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Policing in America has lost more officers to suicides than line of duty deaths over the past four years. As the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, the well-being of officers is critical as unhealthy police using poor coping strategies to handle their stress can lead to a multitude of negative consequences for the communities they serve, their departments, their fellow officers, and themselves. While the technology of policing is quickly advancing, the routine duties of officers remain stressful. This stress requires officers to use effective coping strategies to deal with it, but the traditional subculture of policing promotes maladaptive, rather than adaptive, coping strategies. To understand how the subculture influences police and the coping strategies they use, research must understand the socialization process of recruits entering the job. The current research seeks to understand how police recruits are socialized into the police subculture and how this affects the coping strategies they use to deal with the stressors they will confront on the job. The research analyzes how the network position of recruits influences their adoption of the police subculture and how this, in turn, affects their development of coping strategies. Recruits were surveyed three times during their academy training to examine the transitioning and socialization that occurs throughout the police academy. Results reveal that networks affect the adoption of the police subculture by recruits and this socialization process impacts the development of coping strategies by recruits. Findings highlight the need for future work to continue the longitudinal research approach to examine how the networks change once recruits complete their field training and probationary period. / Doctor of Philosophy / Police officers are engaged in an occupation that induces a vast amount of stress, leading to burnout and poor coping strategies. Blue H.E.L.P. began tracking the suicide rates of law enforcement and found that officers are dying more often by their own hands than in line of duty deaths. We have also seen growing tensions between police and communities, further leading to lower retention rates of current officers. The current study seeks to understand how police recruits are trained to endure the stress of their occupation. Policing is comprised of a unique occupational culture that creates solidarity among its members, which can influence how officers learn to utilize coping mechanisms. The current research examines how new police recruits fit into this occupational culture and how this affects their coping strategies over time. Results show that how new recruits are socialized into the occupational culture matter in terms of how they learn to cope with their job. Understanding how new recruits are taught to cope is imperative to destigmatize the notion of well-being to train healthier officers and to potentially lower suicide rates among our nation's law enforcement.

Traffic congestion, high gas price and inadequate public transportation are major challenges for any country, business or individual. The traditional approach to solving these problems has been to improve public transportation and use greener energy. These approaches require huge investment, research and time, and can only be carried out by governments or businesses. An alternative solution seeks to reduce the number of vehicles on the road based on ridesharing. Nevertheless, ridesharing is not a popular form of public transportation. A ridesharing application involves planning and collaboration in setting up rides. Some of the concerns of users of these applications are social discomfort that arises due to lack of trust amongst co-passengers and inconvenience in scheduling rides. In this work we are trying to understand the perceptions of trust in a software application that integrates collaboration and social networks. We conducted a rideshare needs assessment survey conducted within the Virginia Tech community. The purpose behind this survey was to understand commuters travel patterns, their needs and to identify their preferences for private vehicles and public transit for a variety of travel needs. The survey results indicate that users are willing to increase participation in ridesharing programs if three core issues are addressed trust, convenience and incentives. Based on the results and analysis of our survey results we present an iPhone based ridesharing application that would leverage social networks to embed trust. To overcome the complexity in scheduling rides, we have made our application available on mobile phones (iPhone) so that users are connected on the go and make use of GPS for location awareness to plan their rides instantaneously. Our social software application is easy and intuitive to use, helps users find trusted rideshares and reduces the carbon footprint of the individual. / Master of Science

Yes / The growing body of published e-government literature highlights the importance of e-government in society and the need to make sense of e-government by academia. In order to understand the future of e-government, it is important to understand the research that has been conducted and highlight the issues and themes that have been identified as important by empirical study. This paper analyses the corpus of e-government research published from 2000 to 2013 using Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods to develop an intellectual structure of e-government research. Factor analysis, multidimensional scaling and centrality measurement are also applied to the e-government dataset using UCINET to identify the core influential articles in the field. This study identifies three core clusters of e-government research that centre around (i) e-government development models (ii) adoption and acceptance of e-government, and (iii) e-government using social media and highlights areas for future research in the field. Discover the world's research

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In der vorliegenden Forschungsarbeit – im Charakter einer Pionierstudie auf diesem Gebiet – wird mittels selbstkonstruiertem Onlinesurvey untersucht, inwiefern die Social-Network-Site Facebook die Bildungspartizipation und das Konsumverhalten ihrer Nutzer beeinflusst und verändert. Nach Definition eines sozialen Netzwerks, einer Social-Network-Site und definitorischer Eingliederung von Facebook als solche wird die Sozialplattform selbst historisch und faktisch erklärt und der bisherige Forschungsstand zusammengetragen. Zur weiteren Hypothesenformulierung dienen für die Bildungspartizipation Marotzkis strukturale Bildungstheorie (1990) und Banduras kognitive Lerntheorie (1979), für das Konsumverhalten ebenfalls Banduras sozial-kognitive Lerntheorie (1971; 1976; 1986), Heiders Balancetheorie (1946) und Festingers soziale Vergleichstheorie (1954). Nach äußerst umfangreicher Operationalisierung, Rekodierung und Skalenbildung, univariater und bivariater Analyse, Drittvariablenkontrolle und Mediationsprüfung werden im Regressionsabschnitt alle fünf Prädiktoren der Haupthypothesen der Bildungspartizipation und drei der fünf Haupthypothesen des Konsumverhaltens bestätigt. Die „Anzahl an Facebook-Freunden“, „Neue Facebook- Freunde“, „Daten aus der Vergangenheit“, „Lesen bildungsrelevanter Aspekte“ und die „Facebook-Nutzungshäufigkeit (pro Woche)“ beeinflussen somit signifikant positiv die Bildungspartizipation. Die „Neigung zu positiv geschlossenen Triaden“, die „Relevanz positiver Meinungen der Vergleichspersonen“ und die „Beobachtung positiver Signale Statushoher“ beeinflussen positiv-signifikant das Konsumverhalten, wobei jedoch im Endmodell die „Beobachtung negativer Konsumerfahrungen“ und die „Relevanz der Ähnlichkeit von Vergleichspersonen“ keinen statistisch gesicherten Effekt mehr aufweisen. Der überwiegende Teil der vorab gebildeten Unterhypothesen – als theoretische Zusatzannahmen fundiert – werden bestätigt. Als weiteres statistisches Instrument wird ein Künstliches Neuronales Netz als Regressionsfunktionsapproximator eingesetzt, das bemerkenswert genau die Einflussstärken der Haupthypothesenvariablen validiert. / Nowadays, the social network site Facebook preferably serves as an appropriate medium of communication and as adviser on issues about daily life. Thus, recent social scientists have plenty of reasons to investigate the research field Facebook, the connections amongst its members, their cognitive structures and way of behaving which is frequently not intended. Through an online survey, including 1,358 German respondents, the influence of Facebook on educational participation and consumer behaviour is analysed. According consumer behaviour as dependent variable, Heider´s Balance Theory (1946), Bandura´s Social Cognitive Theory (1971, 1976, 1986), and Festinger´s Theory of Social Comparison Processes (1954), including theoretical continuations for each of these, are used. In order to derivate hypotheses for educational participation Marotzki´s Strukturale Bildungstheorie (1990), further extensions and Bandura’s Social Cognitive Learning Theory are taken. To sum up, tending to positively closed triads, relevant positive opinions of persons of comparison, and observing positively social signals from persons with a high status on Facebook significantly and positively influence consumer behaviour. Surprisingly, there is no significant influence from similarity to persons of comparison and observations of negative consumer´s experience. All hypotheses concerning educational participation could be confirmed: For instance, the more often a person gets new Facebook friends or the more often friends post visible educational aspects (i.e. newspaper articles or similar), the higher is educational participation on Facebook. These results, analysed by a regression analysis, are checked by an alternative method which is rarely used in that context. Using an artificial neural network (multilayer perceptron) a sensitivity analysis is conducted. Interestingly, the rank order of beta coefficients is almost reproduced. The existing study which was carried out at the Institute of Sociology in Leipzig is a pilot experiment in respect of both theoretical and methodical aspects. There are exploratively connections between social-psychological theory and consumer behaviour and educational participation on Facebook, supported by an extensive implementation of control variables.