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Thank God? The Effect of Religious Attitudes and Behaviors on Emotions
Get PDFWhat is the effect of one’s religious attitudes and behaviors on the frequency of different emotions? I propose that a stronger religious affiliation and a higher frequency of attending religious services will lead to feeling happy and ashamed more often and feeling sad, anxious, and mad less often. Further, I propose that a higher frequency of prayer will lead to feeling sad, anxious, mad, and ashamed more often and feeling happy less often. I analyze the frequency of these emotions in 892 respondents to the 1996 General Social Survey, a nationally representative dataset obtained via face to face interviews. Regression analysis revealed that more frequent prayer leads to feeling sad and ashamed more often, and more frequent religious service attendance leads to feeling anxious less often. Demographic control variables are also found to have an effect on how frequently one feels sad, mad, and anxious. The results offer partial support for the hypotheses. Further research is necessary to reconcile these differences and to explain the mechanisms by which the relationship between religiosity and emotions operates
The Word Concreteness Effect -3
No full texthttps://creativematter.skidmore.edu/altered_books_2019/1024/thumbnail.jp
How Will the More Stringent Building Energy Codes Affect the Housing Price: A Case Study in Thornton and Westminster in Colorado
No full textMy paper analyzes the impacts of the more stringent building energy codes, IRC, on the housing price. The dataset is from a leading online real estate broker website from Jan 1st, 2011 to Dec 31st, 2017. Using the difference-in-differences model, I find an overall 16.5% increase in newly built or remodeled houses’ sales price when Thornton changed IRC 2009 to IRC 2015. However, the general housing market does not witness this positive impact on the price. In addition, my paper finds if a house is within 2 or 5 miles to the city center, no significant and consistent effects have been found on the housing price. Therefore, my study provides economic incentives for the municipal government to update the building energy codes regularly
The Effect of An Increase in Minimum Wages on Gender
Get PDFTo estimate the effect of an increase in minimum wages on gender, this paper utilizes a natural experiment opportunity, arising from increases in 21 states of the U.S. and the District of Columbia in 2015. In my study, I implement a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology to evaluate the impact of the increase in minimum wages implemented in 2015 on gender in the Production industry, the Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports and Media industry and the Transportation and Material Moving industry. Through my research, instead of focusing on the employment effects of minimum wages, I shed light on the effectiveness of minimum wages as a tool of redistribution of income for low wage earners. My results conclude that the greatest impact of an increase in minimum wages in 2015 can be witnessed in the Production industry, where earnings of single women with one child increased by 9.60 percent and earnings of divorced women with no child increased by 9.65 percent. My findings report that the second largest impact of an increase in minimum wages in 2015 was observed in the Transportation and Material Moving industry, where earnings of divorced men with one child increased by 6.80 percent and earnings of married men with no child increased by 6.69 percent. The impact of an increase in minimum wages in 2015 had no impact on the earnings of workers in the Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports and Media industry
Higher Education and Religiosity: Does College Weaken or Bolster Students\u27 Religious Beliefs?
Get PDFThis study analyzes the impacts of higher education on religiosity among young adults. Much of the literature on this topic points to a secularizing effect among college-aged individuals. Scholars have pointed to theories such as emerging adulthood, moral community, and secularization to explain this relationship (Davignon and Thompson 2015; McFarland, Wright, and Weakliem 2011; Schwadel 2015). This research uses the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), which was collected in 2008 and produced a sample of 1,464 cases, to test the widely held belief that college students exhibit less religiosity than non-college educated emerging adults. Age was also held constant as the survey only interviewed 18 to 24-year-olds. Running a regression analysis while controlling for the respondents’ gender yielded results that confirm one hypothesis and disconfirm the others. College attendance is not a significant predictor of three of my four measures of religiosity: frequency of prayer, frequency of religious service attendance, and perceived decline in religiosity. The assumption that a college education is secularizing might no longer be true, especially for young women who report greater levels of religiosity than young men on two of the religiosity measures at the p \u3c .01 level. However, this analysis revealed college attendance as a significant predictor of one’s doubt in religious beliefs, but at a lower alpha level (p \u3c .05). Although religion is certainly changing shape in the 21st century, it may not be shifting in the way scholars have long predicted, and these changes certainly vary among different social groups
Are All Politics Still Local? Variations in Local and National Political Participation in the United States
Get PDFPolitical participation is an ever-important facet of United States democracy, but do patterns of participation differ from the local to the national level? Do citizens participate more or less in one sphere of politics? This study utilizes data from the American National Elections Study Timeseries Survey from 2016 (N = 3447) to examine the differences in local and national political participation based on interest in politics, ideological extremism, and education controlling for religious attendance, race, gender, and age. This study finds that on average, United States citizens participate less in local politics than national politics. Additionally, the regression model for local politics (R2 = .109) is statistically significant (p \u3c .01) yet has less explanatory power than the regression model for national politics (R2 = .164), indicating that the independent and control variables are better at explaining variation in national participation. The strongest predictors in the national model were the three primary independent variables of interest. The predictors for the local model included religious attendance and gender. Ideological extremism was significant (p \u3c .01) in the national model, but not significant in the local model. These findings suggest that there are important discrepancies between local and national participation which should receive additional attention in future research
Does Creative Thought Really Matter? The Impact of Arts Participation on Civic Engagement
Get PDFArt has been crucial in fostering individual and community identities, but does arts participation increase levels of civic engagement? I propose that individuals who attend performances and art exhibits participate in more public activities and spend more social evenings with neighbors per year. To test these hypotheses, I analyze 438 cases from the 2016 General Social Survey (GSS). Findings provide partial support for my hypotheses. Regression results reveal that respondents who attended a performance or art exhibit in the last 12 months participated in significantly more public activities. However, there is not a statistically significant relationship between performance and art exhibit attendance with sociability with neighbors. Among control variables, education, family income, and age are significant predictors of participation in public activities. Family income is the only significant predictor of sociability with neighbors. Through a social capital approach, these results suggest that performances and art exhibits are associational activities that strengthen community ties, which increases an individual’s likelihood of voting and socializing with neighbors, friends, and others in public spaces like bars. Future researchers should utilize more specific measures of community involvement and civic engagement to continue studying the relationship between arts participation and civic engagement