Certain types of spatial data maintained and distributed by counties at taxpayer expense can be used with powerful mapping and analysis software, called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to compromise an indvidual's locational privacy. The kind of privacy at threat here is referred to as geoprivacy, which is concerned with the rights to prevent disclosure of the location of one's home, workplace, or daily activities. While the availability of accessible and accurate geospatial data has increased geoprivacy concerns in recent years, this threat remains virtually unknown to the general public. Although previous research has explored various components of the geoprivacy debate, the fragmented and localized nature of this work does not adequately address the threat on a large scale or lend itself for use in multi-level policy discussions. This thesis fills the need for a comprehensive and systematic geoprivacy study by examining county data availability in the entire state of Florida. Ultimately, the success of geoprivacy violation attempts is determined by the availability and quality of the data being used. In order to evaluate this threat,a statewide inventory of the data necessary for a reverse geocoding operation, defined here as geoprivacy data elements, was created. A specific county (Bay County) with complete data availability was then selected and its geoprivacy data elements, specifically street, parcel, and address point layers were evaluated for their reverse geocoding and subsequent identity disclosure success. These findings were then compared with the results of the statewide inventory to determine the level of exposure that the state's residents are subjected to, based on their county's data offerings. The statewide data inventory indicated substantial variation in county availability, quality, and delivery methods of the desired geoprivacy data elements. The results of the reverse geocoding operation performed with Bay County's geoprivacy data elements revealed that both property parcels and address points in conjunction with ownership information have a high rate of identity disclosure success. Geocodable streets were found to have a low rate of identity disclosure success and their results were comparable to a non-county maintained street layer that was used for control purposes. Although the street layers had a low rate of identity disclosure success, they could be used to identify a narrow range of address possibilities and still pose a geoprivacy threat. Forty-two counties in which approximately 13 million people reside make parcel data with ownership information available for free or purchase. Given the high success rate of the parcel data to disclose individual identity, this research suggests that the majority of the state's residents are vulnerable to potential geoprivacy violations.

The question that I investigate here is what emotion work is performed by child protective investigators in order to be successful at their work, and how do they manage these emotional challenges within a community of their peers? Many different workers, from airline employees (Hochschild, 1983) to mortuary science students (Cahill, 1999) to 911 operators (Shuler & Sypher, 2000), have been studied to examine strategies and effects of emotion management. Yet scholars do not agree on whether emotion management at work is positive or negative. For my research, I conducted interviews with ten investigators and observed a night unit of child protective investigators in a Central Florida Sheriff's Office. I observed three different types of strategies, which I discuss in detail: office based strategies, field based strategies, and personal strategies. Office based strategies include group humor, practical support and sharing experiences. Field based strategies include calming down the parent, enlisting the client, and distancing humor. Personal strategies include accentuating importance and blaming the parent. In the conclusion I summarize my research and discuss the finding that both novice and veteran child protective investigators use these strategies. I end with policy recommendations and I stress the importance of building a supportive professional community through further training.

Within the United States, a growing sense of detachment exists. Conditions in both urban and suburban contexts have created a sense of social detachment where spaces do not exist which encourage social interaction. Without this social activity, neighbors become almost a disposable commodity as relationships never fully develop. This thesis will be an examination of environments which do and do not foster community relationships and an implementation of community into an urban multi-family residence. A major part of the problem is the recent move to the suburbs, but urban buildings also exhibit a lack of spaces which help encourage a community among neighbors. Suburban residents are separated by both spatial and physical boundaries. In addition to this, a social boundary is also created by a lack of interaction between the primary unit and the street as well as a reliance on the automobile which blocks any chance of spontaneous interaction. The typical urban multi-family building exists in a context that and provides some spaces which give pedestrian traffic a chance for spontaneous interaction, but provides these by accident as these spaces are usually provided only as a means to get to one's unit. To discover what community is and how it can thrive, many research methods will be used. Existing building projects which have dealt with this problem will be examined; these precedents include residential buildings such as the Bedok Court Condominium in Singapore and large scale urban areas such as New York City. Theory on community within other fields such as sociology and psychology will also be looked at to see what it is that fosters community, and what blocks it. At the end of the project, a model will be designed for an example site within a typical city of the Unites States where the majority of the area is defined by disconnected neighborhoods. The model being sought will not simply be a multi-family building with community space, but an environment where the neighborhood community can grow and thrive.

In Eliza Haywood's fiction, as in eighteenth-century Britain, social restrictions repress the sexual desires of upper class women and men. Therefore, the secret desires of this social class often rely on a different group: domestic servants. Sometimes acting as confidants and other times as active players in the scheming, these servants are privy to the inner secrets of the households in which they live. In Haywood's Love in Excess (1719), Lasselia (1723), Fantomina (1725), and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), the servant class plays significant roles in the narratives. Since the role of the servant is the central issue in my interpretation of Haywood's works, the historical background of the relationship between master and servant in the eighteenth-century is significant to my investigation. Conduct books, a popular genre of the times, were written to offer practical instruction to domestic servants. Haywood's A Present for A Servant Maid; or the Sure Means of gaining Love and Esteem (1743), offers a view of Haywood's own attitude toward the servant class. In addition to her career as a writer of amorous intrigue, Haywood worked as both actress and playwright, and, because of her experience, elements of the stage can be seen in her works. I explore the influence of the theatre in Haywood's fiction and connect it to the prominent role of servants in her work. Though Haywood demonstrates that the servants' loyalty can be bought for the highest price, they are not ruled by the same sexual passion as are their employers. This area is of particular interest to my study. I explore whether the motive of financial gain is greater than sexual desire, or whether it is an awareness that aristocrats are not truly available to the servant class that accounts for the differences in erotic responses. Additionally, I explore how servants affect Haywood's narrative by acting as agents of change and argue that the social restrictions placed on the upper class and the awareness of the sexual freedoms the servant class bring master and servant closer together.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of employee input in the development stage of a new performance appraisal system on their attitudes and work behaviors. A field quasi-experiment with pre-test and post-test measures was conducted in two plants of an organization. The results, consistent with the hypotheses, show that the employees in the experimental plant report higher proximal (satisfaction with the performance appraisal system, procedural justice of the performance appraisal system) and distal (organizational satisfaction, fairness of the organization and citizenship behaviors) outcomes. Also, the proximal outcomes were stronger than the distal ones. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

This dissertation explores Toni Morrison's most prevalent motifs: the ghost, the orphan, and the outlaw. Each figure advances a critique of dominant narratives, specifically those that comprise history, family, and the law. In Chapter One, I argue that Morrison's ghost stories contrast two methods of memory, one that is authoritative and another that is imaginative, in order to counter the official renderings of history. Her ghosts signal forgotten aspects of American history and provide access to another storyline--one that lies in the shadows of the novel's principal narrative. This chapter compares the ghosts of Love and Home in order to show how Morrison uses ghosts as conduits of a subversive individual and communal memory. In my second chapter, I assert a reading of Morrison's orphans as blues figures. They attest to the destructive effects of race, class, and gender oppression, which render her characters biologically and culturally orphaned. I conclude this chapter by comparing Paradise and A Mercy to show how Morrison's orphaned characters posit an alternative model of kinship that is built from the shared project of liberation. In Chapter Three, I examine Morrison's treatment of the law and its foil--the outlaw. I argue that Morrison foregrounds criminality in the absence of the law and its apparatuses (courts, police) in order to subvert the social institutions that give rise to the ghost and the orphan. I compare the crimes at the heart of Tar Baby and Jazz in order to posit another notion of justice operating in Morrison's fiction. When looked at together, Morrison's triptych threatens the coherence of governing ideologies and offers a meditation on the transformative possibilities of narrative.

Logo currently holds a self-described monopoly as the "Gay Channel for America." Logo stands alone as the single most concentrated national-level vehicle of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) visibility in the post millennial television era. The Logo Channel has reaped financial rewards from its strategy as a business entity, as LGBT American television viewers embraced its presence as a signifier to America that gays and lesbians have finally "made it". First, any claim to a monopoly deserves critical attention for its place in mainstream television, for its business practices, and for the power it holds in representing and targeting LGBT audiences. Second, Logo's construction of its audience is an extremely important window into current perceptions of LGBT identity, history, and progress. Third, Logo's ability to capitalize on gay and lesbian visibility in American culture and the rhetoric of "inclusiveness" are important historical and cultural moments to explore the political costs and benefits of these strategies-in business practices, programming content, and advertisements. In this study, I argue that Logo does not capitalize on its television presence to participate in LGBT political, economic, and social equality. Despite its significant visibility and messages of "inclusiveness" in American popular culture, Logo contributes to the perpetuation of negative and narrow stereotypes of consumerist gay culture, as it marginalizes ethnic minorities and women, through a variety of conformist, self-serving practices that undermine the libratory opportunity it holds for its LGBT viewers. Chapter Two "Another Lost Opportunity" examines a brief history of the cable television industry, the television business model and the representations of gays and lesbians on television to draw a parallel social history centered on visibility. Chapter Three "Like Taking Candy from a Baby" examines three reoccurring series on Logo: Noah's Arc, Can't Get a Date, and Round-Trip Ticket. Chapter Four "Easy as Shooting Fish In a Barrel" examines the histories of 1) television advertising, 2) the risks and benefits of advertising on Logo, and 3) the history of gay and lesbian print advertising. This history lays the foundation for 4) exploring contemporary constructions of Logo's target market as the "ideal demographic."

The following dissertation investigates the relationship between depressed mood and academic performance (measured in terms of grade point average) in U.S. middle and high schools. Utilizing data from AddHealth, the dissertation establishes Ordinary Least Squares, Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), and individual and sibling fixed effect regressions that attempt to control for confounding factors, including student motivation, personality characteristics, and parental inputs that are unobserved but may influence both mental health and achievement. Study findings indicate that students who report feeling depressed do not perform as well academically as non-depressed students. Additionally, the degree of GPA impact increases with the severity of reported depression. Students reporting either depressed feelings "most or all of the time" - or symptoms consistent with major depression suffer GPA reductions of 0.06 to 0.84 grade points. In addition, middle schoolers and certain minority groups are hardest hit by depression, and persistent depression has a negative impact on grades.

The purpose of this study was to explore the implications of cultural dimensions on the relationship between job satisfaction facets, role stressors, and organizational commitment. Using data from 214 university employees, the moderating influence of individualistic and collectivistic orientations as expressed through four cultural dimensions (responsibility, affiliation, social welfare, and achievement) on those relationships were investigated. Results indicated that role ambiguity had a greater negative influence on affective commitment for those who were more cooperative as opposed to competitive in their achievement orientation; whereas the relationship between coworker and supervision satisfaction and affective commitment was stronger for those who endorsed an individualist achievement orientation. Responsibility was found to moderate the relationship between satisfaction with the nature of work and continuance commitment more strongly and negatively for those who endorsed a collectivist orientation. The prediction that the relationship between role stressors and normative commitment would be more negative for those endorsing a collectivist orientation of affiliation was supported. Support was also found for the more positive influence of a collectivist orientation of affiliation on the relationship between job satisfaction facets (coworkers and supervision) and normative commitment. Finally, support was found for the collectivist orientation of affiliation positively influencing the relationship of satisfaction with the nature of work with normative commitment. Cross-cultural psychology has moved towards the inclusion of cultural dimensions into the study of psychological behavior in the workplace in a two-pronged approach: refining the theory of cross-cultural industrial/organizational psychology and determining the processes by which cultural dimensions are linked to work behaviors. This study aimed to tackle both approaches by extending the empirical research that is ongoing in the area and accelerating the theoretical development.

With technological advances in testing for gene mutations, a new population of BRCA1/2 women is becoming aware of their increased risk for developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. A salient issue these women face is which risk-reducing option to choose. Little is known about the decision making factors underlying the choice of prophylactic mastectomy for women with a BRCA1/2 mutation. To address this issue, 137 unaffected, positive BRCA1/2 gene mutation carriers (42 who opted for prophylactic mastectomy, 95 who did not) served as participants. All women completed an on-line battery that assessed the following theory-based decision making variables: advantages and disadvantages of prophylactic mastectomy (normative decision theory), physician recommendation (shared decision making theory), cancer worry (affect theory), and information-seeking coping style. With the exception of information-seeking style (p = .8715), the decision making variables of advantages and disadvantages of prophylactic mastectomy, physician input, and cancer worry did have a significant relationship with risk-reduction option chosen. Women who rated the advantages higher than the disadvantages of prophylactic mastectomy (r = .31, p ≤ .001), whose physician had recommended prophylactic mastectomy exclusively (X² = 11.85; p < .001), and who reported higher cancer worry scores a month after receiving BRCA1/2 positive results (r = .28, p ≤ .001) were more likely to have chosen prophylactic mastectomy. The perceived impact (conflict, regret, cancer worry, and general well-being) of risk-reducing option selected was also explored. The direction of these relationships indicates that having chosen prophylactic mastectomy was associated with less decisional conflict (r = -.38, p ≤ .0001), decisional regret (r = -.58, p ≤ .0001), depressive symptomatology (r = -.19, p ≤ .05), and cancer worry (r = -.39, p ≤ .0001). The results suggest higher assessments of advantages over disadvantages of prophylactic mastectomy, doctor recommendation for prophylactic mastectomy exclusively, and higher cancer worry at time of testing is associated with choosing the risk-reducing option of prophylactic mastectomy. In addition, women who chose prophylactic mastectomy fared better psychologically than those who did not. Continued research addressing decision making variables and the impact of risk-reducing decisions may lead to improved understanding on how best to approach these difficult decisions.