The Influence of Gender on Decision-Making

Making the right decision is a very hard thing to do in certain circumstances. Today though this is very tough thing to do because people are always being influenced by the world around them. This thesis sets out to understand how sex shapes such influence patterns – both an individual's sex, and the sex of influential others. To do so, I conducted a survey experiment. Participants gave their opinions on a series of questions, and then there were experimental questions that randomly tested the participants ability to make individual decisions when faced with a gendered manipulation. Changing opinions is here conceived of as social influence. An analysis of the data revealed that there is connection between gendered influence and changing your decisions or beliefs, but because of a small sample size the statistical power of these findings is low.Undergraduate Research Scholarship from the Arts and Sciences Honors CommitteeNo embargoAcademic Major: Criminology and Criminal Justice Studie

From Novice to Expert...For the Motivated: an Exploratory Study of University Press Staff Adoption of E-readers

Books and journal articles are the most familiar forms of disseminating scholarly research, however, the move from "ink-on-paper" to a digital format presents small presses with difficulties. E-books, e-readers and digital publishing demand that presses transform their publishing model and rethink their business practices. Challenges are wide ranging and numerous; inadequate resources hinder press staff ability to develop the necessary skills to create eBooks while lack of experience with e-reading technology limits staff knowledge. With the barrier of device ownership removed, do publishing staff feel better prepared to create new services, develop their skills, and transform their practices? Librarians at Oregon State University Libraries & Press recognized that our press staff lacked personal experience with e-reading technology. We secured funding to distribute four different types of e-readers to the Press staff as part of a larger year-long study of e-reader adoption and use. This poster explores some of the study’s findings and discusses how small presses face challenges as they move into digital publishing. It also looks at some of the emotional and intellectual factors influencing adoption or rejection of e-reader technology by the Press staff, how their experience has changed their business and, their thoughts on the future of the book

The Possibilities are Measurable: Evaluating Innovation, Learning, and Strategic Thinking within Library Technology Units

Presentation was for the 7th International Evidence Based Library and Information Practice conference held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon July 15-18th, 2013.Objective: An essential contributor to library value is found within library systems, web services, and emerging technologies departments. Often these areas of library services are overlooked by traditional assessment measures. Assessing the impact of units engaged in library instruction, reference, and circulation are relatively well established. However, library technology departments, who provide the backbone upon which these other units rest, are significantly more difficult to gather appropriate evidence, metrics and measures of importance. Library technology departments provide essential services and expertise that certainly influence student learning, researcher productivity, and library innovation but documenting this impact remains a challenge. In order to provide a more complete picture of library impact and value, new and robust methods of assessing library technology departments must be developed and employed. Methods: This paper/presentation will explore how Oregon State University Libraries & Press has begun to incorporate more meaningful assessment measures and strategic thinking within its library technology department. In the Fall of 2012, the Emerging Technologies & Services department engaged in a one-week qualitative assessment activity designed to gather evidence of the impact the department have on other units within the library. Results: This starting point allowed the researchers to draw inferences about this department’s role in student learning and success. Each member of the technology team provided detailed reports on their activities during the week, outlining the type of activities performed, the library project to which it was attached, and the department impacted by their efforts. This data was further enhanced by interviews with team members that provided greater detail, leading to the discovery of under-realized connections between library technology departments and its stakeholders. Conclusions: The outcomes of this research project included developing a set of assessment measures that gathered better evidence concerning the value and impact library technology departments have on learning, library innovation, and strategic alignment of resources. While this is the first year of the assessment project, there are plans to map out correlations between enhanced IT infrastructure and student learning opportunities within the library.Keywords: library assessment, library emerging technology, evidence based librarianshi

Predicting infant outcome in families of employed and nonemployed mothers

Differences in infant outcome, predictor variables, and their relationships were explored as a function of maternal employment. Thirty 18-month-olds and their mothers were studied. Child intelligence, attachment security, and dependency were measured, as well as frequency of stressful events in the mother's life, quality of the parents' marital relationship, frequency of the mother's social contacts, and extent of the mother's emotional and parenting supports. Also included were the mother's ability to cope; satisfaction with emotional, parenting, and child care supports; and role satisfaction. For children of employed mothers, attachment and dependency were negatively correlated; securely attached children showed less dependency behavior. For employed mothers, satisfaction with child care and frequent social contacts predicted secure child attachment. Satisfaction with child care, role satisfaction, and ability to cope were strongly interrelated. For nonemployed mothers, maternal coping predicted attachment security, while frequent social contacts predicted greater child dependency. Predictors of child outcome were highly interrelated for nonemployed mothers, with satisfaction with emotional supports playing a pivotal role. These differences suggest that different models to predict infant outcome in employed and nonemployed mother families may be appropriate.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27040/1/0000028.pd

Neighborhood Influences on Perceived Social Support Among Parents: Findings from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods

Background: Social support is frequently linked to positive parenting behavior. Similarly, studies increasingly show a link between neighborhood residential environment and positive parenting behavior. However, less is known about how the residential environment influences parental social support. To address this gap, we examine the relationship between neighborhood concentrated disadvantage and collective efficacy and the level and change in parental caregiver perceptions of non-familial social support. Methodology/Principal Findings: The data for this study came from three data sources, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) Study's Longitudinal Cohort Survey of caregivers and their offspring, a Community Survey of adult residents in these same neighborhoods and the 1990 Census. Social support is measured at Wave 1 and Wave 3 and neighborhood characteristics are measured at Wave 1. Multilevel linear regression models are fit. The results show that neighborhood collective efficacy is a significant ($\beta$ = .04; SE = .02; p = .03), predictor of the positive change in perceived social support over a 7 year period, however, not of the level of social support, adjusting for key compositional variables and neighborhood concentrated disadvantage. In contrast concentrated neighborhood disadvantage is not a significant predictor of either the level or change in social support. Conclusion: Our finding suggests that neighborhood collective efficacy may be important for inducing the perception of support from friends in parental caregivers over time

Who Cares About Being Gentle? The Impact of Social Identity and the Gender of One’s Friends on Children’s Display of Same-Gender Favoritism

This research assessed children’s same-gender favoritism by examining whether children value traits descriptive of their own gender more than traits descriptive of the other gender. We also investigated whether children’s proportion of same-gender friends relates to their same-gender favoritism. Eighty-one third and fourth grade children from the Midwest and West Coast of the U.S. rated how well 19 personality traits describe boys and girls, and how important each trait is for their gender to possess. Results replicate and extend past trait assignment research by demonstrating that both genders valued same-gender traits significantly more than other-gender traits. Results also indicated that boys with many same-gender friends derogated feminine-stereotyped traits, which has implications for research on masculinity norms within male-dominated peer groups

Infants Autonomic Cardio-Respiratory Responses to Nurturing Stroking Touch Delivered by the Mother or the Father

The building of physiological self-regulation during bonding is a crucial developmental process based on early cardio-respiratory maturation. The mother’s role as a facilitator of this physiological maturation has been evidenced and recognized in many respects. Research in fathers, however, remains sparse which may be due to the belief that bonding is a physiological behavior reserved for a mother’s maternal instinct. In the current study we compared the impact of paternal and maternal nurturing stroking touch on infants’ physiological self-regulation in terms of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). We compared the impact of a 3-min stroking period (STROKING) with a pre-baseline (PRE-STROKING) and post-baseline (POST-STROKING) of 25 mothers and 25 fathers (unrelated to one another) on their infants, aged 4–16 weeks. We registered infant electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiration to calculate infant RR-interval (RRI), respiration rate (fR) and (respiratory corrected) RSA (RSAcorr). Based on video-recordings, we analyzed the stroking speed. Infants’ RSAcorr significantly increased during and after stroking, no matter whether touch was delivered by fathers or mothers. This effect was mediated by both heart rate (HR) and respiration. However, respiratory mediation occurred later when delivered by fathers than by mothers. Both mothers’ and fathers’ stroking speed occurred within the optimal stimulation range of c-tactile (CT) afferents, a particular class of cutaneous unmyelinated, low-threshold mechano-sensitive nerves hypothesized to be involved in inter-personal bonding. The discussion builds on the idea to mitigate fathers’ doubts about their paternal capabilities and proposes a research agenda regarding the further examination of the role of nurturing touch and its underlying mechanisms within the development of infants’ physiological self-regulation. Finally, the importance of respiratory measurements in infant physiological research is emphasized