Master of Science / Department of Horticulture, Forestry, and Recreation Resources / Charles J. Barden / Due to health and nutritional disparities, prevalence of obesity and related diseases among American Indians is found to be higher than the U.S. general population. To promote a healthy lifestyle, the long term goal of this project is to increase fresh fruit and vegetable availability through gardening for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (PBPN) tribe in Kansas. In achieving this ultimate goal, two studies were conducted with the objectives of: 1) Evaluate the nutritional and behavioral health indicators for the residential population of the tribe and identify key constraints of gardening activity in the reservation; and 2) Conduct vegetable cultivar trials comparing different open pollinated (OP) and hybrid cultivars of tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum), pepper (Capsicum annum) and eggplant (Solanum melongena var. esculentum) to identify best yielding cultivars. Three surveys were conducted to assess the residential population with respect to gardening activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, health status, physical activity and socioeconomic status, using convenience samples. Cultivar trials comparing 6 pepper, 3 eggplant, and 5 tomato cultivars were conducted in 2012 and 2013 growing seasons. PBPN respondent group revealed significant health disparities compared to the general U.S. and Kansas populations. A higher proportion of this group was in poverty which had strong correlations with land ownership, gardening experience, and attendance to gardening workshops. “No knowledge” and “no space” were identified as key gardening constraints. Hybrid Jetstar was the best tomato cultivar identified, while Cherokee Purple was the best yielding OP cultivar. No difference in performance was observed among the three eggplant cultivars tested. Sweet pepper hybrids Flamingo and Alliance outperformed OP California Wonder which was moderate in production. OP chili pepper cultivars Anaheim 118 and hybrid Chili G76 outperformed hybrid Charger. Identified best yielding cultivars could be distributed among tribal members to support in-place gardening initiatives. Gardening limitations of “no land” and “no knowledge” could be mitigated by increasing participation at the community garden and attendance for gardening workshops. Strategic approaches should be implemented to attract people in poverty to engage in gardening and increase gardening activity in the reservation for nutritional, health and economic benefits.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / William H. Meredith Jr / Walter R. Schumm / This study addresses a social capital literature that has mostly targeted a White majority population in the United States. Hispanic audiences, especially new immigrant populations, have not been primary survey respondents in most studies. Information about the social connectedness of minorities has come from secondary sources. The goal of this study was to understand to what extent Hispanic, compared to Anglo, families in rural Kansas experienced different levels of social capital in terms of social connectedness and community involvement. This study was done in English and Spanish in order to reach the under-represented population. According to political scientist, Robert Putnam (2000), it is through experiences of face-to-face interaction with those from different backgrounds that people learn to trust each other. Connections create networks that allow social trust to spread throughout society. At the individual level, there has been strong, consistent evidence that social connectedness has positive consequences. Individuals have the capacity and the choice to build their social connectedness and community engagement. Then those assets can be shared with the collective; be it family, organization, community, state, or country. When individuals have access to networks of supportive and accepting associates, it can generate an array of personal and societal benefits that include preventing or overcoming illness, preventing crime, mitigating poverty, addressing racial inequalities, supporting child development, improving health, and addressing other social ills. When one builds a stock of personal relationships and other social connections from which he or she can call upon in times of need, it is called social capital. This study, in part, assessed social connectedness and community engagement of people in Southwest County, a rural location in Southwest Kansas which has a 30% Hispanic population. Surveys were sent to selected households in English and Spanish, and two small focus groups were conducted in the two languages. Statistical analyses indicated support for the hypotheses when the independent variables gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, income, and community longevity were analyzed with dependent variables made up of scaled items to measure social connectedness and community engagement. Race/ethnicity, education, and income appeared to be the strongest predictors of social connectedness and community engagement. Implications of the results are discussed.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent Amanor-Boadu / This research identifies factors that distinguish rural women who have migrated to Bangkok for the purpose of enhancing their economic wellbeing by engaging in the sex industry and those who have stayed in their rural communities and are not engaged in the sex industry. The research used primary data collected through interviews in the red light districts of Bangkok and Pattaya and in villages in the rural provinces of Buriram, Udon Thani, Sakon Nakhon, Chayaphum and Khon Kaen in Thailand. A total of 100 respondents provided information for the study: 55 percent from the red light districts and the remainder from the provinces. The data were analyzed using logit regression modeling approach as well as statistical analysis. The statistical analysis provided the descriptive statistics of the respondents and an overview of the data. The logit regression modeling approach facilitated the estimation of the responses of the probability of working in the red light entertainment districts to specified demographic and psychographic variables. The pseudo R-square of the logit model was 46.2 percent for the base model, which included age, marital status, number of male and female siblings respectively, birth position and number of children, education, financial responsibility and average monthly age. The results indicated that marital status was significant at the 1 percent level, exhibiting a marginal effect of about -35.2 percent. That is, when the marital status of a respondent changed from unmarried (0) to married (1), the probability of sex industry participation decreased by about 35 percent. Assessing the effect only among respondents with children, the results are not very different from the base model. The pseudo R-square for this model – which is the same as the base model, except that it has Teen Mother as a variable – was 61.4 percent with a total number of observations of 78 instead of the original 100. This implies that about 22 respondents did not have any children. In this model, the marital status variable is significant at the 1 percent level as was the number of female siblings. The average monthly wage is significant at the 5 percent level, with a 1000 Thai Baht increase in wages leading to a marginal 0.01 percent decline in the probability of sex industry participation. Education, under this model, is statistically significant at the 10 percent level, with another year of education decreasing the probability of sex industry participation by 2.5 percent. The foregoing provides some clear policy direction. Specific efforts may be invested in enhancing the education of women in Thailand, which is expected to increase their economic situation. However, this expectation would not materialize if investments are not made to enhance the economic opportunities available to women across the economic spectrum. Perhaps most importantly, however, this study shows that incremental improvement in educational and economic opportunities for rural women alone may not achieve lasting results if cultural paradigms regarding marriage, relational fidelity and imbalanced socio-cultural obligations of daughters are not addressed in tandem.

Master of Science / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Karen Myers-Bowman / Female adolescent sexual behavior has several potential negative life consequences including: pregnancy, sexually transmitted infection, and HIV/AIDS. Educating parents on how they play a role in the decision-making process regarding the sexual behavior of their adolescent daughters has important implications for Family Life Educators. This thesis explores maternal influence on the risky sexual behavior of female adolescents related to age at first sexual intercourse, contraceptive use, and number of partners. ANOVA was used to explore the relationships between a variety of aspects in the mother-daughter relationship. Findings show there are associations between time spent together, perceptions of closeness, and communication in mother-daughter relationships, and contraceptive use at first and most recent intercourse and total number of partners.

Working to untangle the multiple interests and “truths” that manifest in decision-making in youth shelters, I draw on the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality as an alternative means of problematizing “youth homelessness” in Canada. Tracing interdiscursivity between levels of authority, I use critical discourse analysis to deconstruct federal and Ontario government, and Toronto youth shelter discourses. Aiming to normalize the problematic, I uncover tensions between crime control and human resource development within each level of authority. Further, usurping attention to employment and housing, mental illness and youth criminality are taking over as dominant discourses. Moreover, the discursive production of “needy” and “helping” subjectivities is serving to depoliticize and individualize institutionally structured relationships, thereby limiting the depth of citizenship permitted poor, racialized and gendered young people. Concealing ongoing neo-liberal restructuring, therapeutic community-based governance is thus justified over action to address the roots of youth homelessness.

We rely on science and other organized forms of inquiry to answer cardinal questions on issues varying from global warming and public health to the political economy. In my thesis, which is in the intersection of philosophy of science, social epistemology, and science and technology studies, I develop a social theory of knowledge that can help us tell when our beliefs and theories on such matters amount to knowledge, as opposed to mere opinion, speculation, or educated guess. The first two chapters discuss relevant shortcomings of mainstream analytic epistemology and the sociology of knowledge, respectively. Mainstream epistemology regards individuals, rather than communities, as the ‎bearers of knowledge or justified belief. In Chapter 1, I argue that typically, only an epistemic community can collectively possess sufficient justification required for knowledge. In Chapter 2, I present a case study in computer science that militates against the sociological understating of knowledge as mere interest-based agreement. I argue that social interests alone cannot explain the unfolding of the events in this case. Rather, we must assume that knowledge is irreducible to social dynamics and interests. In Chapter 3, I begin my positive analysis of the social conditions for knowledge. I explore the question of when a consensus is knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus. I identify three conditions – social diversity, apparent consilience of evidence, and meta agreement, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. In Chapter 4, I illustrate my argument by analyzing the recent controversy about the safety of the drug Bendectin. I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, and hence the deference to consensus to resolve this dispute was unjustified. In chapter 5, I develop a new theory of the logical relations between evidence and social values. I identify three roles social values play in evidential reasoning and justification: They influence the trust we extend to testimony, the threshold values we require for accepting evidence, and the process of combining different sorts of evidence.

Working to untangle the multiple interests and “truths” that manifest in decision-making in youth shelters, I draw on the Foucauldian perspective of governmentality as an alternative means of problematizing “youth homelessness” in Canada. Tracing interdiscursivity between levels of authority, I use critical discourse analysis to deconstruct federal and Ontario government, and Toronto youth shelter discourses. Aiming to normalize the problematic, I uncover tensions between crime control and human resource development within each level of authority. Further, usurping attention to employment and housing, mental illness and youth criminality are taking over as dominant discourses. Moreover, the discursive production of “needy” and “helping” subjectivities is serving to depoliticize and individualize institutionally structured relationships, thereby limiting the depth of citizenship permitted poor, racialized and gendered young people. Concealing ongoing neo-liberal restructuring, therapeutic community-based governance is thus justified over action to address the roots of youth homelessness.

We rely on science and other organized forms of inquiry to answer cardinal questions on issues varying from global warming and public health to the political economy. In my thesis, which is in the intersection of philosophy of science, social epistemology, and science and technology studies, I develop a social theory of knowledge that can help us tell when our beliefs and theories on such matters amount to knowledge, as opposed to mere opinion, speculation, or educated guess. The first two chapters discuss relevant shortcomings of mainstream analytic epistemology and the sociology of knowledge, respectively. Mainstream epistemology regards individuals, rather than communities, as the ‎bearers of knowledge or justified belief. In Chapter 1, I argue that typically, only an epistemic community can collectively possess sufficient justification required for knowledge. In Chapter 2, I present a case study in computer science that militates against the sociological understating of knowledge as mere interest-based agreement. I argue that social interests alone cannot explain the unfolding of the events in this case. Rather, we must assume that knowledge is irreducible to social dynamics and interests. In Chapter 3, I begin my positive analysis of the social conditions for knowledge. I explore the question of when a consensus is knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus. I identify three conditions – social diversity, apparent consilience of evidence, and meta agreement, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. In Chapter 4, I illustrate my argument by analyzing the recent controversy about the safety of the drug Bendectin. I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, and hence the deference to consensus to resolve this dispute was unjustified. In chapter 5, I develop a new theory of the logical relations between evidence and social values. I identify three roles social values play in evidential reasoning and justification: They influence the trust we extend to testimony, the threshold values we require for accepting evidence, and the process of combining different sorts of evidence.

Following Merton (1942) science studies has moved from the philosophy of science to a more sociologically minded analysis of scientific activity. This largely involves a shift away from questions that bear on the context of justification – a question of rationality and philosophy, to those that deal with the context of discovery. This thesis investigates changes in science studies in three papers: sociocultural evolutionary theories of scientific change; general trends in science studies - especially concerning the sociology of science; and a principle component analysis (PCA) that details the development and interaction between research programmes in science studies. This thesis describes the proliferation of research programmes in science studies and uses evolutionary theory to make sense of the pattern of change.

Following Merton (1942) science studies has moved from the philosophy of science to a more sociologically minded analysis of scientific activity. This largely involves a shift away from questions that bear on the context of justification – a question of rationality and philosophy, to those that deal with the context of discovery. This thesis investigates changes in science studies in three papers: sociocultural evolutionary theories of scientific change; general trends in science studies - especially concerning the sociology of science; and a principle component analysis (PCA) that details the development and interaction between research programmes in science studies. This thesis describes the proliferation of research programmes in science studies and uses evolutionary theory to make sense of the pattern of change.