Theses and dissertations

This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students. 

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The Demographics of Polling Places

Description
Elections in the United States are highly decentralized with vast powers given to the states to control laws surrounding voter registration, primary procedures, and polling places even in elections of federal officials. There are many individual factors that predict a person's likelihood of voting including race, education, and age. Historically…

Elections in the United States are highly decentralized with vast powers given to the states to control laws surrounding voter registration, primary procedures, and polling places even in elections of federal officials. There are many individual factors that predict a person's likelihood of voting including race, education, and age. Historically disenfranchised groups are still disproportionately affected by restrictive voter registration and ID laws which can suppress their turnout. Less understood is how election-day polling place accessibility affects turnout. Absentee and early voting increase accessibility for all voters, but 47 states still rely on election-day polling places. I study how the geographic allocation of polling places and the number of voters assigned to each (polling place load) in Maricopa County, Arizona has affected turnout in primary and general elections between 2006 and 2016 while controlling for the demographics of voting precincts. This represents a significant data problem; voting precincts changed three times during the time studied and polling places themselves can change every election. To aid in analysis, I created a visualization that allows for the exploration of polling place load, precinct demographics, and polling place accessibility metrics in a map view of the county. I find through a spatial regression model that increasing the load on a polling place can decrease the election-day turnout and prohibitively large distances to the polling place have a similar effect. The effect is more pronounced during general elections and is present at varying levels during each of the 12 elections studied. Finally, I discuss how early voting options appear to have little positive effect on overall turnout and may in fact decrease it.
ContributorsHansen, Brett Joseph (Author) / Maciejewski, Ross (Thesis director) / Grubesic, Anthony (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
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Genetic and Environmental Contributions to the Relation Between Parenting and Child Psychopathology

Description

Prior research has established a relation between parenting behaviors and symptoms of child psychopathology, and this association may be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Gene-environment correlation, or the influence of a child’s genes on the environment they receive, represents one possible mechanism through which genes and environment combine…

Prior research has established a relation between parenting behaviors and symptoms of child psychopathology, and this association may be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Gene-environment correlation, or the influence of a child’s genes on the environment they receive, represents one possible mechanism through which genes and environment combine to influence child outcomes. This study examined evocative gene-environment correlation in the relation between parenting and symptoms of child psychopathology in a sample of 676 twins (51.5% female, 58.5% Caucasian, 23.7% Hispanic/Latinx, primarily middle class, MAge=8.43, SD=.62) recruited from Arizona birth records. Using univariate ACE twin biometric models, genetic influences were found to moderately contribute to internalizing symptoms (A=.47, C=.25, E=.28), while externalizing (A=.86, E=.14) and ADHD (A=.84, E=.16) symptoms were found to be highly heritable. The genetic influences for positive (C=.54, E=.46) and negative (C=.44, E=.56) parenting were smaller and found to be nonsignificant. The correlations between parenting and types of psychopathology were examined and bivariate Cholesky decompositions were conducted for statistically significant correlations. Negative parenting was moderately positively correlated with externalizing and ADHD symptoms; the relation between externalizing symptoms and negative parenting was found to be due to shared genetics, whereas the relation between negative parenting and ADHD symptoms was due to the shared environment. The mixed results regarding the role of gene environment correlation in relations between parenting and child psychopathology indicate that further research on the mechanisms of this relation is needed.
ContributorsCarrizosa, Mya Grace (Author) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Oro, Veronica (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05