A 1969 report identified South Phoenix as a community that simply needed to "strengthen residential identity" (City of Phoenix), but the decades of blight and decline that followed led to the eventual adoption of the South Phoenix Village Redevelopment Area Plan in 1989. The plan recognized that twelve block area five miles southeast of the heart of Phoenix needed comprehensive revitalization. Many of the programs implemented by the City over the 20 years have been successful, but the plan has not been reevaluated in more than a decade. This research seeks to compile information as a proxy for an update on the current state of South Phoenix Village with a goal of ascertaining whether a comprehensive plan continues to be the best revitalization tool for the neighborhood. Using census tract-level data, housing, social, and economic characteristics were analyzed in an effort to identify the barriers to success that South Phoenix faces as the area continues to be rehabilitated. Some issues that have been rampant in the 1980s continues to plague the area, but others seem to have been mitigated. Following analysis of the data in the context of residential stability and neighborhood health, conclusions concerning the advantages and limitations of the comprehensive plan approach for South Phoenix Village were drawn, and recommendations for future initiatives in the area were made.

I was interested to see if there were any statistically significant differences in political ideology between Master's of Accountancy students (MACC) and Master's of Taxation students (MTax) at Arizona State University. I hypothesized that the MACC students would tend to be more liberal or less conservative than the MTax students, while the MTax students would tend to be more conservative or less liberal than the MACC students. Scholars have found ways that conservatives and liberals differ, including differences in personality traits of conscientiousness and openness, as well as the types of careers they are drawn to. Scholars have also performed personality tests on accountants, accounting students, and accounting faculty to show how they differ. I distributed a voluntary online survey to students to discern their political beliefs. Most of the questions I asked did not reveal any statistically significant differences between students from the two programs, but the questions that did reveal some statistically significant differences showed that MACC students were more likely to be liberal or less conservative on certain issues, while the opposite was true for the MTax students. The statistically significant differences tended to appear for questions related to social policy rather than economic policy. This finding supports previous studies that show how social policy tends to be more divisive than economic policy.

This thesis concerns the adoption of health information technology in the medical sector, specifically electronic health records (EHRs). EHRs have been seen as a great benefit to the healthcare system and will improve the quality of patient care. The federal government, has seen the benefit EHRs can offer, has been advocating the use and adoption of EHR for nearly a decade now. They have created policies that guide medical providers on how to implement EHRs. However, this thesis concerns the attitudes medical providers in Phoenix have towards government implementation. By interviewing these individuals and cross-referencing their answers with the literature this thesis wants to discover the pitfalls of federal government policy toward EHR implementation and EHR implementation in general. What this thesis found was that there are pitfalls that the federal government has failed to address including loss of provider productivity, lack of interoperability, and workflow improvement. However, the providers do say there is still a place for government to be involved in the implementation of EHR.

With cannabis legal in 38 states, 5 territories, and the District of Columbia as of 2023, the legal cannabis industry has become a major emerging industry that will continue to grow rapidly as continuing support for legalization drives both states and the federal government toward relaxing and even repealing prohibitions on both medical and recreational cannabis. However, the patchwork of conflicting state and federal laws surrounding cannabis create a legal and economic quagmire that severely limit the growth and success of legal cannabis businesses while aggravating longstanding socioeconomic disparities. In this thesis, I offer an evaluation of the history of cannabis in the US, current cannabis policy at the state and federal level, as well as offer a selection of federal and state policy options to promote a dramatic overhaul of current federal cannabis policy. These proposals aim to effectively and efficiently address the state/federal divide in cannabis law while simultaneously addressing key socioeconomic disparities aggravated by federal cannabis prohibition.

This paper compiles the history of the development of public housing in Phoenix, Arizona between the years 1930 and 1970. Starting with the national public housing program created as part of the New Deal programs, the thesis examines how public housing was started, viewed, and supported in Phoenix. There has always been a shortage of affordable housing for low-income residents in Phoenix and the housing history examines the reasons why Phoenix has struggled to construct affordable housing in the past. Public opposition, city values, racial prejudice, and business influence over government were revealed to be some of the many reasons Phoenix struggled and continues to struggle today. In chronological order, the thesis will examine how Phoenix interacted with public housing legislation during the mid-1900s to provide a comprehensive history of what has been done that has not worked.

Local government is an area of politics that is often put on the back burner by citizens. As compared to national government, participation at the local level is dismal. Participation in governments includes (but is not limited to) voting, attending public meetings, working with neighbors, and having baseline knowledge of current events in local government. This disinterest is particularly concerning with young voters. This thesis seeks to provide possible remedies for local governments to increase "millennial" participation and knowledge of the local government process. This project serves as a pilot study and draws upon interviews from sixty young people (ages 18-30) regarding their involvement in Arizona local government. These interviews determined their level of interest, knowledge, and participation in their local government. I used my findings to create a prescriptive approach for local government officials to increase the participation of young people in local government.

Homelessness is one of the most visible and tragic problems facing Phoenix today. As Tucson cut its homelessness count nearly in half over the past six years, Phoenix only saw a reduction of 25%. The question remains: what is the best solution for Phoenix to reduce and eventually eliminate homelessness? This paper examined costs and benefits as well as examples in other cities and states of Housing First solutions' effectiveness at reducing the number of people suffering from homelessness. It was found that Housing First solutions, namely Permanent Supportive Housing and Rapid Re-Housing, would be highly effective in combating the homelessness experienced by those in the Phoenix area.

We seek a comprehensive measurement for the economic prosperity of persons with disabilities. We survey the current literature and identify the major economic indicators used to describe the socioeconomic standing of persons with disabilities. We then develop a methodology for constructing a statistically valid composite index of these indicators, and build this index using data from the 2014 American Community Survey. Finally, we provide context for further use and development of the index and describe an example application of the index in practice.

Social media is explosively popular in discussing socio-political issues. This work provides a preliminary study on how polarization occurs online. Chapter I begins by introducing limitations of the internet in maintaining a free flow of information. Not only do users seek out groups of like-minded individuals and insulate themselves from opposing views, social media platforms algorithmically curate content such that it will be in line with a user’s preconceived notions of the world. The work then defines polarization and carefully discusses its most prominent causes. It then shifts focus to analyze a closely-related issue regarding political discourse: outrage, which is both a noticeable effect of and further cause of polarization. It is clearly prevalent in traditional media, but for completion, I provide a case study to measure its incidence in social media. In Chapter II, I scrutinize the language used in the #MeToo movement on Twitter and draw conclusions about the issues Twitter users focus on and how they express their views. This chapter details the method I used, the challenges I faced in designing the exploratory study, and the results I found. I benchmark patterns I find in the Twitterverse against those I find in The Wall Street Journal. The analysis relies upon the metric of word similarity, based on proximity of and frequency of words used together, to make distinctions about what users are most commonly saying with respect to given topics, or keywords. Chapter III closes the essay with conclusions of socio-political polarization, discourse, and outrage in social media. Finally, the essay outlines potential channels for future work.

Cities and towns are creatures of the state. There is a constitutional hierarchy between levels of governments, and cities and local governments are structurally at the bottom of this hierarchy. However, despite this established dynamic of power, local governments in the State of Arizona have traditionally maintained a significant level of autonomy when it comes to enacting their own policies. In the face of slow-moving state and national governments, local governments have operated on a level that is quick to respond to the needs of its citizens, and cities have assumed the role of filling in the policy and administrative gaps of higher levels of government. However, relatively recently, there has been increased conflict between cities and the State of Arizona. The state legislature has passed various measures restricting local governments on a variety of topics ranging from elections, labor, firearms, immigration, environmental regulations, and more, preempting cities at a wide level.