This study examined if social distance, i.e. in- vs. out-group membership, had an effect on moral judgments of acts vs. omissions. 164 participants judged the morality of acts vs. omissions of lethal harm, that affected an in- vs. out-group member of the participant, in order to save five other people. The results showed that acts of lethal, but utilitarian, harm were judged more immoral than omissions of equivalent harm. It was also shown that if the victim was an in- group member of the participant the behavior was judged more immoral than if the victim was an out-group member of the participant. However, the acts and omissions of harm were not judged differently when the victim was an in.- vs. out-group member of the participant, indicating that this kind of social distance might not influence the moral judgment of acts and omissions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-55). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Capacity restrictions in stores, maintained by mechanisms like spacing customer intake at certain time intervals, have become familiar features in the time of the pandemic. The effect on total spending is not a linear function of reduced capacity, since shopping in a crowded store under a social distance regime is prone to considerable slowdown. In this thesis, We introduce a simple dynamical model of the evolution of shopping rate as a function of a given customer intake rate, starting with an empty store. The slowdown of each individual customer is incorporated as an additive term to a baseline value shopping time, proportional to the number of other customers in the store. We determine analytically and by simulation the trajectory of the model as it approaches a Little's Law equilibrium, and identify the point of phase change, beyond which equilibrium cannot be achieved. By relating customer shopping rate to the slowdown compared to the baseline, We can calculate the optimal intake rate leading to maximum equilibrium spending. This turns out to be the maximum rate compatible with equilibrium. The slowdown is not enough to justify a lower intake rate. Because the slowdown due to the largest possible number of shoppers is more than compensated for by the increased volume of shopping.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 decimated the theatre industry. Nevertheless, the Department of Theater at Southern Illinois University Carbondale elected to produce live performances of Tuck Everlasting: The Musical to satisfy the thesis requirements of its graduate students and continue the education of its undergraduate students. This document chronicles the production amidst the pandemic from its inception through its closure from the director’s perspective by detailing the pre-production, production, and post-production phases. Pre-production examines the play analysis, directorial interpretation, design process, and casting. Production recounts the processes of executing rehearsals and developing production elements, including complications from COVID-19. Finally, post-production considers the final product through performance and self-reflection, addressing areas of success and opportunities for growth.

This dissertation contains three related papers. The first paper revisits the concept of integrated rural development and provides examples on how to design balanced development work programs for the Trifinio region, a small rural region shared by 3 Central American countries. Work programs should balance 3 development objectives: economic development, social development and environmental protection. Finding a balance between these 3 competing objectives is difficult. The literature of Sustainable Development recognizes that policy makers often fail to balance objectives while the Integrated Rural Development literature points out the challenges of combining the objectives in a manageable project. We argue that, by focusing on identifying sources of economic friction and by accurately measuring tradeoffs using appropriate tools, we can design sound work programs. We present a toolkit that allows policy makers to identify sources of economic friction, measure their drag on the economy, and prioritize these sources so as to reduce the frictions that slow rural development. The toolkit contains 4 tools to assist in program design and 1 for implementation. GIS and building municipal indices of outcomes, household surveys, conjoint analysis and economic field experiments, are the tools that we have applied to design work programs in the Trifinio. In addition, balanced programs must be multi-dimensional in scope so we propose a tool that focuses on the institutional setup required for successful program execution. Finally we make policy recommendations and suggest additional tools that may also be added to our tool kit. In the second paper we create municipal indices of agricultural value of production, personal consumption and poverty in the Trifinio region of Central America with the objective of using them to guide investment priorities. Our indices synthesize information from the complex economic, social and geographic system of this region. In this respect we depart from established practices of estimating indices—for outcomes such as competitiveness—that select factors and create the index by adding them up. The established practice follows a normative approach because the index results from adding factors that should have an impact on the outcome. In this context the index author does not observe the outcome or the impact of factors; and does not know the functional relationship between factors and outcome. The author assumes all the information to create indices. Our methodology follows a positive approach and departs from the established practice because we estimate the outcome and identify factors that have an impact on it. To do it we use household survey and municipal level data to estimate determinants of agricultural value of production, consumption and poverty for the 45 municipalities in the Trifinio region. We then show how to identify municipalities in greatest need, identify factors of greatest impact on the outcome, and identify complementary activities. In addition we use GIS to develop a method that allows for the "generation" of missing agricultural-related data by extrapolating high quality yet limited information from a subsection of the region to the whole. The data generated has been validated in the field by agriculture experts thus confirming the legitimacy of this innovation. Finally we offer policy recommendations. The final paper presents an economic model of group formation with an application to data collected from an agricultural credit program in western Honduras. We formulate a simple theory of group formation using the concept of centers of gravity to explain why individuals join a group. According to our theory, prospective members join based on the potential benefits and costs of group membership, and based on their perception of social distance between themselves and other group members. Social distance is unobservable by outsiders but known by the individual: if you are in then you know who has blue hair. Thus, we argue that social distance helps explain preferences for group formation. To test our theory we analyze data collected from members and non-members of PRODERT, a program that has helped create 188 "Cajas Rurales" (CRs). Using conjoint analysis we test for differences in preferences between members and non-members for the main attributes of the CR. We find that members and non-members exhibit similar preferences for the attributes of the CR; therefore non-membership is not related to supply factors. Using information gathered by executing field experiments, we estimate a proxy for social distance. We use this proxy to run a group formation equation and find that it explains, along with individual characteristics, participation in the CR. Finally we offer suggestions on how to balance performance and coverage in programs in which beneficiaries decide who joins. Small cohesive groups may show exceptional performance at the cost of low coverage, and the opposite may be true. / Ph. D.

Background Globally, there is increasing emphasis on the importance of understanding the ways in which social inequality and injustice impact individual and community mental health. Set in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, India, this thesis examines the complex relationships between individuals, communities and the social environment in relation to mental health. North India is characterised by stark gender and socio-economic inequalities and social exclusion for people with psycho-social disability (PPSD) and mental health services in these study areas were essentially absent. Community mental health competency means people are collectively able to participate in efforts to promote, prevent, treat and advocate for mental health. This thesis reflexively examines the presence and absence of community mental health competence in the upper Ganges region. Methods A mixed methods approach allowed for a multi-level examination of community mental health competence, and generated four sub-studies. In-depth interviews with thirteen PPSD and eighteen caregivers in Bijnor and Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh state) were carried out in 2013 providing data for qualitative analysis. These data were analysed using qualitative content analysis to examine experiences of exclusion and inclusion of PPSD in sub-study I, and thematic analysis to examine the gendered experiences of caregivers in sub-study II. A community based sample of 960 people in Dehradun district (Uttarakhand) were surveyed in 2014 to examine the prevalence, treatment gap and social determinants of depression in substudy III, and the attitudes and preferred social distance from people with depression and psychosis were investigated in sub-study IV. Multi-variate regression analysis in both studies was conducted with Stata software Version 13.1. Results Within the domain of knowledge, relatively low community mental health literacy, a diverse range of explanatory models of mental health, and creative and persistent efforts in helpseeking were the themes identified. Within the domain of safe social spaces, social exclusion was harsh and prevalent for PPSD, with contrasting sub-domains of belonging, social support, social participation and ahimsa (non-violence). Women were disadvantaged more than men in most spheres of caregiving. Social determinants of depression with an adjusted odds ratio of more than 2.0 included being a member of the most oppressed caste or tribal group, having taken a recent loan, and not completing primary schooling. The prevalence of depression was 6.0% in the community sample, and there was a 100% treatment gap for counselling, and a 96% treatment gap for anti-depressant therapy, even though 79% of those with depression had visited a primary care provider in the previous three months. Social determinants of health and access to care are proposed as additional domains of community mental health competency. The prevailing gender regime that values males and disadvantages women influenced every domain of community mental health competency, particularly increasing caregiver burden, social exclusion and experiences of physical violence for women.  Conclusions In this thesis I have refined and strengthened a conceptual framework that portrays community mental health competence as a tree, where foundational roots of social determinants of mental health support four branches depicting access to care, knowledge, safe social spaces and partnerships for action. This tree model proposes that all five domains must operate in unison to support action for community mental health involving: development of community knowledge; promoting social inclusion, gender equality and participation; addressing upstream health determinants; and increasing access to mental health care.

Apart from the introduction (Chapter 1) and conclusion (Chapter 7), this thesis comprises five chapters organized into two parts: Part I studies promotion incentives in the public sector, and focuses on the case of teachers in rural China. All teachers in China compete with their colleagues for rank promotions. I aim to answer two questions: first, whether the promotion system for teachers in China elicits effort from teachers, and second, how the design features of the promotion system affect effort incentives. Part I includes four chapters. Chapter 2 introduces the topic and provides a background on promotions for teachers in China. It also discusses related work in this area, and introduces the data that will be used in Part I. Chapter 3 presents and tests a theoretical model of promotions as an incentive device. The model treats all teachers as identical in terms of their ability, and as such, focuses on average levels of teacher effort. It predicts that effort is exerted in response to potential promotions. In addition, the model also predicts that average effort incentives are higher in promotion contests in which the wage gap is higher, the promotion rate is closer to one half, the number of teachers competing for a promotion is higher (for promotion rates between 1/3 and 2/3), and the average age of teachers in the contest is lower, or the proportion of female teachers is lower. The model is used to derive an estimating equation by which to test predictions on average levels of teacher effort. An equation is estimated for the probability of promotion as a function of teacher effort, which is proxied by the teachers' annual performance evaluation scores. There is simultaneity present as effort increases the probability of promotion, but it is also the promise of promotion that motivates effort. As a result, effort is instrumented using wage changes, which are both informative (higher wage gaps are associated with higher effort) and valid (wages only affect promotions through effort). The second stage of the regression demonstrates that effort is indeed exerted by teachers in order to win promotions. The first stage confirms the predictions of the model with regards to wage gaps, the promotion rate, and the size and composition of the pool of competitors. Chapter 4 extends the model of Chapter 3 in two ways: teachers are now treated as heterogeneous in ability, and a multi-period model of teacher effort over time is also added. This chapter focuses on individual levels of teacher effort, and on how the parameters of the promotion system interact with teacher characteristics to affect teacher effort. The predictions include that teachers in the extremes of the skill distribution will have lower incentives, and as the contest size increases these teachers will have effort incentives that are lower still, that teachers who are five or more years from promotion eligibility will have zero effort, as will teachers in the highest rank, that teacher effort will increase in the five years leading up to promotion eligibility, and that teacher effort will decrease after a teacher is eligible for promotion but has been passed over several times. An effort equation is estimated that captures all of these components, and the predictions are largely affirmed by the data. Tests are conducted in order to alleviate concerns about selection, as well as measurement error in the performance evaluation scores. Chapter 5 concludes Part I. Part II of this thesis looks at teacher labour markets, social distance, and learning outcomes in Punjab, Pakistan. Chapter 6 explores the link between the distribution of teachers in the labour market, caste differences between teachers and students, and child learning outcomes. Using rich longitudinal data from Pakistan that allows me to convincingly identify the causal effects of caste on learning outcomes, I show how the distribution of teachers across public schools induces particular matches of high and low caste teachers and students, and that these matches are highly predictive of test score outcomes. Specifically, low caste male children perform significantly better when taught by high caste teachers than when they are taught by low caste teachers. Several possible channels are explored, including discrimination in the classroom, role model effects, teacher quality, patronage, peer effects, and returns to education. Although the channel cannot be proven, the data points to high caste teachers being able to raise the already high returns to education for low caste children because they are able to assist these children in getting educational benefits and employment later on using their patronage networks. Low caste children therefore work harder to impress high caste teachers, and this results in higher learning outcomes.

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This study examined the attitudes held by police officers towards persons with mental retardation with regard to the domains of knowledge, social willingness, affect and contact. It also investigated relationships among group membership and perspectives towards mental retardation. An analysis of relationships between the four domains was also completed. A descriptive correlational design was employed to survey police officers, pairing the Social Distance Questionnaire with a researcher-designed instrument consisting of open-ended questions aligned with each domain. The sample included one hundred and eighty police officers from five different bureaus in one county in Central Florida. Results of the study indicate that police officers hold generally positive attitudes towards persons with mental retardation, are knowledgeable about persons with mental retardation, and are socially willing to interact with such persons. In the domains of contact and affect, a discrepancy was found between the open-ended responses and the questionnaire data. The latter showed scores were skewed slightly higher than the neutral point of the scale, but the open-ended responses reflected lower contact and less positive affect. This inconsistency was attributed to instrumentation as the level of contact and affect were measured differently between the two surveys. This study found that group membership by gender and race does in fact play a role in the shaping of police officer perceptions towards mental retardation, with females having more positive affect and Hispanic officers scoring lower in social willingness. Significance was not found for either chronological age or years of experience. The analysis of relationships among the domains showed that each domain has a significant relationship with the other, with the strongest relationship between affect and social willingness. According to the study results, the most significant influence on a police officer's attitudinal score is the officer's social willingness to interact with persons who have that disability. The level of knowledge between the study participants was variable, but the responses and level of social willingness demonstrated more consistency when compared with the overall score. Information gained from this study is useful for developing disability awareness curriculum for public service providers and higher education.