This ethnographic study utilizes the case of the Preparation for Social Action (PSA) program in Zambia to explore the topic of science education for development. Specifically, it looks at how science education can be framed to envision its contributions to community development, drawing on the construct of critical science agency; it examines some of the factors that shape the sort of agency students enact, looking in particular at considerations of knowledge and epistemology in science study; and it takes up the question of the relationship between science and local knowledge in this approach to education for development. The result is offered as a small contribution to phronetic social science research.

Scholars have called for a paradigmatic shift away from acculturation models contingent upon oversimplified binaries that associate individuals with their culture of origin or the culture(s) associated with their resettlement community (Berry et. al, 2012; Portes & Zhou, 1993; Rudmin, 2009). Such perspectives do not account for the nuanced ways in which individuals are actively and strategically defining whether and how they will participate in response to socially constructed constraints in multiple or specific contexts. In my dissertation, I study whether and how ethnic identity development is incorporated into this strategic navigational process for refugees who are likely to be racialized as Black in the U.S. Through fourteen interviews and participant observation within five refugee families from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan, I examine how ethnicity, race, and immigration experiences shape individuals perceptions of self, others, opportunities, and challenges. I also investigated the culture, curriculum, and people within a multicultural elementary charter school for refugee, immigrant, and local native-born children to assess the role of schools in these acculturation and identity development processes. Double-consciousness (DuBois, 1903), Black Feminism (Collins, 1990), and Critical Race Feminism (Wing, 2000) provide crucial frameworks for considering how aspects of ethnic identity development manifest in individuals voices, views, and choices, particularly for Sub-Saharan African refugee youth. These theoretical lenses are also valuable for exploring how this developmental process can promote collective action and institutional change. Thus the objectives of this dissertation work are twofold. First, I aim to combine past scholarship with current observations to enhance research on ethnicity in globalizing contexts. Second, I endeavor to inspire practice through an increased awareness of the significance of ethnic identity development, particularly within schools serving broadly diverse and/or international youth.

Research suggests that youth civic engagement is beneficial for individuals and democratic societies, and research in this field has proliferated in recent decades. This abundance of research, however, has also come with challenges, including a lack of conceptual clarity around youth civic engagement. The present paper addresses this confusion and suggests useful tools for moving forward. The first paper presents a conceptual analysis of youth civic engagement, proposing a new conceptualization to create definitional boundaries yet still allow contextual responsiveness of this term, specifically around the concepts of community and the greater good. The second paper provides a quantitative exploration of the relationship between context and the manifestation of youth civic engagement through a multilevel latent profile analysis of data from the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. The results of this study identify profiles of current civic participation and intentions for future protest and political participation that differ across countries and are predicted by family characteristics. The third paper presents a qualitative exploration of civic engagement among students attending recovery high schools. The results suggest that students are actively involved in giving back to their communities, particularly their school and recovery communities, through civic engagement and general prosocial behaviors. Taken together, these three studies highlight the importance of achieving greater conceptual clarity in our understanding of youth civic engagement in addition to the importance of situating this understanding in the context of youths particular communities.

As conflicts surrounding the global Muslim community and other religious divisions continue to capture the attention of the media and public audiences, scholars and community practitioners increasingly extol the benefits of interfaith dialogue and action for developing interfaith peace. Yet very little research has been done to understand and evaluate the successes and challenges of this work. As outlined in the Introduction, much remains to be done to examine the challenges in interfaith work, particularly that it is made all the more difficult by the reality that interfaith participants are comprised of much more than just religious identities. Race, ethnicity, gender, personal social networks these factors and others serve to further complicate the ability of persons to effectively come together in relationship. I examine these challenges in three papers through analyses of interview and survey data collected from interfaith organization participants, as well as interview and focus group data collected from research team members, ourselves an interfaith group. Building from Bronfenbrenners (1979) ecological systems theory, in Chapter II, I examine the ways in which a number of ecological factors influence the practice of research, broadening typically narrow views of researcher subjectivity to be more fully ecological. In Chapter III, I show how attention to a nonreligious identity such as gender may help us to better understand individuals experiences in interfaith spaces. In Chapter IV, I examine the mesosystemic factors impinging on the interfaith organizations that serve to both support and hinder the individual persons participation in interfaith work. In the concluding chapter, I propose some future directions and recommendations for interfaith work. These analyses make important contributions to the extant interfaith and socialpsychological literatures as well as to the work of interfaith practitioners and organizations seeking to make their work more adaptive and responsive to the needs of the particular persons and local contexts they serve.

Millions of individuals and families have been permanently resettled in host countries after having fled their homes in order to seek safety from war or persecution. These resettled refugees may experience extreme hardship prior to and during flight, and may continue to experience difficulties upon resettlement, all of which can negatively influence health status. However, many also exhibit strength and resilience. Understanding the myriad social and environmental factors that affect (and are affected by) health status for any population can be difficult in general, and there are many additional contextual factors to consider when working with refugees in particular. This dissertation contributes to knowledge of refugee health status in two ways. The first is to provide an integrated model for the social determinants of health a tool that can be used to organize what is already either theorized or known, and what is lacked, about the health of a population of interest. This framework is applied to resettled refugees as both an example and as a way of structuring the extant knowledge for this population. The second is to produce evidence about the health status of resettled refugees via three empirical studies. One uses a large existing dataset from the UK, employing latent growth curve modeling to investigate changes in health status over time after resettlement. The other two utilize local data from Nashville, TN collected in partnership with a refugee-serving non-profit organization. One series of research questions focuses on relationships between adjustment to life in the US and health status, drawing on focus groups with Somali residents (n=12). Another series investigates the relationship between life stressors (including traumatic events and chronic stressors) and health status, drawing from survey data collected from Somali residents (n=145). Overall, it is clear that some refugees do quite well upon resettlement, but that there is also great need among others, especially for emotional problems. Approaches to estimating and alleviating the health burdens require attention to cultural issues.

Due to lack of rigorous evaluations, there is limited evidence that homelessness prevention programs effectively reduce rates of homelessness and efficiently direct services where they can make the most difference. Effectiveness is the ability to reduce rates of homelessness among people who would otherwise experience it. Efficiency is the ability to direct services to those who would benefit most. Evidence of effectiveness requires a counterfactual typically a comparison between a treatment group and a similar group that does not receive treatment. Evidence of efficiency necessitates development of a risk model and investigation of the levels of risk where services make the most difference. Investigations sometimes confound effectiveness and efficiency: evaluators might believe that services are effective when those services are imprecisely targeted. The current study examines effectiveness and efficiency for prevention programs in two sites. It develops risk models for homelessness using Cox proportional hazard models for 2,761 applicants for Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing in Alameda County and for 10,220 individual applicants for HomeBase prevention services in New York City. Further, it uses a regression discontinuity design for the sample in Alameda County to examine the effectiveness of services. The findings provide limited evidence that prevention programs can reduce entries into homelessness and stronger evidence that programs can work better by focusing on individuals and families at highest risk. Triage models that exclude some applicants as too risky to serve are not supported by the data. The studies also contribute to the understanding of the causes of homelessness, via the examination of risk factors in the two sites. The results suggest that structural issues are the driving forces of homelessness in two housing markets with limited access to affordable housing. Future research is necessary to obtain more precise estimates of prevention effects and to examine similarities and differences in findings across housing markets. Prevention programs might do better not only to provide immediate prevention services for individuals and families but also to combat the structural forces that lead to high rates of homelessness.

Attracting affluent households and skilled labor has long been a component of local development across U.S. cities. Place attractiveness has, however, taken on a new significance over the past forty years as the diffusion of neoliberal social policy, and the development of the post-productivist economy have effectively tied the prospects of local development to the financial, social, and human capital of this select population. As prevalent as the idea may be that local development is contingent on a potentially-mobile class, there is little research on income-differentiated household migration and its local outcomes. This study considers the impact of income-differentiated household migration on locales across the U.S., and communities situated therein. Of particular interest is the relationship over time between income dispersion in place, as manifest in local income inequality and segregation, and income dispersion between places, as affected by inequality within the population of migrating households. Findings indicate that high- and low-income migration patterns are categorically distinct, affecting sociospatial fragmentation at both the local and regional level, and that class-biased approaches to local development contribute to increasing income inequality and segregation.

While an uncontested symbol of the American dream is homeownership, only members of the higher echelons of society can achieve this dream with ease. Lower-income populations take the greatest risk and suffer the most severe consequences when homeownership fails. This study explores a creative solution for low-income homeowners, called community land trusts (CLT), and the associated challenges for broader acceptance of the CLT model due to its relationship to the low-income population it serves. My research questions attempt to understand two issues affecting the acceptance of the CLT model the physical conditions of CLT properties and public perceptions of the properties. To answer these questions, an online survey instrument was developed using photographs of CLT properties in one neighborhood in Tucson, Arizona. These photos, their corresponding question responses, and the corresponding data elicited interesting information on how both norms associated with low-income housing and respondent demographics affect perceptions of CLT houses. Together these inquiries provide important information about how CLTs may contribute to developing more positive perceptions of affordable housing.

This paper explores the intersection of religious and sexual identity formation amongst Muslim-American youth, employing psychological theories of identity, sociological theories of performance, and theological perspectives of gender and sexuality in Islam. The mixed-method design utilizes both focus groups and a survey instrument to understand the religious and sexual identity development of Muslim American students (ages 10-14) in a medium-sized city in the southern United States. The project contrasts three particular school settings public schools that have a large Muslim population, public schools that have few Muslim students, and Islamic schools. The study seeks to understand Muslim youths beliefs regarding the Islamic teachings on gender and sexuality, Muslim youths beliefs regarding their peers expectations on gender and sexuality, the impact of social contexts on religious and sexual identity formation, and ways in which sexuality is moderated by the religious beliefs of Muslim youth. Findings suggest that gender and sexuality are often part of a null curriculum for Muslim youth issues that are considered taboo and thus un-Islamic. However, Muslim youth who do utilize religious scripts are found to be able to make agentic choices about their sexual identity. In addition, improving parental scripts on gender and sexuality can have a positive impact on the sexual identity formation of Muslim American youth.

Research suggests that adolescent recovery from substance use disorders is a complex and dynamic process requiring multiple resources at intersecting ecological levels. The recovery capital framework is one model that allows for the modeling of these different resources, but has only been studied among adult populations. Thus, the present dissertation explores the relevance of recovery capital for adolescents and also incorporates a demonstration of exploratory methods for social scientists studying similar complex issues and populations. The first paper presents a latent class analysis to distinguish whether adolescents who are in need of treatment have different patterns of recovery capital. The results suggest that there are five qualitatively distinct classes of recovery capital among this adolescent population and that demographic characteristics are predictive of the type of recovery capital class to which an adolescent belongs. The second paper uses data from an ongoing observational study to address whether recovery capital resources predict attendance at a recovery high school (RHS), one form of community recovery capital, using four different quantitative approaches: logistic regressions, SEARCH, classification trees, and random forests. The results of this study indicate that predictors of RHS attendance are diverse, represent factors in multiple recovery capital domains, and are not necessarily linked to higher levels of recovery capital. Additionally, the different exploratory approaches highlight potential important variable interactions for future research to explore. The final empirical paper uses the dataset in paper two to demonstrate the utility of data mining approaches as compared to traditional logistic regression approaches for covariate selection prior to propensity score estimation. The results suggest that logistic regressions produce the best balance on included covariates, yet the random forest method retains the largest sample and identifies key interactions that are important to include in propensity score estimation. Together, these three studies highlight the applicability of the recovery capital model as an ecological framework specific to addiction and recovery for understanding adolescent recovery processes, while also identifying gaps in the current recovery capital model. In addition, these studies demonstrate both the utility and potential challenges of utilizing exploratory quantitative methods to study complex social science research questions.