College Sexual Assault, Career Adaptability, And Grit: A Moderation Analysis

Sexual assault rates are a rising concern, particularly on college campuses. The impacts of being a victim of sexual assault were well documented in the research and spread from academic decline to negative mental health outcomes to career path derailment. Career construction theory suggested a critical developmental time period for young adults where pieces of their environment, past experiences, and personal characteristics informed their career decisions. Career adaptability is a foundational piece of career construction theory that consists of psychosocial, internal resources developmentally related to how a person learns and advances in their career goals. Grit was identified in the research as a character trait studied with academic and career success and conceptually appeared to overlap with career adaptability. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between sexual assault victimization and career adaptability among college undergraduate students as well as what role grit might play in this relationship. This study analyzed the relationship between sexual assault victimization and career adaptability, and whether grit played a moderating role on that relationship. A sample of 292 college undergraduate students participated to address these questions. No significant findings were uncovered to support the potential impacts of sexual assault on career adaptability nor the moderating role of grit. An unexpected finding was discovered supporting a predictive relationship between grit and career adaptability. Theoretical, practical, and diversity implications were discussed as well as future research directions

Grit, Personality, and Job Performance: Exploring Nonlinear Relationships

Hiring employees suitable for specific jobs is a challenge facing organizations, as the cost of a poor hire is approximately 30% of that employee’s first-year earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Employers look to individual differences, such as cognitive ability and personality, to help match applicants with appropriate jobs, as they are supported by research evidence. However, some variance in job performance is explained by differing combinations of these variables, among others. Research in education and psychology have recently highlighted grit as a potentially strong predictor of success in non-work contexts. Grit was introduced by Angela Duckworth, who defined grit as a trait encompassing “passion and perseverance for long-term goals.” Grit is a trait often manifested in the face of adversity and can help individuals overcome challenges and achieve success by persevering despite difficulty. Critics of Duckworth and her colleagues’ research point to a lack of conceptual clarity against existing personality factors such as conscientiousness. The present study explores the overlap between the current grit model and existing models of personality. Prior to the main study, a group of subject-matter experts (SMEs) independently mapped the grit subscales from the shorter grit scale (Grit-S) onto the Five-Factor Model of personality at the facet level. Items from the IPIP NEO-PI personality facets (300-item version) rated by SMEs to closely align with grit were included in the main study, along with the Grit-S scale. Alternative measurement models for the grit construct (including subscales and higher-order factors) were assessed using items from the Grit-S as well as the IPIP. Results of confirmatory factor analyses guide the models of grit in subsequent analyses of the grit-performance relationship. Although there have been several published studies on the measurement of grit and how they construct relates to success, further research is needed to determine if the grit measures are sufficiently robust when used to predict individual and work-related performance. The purpose of this study was to fill in the gaps for measurement and understanding of grit’s relationship with job success. Specifically, the present study investigated the relationship between grit and performance to determine whether a nonlinear model is a better fit than the linear model currently described in the literature. The hypothesized relationships were tested using hierarchical multiple regression with a quadratic term to prove whether a curvilinear relationship exists. The results of this study indicated that there is, in fact, a first-order, two-factor grit model with first-order factors being passion and perseverance. Interestingly, mapping of personality facets to grit did not yield models with an acceptable fit. Using the first-order model with a satisfactory fit, a significant linear relationship was found between performance and passion and perseverance. There was not a meaningful non-linear relationship between passion and perseverance and performance, however. Although results were not what was expected, they advance the research on the measurement of the grit construct and its relationship with job performance and, ultimately, its usefulness in selection contexts. Research implications, limitations, and recommendations are presented in the discussion

The Design of Creative Crowdwork – From Tools for Empowerment to Platform Capitalism

The thesis investigates the methods used in the contemporary crowdsourcing of creative crowdwork and in particular the succession of conflicting ideas and concepts that led to the development of dedi- cated, profit-oriented, online platforms after 2005 for the outsourcing of cognitive tasks and creative labour to a large and unspecified group of people via open calls on the internet. It traces the historic trajectory of the notion of the crowd as well as the development of tech- nologies for online collaboration, with a focus on the accompanying narratives in the form of a dis- course analysis. One focus of the thesis is the clash between the narrative of the empowerment of the individual user through digital tools and the reinvention of the concept of the crowd as a way to refer to users of online platforms in their aggregate form. The thesis argues that the revivification of the notion of the crowd is indicative of a power shift that has diminished the agency of the individual user and empowered the commercial platform providers who, in turn, take unfair advantage of the crowdworker. The thesis examines the workings and the rhetoric of these platforms by comparing the way they address the masses today with historic notions of the crowd, formed by authors like Gustave Le Bon, Sigmund Freud and Elias Canetti. Today’s practice of crowdwork is also juxtaposed with older, arguably more humanist, visions of distributed online collaboration, collective intelligence, free soft- ware and commons-based peer production. The study is a history of ideas, taking some of the utopian concepts of early online history as a vantage point from which to view current and, at times, dystopian applications of crowdsourced creative labour online. The goal is to better understand the social mech- anisms employed by the platforms to motivate and control the crowds they gather, and to uncover the parameters that define their structure as well as the scope for their potential redesign. At its core, the thesis offers a comparison of Amazon Mechanical Turk (2005), the most prominent and infamous example for so-called microtasking or cognitive piecework, with the design of platforms for contest-based creative crowdwork, in particular with Jovoto (2007) and 99designs (2008). The crowdsourcing of design work is organised in decidedly differently ways to other forms of digital labour and the question is why should that be so? What does this tell us about changes in the practice and commissioning of design and what are its effects on design as a profession? However, the thesis is not just about the crowdsourcing of design work: it is also about the design of crowdsourcing as a system. It is about the ethics of these human-made, contingent social systems that are promoted as the future of work. The question underlying the entire thesis is: can crowdsourcing be designed in a way that is fair and sustainable to all stakeholders? The analysis is based on an extensive study of literature from Design Studies, Media and Cul- ture Studies, Business Studies and Human-Computer Interaction, combined with participant observa- tion within several crowdsourcing platforms for design and a series of interviews with different stake- holders

Beezy, a gamified project management tool

In today’s fast-paced business world, companies struggle to manage their projects effectively without suffering the negative effects of excessive workloads and deadline pressures. In order for teams to effectively coordinate their efforts and monitor their progress towards achieving their goals or objectives, project management is essential for any company. However, burnout is still a common problem among employees, which lowers efficiency, morale, and productivity. Businesses must come up with creative and innovative solutions to sustain employee motivation and engagement, while still maintaining their projects efficiently and successfully, as well as incentivizing team building, as it helps create a sense of unity and common purpose among team members. This university thesis embarks on the journey of designing Beezy, a gamified project management tool, following a methodology of one of the most famous authors in the field, Amy Jo Kim. Beezy’s design aims to transform the project management landscape by incorporating elements of gamification to help motivate and increase team collaboration, ultimately offering a fresh and engaging approach to project management. After setting the stage for the project by identifying the motivations that sparked this idea, as well as articulating the problem, the objectives for this project, and the project's scope, an in-depth study of the relevant topics is made. Located within the State of the Art, this study delves deeply into project management and gamification, providing the essential foundation to understand the project´s full potential and capabilities. Beezy is made up of three main components: a project management tool, an immersive social deduction game called HoneyRush!, and a friendly customizable pet companion, Beebo. These elements contribute to enhancing employee morale, fostering engagement, and increasing overall productivity and efficiency. Playtesting and validation plays a crucial role in ensuring Beezy´s usability and effectiveness. In the thesis’s final stages, playtesting and interviews offer valuable insights that helped validate the project’s viability. In summary, Beezy represents an innovative approach to bridging project management and gamification, with the intention of transforming workplace dynamics, enhancing team collaboration, and increasing job satisfaction. It embodies innovation and the future of work, assuring a shift toward more effective and engaging project management practice

Green Alley Network Plan

The Green Alley Network Plan seeks to realize the potential of Richmond’s public alleyways as opportunities for biodiverse shared streets acting as active transportation corridors, stormwater management systems, and public spaces that support high quality of life and community health. This project aims to be an expansion on Richmond’s Green Alley program, detailing tools, examples, recommendations, and steps to implementation. It is guided by the city’s visions of High-Quality Places, Equitable Transportation, a Diverse Economy, Inclusive Housing, and a Thriving Environment as expressed in the Richmond 300: A Guide for Growth Master Plan. Additionally, the region’s long-range transportation plan being developed by PlanRVA, ConnectRVA 2045, as well as the companion bicycle and pedestrian plan, is taken to account in this project and final document. This plan intends to help meet urgent challenges by utilizing natural processes in our stormwater and transportation infrastructure to support a healthier urban ecosystem

Conventions of the Commons: Technical Communication and Crowdsourced Digital Publishing

This project traces the digital publishing history of the audiobook archive LibriVox.org, examining how its volunteers manage, control, and negotiate procedures and policies for their ongoing collaborative work. Examples of public knowledge work like LibriVox illustrate the value of professional and technical communication in accessibly digitizing knowledge and culture for use now and in the future. I investigate and theorize how groups of diverse and transient volunteers create and engage with the tools and documentation they use to manage their crowdsourced audio digitization work. The example of LibriVox can help us better recognize and value the invitational care work embedded in the professional and instructional documents we create, circulate, and consume. As both researcher and participant with LibriVox, I interrogate conventions of crowdsourced digitization and sharing in the public domain, recover some of the technological and social history upon which LibriVox was built (and is still being built), and explore how LibriVox and its volunteers are preserving crucial modes of openness and access with regards to public culture. Crowdsourcing models of production are proliferating in professional, social, and scholarly contexts. Understanding how individuals contribute to such projects can help us understand the implications such models have for the future of collaborative work and distributed workplaces. As social production and digitization efforts become more supported across sectors, these models offer and allow for many unique collaborative learning opportunities. The complex, often transient, extra-institutional communities that emerge around the activities of socially sharing knowledge are valuable for what insights they may offer into the future of information access and the future of distributed work arrangements. I aim to extend what we know about technical communication in public, open, volunteer spaces. How we organize and preserve content—whether old, new, or re-imagined—matters to how we and others access and use that content, both now and in the future. LibriVox is an example of a digitally-based volunteer-run community of practice engaged in public, crowdsourced social production. With this project, I begin to document how the LibriVox’s initially ad hoc and somewhat chaotic processes have (and have not) congealed into a more stable, yet still idiosyncratic, protocol. I find LibriVox volunteers managing their ongoing work using documentation, instruction, and interactions that are marked by a generous, patient invitational rhetoric. For digital knowledge projects like LibriVox, the invitational and instructional roles of documentation become especially important for stewarding a transient, multicultural, digital community of practice. The LibriVox project’s clarity of purpose and open, welcoming processes demonstrate possibilities for pluralism and inclusiveness in terms of work, culture, and knowledge curation. Such a project makes a useful potential model for future collaborative, online media projects. The implications of this successful, sustainable, commons-based, digital publishing model may help prompt important, democratizing shifts in the future of multimodal and open scholarly publishing. Understanding the nuances of LibriVox practices will also help us to better prepare students to intervene effectively in other similarly distributed, ad hoc organizations and to face the shifting and uncertain futures of 21st-century work. Volunteers at LibriVox are digitizing and preserving certain types of available human culture in particular ways that afford near limitless access, re-distribution, and re-use. The ways LibriVox and other archives, digital curation projects, and public collections manage themselves make a difference for how (and perhaps whether) cultural knowledge is preserved, not only into the future, but for access now, across platforms and across user groups with varying abilities. I contend that investigating the example of LibriVox and what it means for how we conceptualize and make use of human culture and knowledge can help us in formulating and answering important questions about the lasting value of LibriVox and of other open knowledge projects

Gender, Risk, and Leadership

Daily human interactions are likely to bear the weight of society’s gendered expectations. Gender stereotypes (i.e., descriptive beliefs) manifested through such gendered expectations, garnered throughout history across cultures, define ideal male and female characteristics and dictate how exemplary men and women should behave. Gender roles are the sum of these stereotypes. Agentic (e.g., competitive, aggressive) characteristics are commonly considered typical male traits, whereas communal (e.g., warm, kind) characteristics are associated with the female. Without even consciously knowing, human minds learn how to view members of society based on these gendered traits, even though people usually have a mix of both agentic and communal characteristics regardless of their gender (e.g., Hyde, 2005; Larsen & Seidman, 1986). What happens when women do not comply with these deep-rooted gendered beliefs? The three essays comprising this doctoral dissertation explore women’s deviations from these shared expectations. Women are seen as defying societal expectations by acting agentic, such as taking risks and being in a top leadership position. Drawing upon behavioral economics, management, and applied psychology literature, this dissertation investigates women who do not fit into stereotypes

Geographic Citizen Science Design

Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to support citizen involvement is massive; every citizen has an opportunity to become a scientist and contribute to a scientific discipline, without having any professional qualifications. With geographic interfaces being the common approach to support collection, analysis and dissemination of data contributed by participants, ‘geographic citizen science’ is being approached from different angles. Geographic Citizen Science Design takes an anthropological and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stance to provide the theoretical and methodological foundations to support the design, development and evaluation of citizen science projects and their user-friendly applications. Through a careful selection of case studies in the urban and non-urban contexts of the Global North and South, the chapters provide insights into the design and interaction barriers, as well as on the lessons learned from the engagement of a diverse set of participants; for example, literate and non-literate people with a range of technical skills, and with different cultural backgrounds. Looking at the field through the lenses of specific case studies, the book captures the current state of the art in research and development of geographic citizen science and provides critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area

Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind

Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to support citizen involvement is massive; every citizen has an opportunity to become a scientist and contribute to a scientific discipline, without having any professional qualifications. With geographic interfaces being the common approach to support collection, analysis and dissemination of data contributed by participants, ‘geographic citizen science’ is being approached from different angles. Geographic Citizen Science Design takes an anthropological and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stance to provide the theoretical and methodological foundations to support the design, development and evaluation of citizen science projects and their user-friendly applications. Through a careful selection of case studies in the urban and non-urban contexts of the Global North and South, the chapters provide insights into the design and interaction barriers, as well as on the lessons learned from the engagement of a diverse set of participants; for example, literate and non-literate people with a range of technical skills, and with different cultural backgrounds. Looking at the field through the lenses of specific case studies, the book captures the current state of the art in research and development of geographic citizen science and provides critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area