. The results of this study show the performance of each platform algorithm over weeks of observation and how they stack in terms of engagement effectiveness.

Committee: Alae Loukili (Advisor); Kristall Day (Other); Kenneth Fah (Other) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2023, Computer Science

Obtaining accurate inferences from deep neural networks is difficult when models are trained on instances with conflicting labels. Algorithmic recognition of online hate speech illustrates this. No human annotator is perfectly reliable, so multiple annotators evaluate and label online posts in a corpus. Labeling scheme limitations, differences in annotators' beliefs, and limits to annotators' honesty and carefulness cause some labels to disagree. Consequently, decisive and accurate inferences become less likely. Some practical applications such as social research can tolerate some indecisiveness. However, an online platform using an indecisive classifier for automated content moderation could create more problems than it solves. Disagreements can be addressed in training by using the label a majority of annotators assigned (majority vote), training only with unanimously annotated cases (clean filtering), and representing training labels as probabilities (soft labeling). This study shows clean filtering occasionally outperforming majority voting, and soft labeling outperforming both.

Committee: Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan Ph.D. (Advisor); Shu Schiller Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Raymer Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2023, Psychology, Clinical

A lack of empathy has historically been associated with the psychopathy construct, both in clinical descriptions, and theoretical conceptualizations. One factor to consider when attempting to understand the association between psychopathy and empathy is gender. Engel et al. (2023) examined gender as a moderator of the relationship between the dimensions of the triarchic model of psychopathy (i.e., boldness, meanness, and disinhibition; Patrick et al., 2010) and both cognitive and affective empathy. They found that gender moderated the relationship between meanness and empathetic concern, a facet of affective empathy, such that women high in meanness exhibited stronger deficits in affective empathy than men high in meanness. The current study utilized data from 282 college students to understand the results of Engel et al. (2023). A double moderated mediation model was tested to better understand why, and under what circumstances, gender moderated the relationship between certain dimensions of psychopathy (i.e., meanness, and possibly disinhibition) and affective empathy. Based on theory linking alexithymia to empathy deficits among those with various forms of psychopathology (Valdespino et al., 2017) and research demonstrating a positive relationship between psychopathy and alexithymia (Lander et al., 2012; Ridings & Lutz-Zois, 2014) and a negative relationship between alexithymia and empathy (Jonason & Kruse, 2013), it was expected that alexithymia would mediate the relationship between both meanness and disinhibition and affective empathy. Further, it was expected that the path from meanness or disinhibition to alexithymia would be moderated by gender such that women show stronger positive relationships between both two dimensions of psychopathy and alexithymia. Lastly, based on the findings of Brown et al. (2018), this gender moderation effect was expected to be stronger for women who have experienced invalidating childhood environments. While the results of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Catherine Zois Ph.D. (Advisor); Jackson Goodnight Ph.D. (Committee Member); Julie Walsh-Messinger Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Educational Studies

As mobile learning (m-learning) becomes increasingly prevalent in education, it is recognized for its potential to enhance the overall quality of teaching and learning. Despite the many benefits, m-learning apps often experience low retention rates, which directly impede learners' benefit from using them and cause a waste of resources in app design, development, and maintenance. To investigate the critical factors influencing learners' acceptance of m-learning outside the classroom, this study introduced a novel model, the Mobile Learning Acceptance Determination (mLAD) Model, based on the Technology Acceptance Model and the updated DeLone and McLean Information System Success Model. Through the mLAD model, the study identified the critical app quality factors that influence learners' acceptance of m-learning. The moderating effects of the type of m-learning apps on learners' acceptance of m-learning were also revealed. An online questionnaire named the m-Learning Acceptance Questionnaire (mLAQ) was developed and disseminated through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of seven hundred forty-seven adult learners in the U.S. participated in the study. The descriptive statistical results of the examined factors revealed that m-learning apps available in the market demonstrate high mobility and content quality. Still, their interactivity and service quality could be improved. Furthermore, the results of the structural equation modeling analysis indicated that learners' two beliefs, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use, are the two essential determinants of learners' intention to use m-learning apps outside the classroom. Quality factors, such as content quality, interface design, mobility, and service quality, are the antecedents of learners' m-learning acceptance, given that they significantly and directly influence perceived usefulness and ease of use and indirectly impact learners' intention to use m-learning apps through learners' two beliefs. Through (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ana-Paula Correia (Advisor); Minjung Kim (Committee Member); Richard J Voithofer (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Software; Educational Technology; Information Systems; Information Technology; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Psychology

Researchers interested in understanding causal relationships must not only test if X causes Y, but how and/or when X causes Y. Mediation analysis is a tool that allows researchers to identify the mechanism(s) by which one variable causes another, whereas moderation analysis allows researchers to detect when one variable's effect is heterogenous across levels of another variable (or multiple variables). Although these analyses lead to a deeper understanding of an observed relationship, they are still often too simplistic in isolation to properly model real-world effects. Combining mediation and moderation into a single analysis allows one to study conditional indirect effects—that is, when an indirect effect of X on Y is variable across the levels of a moderator. Methodological researchers have paid much attention on how to test for conditional indirect effects. However, considerably less work has been devoted to evaluating the performance of these proposed methods or interpreting the results of these tests. A review of the simulation studies that have been done reveals that current testing methods have relatively poor performance except for the most optimistic combinations of effect and sample size. Despite this, many substantive researchers continue to use these methods and rely on them for dichotomous decisions about and interpretations of such effects. In this dissertation, I aim to clarify the best way(s) for researchers to specify, test, and interpret conditional indirect effects. In Chapter 1, I introduce the concepts of mediation, moderation, and conditional indirect effects and conduct a literature review to learn how methodological and substantive researchers think about and apply conditional indirect effects. In Chapter 2, I introduce the math underlying mediation, moderation, and conditional indirect effects and step through substantive examples of each. I also introduce a graphical presentation of effect size to aid in the interpretation of conditi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Duane Wegener (Committee Member); Jolynn Pek (Advisor); Mike Dekay (Committee Member) Subjects: Quantitative Psychology

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Leadership Studies, Xavier University, 2022, Leadership Studies and Human Resource Development

The purpose of this experimental, cross-sectional study was to assess whether leaders' gender may have a differential effect on observers' causal attributions for leaders' display of vulnerable emotions. This study also examined whether leader gender and causal attributions interacted in determining observers' perceptions of leaders' competence and appropriateness following leader displays of vulnerable emotions. Differential analysis of leader gender and emotion was conducted using two-way ANOVA. Main effects for both gender and emotion were reported for 1) internal and external causality, 2) competence and 3) appropriateness, as well as any resulting interactions. The Montoya and Hayes (2017) method was utilized for testing for mediation. A within-subjects ANOVA comparing ratings of causality across all three emotional conditions determined whether evidence supported the moderation effect. Results of these analyses found no significant difference between observers' attributions of causality for female versus male leaders on any of the emotions tested. There was a significant difference between observer ratings of appropriateness for male and female leaders after an exhibition of humor such that the male leader was rated as more appropriate than the female leader, but there was no significant difference in the perceived appropriateness of male and female leader's expression of sorrow or anger. Male leaders were rated as less competent than the female leaders following the expression of sorrow. No significant differences were found between male and female leaders expressing anger or humor. The data did not support causal attribution as a mediating variable between leader displays of emotion and observer ratings of competence, when comparing ratings of appropriateness after observing leaders displaying anger and humor or anger and sorrow. There was, however, support for causal attribution as a mediating variable when comparing ratings of appropriateness after observ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Tobergte Ed.D. (Committee Member); Gail F. Latta Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Education; Educational Leadership; Educational Psychology; Gender; Gender Studies

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2022, College of Education and Human Services

Internalized racism, also referred to as appropriated racial oppression, refers to the phenomenon of people of color adopting negative racist messages about their worth and abilities. The internalization of racism by members of the targeted group results in an experience of self-degradation and self-alienation and the assumption of one's inferiority, which is directly related to issues of self-esteem, self-confidence, shame, depression, and anxiety. This study used structural regression with moderation and mediation to explore the possibility of internalized racism as a mediating variable and black identity and perceived social support as possible moderators. A sample of 639 participants (MAge = 35.29, SDAge = 10.09) who identified as Black and/or African American were included in the study. The findings indicated that internalized racism partially mediated the relationship between racial microaggressions and depression and anxiety, where approximately 50 percent of the relationships were explained by internalized racism. Additionally, the findings indicated that centrality and private regard aspects of Black identity weakened the relationship between racial microaggressions and depression and anxiety. Finally, the findings indicated that social support weakens the relationship between racial microaggressions and depression and anxiety.

Committee: Julia Phillips Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Adam Voight Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Jeffrey Snyder Ph.D. (Committee Member); Graham Stead Ph.D. (Committee Member); Tawanda Greer-Medley Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Counseling Psychology; Psychology

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2022, Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology MS

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) costs U.S. organizations billions annually (e.g., Bennett & Robinson, 2000). Any behavior that goes against the goals of an organization and is intended to harm either the organization or its members can fit the definition of CWB. To properly address these problems an accurate understanding of CWB and its' determinants is necessary. Employee perceptions of fairness (organizational justice) is linked to CWB because employees reciprocate unfair treatment with CWB (e.g., Shaw et al., 2003), and the personality traits honesty-humility and self-control are also strong determinants of CWB because high levels of these traits will suppress the urge to act counterproductively (Lee et al., 2019; Marcus & Schuler, 2004). Moreover, CWB is caused by characteristics of the situation interacting with those of the individual (e.g., Eschleman et al., 2014), but little is known about how personality is related to justice in organizations. There are only a handful of other studies (e.g., Colquitt et al., 2006; Scott & Colquitt, 2007) that have tested for a person x organizational justice effect on CWB. Furthermore, this study uses an experimental design to optimally detect causation attributable to the hypotheses. The results of this study support the idea that high honesty-humility-humility leads to attentiveness to fairness and to the social exchange closely related to organizational justice, but that neither honesty-humility nor self-control suppress (moderate) the urge to retaliate against perceptions of injustice in terms of CWB.

Committee: Nathan A. Bowling Ph.D. (Advisor); Ion Juvina Ph.D. (Committee Member); Corey E. Miller Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2022, Economics

This paper examines the 1970s and 1980s deregulation of interstate banking restriction as a possible cause for the Great Moderation. Characterized by its abrupt drop in volatility at the national level, I disaggregate the Moderation and recognize the importance of explaining the role of interstate business cycle correlations in the reduction of aggregate volatility. Using empirical methods, I demonstrate two items: a series of disaggregated structural breaks to the volatility of state business cycles occurring before the U.S. aggregate, and suggestive evidence supporting the theory that an integrated banking system can reduce volatility by allowing for state and regional shocks to be smoothed across a more interconnected national economy. I establish the former by use of a cumulative sum of squared residuals test, which is common in the literature of the Great Moderation. Furthermore, I establish the latter by implementing a more novel Synthetic Difference-in-Differences approach.

Committee: Jonathan Wolff (Committee Chair); David Lindequist (Committee Member); Nam Vu (Committee Member) Subjects: Banking; Economics

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

This study has three primary objectives. First to provide insight into possibilities for moderation/mediation analysis in education research by discussing analytical methods based on the counterfactual and developed in other disciplines. Second is to highlight specific issues related to mediation and the estimation of effects when the outcome is dichotomous. The final objective is to apply counterfactual-based analytical methods to two questions pertaining to student success in community college mathematics, using a dataset spanning twenty years of student transcript information. This study will estimate moderated and mediated effects, use a generalized linear model approach to calculate odds and risk ratios, and incorporate a measure of possible confounding known as the E-value in the investigation of two research questions pertaining to student success in community college mathematics. Prior grades were the most important predictor of success, both in a second sequential mathematics course and for credential completion. While a small association was found between timing of first math class and credential completion, there is no evidence that timing has a causal effect. Policies hoping to enhance student success should focus on effective advising rather than specifying either the timing between sequential math courses or on the timing of the first math class. Researchers using logistic regression should estimate risk ratios instead when an outcome is not rare. Research using regression models should include sensitivity analyses as a standard practice.

Committee: Aryn Karpinski (Advisor); Stephen Brown (Committee Member); Anthony Vander Horst (Committee Member) Subjects: Mathematics Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Education and Human Services

Work volition as it relates to perceived career barriers for marginalized populations has become a growing area of research in the field of vocational psychology (Blustein, 2004, 2013). Such research through the psychology of working framework (PWF) has focused on highlighting the strengths and challenges of career-development variables for marginalized groups, and identifying coping variables to aid in the development of an individual's working needs. Two constructs that have been supported throughout PWF research, work volition and perceived career barriers, focus on detailing the negative impacts of ethnic and gender discrimination on career development (Duffy et al., 2016; Gee, 2002; Joireman & Stratham, 2005; Yoo & Lee, 2005). In response to Duffy's (2005) call for further inquiry regarding career-development in relation to religious variables, this investigation explored the contextual factor that religious community support has within the Orthodox Jewish community on their relationship with work. The study sampled 252 Orthodox Jewish people over the age of 18, primarily from the greater Cleveland area. Respondents completed online survey questionnaires distributed through SurveyMonkey.com. A mediated regression model analyzed the relationship between this group's reported perceptions of barrier and work volition, as mediated by religious social support. An additional moderation model analyzed the described mediated model to determine the extent gender has on the relationship with these factors. Results from the mediation regression indicated that there was a significant relationship found between variables (F(2, 249) = -9.56, p <.001). The moderation analysis revealed that there were no significant relationships found based on gender differences for any of the variables relationships: perceptions of barriers, religious social support and work volition.

Committee: Graham Stead (Committee Chair) Subjects: Counseling Psychology; Judaic Studies; Psychology; Vocational Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, City and Regional Planning

This dissertation presents a comprehensive analytical framework for examining urban green infrastructure and its urban planning implications. Comprised of four essays, this research investigates the concepts, measurement, modeling and implications of urban green spaces and vegetation (UGSV). Leveraging the increasing variety and precision of geospatial big data and techniques, this research characterizes the heterogeneity of UGSV in terms of physical form and functions to inform the effective environmental design of UGSV. The first and second essays present methods for the assessment of spatial patterns of UGSV and their socioeconomic accessibility using various green measures. Remote sensing, GIS and pattern recognition techniques are used to measure UGSV over large geographic areas with fine thematic resolution. The third and fourth essays deal with planning applications, focusing on the relationship between UGSV, sustainable mobility and microclimate moderation. The results imply that urban and suburban neighborhoods experience significant disparities in terms of socioenvironmental benefits provided by UGSV, and the assessment of how and where the inequity occurs varies with green measures and applications. UGSV relates closely to the long-term sustainability of active travel and thermal environment, while the benefits are likely to be spatially and socially limited to certain groups, requiring targeted planning interventions. This dissertation highlights the importance of a multidisciplinary understanding of `greenness' in urban areas, suggesting that divergent understandings in different fields should be integrated to formulate a coherent strategy for green infrastructure planning.

Committee: Jean-Michel Guldmann (Advisor); Gulsah Akar (Advisor); Desheng Liu (Committee Member) Subjects: Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Communication Studies (Communication)

In this dissertation, I illustrate how external rhetorics (social discourses and rhetorical stories) contribute to what Jean Nienkamp terms internal rhetorics, self-deliberative arguments that take place in the “parliament of the psyche,” and inform the symbolic action of communicative (dis)engagement. Conducting an iterative analysis of 32 respondent interview transcripts, I rhetorically examine the reported lived experiences of self-identified political moderates to uncover the most influential external rhetorics that contribute to persuasive thoughts and emotions and consequently shape decisions to communicatively (dis)engage in political conversations. Findings reveal that reported external rhetorics—critical discourses, rhetorical stories of incivility, absence of recognition, and complimentary descriptions—contribute to reactive thoughts and emotions of avoidance, excitement, and caution, while contributing to decisions to participate, remain silent, or evaluate the context before responding. Moreover, the self-deliberative process of political moderates reflects a desire for civil dialogue in both rhetorical identity representations and in dialogic and deliberative interactions. Implications further underscore the theoretical intersectionality of rhetoric and public dialogue and deliberation inquiry, offer methodological avenues for engaged rhetoricians, critically dissect civil dialogue's potentially oppressive privileges, and consider the transformative potentials of critical dialogue.

Committee: jw Smith (Committee Chair); Roger Aden (Committee Member); Laura Black (Committee Member); Theodore Hutchinson (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Education; Political Science; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2019, Marriage and Family Counseling/Therapy

The purpose of this quantitative research study was to examine the potential moderating role of boundaries between adolescents (N = 46) and their parent(s) in the families of African American adolescents who have experienced trauma, and the effect it had on the adolescent's self-esteem, through the lens of Structural Family Therapy (SFT). The 2014 wave of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - Children and Young Adults was used to conduct the study. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted examining the intersection of poverty, race, trauma, the individual and lifespan development of adolescents and their families and family systems theory. The direct effects of experiencing trauma upon the parent-adolescent relationship and the self-esteem of adolescents were examined using simple regression analysis. The moderating effect of the perception of boundaries in the parent-adolescent relationship was examined using a multiple regression analysis. The regression results were mostly statistically insignificant, except for the moderating effect of the parent-adolescent relationship. It was found that African American adolescents who reported being closer to their parents were protected from the expected results of experiencing trauma. Additional research should be conducted within the field of Marriage and Family Therapy with respect to the intersection of trauma, poverty, protective factors and African American adolescents and their families.

Committee: Karin Jordan PhD (Advisor); Heather Katafiasz PhD (Committee Member); David Tefteller PhD (Committee Member); Wondimu Ahmed PhD (Committee Member); John Queener PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; Behavioral Sciences; Black Studies; Counseling Education; Families and Family Life