Historians recognize that there was an increase in political repression in the United States during the Vietnam War era. While a number of accounts portray the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the primary driver of repression for many groups and individuals during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those on the left, historians typically overlook the role played by local and state law enforcement in political intelligence-gathering. This thesis seeks to advance the study of one aspect of this much larger topic by looking at New York State Police surveillance of the Vietnam-era student peace movement. Drawing extensively on State Police spy files housed at the New York State Archives, the thesis makes several significant contributions to the existing historiography on this period. First, it demonstrates how state and local police contributed to the climate of political repression and surveillance during the Vietnam era. Second, while this thesis encompasses state police surveillance at all types of institutions, including elite private universities and second-tier state colleges, in doing so it provides the first-ever detailed look at how community college students organized against the war. Since a majority of community college students were from relatively low-income backgrounds, chronicling the history of protest on two-year campuses gives historians another angle from which to counter the persistent myth that antiwar activism failed to penetrate the most working-class sectors of U.S. society.

The purpose of this project was to determine whether certain personal, socioeconomic, and court-related factors are significantly related to the differential placement of delinquent and dependent children from the detention facility at the Donald E. Long Home. A stratified random sample was composed of 173 placements of children who were held in detention after a preliminary hearing. The review of literature revealed that little systematic. Information is known regarding the placement process as it is related to differential placement of children from a detention facility. A code sheet was developed for recording the information in the children’s records maintained by the court. Fourteen variables were ultimately selected for analysis of their relationship to differential placement. These variables were subjected to three statistical approaches; a descriptive analysis of the random sample, testing of the significance of each variable to the alternatives in placement by either Chi square or analyses of variance, and testing of several variables in combination by discriminant function. This study was limited by the fact that only demographic variables were tested. Although three individual variables were found to have a high degree of significance in relation to placement, the data as produced within the scope of this research project does not provide an effective placement profile. The need for additional research in the area of the differential placement process is clearly indicated. Suggestions are made for future research.

The increasing popularity of the social web and online communities requires the attention of researchers of conflict resolution. Although there are many ways to resolve conflict offline, the ways in which conflict takes place within a native online context have not been much studied. Are any of the tools and strategies that are used to improve communication offline used successfully online, or are some other strategies taking their place? What communication patterns occur within an online community equipped with comment moderation capabilities? This research is a case study and addressed these questions by performing a qualitative analysis of comment conversations within two diaries that discussed a conflict event known as the Pie Fight within the Daily Kos community in June, 2005. The findings of this research are organized into three sections, which discuss behaviors related to Communication Style, Conflict Minimization or Avoidance, and community members' response to Comment Moderation (Ratings). Novel communication style behaviors which were noted included the use of cut-and-paste "paraphrasing" which was used to escalate conflict rather than resolving it, medium blaming when the writer's own words were quite obviously provocative, and extended leave-taking as a means of maintaining relationships before departing from the community. Conflict minimization or avoidance behaviors included the assumption that removal of discussion about the conflict by deleting an entire diary and comments threads would somehow resolve the disagreements included in them it, the use of benign verbal aggression which seemed to bring some segments of the community together, and the temporary or permanent departure from the community by members who took part in the conflict discussion. Ratings moderation created another point of conflict when negative ratings were threatened, although negative ratings were used mainly to address unproductive language rather than punish differences of opinion. The use of positive ratings to offer silent support or appreciation to members whose reasoned comments received a dismissive response was also observed. These findings could be used in future research about the suitability of online communities as sites of deliberative discussion.

This cross-sectional study investigates the perceptions of sexual harassment among 271 non-academic university personnel. The survey administered measured perceptions of sexual harassment using 17 dependent variables which assessed attitudes toward hostile work environment and quid pro quo sexual harassment. The study found that differences do exist in perceptions of sexual harassment based on biological sex of the respondents and the biological sex of the sexual harassment target. The study also found that there are significant positive correlations between perceptions of sexual harassment and the variables of age and number of years in the workforce. This study found no significant differences in perceptions of sexual harassment between those respondents who had participated in sexual harassment education and those who did not.

The interest in hoarding has peaked since its first clinical definition in 1996 and is evident by six television shows centered on the topic. This thesis reports the results a content analysis of two seasons (21 episodes) of the popular T.V. series A&E’s Hoarders. People rationalize hoarding in ways that both differ and overlap. Doctors, professional organizers, hoarders and their loved ones collectively frame hoarding as a medical and mental health problem. The results suggest that Americans’ perceptions of hoarding behavior has shifted from one that is deviant behavior to one that is medicalized.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between family type and criminal behavior of juveniles in Tennessee who were referred to Juvenile Court in 2006. The population used in the study comprised the juveniles who were referred to the Tennessee Juvenile Courts as reported by the Tennessee Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges in 2006. This investigation focused on the criminal behavior as indicated by number and type of referrals to the Juvenile and Family Court system in Tennessee. The data were analyzed by family-of-origin type, age group, and geographic region in Tennessee. The findings of this study indicate there was a difference in criminal behavior of children referred to the Juvenile and Family Court system in Tennessee in 2006 according to family-of-origin type with referrals. For the family-of-origin types with referrals to the juvenile courts (TCJFCJ), 20,734 (26.2%) of the referrals came from married couples, 5,899 (7.5%) of the referrals came from fathers only, 33,802 (42.8%) of the referrals came from mothers only, and 18,620 (23.6%) of the referrals came from other family-of-origin type. For all family-of-origin types in Tennessee (TN 2006) with referrals to the juvenile court system, 20,734 ( 4.4%) of the married couples had referrals , 5,899 (11.3%) of the fathers only had referrals, 33,802 (17.8%) of the mothers only had referrals, and 18,620 (3.2%) of the other family-of-origin type had referrals. The findings also show that as children approach the age of 18, there is a dramatic increase in illegal conduct and a less dramatic increase in status offenses. The number of referrals for offenses against persons and offenses against property tend to have a constant increase as children approach age 19. The results also show that in East Tennessee, status offenses had the highest number of offenses and offenses against persons had the lowest number of offenses. In West Tennessee, offenses against persons had highest number of referrals and status offenses had the lowest number of referrals.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use among teenagers. This study examined three research questions: (1) Is there a relationship between demographic characteristics (i.e., sex and race), the attitudinal variable (attachment to family), and the admitted use of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco among teenagers? (2) Is there a relationship between the use of marijuana by teenagers and the use of tobacco by teenagers? (3) Is there a relationship between the use of marijuana by teenagers and the use of alcohol by teenagers? The data used for this paper were from the Evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program research project (Esbensen, 2003). The analysis found that the frequency of teenage alcohol use had the strongest correlation with the use of marijuana. The frequency of teenage tobacco use was also found to have a significant correlation to marijuana use.

Research on hate crime has tended to utilize sociological frameworks to best explain the incidence of such offending, but little research has been conducted to determine whether political factors may play a role. Although Olzak (1990) touched upon the relationship between racial violence and third-party politics during the American Progressive era (1882-1914), the research did not fully articulate how political competition may influence the commission of hate crime. The current study seeks to fill this gap, while also extending concepts associated with social disorganization theory and the defended communities perspective. It does so by utilizing a longitudinal research design to assess the impact of theoretical predictors and political competition measures on hate crime prevalence in counties across three states (Tennessee, Virginia & West Virginia) over a seven-year span (2010-2016).

<p>Cohabiting with a partner, rather than living in a legal marriage, has been documented as a significant risk factor for intimate partner homicide. This study used national U.S. homicide data from 1990-2005 to examine changes in risk patterns. The results showed that both male and female cohabiting victims experienced a steep decline in intimate partner homicide rates. Such was the strength of this decline that by 2005 cohabiting couples were no longer at higher risk than married couples. A similar, though weaker, trend was found in Canada between 1991 and 2006. It was hypothesised that this convergence of cohabiting and married homicide rates was due to cohabiting and married populations becoming more similar in terms of socio-demographic variables. Contrary to expectation, over time, the U.S. and Canadian cohabiting populations remained younger, poorer, less educated, and less conventional, than their married counterparts. This suggests that demographic changes were not responsible for the decline in cohabiting homicide rates. Further research is required to determine whether changes in union characteristics may have driven the decline in cohabiting homicide risk.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

<p>Against the backdrop of social and demographic transformations, including increasing longevity and changing family relationships, this dissertation combines quantitative and qualitative methods to examine contemporary grandparent-grandchild ties in Canada. Beginning with an analysis of grandparenthood at the population level, this research analyzes the social and demographic contours of grandparenthood, establishing the prevalence of grandparenthood, adults with living grandparents, step-ties, multi-generational households and grandparents raising their grandchildren, as well as the supply of grandchildren and the intersection of family and work roles with grandparenthood. And, given that American data are often used to represent the Canadian situation, the dissertation provides a comparative analysis between the two countries.</p> <p>The demographic analysis revealed high percentages of grandparent-adult grandchild relationships in the population. This finding formed the foundation for the micro-level analysis on which the dissertation is also based-an original qualitative study involving older grandparents and adult grandchildren (n=37). The overall aim of this research was to explore grandparent-adult grandchild relationships from the perspectives of both generations in order to understand the significance of the ties and these family roles, as well as how they are negotiated over time and within the context of contemporary social life. The data reveal that the ties have instrumental, symbolic, existential and material significance, that adult relationships are qualitatively different and more complex compared to young grand relationships and that the broader social context is very consequential to how these family ties and roles are negotiated. Taken together, the qualitative and quantitative findings challenge commonly held assumptions about who and what constitutes 'the family' and shed scholarly light on choice and obligation as they arise in contemporary family life.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)