The present study draws on recent sociological literature that argues that the study of cognition and culture can benefit from theories of embodied cognition. The concept of semantic internalization is introduced, which is conceptualized as the ability to perceive and articulate the topics that are of most concern to a community as they are manifested in social discourse. Semantic internalization is partly an application of emotional intelligence in the context of community-level discourse. Semantic internalization is measured through the application of Latent Semantic Analysis. Furthermore, it is investigated whether this ability is related to an individual’s social capital and habitus. The analysis is based on data collected from the online review platform yelp.com.

This study delineates the basic concepts and analytical techniques of contemporary French structuralists, namely Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, Althusser, and Foucault, and critically examines the contribution of their formulations to sociological theory and the implication of such formulations on the methodological orientation in sociology.

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the characters portrayed on "prime-time" television drama in an attempt to determine how they compared, with the distribution represented in U. S. Census Bureau data for sex, marital status and occupational status. In pursuing this objective, it was also concerned with the development of a method of content analysis that would not require use of a videotape recorder.

Intergroup relations and the factors affecting them constitute a subject of recurring interest within the academic community. Social identity theory suggests that group membership and the value we assign to it drives the expression of in-group favoritism and outgroup prejudice, among other intergroup phenomena. The present study examines how (ir)religious identities are related to topic-sentiment polarization in the form of positive in-group and negative outgroup bias during interreligious debates in YouTube commentaries. Drawing from the propositions of social identity theory, six hypotheses were tested. The data for the study, a product of a natural experiment, are comments posted on YouTube commentary sections featuring videos of interreligious debates between (a) Christian and atheist or (b) Christian and Muslim speakers. Using topic-sentiment analysis, a multistage method of topic modeling with latent semantic analysis (LSA) and sentiment analysis, 52,607 comments, for the Christian - atheist debates, and 24,179 comments, for the Christian - Muslim debates, were analyzed. The results offer support (or partial support) to the hypotheses demonstrating identity-specific instances of topic-sentiment polarization to the predicted direction. The study offers valuable insights for the relevance of social identity theory in real-world interreligious interactions, while the successful application of topic-sentiment analysis lends support for …

The purpose of this research design is to explore the meaning of death for the female adolescent. A qualitative design was used as the method of research. Twelve participants were selected from a snowball sample ten females and two males. Four participants reported witnessing the death of an individual, five reported a moderated death experience in which they were not present but were told after the fact and three reported no significant experience with death. The study indicated relationships and cause of death as among the pre-conditions towards meaning development for the adolescent female. The two main themes derived from the pre-conditions are an understanding of the inevitability of death for themselves and the experience of death as qualia. Consequences to the experience of death include increased emotional tolerance under stress and a perceived increased maturity suggesting resilience in the adolescent female following a loss. Future areas of research are also addressed.

Using a logistic regression model, this dissertation employed a macro level Gateway Provider Model to explore eight factors that may influence community health center HIV testing approach. The logistic regression model indicated that three variables related to community health center HIV testing approach. First, all else equal, the odds of offering routine HIV testing for community health centers that perceived their patients and community to be at average risk for HIV were 3.676 times the odds for those centers that perceived their patients and community to be at low or no risk for HIV. Further, the odds of offering routine HIV testing for community health centers that perceived their patients and community to be at high risk for HIV were 4.693 times the odds for those centers that perceived the community to be at low or no HIV risk. Second, all else equal, the odds of offering routine HIV testing for community health centers in which an HIV testing policy exists were 2.202 times the odds for those centers in which an HIV testing policy does not exist. Third, all else equal, the odds of offering routine HIV testing for community health centers that received funding specifically for HIV testing …