Matching Items (25)
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Description
This dissertation examined sojourner adjustment success utilizing a unique method for collecting and analyzing the perceptions and sense making of the sojourner participants. Although previous research studies in this area have mostly relied on quantitative survey designs and researcher-generated models, this study relied on in-depth, participant-driven, qualitative interviews that were

This dissertation examined sojourner adjustment success utilizing a unique method for collecting and analyzing the perceptions and sense making of the sojourner participants. Although previous research studies in this area have mostly relied on quantitative survey designs and researcher-generated models, this study relied on in-depth, participant-driven, qualitative interviews that were semi-structured using a software-assisted method called Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). Through this dissertation research, study abroad students (sojourners) had the opportunity to reflect on their sojourn experience, share their adjustment stories, and identify factors that were personally relevant to their success. This study broke new ground while building on the vast body of work in cross-cultural and sojourner adjustment. Sojourners were asked to provide their perspectives on the relationships among those factors reported in the literature that are commonly believed to influence successful adjustment. This allowed me to connect existing literature on the subject with the lived experience of the sojourner participants. This dissertation sought to answer two research questions. First, what factors do participants identify as being keys to the success of their sojourn? Second, what relationships do participants perceive among the factors contributing to successful sojourner adjustment? This dissertation found that language proficiency played a key role in their adjustment and openness was the factor most selected by participants in their explanation of a successful sojourn. Additionally, participant profiles and influence structure summaries provided evidence of the relationships participants saw among success factors in their lived experiences. In terms of preparing sojourners for going abroad, analysis of the composite structure revealed what could be prioritized in pre-departure training for impending sojourners. Themes emerged which provide insight into the commonalities of the sojourner experience despite differences in one's program or personality. This dissertation also explained additional success factors participants identified (e.g., ability to manage language fatigue, creation of connections with other travelers) that were not initially provided to them. Finally, suggestions for study abroad students/coordinators, researchers, and employers are provided.
ContributorsValianos, Alexis J (Author) / Broome, Benjamin (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Baldwin, John (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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The history of the American Old West has frequently been romanticized and idealized. This dissertation study explored four Arizona towns that developed during the era of the American Old West: Tombstone, Jerome, Oatman, and Globe. The study broadly examined issues of remembering/forgetting and historical authenticity/myth. It specifically analyzed historic tourist

The history of the American Old West has frequently been romanticized and idealized. This dissertation study explored four Arizona towns that developed during the era of the American Old West: Tombstone, Jerome, Oatman, and Globe. The study broadly examined issues of remembering/forgetting and historical authenticity/myth. It specifically analyzed historic tourist destinations as visual phenomenon: seeking to understand how town histories were visually communicated to contemporary tourists and what role historically-grounded visual narratives played in the overall tourist experience. The study utilized a visual methodology to organize and structure qualitative data collection and analysis; it incorporated visual data from historic and contemporary photographs and textual data from observations and interviews. Through a careful exploration of each town's past and present, the research proposed a measure to assess how the strength of visual connections between past and present impacted tourist impressions of each town. The analysis suggested that, due to a general lack of historic knowledge, tourist impressions were more closely connected to contemporary experiences and prior expectations of the American Old West than to historically-grounded visual narratives.
ContributorsMcMullen, Melissa (Author) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Rowe, Jeremy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
The Autonomous Vehicle (AV), also known as self-driving car, promises to be a game changer for the transportation industry. This technology is predicted to drastically reduce the number of traffic fatalities due to human error [21].

However, road driving at any reasonable speed involves some risks. Therefore, even with high-tech

The Autonomous Vehicle (AV), also known as self-driving car, promises to be a game changer for the transportation industry. This technology is predicted to drastically reduce the number of traffic fatalities due to human error [21].

However, road driving at any reasonable speed involves some risks. Therefore, even with high-tech AV algorithms and sophisticated sensors, there may be unavoidable crashes due to imperfection of the AV systems, or unexpected encounters with wildlife, children and pedestrians. Whenever there is a risk involved, there is the need for an ethical decision to be made [33].

While ethical and moral decision-making in humans has long been studied by experts, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) also calls for machine ethics. To study the different moral and ethical decisions made by humans, experts may use the Trolley Problem [34], which is a scenario where one must pull a switch near a trolley track to redirect the trolley to kill one person on the track or do nothing, which will result in the deaths of five people. While it is important to take into account the input of members of a society and perform studies to understand how humans crash during unavoidable accidents to help program moral and ethical decision-making into self-driving cars, using the classical trolley problem is not ideal, as it is unrealistic and does not represent moral situations that people face in the real world.

This work seeks to increase the realism of the classical trolley problem for use in studies on moral and ethical decision-making by simulating realistic driving conditions in an immersive virtual environment with unavoidable crash scenarios, to investigate how drivers crash during these scenarios. Chapter 1 gives an in-depth background into autonomous vehicles and relevant ethical and moral problems; Chapter 2 describes current state-of-the-art online tools and simulators that were developed to study moral decision-making during unavoidable crashes. Chapters 3 focuses on building the simulator and the design of the crash scenarios. Chapter 4 describes human subjects experiments that were conducted with the simulator and their results, and Chapter 5 provides conclusions and avenues for future work.
ContributorsKankam, Immanuella (Author) / Berman, Spring (Thesis advisor) / Johnson, Kathryn (Committee member) / Yong, Sze Zheng (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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In my exploration of the expectations of customer service that people have in regards to their visits at Starbucks retail stores, I will utilize Laswell's Model of Communication and the theory of symbolic interactionism to guide my findings. These overarching ideas provide a foundation for understanding the communication process as

In my exploration of the expectations of customer service that people have in regards to their visits at Starbucks retail stores, I will utilize Laswell's Model of Communication and the theory of symbolic interactionism to guide my findings. These overarching ideas provide a foundation for understanding the communication process as a whole, and will therefore allow us to extract meaningful information from regular interactions between Starbucks employees and consumers. Additionally, my goal is for these discoveries to produce insight in regards to critical customer service qualities that other businesses should incorporate into their own customer service programs in order to find success.
ContributorsRomero, Felipe Antonio (Author) / Martin, Judith (Thesis director) / Robinson, Jennifer (Committee member) / Propes, Rebecca (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2014-12
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Classroom communication is imperative in the creation of a classroom environment that encourages participation and inter-student relationships. Several factors that may influence these variables, such as female-to-male sex ratio, have not been studied in depth. This study examined the impact of class size, female-to-male ratio, and teaching method on individual

Classroom communication is imperative in the creation of a classroom environment that encourages participation and inter-student relationships. Several factors that may influence these variables, such as female-to-male sex ratio, have not been studied in depth. This study examined the impact of class size, female-to-male ratio, and teaching method on individual participation and class interactions. Class size was negatively related to individual verbal participation, classroom connection, classroom animation, and classroom intimacy and positively related to classroom nonimmediacy. Female-to-male sex ratio was positively associated with classroom connection, animation, and intimacy. Class activities were positively related to individual verbal participation, classroom connection, classroom animation, and classroom intimacy and positively related to classroom nonimmediacy. The use of videos in the classroom was positively associated with classroom animation and intimacy while other technologies were not significantly correlated with any variables. These findings suggest that the ideal classroom should have a small number of students and utilize interactive class activities. Furthermore, women should be encouraged to take classes that are traditionally dominated by men and future research should focus on how gender is connected to the variables in this study.
ContributorsHanks, April Nicole (Author) / Guerrero, Laura (Thesis director) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
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This study investigates the relationship between intercultural friendships and attitudes towards intercultural dating—from the perspective of Asian students studying in the United States. Twenty Chinese students completed an online, 19-item questionnaire (Survey Monkey) surveying the cultural diversity of their friendships (age, gender, religion, nationality, and language) and also their

This study investigates the relationship between intercultural friendships and attitudes towards intercultural dating—from the perspective of Asian students studying in the United States. Twenty Chinese students completed an online, 19-item questionnaire (Survey Monkey) surveying the cultural diversity of their friendships (age, gender, religion, nationality, and language) and also their attitudes toward dating White U.S. Americans. The data were submitted to statistical tests and the results revealed no significant correlation between success in developing U.S. American friends, diversity of friendship networks, and interest in dating a White U.S. American. These non-significant results may be due to a limitation of the study--the small number of respondents. However additional findings revealed a high percentage of respondents expressed interest in making friends and dating White U.S. Americans. They also identified major challenges involved--language barriers and cultural differences. Finally, future research directions and applications of research findings are presented.
ContributorsWarner, Olivia Rose (Author) / Martin, Judith (Thesis director) / Mongeau, Paul (Committee member) / Faulkner, Kristin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Community Resources and Development (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2013-05
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Abstract Although sending mobile phone text messages, or texting as many people call it, is a very common form of communication, it is still a fairly new technology. Because of this, there is not a great deal of research on it. This study seeks to discover how young adults use

Abstract Although sending mobile phone text messages, or texting as many people call it, is a very common form of communication, it is still a fairly new technology. Because of this, there is not a great deal of research on it. This study seeks to discover how young adults use texting for relational maintenance as well as study equity, closeness, and to discover sex/gender differences. Data was collected through an online survey. Students were offered extra credit for taking this survey, however some students took the survey with no direct benefit to themselves. Scales were created based on the scales of previous research and modified for texting. Results indicated that texting is used for relational maintenance and there was a significant correlation between using maintenance strategies through texting and closeness. In addition, there were significant correlations between the use of maintenance strategies and equity as well as being underbenefited, however, no correlation was found between the use of relational maintenance strategies and overbenefitedness. Finally, results indicated that sex differences were very minor, the only sex difference was that women use positivity more than men. Gender differences accounted for much more differences in that while femininity was partially associated with the use of relational maintenance strategies, there was a much stronger correlation between the strategies and masculinity. Direction for future research is assessed.
ContributorsAhlstrom, Sydney Bow (Author) / Guerrero, Laura (Thesis director) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor)
Created2014-05
DescriptionChildren's book on life and career of Governor Jon Huntsman with civics lessons tied into story. Context paper explaining political science and communication theories as well as background on creative project.
ContributorsBenning, Annica (Co-author) / Huntsman, Elizabeth (Co-author) / Symons, Adam (Thesis director) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Trumble, Anna (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-05
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Perceptions of the self differ between cultures, generally between those cultures in the West and East. Some of the ways that these individuals from these cultures may differ are in their self-construal, their collectivist and individualist tendencies, and how they perceive control in their lives. The current study proposes that

Perceptions of the self differ between cultures, generally between those cultures in the West and East. Some of the ways that these individuals from these cultures may differ are in their self-construal, their collectivist and individualist tendencies, and how they perceive control in their lives. The current study proposes that some of these differences are influenced by different concepts individuals hold regarding the "soul", or inner self. These concepts may be promoted by the different religious beliefs prominent in different regions. The Soul Perception Index, being developed through this study, measures belief in multiple souls, a universal soul, a single soul, or no soul. It was predicted that a belief in a single soul will correlate with an individual view of the self (individualism, independent self-construal, internal locus of control), and a universal or multi-soul belief will correlate with an interdependent view of the self (collectivism, interdependent self-construal, and external locus of control). We found that these variables did not significantly differ in their relationships with soul belief. However, Indian Hindu participants and Chinese participants seemed to score highly on all self-view variables and all soul perception types indicating that individuals from these cultures may be more predisposed to hold opposing beliefs simultaneously while US Christians are not.
ContributorsNaidu, Esha Svetha (Author) / Cohen, Adam (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Johnson, Kathryn (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
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In this honors thesis certain religious and moral beliefs were analyzed and used to predict active euthanasia acceptance for Christians in the United States. The factors used to predict euthanasia acceptance for a suffering, terminally ill individual were religiosity, empathy, God representations, and attitudes toward God. Negative correlations were observed

In this honors thesis certain religious and moral beliefs were analyzed and used to predict active euthanasia acceptance for Christians in the United States. The factors used to predict euthanasia acceptance for a suffering, terminally ill individual were religiosity, empathy, God representations, and attitudes toward God. Negative correlations were observed between acceptance of euthanasia and religiosity, empathy, positive attitudes toward God, and a benevolent God representation. Positive correlations were observed between acceptance of euthanasia and negative attitudes toward God, whereas there was no significant correlation between support for euthanasia and an authoritarian God representation. When acceptance of euthanasia was regressed on these independent variables, religiosity was the most significant predictor of acceptance. It was concluded that highly religious Christians may tend to prioritize their religious teachings over their instinctual empathy for a suffering person because prematurely ending a patient’s life interferes with God’s will and reduces his role in worldly affairs.
ContributorsAustin, Richard Vincent (Author) / Johnson, Kathryn (Thesis director) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05