Tag: Social Science

Eyewitness Memory: How Stress and Situational Factors Affect Eyewitness Recall

Presenter: Anne Yilmaz

Faculty Mentor: Robert Mauro

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Psychology

As eyewitness memory and its current admissibility as evidence in courts have come under scrutiny, thousands of studies have been conducted examining variables that affect the accuracy of eyewitness memory. These variables are typically broken up as system and estimator variables—the first being factors affecting memory that are controllable after the event and the latter being uncontrollable situational factors that took place during the event. Decades of research has concluded that stress can both inhibit and enhance memory; this literature review will focus on the tie between stress, memory and various estimator variables such as seriousness, group eyewitness memory, weapon- focus, and victim vs bystander observation of a crime. Both field and lab studies will be examined. Despite the breadth of research in both eyewitness memory and stress’s effect on memory, there has been no comprehensive review in recent years combining stress and memory research with eyewitness data. This literature review will serve to bridge that gap and provide resources for those looking to continue research in the field of stress, situational psychology and eyewitness memory.

Examining Inefficiencies in NBA Player Development and Potential Solutions

Presenter: Connor Williamson

Co-Presenters: Gregory Bothun, Joshua Gordon, Daniel Rosenberg

Faculty Mentor: Josh Gordon, Greg Bothun

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Business Administration

Though the United States has maintained an impressive performance record in international athletic competition, its amateur sport infrastructure has become less efficient than that in many other countries. For late-development sports like basketball, in which early athletic training should be varied and specialized late, training these inefficiencies have led to a lower skill level among players in the highest league, the NBA. Basketball-specific factors, like the preps- to-pros era coinciding with the post-Jordan generation, have severely affected the training methods in American basketball. The NBA has taken note of this change, as the San Antonio Spurs make headlines with a roster of imports, the percentage of foreign players in the NBA has never been higher. As rule changes in the NBA have made for a faster game predicated on skill and savvy, the American pipeline of players has never been less prepared.

This thesis will define problems with the current system in areas of physical, athletic, and mental athlete development and examining player development models through a holistic lens which digs into the underlying causes of skill deficiencies in the NBA player pool. After doing this, it will attempt to solve some of the major issues facing American basketball player development, like transitioning players into the NBA. Systems like Canada’s Long Term Athlete Development and the youth academy system in German club football provide an extensive list of alternatives to assess. By taking the best aspects of each and adjusting them to the American environment, a better system can be designed. The results of this research point to unstructured nature of youth basketball, which is the root cause of issues like lack of coaching educational standards, as well as many other pervading the NBA player development pipeline.

Sociolinguistic Awareness through Cultural Spaces

Presenter: Nayelli Velazquez

Co-Presenters: Corinna Soriano

Faculty Mentor: Claudia Holguin, Heather Quarles

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Human Physiology

Even though some states, such as Arizona and Texas are pushing for monolingual, English-only policies, it is important that cultural spaces such as Mexican markets exist in every community. Through interviews with several people at a Mexican market and grocery store in Hillsboro, Oregon about their experiences with Spanish in the area and about what draws them to shop in the market, we found a consistent message about the importance of these types of places. Many of the people interviewed expressed comfort in having a space to visit that reminds them of their home cultures and as a place where the North American and Latin American cultures are fused into one hybrid identity. We documented many examples of Spanglish, proposed by several scholars as an entire way of life rather than just as a new language. Over the course of this project we have come to realize the benefits of these cultural spaces and we propose community-level creation of cultural havens apart from the politics and social discrimination of our current society. These spaces should be established by the local Latino communities, in order to best accommodate their identities. Ultimately, they would serve as places of cultural expression, and appreciation.

The Increased Danger of High Drivers: Evidence from the Fatal Accident Reporting System

Presenter: Mitchell VanVuren

Co-Presenters: Daniel Palau

Faculty Mentor: Benjamin Hansen, Bill Harbaugh

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Economics, Mathematics

As recreational marijuana legalization grows increasingly prominent, one possible externality of its use concerns its impact on driving; motorists under the influence of marijuana may have increased risk of being involved in a fatal accident. We use national-level data from the Fatal Accident Reporting System to estimate the increased risk due to high drivers. Using a multinomial model of car accidents, we estimate that a high driver is at least 2.8 times more likely to be involved in a fatal car accident than a sober driver. Ours is the first study to estimate this parameter while accounting for changes in driving patterns across geography and time over nine years.

From Hoplon to Scutum: The Evolution of the Roman Military’s Shield

Presenter: John Tuttle

Faculty Mentor: Mary Jaeger, Stephanie Budin

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: History, Classical Civilizations

The Roman legion built one of the largest empires in the world but it was not the original structure of the Roman military. The Romans adopted this system after it utilized the hoplite phalanx from Greece. The most fundamental difference between these tactical systems boils down to the shields that each soldier carried. The earlier hoplon is much heavier than the scutum and each were used for different advantages. The reason this change occurred was not only for the advantages that the scutum offers a legionary model but because of economic and population constraints the Romans faced after the Gallic sack of Rome in c.a. 390 BCE. Livy reports that the Romans lost much of their wealth in the raid and this would have resulted in a lack of important military resources such as bronze as well as the death of a substantial amount of the population. The lack of wealth as well as a lack of tin or copper deposits within the sphere of influence meant that the Roman citizenry could not afford to trade for enough bronze to make the hoplon. The loss of so many people also made phalanx tactics impractical as well as the use of the hoplon. This forced the Romans to adopt the scutum and change its military into the dominant force of the Mediterranean.

What Do We Say Now: An Analysis of Mass Communication and Advertising for the Prevention of Sexual Assault

Presenter: Jesse Summers

Faculty Mentor: Kim Sheehan, Heather Shoenberger

Presentation Type: Poster 40

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Journalism: Advertising, Journalism

Sexual assault has become a prevalent issue in recent years. From university campuses to the White House, the issue is being discussed and addressed in many different ways. This thesis specifically discusses the It’s On Us and No More campaigns as well as two pieces of popular media used to spread awareness of the issue of sexual assault. The Transtheoretical Model of Change, a social health model for understanding an individual’s willingness to change their behavior, is used as a basis for analyzing the videos produced for these campaigns and categorizing them based on their potential to influence a viewer’s behavior. Semiotic analysis is used to analyze specific content in each video and associate the videos with stages of the Transtheoretical Model of Change. Initial results show that many of the current videos focus on creating awareness and are associated with the pre-contemplation or contemplation stages. However, analyzing specific links between these videos and other content such as websites creates the potential for viewers to move beyond these stages with the inclusion of additional information and action steps. This research and the areas outlined for further research are critical for expanding communication literature applying theory to media content and expanding research done in the intersection of social health and mass communication.

The Inequality in Families: Institutional Pressure and Gender Diverse between Family Members

Presenter: Dongxue Su

Co-Presenters: Yaoying Zhang

Faculty Mentor: Julia Heffernan

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Educational Foundations

Authors: Lisa Wade (An associate professor of sociology at Occidental College in Los Angeles); Myra Marx Ferree (the Alice H. Cook Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)

During the development of families, there are lots of inequalities between genders. In this project, we will focus on how institutional pressure influence both men and women in different ways, and the relationship between children and parents. Normally, men spend more time on breadwinner and women focus on housework and parenting in pop culture and conversation. For single parents and families with two working parents, that work is second shift, work that greets us when we come home from work (P248). Childcare and housework still carry the gendered meaning they did when breadwinner/housewife family were considered ideal. We need to think about social construction of children care and housework and look at the actual and the ideal division of labor in family today. Women are less happy than men in marriage, then, because it is an institution that systematically presses them into doing the low- status domestic work of our society. On the other hand, we also need to focus on children and family’s relationship. For example, if the child always stay with their mom that this child will love their mom more than their dad. And parent’s relationship also can affect their children thinking about the family relationship.

Seeds of Peace: Visible Cooperation Between Jews and Muslims in Morocco

Presenter: Namratha Somayajula

Faculty Mentor: Shaul Cohen

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: International Studies

Situated at multiple crossroads, Morocco is unique due to the historical presence of Judaism in a region that, over the years, became a Muslim-majority Islamic kingdom. Muslim and Jewish Moroccans coexisted for centuries, albeit with minor hurdles, as did the Muslims and Jews of Palestine. However, political events around the world in the twentieth century led to the rapid departure of Jews from their Moroccan homeland. Today, with so few remaining in Morocco, “Jew” often becomes synonymous with “Israeli,” and relations between Moroccan Muslims and their Jewish compatriots have become increasingly tense. In spite of this, there are still many people in Morocco who hope for everyday relations between Muslims and Jews there to remain cooperative, unhindered by the political tensions often affiliated with their identities. This study examines current efforts to counter and prevent recent tensions between Muslims and Jews in Morocco. It concludes that in order to encourage cooperation, several current peace-building movements in Morocco seek to raise awareness about Morocco’s cultural plurality, and to bring this awareness from the private to the public sphere. The success of these efforts highlights the fact that present-day Muslim-Jewish relations in Morocco are not solely defined by tension and that the historical cohabitation still exists, though on a smaller scale. I hope that the information gathered through this study, from members of the Moroccan Jewish community and leaders of local interfaith organizations, can help us more broadly re-conceptualize some ways in which local peace-building movements can impact a culturally diverse society such as Morocco.

Relieving Ukrainian Energy Reliance on Russia: Working with Wind for Prosperity to Encourage Energy Reform and Support New Relations with Western Europe

Presenter: Priscilla Sol

Faculty Mentor: Patricia Curtin

Presentation Type: Poster 38

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: English, French

The ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia following the 2014 invasion of Crimea and other eastern Ukrainian territories has garnered attention and interest throughout the world. This project utilizes tenets of Public Diplomacy to strategically target problems of Ukrainian energy supply and dependence, and to help the country continue its gradual divestment from Russian resources. Through cooperation between Wind for Prosperity—a program which connects with investors and builds wind turbine mini-grids in rural locations—the US State Department, and federal and local governments in Ukraine, citizens will have access to reliable renewable energy and economic ties with Western Europe will be strengthened.

The first section of this project is a white paper establishing political, social, and economic history in Ukraine and clarifying the context for a renewable energy project. The second section is the strategic plan for the project which includes: overall goals, analyses of audience reception, long term objectives, strategies for garnering attention and support, and actual on-the-ground tactics to be implemented.

Ukraine is struggling to maintain its sovereignty over its people and territory. This project intends to support the movement towards economic independence from Russia, foster citizen involvement in developing renewable resources, and provide for energy needs in rural regions of Southern Ukraine.

The UO Veterans Oral History Project

Presenter: Leonie Schulze

Co-Presenters: Jennifer Esparza

Faculty Mentor: Alexander Dracobly

Presentation Type: Poster 92

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: English, History

Funding Source: Tom and Carol Williams Fund for Undergraduate Education; Department of History; Kira Homo and James Fox at Special Collections; Kirstin Hierholzer and her staff at the Center for Media and Educational Technologies

Every person has a story to tell and everyone’s story deserves to be told. These stories can be recorded and stored in archives to be read and possibly used for research in the future. This is exactly what students of the UO Veterans Oral History Project have been doing for the past five years and will continue to do for however long there are veterans out there willing to tell their story. For students, the project is an opportunity to learn about how to prepare and successfully conduct interviews, as well as how to transcribe them in a way that lets the interviewee’s character shine through black letters on white paper. For the veterans who are interviewed, the project is an opportunity to reflect on their military past in a safe environment, to perhaps tell a story they have not told before and to know that their names will not be forgotten. For future researchers this project will hopefully be useful in various ways. During the past five years that this project has been pursued, UO students have collected enough material for researchers to ask a wide variety of questions. Why did people decide to join? How did one individual’s experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan differ from those of another soldier? What did the service mean for the members’ families? Our project will hopefully serve as a public record and as a tool for future researches and historians to find answers to their questions.