In this qualitative case study, the implementation of a student-centered model of teaching, “Design Thinking, is explored to understand the difficulties learners experience when studying a foreign language in formal learning environments. This study suggests that excessive concentration on factors of grammar, translation, pronunciation, vocabulary, and lack of speech activity...
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a formidable international force operating and perpetuating religious, military, and violent agendas. In 2014, ISIS established a worldwide Caliphate governing religious authority across Middle Eastern territories. ISIS operations are grandiose and large scale, longevity and survival are predicated on recruitment. One...
Mary Collins composed the award-winning book American Idle in 2009 after her recovery from an awful bicycle accident. This bicycle accident inspired Mary Collins to take a trip of discovery. Mary Collins visited historical locations to see changes in peoples’ physical activity over time. Collins interviewed individuals whose professions varied...
The present research sought to investigate individual differences in the way individuals process intuitive risk judgments. The present investigation is centered on Fuzzy Trace Theory (Brainerd & Reyna, 1991), a developmental dual process theory of cognition which posits two ways in which individuals process information, gist and verbatim processing. 228...
On January 2, 2016 a militia occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and captured national attention. The militia vowed to occupy until certain demands were met, and among these demands was a call for less federal control of land. While the occupation lasted 41 days, the militia remained...
Across the U.S. social activism is on the upsurge, offering possibilities for a revolution against capitalism. However, these possibilities are potentially undermined by entrenched factionalism amongst the left. At root, such in-fighting is fostered by the creation of false dualistic frameworks on the transition out of capitalism and into the...
Humans have a desire for a connection among others, and they also have a desire for both giving and receiving affection, regardless of class, age, gender, cultural or religious backgrounds. There is a plethora of research on the health benefits for both giving and receiving affection in romantic and family...
Hostile sexism (HS) is an antagonistic attitude towards women; benevolent sexism (BS) is a positive attitude towards women that is sexist in terms of viewing women in restricted roles. HS and BS held simultaneously is defined as ambivalent sexism (AS). Despite negative outcomes associated with AS, BS, and HS, women...
Following a history of tensions surrounding concubinage in medieval and early modern Spain, the Church sought greater control of religious life, particularly over the sacrament of marriage, via the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The Church exercised its strengthened restrictions and prosecuted these relationships with more frequency, as did civil...
The perception that there exists a lack of leadership can be found throughout history. Currently, according to Robert Putnam, there does appear to be a decline is social capital. This research examines the connection between business leadership style and effects on social capital. Most research on corporate social responsibility focuses...
According to the Center for Disease Control, 7-in-10 people use their smartphones while driving. This includes behaviors such as sending or reading text messages or emails, taking photos, or using social media. Despite its prevalence amongst drivers, using one’s phone while driving is considered one of the worst types of...
The study of motivation in second language acquisition has been a matter of interest for many years. The research objective of this project was to conduct a study that would determine the motivation level of students of Spanish 113 during Spring term 2016 at Oregon State University, and how their...
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is an interdisciplinary academic field that addresses gender, sexuality, and social justice issues. The research objective of this project was to examine the attitudes of self-identified male students in introductory Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for winter term 2016 at Oregon State University. This...
African American male students are a small portion of the student body at NCAA Division 1-A schools, but they make up a large portion of population of college football players. African American male college students are also one of the most at-risk student populations on campus in regards to retention....
Pornography remains one of the most controversial topics in our culture. Politicians, religious groups, and special interest organizations tend to focus on the ‘effects’ pornography has on those who consume it, and fear that pornography is a threat to public health. The general discourse surrounding pornography is that men produce...
The research conducted here originated with the question of what caused the massive build-up of nuclear arsenals, which included ever larger and more powerful bombs and delivery systems from them, in the United States and the Soviet Union, even though the consensus beforehand was that nuclear energy should be prohibited...
Videotapes of 90 dyadic interactions from Sommer and Bernieri (2015) were examined to assess verbal and nonverbal intimacy. Verbal intimacy (self-disclosing statements) and nonverbal intimacy behaviors (face gaze, distance, body orientation, and forward lean) were coded in every interaction. It was hypothesized that verbal intimacy (self-disclosure) would increase over time...
Recent scientific studies show that framing climate change as a health issue rather than an environmental issue were more persuasive with American audience members (Maibach et. al., 2010; Maibach et. al. 2014). Also in 2014, a survey on respiratory healthcare providers and found that a large percentage believed that climate...
This thesis examines the role of Erikson’s (1950) theory of generativity in facilitating knowledge transfer during the preretirement transition. McAdams and de St. Aubin’s (1992) updated framework for generativity is used as a theoretical foundation to explain motivation and actions during this period. Through the use of multiple-case studies, twenty-one...
Rural students have lagged behind non-rural students in matriculation into higher education, as well as in completion of four-year degrees. The current studies sought to investigate academic readiness, academic performance, and psychological differences between rural and non-rural students at Oregon State University. Rural and non-rural students were compared during spring...
The ability to accurately convey an intended nonverbal emotional message is critical for competent interpersonal functioning. To examine encoding ability, a replication of Noller’s (1980) study employing content standard methodology was conducted. This method is essentially an acting task where participants are given a hypothetical social scene within which they...
Previous research on age-related differences in attentional capture has indicated that older adults are more susceptible to distraction than younger adults and this has been interpreted as a reduced capacity to inhibit distraction in late life. Recently, however, there have been discrepancies in the literature about in what circumstances older...
This research examines the literary and philosophical dimensions of the African American Harlem Renaissance, beginning with the historical milieu of the early twentieth century. A social movement that became known as Uplift and the so-called Cabaret Movement emerged as important, competing literary and social ideologies within the Renaissance. W.E.B. Du...
The present research sought to investigate the relationship between an individual's word choice and their social well-being. In the present investigation, social well-being is a person's social health in relation to their social environment, social network, and ability to interact with others in a social context. This thesis was based...
This thesis describes how heteropatriarchal, settler colonialism impacted Indigenous communities' systems in power and control, particularly with the American Indian Movement during the 1960s-1970s. Further, the gendered divides this created within the American Indian Movement are described. The murder of Anna Mae Aquash is revisited as an act of gendered...
On February 9th, 2014 Michael Sam stated in an interview with ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that he is gay. Since he was drafted, Sam will become the first ever openly gay player in NFL history. The following study aims to explore ESPN's coverage of Michael Sam, with a goal of...
Bisexual females experience unique forms of discrimination, but are often overlooked in scholarship. Recent research focuses on various aspects of bisexuality, yet female bisexuality is largely overlooked. Many existing studies focus on the experiences of bisexuals, rather than on social constructions of the identity and the role communication plays in...
The present study examined involuntary attentional bias toward facial emotion expression. Particularly, the study examined two different attentional components for emotional processing, namely, orienting vs. disengagement. A cueing paradigm using two cue presentation times (250ms and 350ms) was used to determine if attention would be involuntarily captured by an irrelevant...
U.S. foreign policy during the period between World War II and the Vietnam War has been described as part of a “nation-‐building” or “liberal” grand strategy. This thesis contends that understanding U.S. efforts to influence the internal affairs of sovereign states through the spread of liberal values and institutions during...
The purpose of this study is to examine significant and persistent problems within the Salem-Keizer School District, particularly when comparing Douglas McKay High School to West Salem High School. Douglas McKay High School is one of the physically smallest schools in the district, with over 2000 students and has the...
One's ability to determine the cause and effect nature events is important for navigating within the social realm. However, the ability to determine these relationships is not always as clear. According to Weary and Edwards (1996) causal uncertainty (CU) is the result of an individual perceiving themselves as someone who...
The Syrian civil war generated waves of refugees who flow into neighboring countries. These refugees have been creating excess supply of labor in host countries. This study involves a series of interviews in which respondents shared their perceptions of their involvement in the labor market in Iraq. These interviews provide...
As a young adult, I have been able to witness first hand just how drastically social media is changing our culture and the way that we look at things. As social media continues to become more vastly used by its members who are in many different phases of life and...
In the contemporary United States, the process of "coming out of the closet," or public disclosure of one's non-normative sexual orientation or gender identity, is ongoing and performative. Particularly within the context of dominant contemporary U.S. society, popular media favors a hegemonic set of defining characteristics, which thereby forces the...
Several behavioral studies have suggested that rarity is critical for enabling irrelevant, salient objects to capture attention. We tested this hypothesis using the event-related potential (ERP) component, N2pc, thought to reflect attentional allocation. A cue display was followed by a target display in which participants identified the letter in a...
This thesis combines elements of forestry, interpersonal communication, and rhetoric to describe where residents of Coos Bay and North Bend Oregon obtain information about forests and forest uses, and how they view the credibility of that information. As a qualitative exploratory study, grounded theory methodology was used to develop theme...
Students who believe that their intelligence is able to grow over time (malleable/ growth mindset) perform better on measures of academic success than students who believe that intelligence is a fixed trait that cannot be changed (fixed mindset; Dweck, 2000). Previous research on the effectiveness of mindset interventions have demonstrated...
Negative attitudes towards people with disabilities persist in our society, limiting the inclusion of people with disabilities in a multitude of social roles. Despite existing research on the nature of these attitudes and interventions to improve them, people with disabilities continue to cite social barriers as some of their greatest...
Title IX's passage into law in 1972 set women’s sports on a course toward gender equity with men's sports at the scholastic and collegiate levels, leading to a definitive growth in women’s professional leagues, corresponding athlete salaries, and athletic marketing and promotional prospects. However, disparities currently exist in the availability...
The search for and discovery of early archaeological sites is an inherently geoarchaeological problem. Archaeological sites of late Pleistocene-age are known to be located in the Intermountain West, however, the record of these early sites remains limited to only a few examples. In the lower Salmon River canyon (LSRC), the...
In Nazi Germany, 1938, Der Stürmer publishing house, under the control of Julius Striecher, published Der Giftpilz or The Poisonous Mushroom; an anti-Semitic children's book. Disseminated in the thousands, Der Giftpilz became infamously known as a children's book so grotesque it could be, and in fact was, admitted as evidence...
Previous studies using an incidental learning paradigm have found that facial emotion enhances subsequent face recognition. The present study examined whether emotion enhances only memory for the specific emotional features, or whether it also enhances general memory of that person's identity. Prior to the study, we had 20 participants validate...
Scholars promote the ability of visual imagery to have a number of political campaigning benefits such as influencing opinions and attitudes and encouraging vibrant, striving democracy while improving the quality of public knowledge and opinion. However, previous research on this subject has failed to identify how presidential candidates display their...
Archaeological excavations of the Cooper's Ferry site in the Lower Salmon River Canyon, Idaho, have revealed a stratified record of cultural occupation, spanning the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the understanding of cultural adaptive strategies represented in the archaeological record...
Online fanfiction communities have received attention for providing spaces of creativity and individual empowerment. Yet as critics have sought to establish fanfiction as a worthy object of study, many have not grappled with the ways that fanfictions not only trouble, but also reinforce various discourses and ideas of gender and...
Sexual assault in the military is prevalent, underestimated, and sadly overlooked. This is largely due to the inherent patriarchy and hegemonic masculine ideologies that set rigid power boundaries in the military. The roles of powerful and powerless are indoctrinated into Servicemembers from the first moment of training, and are reified...
First Ladies have performed a variety of public and private roles, from presidential escort, hostess, and social advocate to policy maker and presidential advisor. The nature of the position has always been both traditional and gendered, greatly influencing each First Lady's performance. Due to the changing role of women in...
Despite policies implemented by the NCAA with the intention of increasing student-athlete academic success and persistence to graduation, student-athlete graduation rates still remain low, with only 65% of student-athletes receiving their college degree. Certain non- cognitive variables, including the availability of a strong support person, have been shown predict persistence...
Interweaving perspectives from both social cognitive psychology and Tibetan Buddhism, the present study examined common and differential effects of two styles of meditation: Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) and mindfulness meditation (MM). Psychological theories of construct accessibility postulate that cognitive constructs activated frequently are more readily available for processing stimuli. Researchers in...
This research examines the response from the National Rifle Association (NRA) to the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. Specifically, the research seeks to conclude whether the NRA engaged in propaganda, and if so, what the ethical implications of such use are. Using literature from...