abstract: Background In the United States (US), first-year university students typically live on campus and purchase a meal plan. In general, meal plans allow the student a set number of meals per week or semester, or unlimited meals. Understanding how students’ use their meal plan, and barriers and facilitators to meal plan use, may help decrease nutrition-related issues. Methods First-year students’ meal plan and residence information was provided by a large, public, southwestern university for the 2015-2016 academic year. A subset of students (n=619) self-reported their food security status. Logistic generalized estimating equations (GEEs) were used to determine if meal plan purchase and use were associated with food insecurity. Linear GEEs were used to examine several potential reasons for lower meal plan use. Logistic and Linear GEEs were used to determine similarities in meal plan purchase and use for a total of 599 roommate pairs (n=1186 students), and 557 floormates. Results Students did not use all of the meals available to them; 7% of students did not use their meal plan for an entire month. After controlling for socioeconomic factors, compared to students on unlimited meal plans, students on the cheapest meal plan were more likely to report food insecurity (OR=2.2, 95% CI=1.2, 4.1). In Fall, 26% of students on unlimited meal plans reported food insecurity. Students on the 180 meals/semester meal plan who used fewer meals were more likely to report food insecurity (OR=0.9, 95% CI=0.8, 1.0); after gender stratification this was only evident for males. Students’ meal plan use was lower if the student worked a job (β=-1.3, 95% CI=-2.3, -0.3) and higher when their roommate used their meal plan frequently (β=0.09, 99% CI=0.04, 0.14). Roommates on the same meal plan (OR=1.56, 99% CI=1.28, 1.89) were more likely to use their meals together. Discussion This study suggests that determining why students are not using their meal plan may be key to minimizing the prevalence of food insecurity on college campuses, and that strategic roommate assignments may result in students’ using their meal plan more frequently. Students’ meal plan information provides objective insights into students’ university transition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Exercise and Nutritional Sciences 2019

My dissertation examines the question of how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects social welfare spending across countries. To date, there have been three important challenges to studies of the globalization-welfare state nexus. First, most scholars understand market internationalization in terms of the trade of goods and services while minimizing how other aspects of globalization fit into this discussion. Second, scholarly attention to economic globalization has been mistaken when understanding the relationship between demand- and supply-side mechanisms for social welfare provision. Thus, the argument that trade stimulates demand for social welfare has been incorrectly used to oppose the argument that capital mobility significantly undercuts a government's capability to fund welfare states. Lastly, existing studies on this topic mostly center around affluent democracies; various theories of welfare states require further elaborations to increase their external validity. My dissertation aims to overcome these challenges. For this purpose, I focus on one of the most important aspects of globalization, FDI, which bears meaningful implications for both demand- and supply-side functions of social welfare provisions when explaining variations of social welfare spending across countries. I argue that since the late twentieth century, FDI has been a major cause of the "globalization dilemma,'' proposed by (Rodrik1997), who argues that in an age of globalization governments face increased demand for social welfare and decreased capabilities to supply it. In other words, FDI has conflicting influences on welfare states. On the one hand, FDI works for welfare states as the ensuing economic insecurity increases demand for social welfare. At the same time, however, FDI works against welfare states because governments will experience reductions in capital taxation due to competition among themselves to attract and retain production capitals. I further argue that there is an interesting consequence of this dilemma. Due to the conflicting influences of FDI on welfare states, the expansion of social welfare provisions requires governments to secure additional revenues. Governments will address this concern through a strategy that is both effective and politically less expensive: an increased reliance on indirect taxation. As indirect taxes are mostly born out of labor and thus notoriously regressive, the very effort to supply social welfare provisions goes against the fundamental principle of welfare states: the redistribution of income from the rich to the poor.

Background: College food insecurity (CFI) is a prevalent social justice and public health issue in the U.S. with the prevalence ranging between 15-59%. Though numerous quantitative studies were first conducted in the past decade, little qualitative research was conducted to assess CFI. Objective: To explore and deeply understand the contexts of CFI at a land-grant university in Kentucky. Methods: This qualitative study used a validated food insecurity survey tool and hour-long focus groups that were audio recorded and transcribed. Three theoretical models were combined into an adapted model and utilized for the thematic analysis. Results: Thirty-three students participated in one of eight different focus groups. Among participants, 72.7% were female, 81.9% were undergraduate students, and 63.6% were food insecure. Access-related themes included transportation, time-related issues, awareness of resources, coping strategies and suggestions for improvements; availability-related themes consisted of city- and campus-wide availability of food choices and coping strategies; utilization-related themes constituted dietary needs and coping strategies; and stability-related themes involved disrupted element(s) of food security and their effects on well-being and academics. Conclusion: All elements of food security need to be fulfilled to achieve a sustainable food security. For future CFI studies, the use of theoretical framework(s) is recommended.

Food insecurity (FI) is a significant risk factor in malnutrition which can lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. The association of FI to undernutrition can additionally lead to impaired cognitive development in children. Nearly $100 billion is spent annually on federal nutrition programs yet FI still affects 1 in 8 American households pointing to the urgent need for the further refinement of our national/regional anti-hunger models. One notable and underutilized tool is the community food security assessment (CFA) which seeks to eliminate FI at the local level by improving food access throughout the community. A major limitation in knowledge about CFAs is the dearth of empirical studies of their effectiveness. The principal aim of this dissertation research was to statistically examine secondary data on U.S. counties where CFAs have been conducted and to determine whether they helped reduce individual FI over a two-year, post-test period. Repeated measures of ANOVA across the longitudinal time frame for n=66 counties revealed the main effect of FI was not statistically significant. A majority (56.9%) of 37 counties experienced a decrease in FI over the period. Linear regression found that unemployment was a significant influence in communities that experienced decreases in individual FI at the county level during the pre-test/post-test interval (β = .387 [.067], p<.01). This dissertation found that CFAs can be more effective in areas of higher unemployment as well as geographically where FI is initially higher, however further research is clearly needed in more communities over a longer time period. Also, the study suggests that proper development and structure of state and local-level food policy councils (FPCs) may lead CFAs to find better structure, funding and best practices to become more effective. Overlays prepared with ArcGIS mapping demonstrate that, in general, CFAs are not being performed in areas of highest FI when measured at the county level. The most important take-away from the visual mapping is the dearth of studies performed in the southeastern and southwestern regions of the country where county-level FI is higher, on average, than the rest of the country. These regions coincide with much of the Southern Black Belt and areas where Hispanic or Latino populations are most prevalent suggesting that communities in these regions may be able to benefit from the intervention.

Oro och otrygghet är komplexa fenomen som ofta undersöks ur ett kriminologiskt perspektiv, så även i den nationella trygghetsundersökningen (NTU). För att försöka förstå hur oro och otrygghet framställs och motiveras som policyproblem har vi undersökt problemframställningar i NTU med Carol Lee Bacchis WPR-ansats. Vi identifierade framställningar av ett “säkerhetsproblem”, ett “kunskapsproblem” och ett “samhällsbildsproblem”. Utifrån dessa problemframställningar ifrågasätter vi beskrivningen av NTU som “faktabaserad kunskap” och konstaterar att möjligheterna att sakligt kartlägga oro och otrygghet inte problematiseras tillräckligt. Istället talar vår analys för att denna trygghetsundersökning både producerar och reproducerar representationer av otrygghet och därmed fungerar som bränsle för den mediala och politiska riskmedvetenheten i ett samhälle präglat av ett starkt säkerhetsideal. För att förändra detta ser vi ett behov av att både vetenskapligt och politiskt klargöra motiven för att studera subjektiv otrygghet. / Feelings of worry and insecurity are complex phenomena commonly studied from a criminological perspective. This also applies for The Swedish Crime Survey (SCS). To understand how these feelings are constructed and motivated as policy issues, we analysed problem representations in the SCS, using Carol Lee Bacchi’s WPR-approach. We identified representations of a “security problem”, a “knowledge problem” and a “societal image problem”. On the basis of these problem representations we question the SCS as a source of “fact-based knowledge” and find that the possibility to objectively index feelings of insecurity are not adequately problematized in the report. Instead, our analysis suggests that this survey produces and reproduces representations of fear, thereby maintaining a medial and political risk awareness in a society characterized by a strong security ideal. To rectify this, we see a need to both scientifically and politically clarify the motives behind studying subjective insecurity.

This study examined the concept of organizational uncertainty and the involvement of public relations practitioners. Understanding organizational uncertainty is imperative to the success of an organization, but the effects of uncertainty have been relatively undertheorized within public relations. To close the gap, this study blended multidisciplinary theories pertaining to uncertainty with a triangulated methodological approach. First, this study took a macro-organizational look at uncertainty by analyzing trends in the literature and conducting qualitative in-depth interviews with members of management and employees in an organization. The results of this portion of the study found uncertainty to be multi-layered and the most common causes of uncertainty to be organizational changes, unclear policies, job insecurities, and the external environment. This data was then used to conduct a micro-organizational analysis of uncertainty. Therefore, the second step of this study expanded on the organizational findings to look at the role of public relations in uncertainty management. Through this study, a valuable survey instrument was created containing five significant factors of: job insecurities, the external environment, organization uncertainty, practitioner perceived involvement, and practitioner feelings. It was administered, primarily through use of the Internet, to members of the Public Relations Society of America (N=1,135), yielding a response rate of 31.8 percent. The results of this study indicated that public relations practitioners do not perceive four main causes of uncertainty, but instead they perceive two: job insecurities and the external environment. The results also suggest that public relations practitioners personally have low feelings of uncertainty, although they believed their organizations have moderate levels of uncertainty. Additionally, this study found that practitioners reported being moderately involved in the management of uncertainty, with the level of involvement most influenced by job insecurities. Finally, the results found that public relations practitioners most frequently used electronic communication to help employees cope with organizational uncertainty pertaining to organizational change, policies, and the external environment. However, with job insecurities, interpersonal communication was the most popular communication strategy. Overall, the results of this study bring us a step closer in establishing a framework for public relations practitioner involvement in the management of organizational uncertainty.

Access to reliable water and sanitation are two important goals to improve livelihoods around the world. Providing access to improved and safe water resources that are equitable and appropriate to local needs is important to improve sustainability long-term. In addition, framing access to water and sanitation as basic human rights is often used as a rationale in developing new water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions in developing countries around the world. But not all countries consider access to safe water and sanitation as a human right. In the thesis, the politics of improving and investment in water access and sanitation provision are considered. The socio-cultural impacts of lack of sanitation in the lives of residents of Valparaiso de Goias, Brazil are explored. During a period of nine months, I also assessed perceptions of water scarcity and insecurity, and documented ideas of water reuse and sustainability in the area. I found that access to water and sanitation are not viewed as human rights, but as part of a discourse of citizenship and a social right. These services are viewed as a responsibility of the State to its residents because they are Brazilian and because it ensures improved livelihoods for the country’s residents. I also found that access to wastewater treatment infrastructure varied throughout the city, though treatment of wastewater remains very important to the study site community. In addition, the feasibility of implementing sustainable alternatives to address community needs is unlikely, given the infrastructural, financial, and space constraints. Political will and support have an important role in increasing and improving access to sanitation infrastructure. Perceptions of water scarcity varied between local residents and water service providers and other professionals interviewed. Though water is not perceived as scarce, Valparaiso and the Federal District of Brazil are located in a water stressed area, and are therefore more susceptible to water shortages and decreased water availability. Finally, community-based solutions to address water shortages should be included in the expansion of water reservoirs to collect rainwater, the usage of fines and bonuses to encourage appropriate water consumption.

Since 1999, there has been a significant increase in the number of food insecure individuals in the United States. The Great Recession (2007-2009) and slow economic recovery has led to additional increases in rates of food insecurity and the usage of emergency food assistance programs. Thirty qualitative interviews with individuals seeking emergency food assistance at a Tampa Bay food pantry were conducted. Interviews focused on collecting the life experiences of participants, the barriers they face in having food security, their strategies to cope with limited food budgets, and how food insecurity impacts their household's overall health and wellbeing. Recommendations for fulfilling the immediate need for food as well as addressing the larger issues that lead to and perpetuate food insecurity and hunger are presented in this paper. In collaboration with the food pantry, a booklet presenting personal experiences of hunger alongside broad institutional forces affecting food insecurity was disseminated in the community in hopes of increasing awareness of and support for combating this important social issue.

<p>What do teenagers recount about themselves and their interpretation of life and values, and what characterises individual teenagers’ perceptions and statements? What is the relation between teenagers’ life interpretation and values and social circumstances? What challenges to school religious education do the teenagers’ perceptions and statements represent? These questions are central to the study Icelandic Teenagers’ Life Interpretation and Values.</p><p>The purpose of the study was to investigate some central elements in teenagers’ life interpretation so as to discuss the results in terms of social circumstances in Iceland and of school religious education. The background is that Icelandic society, having been relatively homogeneous, has changed during the past few years with increased plurality.</p><p>The material the study was based on consists of interviews with Icelandic teenagers. In four articles included in the thesis different parts of the material collected are interpreted using a hermeneutic approach. The main result showed that the teenagers were in a field of tension between homogeneity and plurality on the one hand and security and insecurity on the other. The main trends in the material indicate a common reference framework at the same time as plurality emerges in the teenager’s verbal expressions; and while most spoke of their happiness and security, there was also awareness of the risk and threat that can transform the situation.</p><p>The material exhibited greater variation within each school than between schools. This suggests the effect of plurality on the younger generation in Iceland. Given this variation among individuals it is urgent to find an approach to religious education that takes greater account of the different pupils’ backgrounds, personal experience and existential questions.</p>

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