This study examines factors related to employee attrition in a state social service organization (SSSO) that administers welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 132 former SSSO employees. Qualitative analyses found that informants reported insufficient resources to do their jobs, inconsistent or inadequate training experiences, negative perceptions of the organizational culture and management (e.g. minimal recognition and inadequate support for professional growth or innovation), and typically positive perceptions of co-worker relationships during their tenures at the SSSO. To examine the relative impact of these factors and background variables (age, race, office location, and position) on duration of employment, a multiple linear regression was conducted. Age, office location, position, and perceptions of organizational culture significantly predicted duration of employment (F (7,123) = 24.19, p < .001, R2 = .56). Findings suggest that organizational culture may be an important change target for retaining workers in SSSOs.

Empirical investigations that examine mortgage default tend to frame studies with theory that emphasizes individual financial factors and minimizes ecological factors, which may influence defaulters' opinions of their homes as investments. While recent qualitative work has elucidated the emotional and psychological impacts of foreclosure, these investigations have not focused on the ways that neighborhood characteristics may affect these trends. This study of two neighborhoods in Nashville, TN addresses these gaps. A Ward's cluster analysis grouped high-foreclosure census tracts into neighborhoods with distinct foreclosure risk-factors based on structural characteristics and environmental stressors. Interviews with defaulters from the two neighborhoods with the highest differences in risk-factors illuminate informants' opinions of homeownership as an investment and further solidify how the distinct attributes of these neighborhoods relate to individual and collective opinions about local housing markets. The idea of an ecology of despair and ethnocentric attitudes are discussed.

This research strives to tell a new story regarding the social production of health by focusing on the relations of power influencing food access and related health conditions. This new story begins by challenging existing tools used to understand the publics health and offers a new theory-methods package, materialist praxis, as means for activating population health perspectives and for materializing praxis-oriented research. I then apply a materialist praxis research approach to transform three Boys and Girls Clubs in Nashville, Tennessee from youth-serving organizations to farmers markets. This participatory, situated, reflective, and materialized research process provided an opportunity for children, youth, and adults to author a discourse of resistance and possibility with respect to pressing health inequities such as obesity and food insecurity. Through performances in and to space, this research also provided opportunities for uncovering the spatially, temporally, and socially constructed boundaries influencing food access. These boundaries combine to make real, fresh, and good foods foods considered to be healthier than and superior to foods described as bad, rotten, and junk inaccessible to many people residing in socially marginalized locations. Data analysis also depicted a nuanced understanding of food access by focusing on the financial and time costs influencing access. The results of this study reveal that the politics of food access are complex and intersectional but nevertheless discernable and most importantly changeable. This dissertation concludes by exploring how this materially and community-based process of research facilitated the re-creation of relationships between food and food practices by transforming social structures and, in turn, human agents. I also explore how the relations of power influencing food access are intricately connected to the production and reproduction of health disparities more broadly, and argue for the use of materialist praxis in future research focused on the social production of health as well as for the development of social change efforts focused on redressing unequal and unjust relations of power influencing access to food.

Citizen participation in neighborhood planning has become commonplace, but the process and resulting use of the input varies widely across projects. Literature on participatory planning suggests theoretical approaches to inform the structure of the process, as well as highlighting many of the issues and challenges that have become a part of participatory planning projects. This study examines a participatory neighborhood planning process in a mid-sized Southeastern U.S. city. The neighborhood is located near the citys central business district, and includes within its boundaries several service providers to the homeless in addition to a number of local businesses. The process involved a series of community meetings organized by a partnership between the local housing authority and a local non-profit planning agency. Business and property owners, homeless service providers, and homeless individuals attended meetings and provided input to inform the future development of the area. The process and results of these meetings, as well as interviews with participants, were analyzed to determine 1) the differences between groups in terms of goals for the neighborhood, 2) how those differences were resolved in the final plan, 3) how these final decisions were made, and 4) group differences in perception of the process. The results indicate that key differences existed between groups in their perception of the process and outcomes, but overall some consensus was reached.

Caregiver strain is a complex phenomenon with the potential to have a deleterious effect on caregivers ability to perform their caregiving duties. Previous research has suggests that differences in race influence caregivers reported level of strain, with African Americans tending to report lower levels of strain than their Caucasian counterpart. The present study examines racial differences in and measurement-related issues regarding caregiver strain, as measured by the Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (Brannan, Heflinger, & Bickman, 1997), as well as the contribution of caregiver substance use and mental health problems to strain. Regression analysis was used to examine objective and subjective caregiver strain outcomes collected from Medicaid family caregivers (N = 1089) of children with emotional and behavioral problems from four sites (New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee/Mississippi). Selection of explanatory variables was guided primarily by the Double ABCX Model of adaptation. Propensity score methods were used to minimize confounds among race, demographic variables, and ABCX constructs. The propensity score adjustment strategies limit comparison groups and stratify on the propensity score to balance observed risks between African Americans (n = 414) and Caucasians (n = 675). Ordinary least squares regression results using the unadjusted covariates showed that African American caregivers reported less strain than Caucasians. However, after using propensity score analysis, African American caregivers with similar risk profiles to Caucasian caregivers were shown to report similar levels of caregiver strain. Although there were no differences in perceptions by race, caregivers with higher levels of self-reported mental health problems reported more strain; and caregivers substance abuse problems were not a significant predictor of strain for African Americans or Caucasians. Results from this study provide evidence that perceptions of caregiver strain when caring for a child with emotional and behavioral problems are similar for African Americans and Caucasians when differences in observed covariates are controlled, demonstrating that caregiver strain may be universal among U.S. caregivers. These results warrant additional study to determine if these differences are true of other child and adolescent populations.

This study is a response to the recent global re-framing of domestic violence as a preventable social problem, calling for prevention-oriented efforts throughout the different levels of our societies, or social ecology. This research investigates if existing responses to domestic violence currently occur throughout social ecologies, and to what extent efforts are prevention oriented. This is achieved through the undertaking of a case study of a particular community in Scotland, and the broader social ecology of which the community is a part. Through a collaborative investigation with expert community members, the study explores how domestic violence is responded to throughout this social ecology. Over 90 responses to domestic violence were identified and are discussed. Each response was found to operate in one of six major sectors of response, Governmental, Non-Governmental, Criminal Justice, Health, Housing or Social Services. Most responses stemmed from the Governmental and Criminal Justice sectors. Prevention of domestic violence was found to be a key objective of the existing responses, but few, in practice, were primary prevention efforts. The perspectives of key stakeholders on the existing efforts are engaged throughout. Local community efforts to respond to domestic violence were found to be an asset throughout the social ecology, and are presented as a model. Key findings include the invisibility of men across efforts to tackle domestic violence, the benefit of engaging the expertise of those who have experienced domestic violence, and the need for responses to more realistically meet the needs of those living with violence.

This is a study of participation and engagement in power-based community organizing a multidimensional approach to community and person-level change. Community organizing groups seek to develop and strengthen local networks of voluntary members that operate independent of particular issues, and span multiple constituencies. The local federations participating in this research have harnessed the power of volunteer participation to pursue fair lending, affordable housing, improvements in education, community development, crime prevention, and other issues of local concern. Understanding impacts on participation, particularly setting-level or contextual influences, is crucial to furthering the goals of power-based organizing, especially as these goals are addressed by maintaining and deepening member participation. This study examines individual participation patterns in context specifically, the settings, networks, and neighborhoods in which participatory activities occur. Longitudinal data analysis on participation in organizing groups demonstrates great variation in rates of return and attrition among participants. Attendance at certain types of meetings (particularly research actions), participation in the relational work of organizing through one-to-one meetings, and social network engagement are found to be important determinants of future participation. This study sheds light on dynamics within the practice of community organizing at the interstices of group process and individual behaviors, and suggests ways that intentionality in the application of an organizing model can help to sustain and deepen member participation, enhancing the power of local organizing groups. Implications are explored more broadly as they relate to movement building, and attempts to increase civic engagement.

The flow of ideas that emerges from educational programs, particularly those that explicitly encourage interactions with community members, holds under-appreciated potential for knowledge flow to contribute to development at a community level. This study examines a single case, the PSA program in Colombia, to explore the patterns and potential of educational knowledge-sharing for community development. Using the lenses of network theory and communities of practice, it draws from social network data, interviews, and participant observation to capture the knowledge-sharing practices of students and their contributions to community development. Findings suggest that through formally-assigned activities and those that emerge from student initiative, students enrich their existing networks of community with additional information, recommendations for practice, and discussions of fundamental values and concepts. At the same time, they extend those networks to include new individuals and promote sharing that shapes practice within communities of practice.

Much ink has been spilled over the question of whether or not there is a culture war going on in the United States between religious conservatives and liberals (Hunter, 1991). This thesis examines the possibility of cultural war through an in-depth investigation of how morality and values affect peoples larger political narratives. Specifically, I use the grounded theory method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to develop a theoretical model of how political narratives form and develop. From this analysis, I found that beliefs, values, and emotional sentiments are the three super-ordinate categories from which political narratives take shape. First, I show how these categories, taken together, are the basic building blocks of a persons political narrative at any given time. Second, I show how these categories interact with a persons context to lead to the development of a political narrative across time. After examining the importance of beliefs, values, and emotional sentiments in the general case, I explore two political narratives in extensive detail. Through this exploration I show how these categories combine to create political narrative in specific instances. Finally, I use the information learned through this analysis to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of two prominent theoretical accounts of morality and politics and morality, one offered by Jonathan Haidt (2007), the other by George Lakoff (2002).

This thesis uses Foucaults conceptualization of power to examine power dynamics in two health and human service organizations. Foucault suggests that power should be observed by assessing relationships, cultures, and ideologies. Recognizing power processes that inform individual agendas, culture, and structure is vital for understanding how organizations function and potentially create sustainable change. However, there are few academic studies that focus on organizational power. Moreover, when investigating power in organizations, research has tended to: 1) compartmentalized power; 2) classify its definition as a human capacity; or 3) privilege collective efforts to exercise power. Findings based on an analysis of interviews, focus groups, participant observations, and organizational artifacts indicate the presence of power at multiple organizational levels. Results also reveal varying and often contradictory expressions of power as well as informal power dynamics. Given these outcomes, I present a model based on Foucaultian themes to simultaneously observe power at multiple organizational levels. Lastly, theoretical and practical implications for organizations, policy, and organizational change are discussed.