ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
Research examining the long-term impacts of federal interventions under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act on correctional institutions has been scant. The result has been a failure to understand the sustainability of reforms aimed at protecting the civil rights of confined persons. This dissertation examined the long-term reforms at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections following a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice from 2004 to 2007. Interviews were conducted with current and former ADJC employees, juvenile justice advocates across Arizona, and county court representatives to determine how each of these groups perceived the status of the reforms at the ADJC. The findings of the current dissertation suggest that long-term reforms following consent decrees imposed on correctional institutions are possible. At the ADJC, the methods for securing the reform required that the agency reform its culture, implement a Quality Assurance process, revamp the Investigations and Inspections unit at the agency, and consider the perspectives of external agencies. One of the primary reasons why the department has been committed to making these reforms is because of the perceived loss of legitimacy and resources that would occur if they failed to reform. Such a failure for the agency could have potentially resulted in a closure of the agency. However, the increase in punitive and preventive policies used to enforce the reforms may have negative repercussions on the organizational culture in the long term. Policy implications for future CRIPA consent decrees are outlined, limitations are addressed, and suggestions for future research are made.
ContributorsTaylor, Melanie Ann (Author) / Decker, Scott H. (Thesis advisor) / Katz, Charles M. (Committee member) / Fox, Kathleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Knowing that disorder is related to crime, it has become essential for criminologists to understand how and why certain individuals perceive disorder. Using data from the Perceptions of Neighborhood Disorder and Interpersonal Conflict Project, this study uses a fixed photograph of a neighborhood, to assess whether individuals "see" disorder cues. A final sample size of n=815 respondents were asked to indicate if they saw particular disorder cues in the photograph. The results show that certain personal characteristics do predict whether an individual sees disorder. Because of the experimental design, results are a product of the individual's personal characteristics, not of the respondent's neighborhood. These findings suggest that the perception of disorder is not as clear cut as once thought. Future research should explore what about these personal characteristics foster the perception of disorder when it is not present, as well as, how to fight disorder in neighborhoods when perception plays such a substantial role.
ContributorsScott, Christopher (Author) / Wallace, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / Katz, Charles (Committee member) / Ready, Justin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study explores the ways in which LGBTQ young adults describe the aspects of their identities, and how those identities shape their service needs and experiences. A participatory action research component was explored as a research and service approach that is sensitive to LGBTQ young people living at the intersections of multiple identities. Although it is understood that LGBTQ young people come from a variety of backgrounds, research is limited in its understanding and exploration of how aspects of identity, such as race and class, influence the lives and service needs of this population. The data was collected through an initial set of interviews with fifteen LGBTQ-identified young adults ages 18 to 24. The interviewees were recruited from an LGBTQ youth-serving organization using a purposive sampling approach to reflect racial/ethnic and gender identity diversity. Following the interviews, eight of the participants engaged as co-researchers on a participatory action research (PAR) team for sixteen weeks. The process of this team's work was assessed through a reflective analysis to identify factors that impacted the participants' lives. Analysis of the interviews identified key themes related to identity among the LGBTQ young people. The interviewees experienced a multiplicity of identities that were both socially and individually constructed. These identities were impacted by their immediate and social environments. The young people also identified ways that they used their identities to influence their environments and enhance their own resilience. The service experiences and needs of the LGBTQ young people in this study were directly influenced by their multiple identities. Implications for intersectional approaches to serving this population are explored. Analysis of the PAR process identified four areas in which the young people were most impacted through their work and interactions with one another: relationships, communication, participation, and inclusion. Implications for research and service approaches with LGBTQ young people are discussed.
ContributorsWagaman, M. Alex (Author) / Segal, Elizabeth A. (Thesis advisor) / Adelman, Madelaine (Committee member) / Ayón, Cecilia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study examined four research questions investigating relationships among the experience of trauma, identity development, distress, and positive change. There were 908 participants in the study, ranging in age from 18 to 24 which is known as the period of emerging adulthood. Participants completed an online survey regarding their exposure to trauma and reactions to these experiences. The first research question examined the experience of trauma for the sample. The second question examined group differences among the participant's identity status, gender, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnostic status on the hypothesized variables. In general, comparisons among the four identity status groups found participants who experienced greater identity exploration (diffused and moratorium) experienced more distress, whereas the identity status groups that reported greater identity commitments (foreclosed and achieved) were associated with positive change. Similar findings were found for PTSD diagnostic status indicating more distress and identity exploration for participants with the diagnosis and more positive change and identity commitments for participants without the diagnosis. Female participants were found to experience more PTS symptoms, centrality of the trauma event, and positive growth than males. Examination of the relationships between trauma severity and posttraumatic growth revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship (quadratic) that was a significant improvement from the linear model. An S-shaped relationship (cubic) was found for the relationship between trauma exposure and posttraumatic growth. Regression analyses found the centrality of the trauma event to one's identity predicted identity distress above and beyond the experience of trauma. In addition, identity distress and the centrality of the trauma contributed to the variance for identity exploration, while only identity distress contributed to identity commitments. Finally, identity development significantly predicted positive change above and beyond, identity distress, centrality of the trauma event, and the experience of trauma. Collectively, these results found both distress and growth to be related to the experience of trauma. Distress within one's identity can contribute to difficulties in the psychosocial stage of identity development among emerging adults. However, the resolution of identity exploration towards commitments to goals, roles, and beliefs, can help trauma survivors experience resilience and growth after stressful experiences.
ContributorsWiley, Rachel (Author) / Robinson-Kurpius, Sharon (Thesis advisor) / Stamm, Jill (Committee member) / Kinnier, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT Research on self-control theory (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) consistently supports its' central proposition that low self-control significantly affects crime. The theory includes other predictions, which have received far less empirical scrutiny. Among these is the argument that self-control is developed early in childhood and that individual differences then persist over time. Gottfredson and Hirschi contend that once established by age ten, self-control remains relatively stable over one's life-course (stability postulate). To determine the empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's "stability postulate," a meta-analysis on existing empirical studies was conducted. Results for this study support the contentions made by Gottfredson and Hirschi, however the inclusion of various moderating variables significantly influenced this relationship. Keywords: self-control, self-control stability, absolute stability, relative stability
ContributorsMeyers, Travis J (Author) / Pratt, Travis (Thesis advisor) / Burt, Callie (Committee member) / Wright, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In order to adapt to a new culture and new language, children of immigrant families are faced daily with the responsibility of being the intermediaries between the family and the host culture through their language proficiency (Weisskirch & Alva, 2002). This thesis looks into the experiences of English-Spanish bilingual children as they bridge the gap between the family and the non-Spanish speaking community through their interpreting/translating skills. With an emphasis on children of Mexican-origin, the goal is to further understand and illuminate how these children manage this communication in an adult society, their feelings and thoughts about their experiences, and the child's perceptions about the influence that this experience may or may not have on their future. A sample of seventeen children agreed to participate in a semi-structured face-to-face interview to share their experiences. The data from these interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). A priori themes of circumstantial bilingual and adaptive parentification were the initial focus of the research while being open to emerging themes. The children's accounts of their experiences indicated primarily that the Mexican-origin values of familism and respeto (respect) were a significant influence on them when they interpreted/translated for their family. With these traditional cultural values and norms as the groundwork, the sub-themes of normalcy and stress emerged as supportive elements of the circumstantial bilingual experience. Furthermore, the theme of adaptive parentification and the sub-themes of choice, expectation/responsibility to assist, and equality to parents offered further insight on how adaptive parentification can result as the roles of these children change. There was an emergent theme, identity negotiation, which increases our understanding of what the circumstantial bilingual child encounters as the attempt is made to negotiate his identity as an individual who has to mediate language between two opposing cultures. Due to the language brokering responsibility that are bestowed upon these children, it is concluded that communicative support by the parents is a necessary component of the parent-child relationship in order to nurture and develop these children as they negotiate and create their identity to become the successful leaders of tomorrow.
ContributorsCayetano, Catalina (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Waldron, Vincent (Committee member) / Gaffney, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airport security has become an increasingly invasive, cumbersome, and expensive process. Fraught with tension and discomfort, "airport security" is a dirty phrase in the popular imagination, synonymous with long lines, unimpressive employees, and indignity. In fact, the TSA and its employees have featured as topic and punch line of news and popular culture stories. This image complicates the TSA's mission to ensure the nation's air travel safety and the ways that its officers interact with passengers. Every day, nearly two million people fly domestically in the United States. Each passenger must interact with many of the approximately 50,000 agents in airports. How employees and travelers make sense of interactions in airport security contexts can have significant implications for individual wellbeing, personal and professional relationships, and organizational policies and practices. Furthermore, the meaning making of travelers and employees is complexly connected to broad social discourses and issues of identity. In this study, I focus on the communication implications of identity and emotional performances in airport security in light of discourses at macro, meso, and micro levels. Using discourse tracing (LeGreco & Tracy, 2009), I construct the historical and discursive landscape of airport security, and via participant observation and various types of interviews, demonstrate how officers and passengers develop and perform identity, and the resulting interactional consequences. My analysis suggests that passengers and Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) perform three main types of identities in airport security contexts--what I call Stereotypical, Ideal, and Mindful--which reflect different types and levels of discourse. Identity performances are intricately related to emotional processes and occur dynamically, in relation to the identity and emotional performances of others. Theoretical implications direct attention to the ways that identity and emotional performances structure interactions, cause burdensome emotion management, and present organizational actors with tension, contradiction, and paradox to manage. Practical implications suggest consideration of passenger and TSO emotional wellbeing, policy framing, passenger agency, and preferred identities. Methodologically, this dissertation offers insight into discourse tracing and challenges of embodied "undercover" research in public spaces.
ContributorsRedden, Shawna Malvini (Author) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Thesis advisor) / Corley, Kevin (Committee member) / Alberts, Janet (Committee member) / Trethewey, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this study is to investigate the literacy practices of three members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and to explore how they use these practices to support and maintain their recovery in their lives. This study also aims to examine how each participant used specialist language, enacted certain identities and acquired the secondary Discourse in A.A. through literacy use. This dissertation study is the result of in-depth interviewing in which each participant was interviewed three times for 90-minutes. These interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis. Study results are presented in three chapters, each one designated to one of the participants. Within these chapters is a life history (chronology) of the participant leading up to the point in which they got sober. The chapters also include a thematic discourse analysis of the interview transcripts across themes of literacy practice and topics in A.A. A conclusion is then presented to investigate how literacy was used from a sociocultural perspective in the study. Due to the emotionally charged nature of this dissertation, it has been formatted to present the stories of the participants first, leaving the theoretical framework, literature review and research methods to be included as appendices to the main text.
ContributorsClausen, Jennifer Ann (Author) / Marsh, Josephine (Thesis advisor) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
A void exists in public administration, criminology, and criminal justice research as it relates to the study of power in American policing agencies. This has significant ramifications for academia and practitioners in terms of how they view, address, study, and interpret behaviors/actions in American policing agencies and organizations in general. In brief, mainstream research on power in organizations does not take into account relationships of power that do not act directly, and immediately, on others. By placing its emphasis on an agency centric perspective of power, the mainstream approach to the study of power fails to recognize indirect power relationships that influence discourse, pedagogy, mechanisms of communication, knowledge, and individual behavior/actions. In support of a more holistic inquiry, this study incorporates a Foucauldian perspective of power along with an ethnographical methodology and methods to build a greater understanding of power in policing organizations. This ethnography of an American policing organization illuminates the relationship between the exercise of power and the objectification of the subject through the interplay of relationships of communication, goal oriented activities, and relationships of power. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that sworn officers and civilian employees are objectified distinctly and dissimilarly. In summary, this study argues that the exercise of power in this American policing organization objectifies the civilian employee as a second class citizen.
ContributorsBentley, Paul C (Author) / Catlaw, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Musheno, Michael (Committee member) / Lucio, Joanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
There has been a tremendous amount of innovation in policing over the last 40 years, from community and problem-oriented policing to hot spots and intelligence-led policing. Many of these innovations have been subjected to empirical testing, with mixed results on effectiveness. The latest innovation in policing is the Bureau of Justice Assistance's Smart Policing Initiative (2009). Created in 2009, the SPI provides funding to law enforcement agencies to develop and test evidence-based practices to address crime and disorder. Researchers have not yet tested the impact of the SPI on the funded agencies, particularly with regard to core principles of the Initiative. The most notable of these is the collaboration between law enforcement agencies and their research partners. The current study surveyed SPI agencies and their research partners on key aspects of their Initiative. The current study uses mean score comparisons and qualitative responses to evaluate this partnership to determine the extent of its value and effect. It also seeks to determine the areas of police agency crime analysis and research units that are most in need of enhancement. Findings indicate that the research partners are actively involved in a range of aspects involved in problem solving under the Smart Policing Initiative, and that they have positively influenced police agencies' research and crime analysis functions, and to a lesser extent, have positively impacted police agencies' tactical operations. Additionally, personnel, technology, and training were found to be the main areas of the crime analysis and research units that still need to be enhanced. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for police policy and practice.
ContributorsMartin-Roethele, Chelsie (Author) / White, Michael D. (Thesis advisor) / Ready, Justin (Committee member) / D'Anna, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013