The article I found is called “Money and Mental Illness: A Study of the Relationship Between Poverty and Serious Psychological Problems” (Ljungqvist, 2016). The researchers had evaluated previous studies done on the relationships between mental problems and economic issues along with isolaton and were interested in exploring the effects of social initiatives on the condition of people with previously diagnosed mental health issues. Their research question was: Can the addition of modest financil support for social and recreational activities have an impact on social intercourse, sense of self, symptoms, and functional level among persons with SMI?”. Their method included giving financial aid to 100 individuals with mental illnesses for a period of time and comparing them to a control group. Their study concluded that the financial aid improved symptoms of depression and anxiety in the group of people that had been previously diagnosed. Data for this study would include self reports of one’s symptoms and state of mind/being before, during and after they participated in the study and were given financial aid. The assessments were categorized as symptoms, functional level, social networks, sense of self, and overall quality of life. Their self assessment tools included “Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale”, “Global Function Assessment Scale”, “Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life”, “The Visual Analogue Scale”, and “Lancashire Quality of Life Profile”. All categories showed statistically significant improvement except for functionality under the “Global Function Assessment Scale”. The data was analyzed with Wilcoxon matched-paires signed-ranks test for non-normally distributed values. Unpaired groups were analyzed using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. I enjoyed reading this research and think it was really well done. I think it was really important that they used so many different ways of evaluating their participants mental health and well-being, giving deeper insight into how exactly poverty can affect people and how having more resources improves – or does not improve – those different facets of how mental illnesses are expressed in those who have been previously diagnosed. One thing to note is that the sample size was fairly small, so if the study were re-done with a larger sample the results could differ.

Ljungqvist, I., Topar, A., Forssell, H., Svensson, I., Davidson, L. (2016). Money and Mental Illness: A Study of the Relationship Between Poverty and Serious Psychological Problems. Community Mental Health Journal (Vol. 52, Iss. 7, pp. 842-850).

The article that I used for this research example is called “Effects of Music on Depression and Sleep Quality i Elderly People: A randomized Controlled Trial.” I used ProQuest and sorted the articles by scholarly journals. In this article they discuss the effects of music on depression and anxiety in the elderly community. It was a controlled randomized study that was separated into three measures which were: demographic variables, physiological parameters, and physiological parameters. There choices of music were meditative, Chinese classical, western classical, and western modern jazz. The results came back showing that listening to music helps to improve sleep quality and the results of depression lowered as well. I believe this way of collecting data would be beneficial in my research of finding music related to stress levels.

Chan, M. F., Chan, E. A., & Mok, E. (2010). Effects of music on depression and sleep quality in elderly people: A randomised controlled trial. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 18(3-4), 150-9. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.redlands.edu/10.1016/j.ctim.2010.02.004

This weeks journal comes form The Journal of Educational Technology Systems, and the section I chose is by Marion G. Ben-Jacob. In the writing, Jacob discusses the ethical side of the whole internet debates on both the provider and users point of view. Not only is the ethical dilemma looked into but also the problems with regulation and over reaching and conflicting with people’s privacy. This all being the articles topic of how is the use of technology being ethically observed and regulated. The type of data needed would be quantitative and probably best collected through the use of surveys online and maybe some person to person interviews, as well as expert opinions. One data collections that Jacob did was a classroom control group where he has a teacher give definitions and background and gave who supports and disapproves of the topics provided. Then after Jacobs went through and discussed each of the students answers. I think this way of collecting data is very interesting and I am curious to see if it would be effective for my data collection.

Citation:

Ben-Jacob, Marion G. “Internet Ethics for Users and Providers.” Journal of Educational Technology Systems, vol. 46, no. 2, 2017, pp. 252–258.

The article that I found this week comes from the American Journal of Criminal Justice. The article, titled “Prison Violence, Gender, and Perceptions: Testing a Missing Link in Discretion Research”, is written by David M. Bierie. This article illuminates how agents of criminal justice (police officers, judges, prison staff,etc) exercise their authority and power over those they are in control of. The article examines how gender and perceptions of violence through past experiences can influence the force exerted by those agents. Men and women have different perceptions of violence because of how violence is presented to them in their life experiences. For example, women are more likely to be victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, while men are more likely to be perpetrators of this kind of violence. This impacts their perception when a violent situation occurs and how they react to it. The article focuses on 2 research questions: (1) do male and female officers show similar perceptions of serious violence, yet diverging perceptions of minor assault? and (2) do women perceive less minor violence than men? The study drew from the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ annual Prison Social Climate Survey (PSCS), which contained the opinions of 2,184 correctional staff across 112 prisons in the U.S. The survey used a stratified proportional probability random sampling design to draw a pool of staff from each institution. Each respondent was asked to estimate the number of assaults they knew to have occurred within the last 6 months. They looked at common assault, armed assault and sexual assault. They survey also consisted of demographic data (e.g. race) and job characteristics. They tested where gender impacts perceptions of violence through a fixed-effects regression framework. Information was gathered from the staff in different ways (witnessing, communication, etc.). In conclusion, the study did find that gender and perception do matter.

Bierie, David. “Prison Violence, Gender, and Perceptions: Testing a Missing Link in Discretion Research.” American Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 2 (June 2012).

Research Example 1:

The title of the Journal is called “Progressive Architecture”. The article within the Journal is called “Remebrance in downtown Boston” by John Morris.  The article talks about the New England holocaust memorial located in Boston. Specifically reminding people about one of history’s grimmest events. The article continues by discussing the design behind the memorial itself and why architects chose to create the building the way they did. The memorial is placed on a “traffic island” meaning its surrounded by traffic and random busy backdrops.

The main question posed in this article was “how can a memorial be constricted so that it can have presence while being surrounded by distracting backdrops?” In order to answer this question, there was a competition for architects to see who could complete such a task. A man named Stanley Saitowitz ended up winning, and explained his thought process and design. A person who would be competing in this type of competition would need expert knowledge in architecture. The data would than be analyzed by qualitative data because it is going to be composed of descriptions or pictures, created by the architect. I think this research is very interesting and brings up some good points about how to make something “known” while being surrounded by chaos. I think my classmates would find the thought process behind the design of the memorial to be interesting. This article would be a secondary source, because the information is not firsthand evidence, rather it is more recapping a situation and data that already happened.

Citation:

Dixon, J. M. (1995). Remebrance in downtown Boston. Progressive Architecture, 76(12), 25. Retrieved from

http://ezproxy.redlands.edu/docview/197316912?accountid=14729

I used google scholar in order to find a research example that best fits my topic, my topic is agrochemicals and whether or not they increase the chances of heart disease. I’ve stumbled upon a few articles and online research examples that address the same concept of particulate matter and heart disease. The research article I’m using is titled “Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter: Association with Nonaccidental and Cardiovascular Mortality in the Agricultural Health Study Cohort” and can be found online in Environmental Health Perspectives. The study focused on nonaccidental and cardiovascular mortality in the U.S. Agricultural Health Study Cohort. The Cohort has 83,378 subjects made up of farmers, their spouses, and pesticide applicators mostly found in Iowa and North Carolina. Estimates of PM2.5 were assigned to each subject at enrollment, this helps determine a correlation between pesticides and heart disease. With different PM2.5 values being assigned to each subject of the cohort, it is possible to determine a correlation by determining whether or not there are more deaths amongst subjects with higher PM2.5 values or vice versa. The results were 5,931 nonaccidental and 1,967 cardiovascular deaths over a follow up time of 13.9 years. However, there were positive associations with PM2.5 amongst men, but inverse relationships among woman. This research example has helped me further understand the effects of pesticides on the nearby population. Furthermore, I have no narrowed my research question to only men, due to the lack of correlation of women, heart disease, and pesticides.

“Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter: Association with Nonaccidental and Cardiovascular Mortality in the Agricultural Health Study Cohort.” National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1 June 2014, ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1307277/.

The article I selected for this research example is “Consuming Untreated Water in Four Southwestern Alaska Native Communities: Reasons Revealed and Recommendations for Change.” The article is in the Journal of Environmental Health Volume 77, Number 5, December 2014. The authors of this article discuss why some Alaska native people drink untreated water when untreated water is available. The qualitative research was conducted in four Alaska native villages that have treated water available. Eighty-two percent of the people responded to the survey reported that some of their drinking water came from an untreated source such as river and rain water. The authors found that the reasons people drank untreated water could be captured in six categories: chemicals, taste, health, access, tradition, and cost. Many respondents who did not like drinking treated water expressed concerns about the chemicals used in the water treatment process, and they did not like the taste and smell of the treated water. Many of the respondents associated treated water with health problems such as stomachaches, diarrhea, headaches, allergic reactions, dry skin, and even death. The authors believe that understanding why Alaskan native people continue to drink to untreated water when treated water is available is important to design strategies to change behavior towards drinking treated water. They believe that education about the benefits of untreated water and the risks involved with drinking untreated water is critical. It is common knowledge that drinking untreated water exposes a person to a high risk for diseases; however, the Alaska Natives had a completely different view of untreated water. The authors recommend that designing interventions that address the six categories for not drinking treated water will help to change behavior. They also believe that this kind of strategy can be applied to a range of topics in environmental health such as promoting seat belt usage among drivers, encouraging food service workers to wash their hands, and increasing compliance with environmental regulations.

Troy L. Ritter, Ellen D. S. Lopez, Rachel Goldberger, Jennifer Dobson, Korie Hickel, Rhonda M. Johnson, Andrea Bersamin. 2014 “Consuming Untreated Water in Four Southwestern Alaska Native Communities: Reasons Revealed and Recommendations for Change.” Journal of Environmental Health. Vol 77(5): 8-13.

With regards to my topic, the challenges facing today’s American farmers and ranchers, I have found my focus to shift specifically to the environmental challenges. That being said, one of the leading issues regarding America’s beef industry today is the fact that Americans are purchasing beef from international sources instead of local ones. This is an issue on a local level as it takes money away from our own farmers and rancher, but it is also an environmental issue as well.  The online Rural Sociology, June 2012, Volume 75, No. 2 article, “The ‘Hamburger Connection’ as Ecologically Unequal Exchange: A Cross-National Investigation of Beef Exports and Deforestation in Less-Developed Countries” by Kelly Austin goes into the reasons why beef exports are having a detrimental impact on the environment. To explain this issue, Austin describes the concept of unequal exchange and focuses on the deforestation in Latin America that has increased as a result of their growing beef industry.

Austin opens her article by explaining that unequal exchange happens when a less developed country exports goods to a more affluent country. When this happens, the affluent country gains the goods while the less developed country gains hardly anything and continues to lose resources as a result. For example, when beef is exported from Latin America, whatever profit they make needs to go to immediate needs of the ranchers and very little profit is left over. It also means that, with rising demand for Latin American beef, more ranches are popping up meaning that more deforestation is happening. There is an unequal exchange of goods happening whenever North Americans demand beef from Latin America. Based on this concept, Austin poses a hypothesis which can be summarized into two research questions: “is deforestation in less-developed countries positively associated with the relative extent to which beef exports are sent to more-developed nations? Is the impact of the vertical flow of beef exports on deforestation in Latin American nations more pronounced than in other less-developed nations?” (Austin, 2010).

Austin uses ordinary least squares regression to compare the rate of deforestation to the amount of beef being exported out of Latin America as well as how the deforestation in Latin American nations compares to other nations where deforestation happens. To gain her sample she created a list of criteria that the less-developed countries needed to fall under and she used listwise deletion to create her sample of 48 countries. After obtaining data through her research of beef export data and deforestation data, Austin used OLS regression to come to the conclusion that part of her hypothesis was correct. Deforestation in less-developed countries is positively associated with beef exports to more-developed countries and this is predominately seen in Latin America.

While this article provided interesting insights into this environmental issue, I found it incredibly confusing to follow the methods portion of the article. There were many concepts that we have not learned about yet including her methods of analysis and data collection. That being said, I was still able to understand what was being discussed and the results of the research.

Austin, Kelly. 2010. “The “Hamburger Connection” as Ecologically Unequal Exchange: A Cross-National Investigation of Beef Exports and Deforestation in Less-Developed Countries.” Rural Sociology75(2):270–99. Retrieved February 10, 2018 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1549-0831.2010.00017.x/full).

For this research exercise I used JSTOR to find a scholarly article on my topic, which is about the relationship between conspicuous consumption and socioeconomic status. This article is called Low-income Families and Coping through Brands: Inclusion or Stigma? and it is featured in the academic journal, Sociology. This article covers the “coping strategies” used by low-income families in regards to conspicuous consumption. According to the author, low-income families engage in conspicuous consumption of popular brands in order to provide their children with access to these brands. Access to popular brands allows children to feel accepted and apart of a larger group. Without access to such brands, children may feel stigmatized and ostracized, because they are not part of the group. Material items are a form of scrip for children. This allows them to interact with other children, and provides a means for social acceptance. This article uncovers the powerful control that brands have over our lives, especially among children.

I would assume this article’s research topic is conspicuous consumption and low-income families, and the research question is “What are the social effects of conspicuously consuming popular brands among low-income families and single mothers?” Because this study is comprised of 30 in depth interviews with different families, the type of data needed to answer this question is reports of acts, behavior, and events, and the data gathering method is in depth interviews. The method of data analysis is qualitative, because the author did not count the reports of acts, behavior, or events, but rather describe them. Overall, this data appears to be legitimate and trustworthy because it appears in a well respected academic journal, and the conclusions came from deep and thoughtful results that arose from the in depth interviews.

This journal article contained historical research about the repatriation of human remains, discovered in Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico, to the Jicarilla Apache and Ute Mountain Ute Native American tribes.  The researchers wanted to discover if the human remains were erroneously repatriated.  They explore whether a better course of action could have been taken during the evaluation process.  The remains were discovered as part of a mass burial in 1958.  The researchers explain that during their initial analysis by a physical anthropologist the remains were declared to be four adult males who died as a result of gunshot trauma.  The anthropologist wrote that the remains were of “American Indian, Spanish, and possibly Negro,” descent.  “They would be called ‘Mexicans’ in the sense of multiple racial admixture characterized in the Southwest.”  In 1990, the Fort Union National Monument museum began a process of evaluating any indigenous cultural affiliation of the remains as a result of the passing of NAGPRA.  The remains were reexamined and two were declared to be Native American and the other two as “admixed Caucasoid-Mongoloid.”  After further examinations, their heritage was determined to be culturally inconclusive but all four sets were repatriated to the local tribes due to the geography of the grave.  The authors argue that at least one human remain was not Native American and was in fact a New Mexico citizen.

The authors of this article relied on expert and cultural knowledge to perform this historical research.  They utilized reports of acts, behaviors, and events and their form of analysis was descriptive and qualitative.  The article raised an interesting topic of cases of erroneous repatriation and examining how historical cases leave room for error in their process.  However, the researchers’ tone comes off as slightly anti-NAGPRA in their rhetoric.

Spude, Catherine Holder, and Douglas D. Scott. “NAGPRA and Historical Research: Reevaluation of a Multiple Burial from Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico.” Historical        Archaeology 47, no. 4 (February 13, 2013): 121-36.