This study provides a measurable model of the concept of place vulnerability for HIV/AIDS that incorporates both community and structural level effects using data provided at the ZIP code level from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Sociological literature on the effects of place on health has been growing but falls short of providing an operational definition of the effects of place on health. This dissertation looks to the literature in medical/health geography to supplement sociology’s understanding of the effects of place on health, to the end of providing a measurable model. Prior research that has recognized the complexity of the effects of place still have forced data into one scale and emphasized individual-level outcomes. A multilevel model allows for keeping the associated spatial unit data, without aggregating or parsing it out for convenience of model fit. The place vulnerability model proposed examines how exposure, capacity and potentiality variables all influence an area’s HIV/AIDS count. To capture the effects of place vulnerability at multiple levels, this dissertation research uses a multilevel zero-inflated poisson (MLZIP) model to examine how factors measured at the ZIP code and county both affect HIV/AIDS counts per ZIP code as an outcome. Furthermore, empirical Bayes …

This study examines race differences and the relationship between religiosity/ spirituality and social support on quality of life (QOL) among people living with HIV/AIDS in Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX. The data were obtained from the Project VOICES research study conducted by the Center of Psychosocial Health Research at University of North Texas in 2003. This study explores the hypotheses that religiosity/spirituality and social support positively influences quality of life among people living with HIV/AIDS. The current study uses a diverse, gender-balanced sample consisting of African Americans (n = 156), aged 20-68, 47% male, 52% female and 1% transgendered) and Non-African Americans (n = 131), aged 19-65, 50% male, 46% female and 3% transgendered) (Caucasian, Latino, & others) to evaluate the relationship among variables of interest. Multiple regression analyses revealed that social support was a significant factor explaining quality of life (QOL) for African Americans when controlling for medical variables but did not for non-African Americans. Religiosity/spirituality was not found to be significant in this study. The implications of the findings are discussed.

The objective of this study is to investigate the variations in the type of trauma (post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and disorder of extreme stress not otherwise specified (DESNOS) resulting first from group membership, and second from variations in socioeconomic status, and last, from exposure to physical and psychological methods of interrogation due to imprisonment. I use a diverse sample of 202 child ex-detainees who served sentences in Israeli prisons and were 17 years of age or less at the time of arrest. Various regression techniques were utilized to determine the most parsimonious way to distinguish between the three groups in their trauma responses. The key finding in this study is that child refugee ex-detainees living in refugee camps, in general, did not report PTSD or DESNOS reactions compared to their counterparts. Continuing PTSD and DESNOS symptoms were more prevalent among the group of refugees living outside the camps. However, there is at least one finding that supported what I hypothesized: refugees living in camps were more likely to experience elevated levels of alterations in attention or consciousness (DESNOS2). For refugees in camps, the DESNOS absence tells us that the volatile childhood these children experienced was not associated with severe pathological …

This study examined the relationship between aspects of social capital and self-reported delinquency among Turkish juveniles by using a secondary dataset, which is a part of the European Youth Survey. The survey was conducted among tenth graders in 2007 in Bağcılar, Istanbul. The dependent variable of this study, delinquency, was divided into two groups, minor and major, according to the stipulations of the Turkish Penal Code. Social capital was measured by assessing adolescents’ reports of their direct interactions with their parents, peers and community. In order to predict the likelihood of major and minor delinquency independently, two different subsets (N: 1879 and 1837, respectively) of the data set were used. The findings of the multivariate analyses suggest that a low level of social capital contributed significantly to Turkish juveniles’ engagement in major and minor delinquent activities. Among the social capital items, adolescents’ affiliation with delinquent peers had the strongest correlation with both dependent variables.

This analysis of secondary data collected from family members of nursing home residents in North Texas (n = 422) used a mixed methods approach to determine if there is a difference in perspectives on quality care among family members of Alzheimer’s/Dementia Special Care Unit (ADSCU) residents compared to those of non-ADSCU residents. Descriptive content analysis was used identify and condense responses to an open-ended question into four meaningful categories of qualities of care. An independent t-test was employed to determine if there was a difference between family members of ADSCU residents and family members of non-ADSCU residents regarding their rating of their loved-ones’ nursing home on the important qualities of care they identified from the open-ended question. Closed-ended questions were organized into indices of these qualities of care, and ordinary least square regression was employed to determine if there were significant differences between perceptions of family members of ADSCU residents and those of non-ADSCU residents regarding care their loved-ones are receiving on these qualities of care, controlling for frequency of visit.

Organized crime and terrorism taking place in the Turkish provinces get more attention in the public agenda than other type of crimes. Although property crimes receive less attention, they pose a serious threat to public order and the social welfare of Turkish society. Academic researchers have also paid little attention to the analysis of property crimes at the macro level in Turkey. For these reasons, this study focused on the analysis of property crimes for three years period, 2005, 2006 and 2007 in Turkey, using a conceptual model of social disorganization. Provincial level data from Turkish governmental agencies were used. The findings of multivariate analyses showed that social disorganization approach, as measured in this study, provided a partial explanation of property crime rates in Turkey. Family disruption and urbanization had significant effects on property crime rate, while remaining exogenous elements of social disorganization (i.e., SES, population heterogeneity and residential mobility) did not have any expected effects. In mediation analysis, using faith-based engagement and political participation rates as mediators between the structural factors of social disorganization and property crime rate provided marginal support for the theory. Political participation rate partially mediated the relationship between property crime rate and urbanization rate, while …

Every day, individuals commit acts which are considered immoral, unethical, even criminal, often to gain material advantage. Many people consider cheating on taxes, cheating on tests, claiming false benefits, or avoiding transport fare to be wrong, but they do them anyway. While some of these acts may not be formally illegal, they are, at best, considered morally dubious and is labeled “everyday crime.” Anomie theory holds that individuals make decisions based on socialized values, which separately may be contradictory but together, balances each other out, producing behavior considered “normal” by society. When one holds an imbalanced set of values, decisions made on that set may produce deviant behavior, such as everyday crime. RD theory holds that individuals who perceive their own deprivation, relative to someone else, will feel frustration and injustice, and may attempt to ameliorate that feeling with deviant behavior. Data from the 2006 World Values Survey were analyzed using logistic regression, testing both constructs concurrently. An individual was 1.55 times more likely to justify everyday crime for each calculated unit of anomie; and 1.10 times more likely for each calculated unit of RD. It was concluded from this study that anomie and relative deprivation were both associated with …

Using the 2009 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS), this paper uses logistic regressions to explore the effect of facility ownership on a facility’s show of altruism. Facility’s show of altruism is operationalized as a facility offering free treatment to all its clients, free treatment to some of its clients, or a facility offering a sliding fee scale to its client base in order to absorb some of the cost of treatment based on a potential client's income. Region, receipt of public funds, and religious affiliation are added as covariates in order to gauge whether the potential relationship between facility ownership and a facility’s show of altruism is genuine. Results indicate that private, for-profit ownership status of a facility is associated with a lower likelihood that a substance-abuse treatment facility would engage in altruistic behavior. However, receipt of public funds acts as a mediating variable, in that, its inclusion raises the likelihood that a private, for-profit facility would engage in shows of altruism. Furthermore, it appears that religious-affiliation increases the likelihood that a facility would display altruism by providing free treatment, to some of its clients, or to all, but less likely to display altruism by employing a …

This study is an attempt to determine the effects of proximity to a large urban center on selected changes in agriculture.

This dissertation is a qualitative study of racially ambiguous people and their life experiences. Racially ambiguous people are individuals who are frequently misidentified racially by others because they do not resemble the phenotype associated with the racial group to which they belong or because they belong to racial/ethnic groups originating in different parts of the world that resemble each other. the racial/ethnic population of the United States is constantly changing because of variations in the birth rates among the racial/ethnic groups that comprise those populations and immigration from around the world. Although much research has been done that documents the existence of racial/ethnic mixing in the history of the United States and the world, this multiracial history is seldom acknowledged in the social, work, and other spheres of interaction among people in the U.S., instead a racialized system based on the perception of individuals as mono-racial thus easily identified through (skin tone, hair texture, facial features, etc.). This is research was done using life experience interviews with 24 racially ambiguous individuals to determine how race/ethnicity has affected their lives and how they negotiate the minefield of race.

Recent orders from the executive branch of the United States’ government have encouraged participation from faith-based organizations in providing human services because they are more effective in aiding impoverished citizens. This study examined the effectiveness of faith-based and non faith-based anti-poverty nonprofit organizations to find if one organization type is more effective in providing social services. the data for this study were collected through a survey-questionnaire which was administered to a convenience sample of 82 participants seeking assistance from four different nonprofit organizations (two faith-based and two non faith-based) in Dallas County and Tarrant County. the results from this study indicated that when controlling for demographic and socio-economic variables, recipients from faith-based organizations were less likely to report that they at least received services desired as compared to those who visited a non faith-based organization. Therefore, non faith-based organizations were better at meeting the needs of respondents than faith-based organizations.

Disasters are an ever increasing phenomena in our society, resulting in many people being adversely affected. the social vulnerability paradigm explores the social, economic and political factors which contribute to certain populations being disproportionately affected by disasters. However, the paradigm has not yet begun to investigate the cultural or religious ideologies which may affect a population's behavior in disaster. This study is an exploratory investigation into whether religious ideologies may impact a person's decision to prepare, or not, in the event of a disaster. Specifically, it seeks to investigate whether a person who holds a belief that natural disasters are under God's control will prepare for the hazard? the study undertaken five years after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans show that religious ideology is closely linked with one's capacity to prepare for the hazard which is closely tied in with social structure. It may appear that a person's 'fatalistic' attitude is tied to economic inability to prepare for a hazard. This does not mean that they will not prepare but that preparation may include prayer as their initial attempt to mitigate.

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.

The purpose of this research was to investigate certain value orientations of adult women of low socio-economic status in Dallas, Texas. Central to the approach to values relied upon in this research project was a concern for cultural integration and change. Of interest was a partial description of the degree of cultural integration and an partial description of strains that exist within the social systems under analysis: a group of 50 Negro women and a group of 50 white women.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a descriptive study of psychiatric and social variables related to aged first admissions to a private psychiatric hospital in the calendar years 1959 through 1963. The study also seeks to determine what, if any, relationship exists between background characteristics of the patients and their diagnoses. Finally, the diagnosis of the patient is compared with a series of patient outcome variables to determine the relationship, if any, between diagnosis and selected recovery variables. Due to the nature of the data used, the emphasis of the thesis is upon describing relationships rather than testing hypotheses.

The primary significance of this inquiry is as a contribution to the continuing effort to categorize socialization studies and thereby to make more useful the accumulation of empirical knowledge in the field. This thesis presents a summary of sociological studies of socialization in the 1960's. It reviews articles published between January 1, 1960 and December 31, 1967.

When the heterogeneity of the city is considered, the sociological implications which stem from this heterogeneity become important to understanding the social structure of the city. One of these sociological implications is intrinsic in the patterns of transportation. This is an ecological study of the structure and changing structure of parts of the city. We will study the relationship between two variables; social area characteristics and patterns of transportation.

Black students now have a choice of predominantly Black or integrated colleges. This investigation is concerned with the possible differences between Black students at these two types of institutions. It was hypothesized that these two student groups differ significantly in socioeconomic status, social mobility expectations, and type of orientation in regard to choice of school.

This investigation is concerned, with the problem of the normative constraints upon scientific research within the broad theoretical framework of the sociology of knowledge, i.e., the contention that knowledge is functionally related to the social system. The concepts "knowledge" and "Social system" are open to wide interpretation; however, in this study knowledge refers to an empirically verifiable variable and the social system is synonomous with the normative system.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining the drug knowledge levels and attitudes toward drug abuse of fifth and sixth grade schoolchildren.

The present study has the following purposes: to provide a general description of work release in this country, to provide specific descriptions of the work release programs at two federal institutions, and to relate the descriptions of these programs to societal reactions to crime and theories of criminal etiology and epidemiology.

The purpose of this study is to add to the knowledge of juvenile delinquency in our society as it may be discerned through reports by those who have committed delinquent, but in most cases unadjudicated, acts. This study further seeks to add a dimension to the body of knowledge already gained through self-report techniques by discovering whether there are any important differences to be observed in comparing surveys of limited Negro and white populations.

The study attempts to determine the degree of powerlessness and the deferment of gratification among children as measured by instruments designed for this purpose. An effort will be made to test whether the deferred gratification pattern exists in inverse relationship to the feeling of powerlessness among the lower classes; and to determine whether children who feel they are estranged from society have a psychological need for an impulsive release of feelings.

It is hypothesized that Rex Hopper's model for the development of a South American political revolution will apply equally to the development of a social movement which is not a South American political revolution, namely, the Ku Klux Klan. The general purpose of this study was to test the generalizability of Hopper's model.