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Consumer Experiences in the Secondhand Market: Finances, Frugality, Fashion, & Fun
No full textSecondhand apparel refers to clothing and accessories that have been previously owned, handed down, donated, or resold to others. They are a sustainable product because they are reused instead of being discarded into landfills. Consumer experience refers to the emotional and psychological responses individuals have during their interactions with products and services across all touchpoints. In the secondhand apparel market, consumer experience plays a significant role in product purchasing, and the unique aspects of retail entertainment serve as key motivators. Consumer-perceived risk refers to the uncertainty of adverse outcomes associated with purchasing a product. Purchasing secondhand apparel poses similar yet distinct risks compared to purchasing new products. This study explores the phenomenon of secondhand consumer shopping experiences, the risk of time, and its impact on the consumption and disposal of secondhand apparel.
Through hermeneutic phenomenological purposive in-depth interviews, with n=11 female participants, the data were interpreted as stories, experiences, and motivations. Secondhand shopping experiences were found to revolve around the principles of finance, frugality, fashion, and fun. It has been shown that shopping for secondhand apparel is inherently unpredictable, with product availability, quality, and variety fluctuating, creating a shopping experience that can be both exciting and frustrating. Ethical factors, such as aiding the community, waste reduction, and sustainable consumption, often influence consumer choices. Additionally, the transparency of secondhand stores plays a crucial role in shaping consumer trust and influencing their motivations
Improving Postpartum Outcomes Through Therapeutic Individual and Group Occupational Therapy Sessions in Hospitalized Antepartum Patients
No full textExtended hospitalization in the postpartum period is occasionally medically indicated due to a variety of diagnoses, but can pose challenges to the psychosocial well-being of pregnant women, such as social isolation, anxiety, alteration of normal life routines, and less preparation for postpartum life. In acute care settings, however, maternal management tends to focus on physical stabilization rather than holistic maternal care, including opportunities for emotional support, occupational engagement, and postpartum planning. This doctoral capstone project was designed to assess the effect of individualized and group-based occupational therapy interventions for antepartum women who have been hospitalized for extended periods of time, specifically addressing the immediate postpartum period in terms of maternal confidence, occupational engagement, and overall postpartum well-being. The project, conducted at WVU Medicine Children’s Birthing Center, filled a critical gap in maternal care by providing therapeutic education and support before childbirth. Outcomes were evaluated through a primarily qualitative design from semi-structured interviews, in addition to the integration of quantitative data from validated mental health screening tools. Using descriptive statistics, a decrease in depressive symptoms was observed in individuals who completed both the pre- and post-intervention assessments. A thematic analysis of participant interviews revealed three main themes: (1) a sense of belonging and social connection, (2) mood improvement due to an altered environment, and (3) mental health and social support in future groups. Thematic analysis of provider interviews revealed three themes: (1) Decrease in feelings of loneliness and isolation, (2) Observed and stated mood improvement due to a change in environment and activity, and (3) Increase in awareness and confidence in movement. Qualitative evaluation from interviews with providers and facilitators also underscored the value, feasibility, and unique interdisciplinary role of occupational therapy in maternal care. These insights can be used to substantiate the implementation of proactive, occupation-based interventions into inpatient antepartum care and highlight the need for occupational therapy to contribute to the promotion of holistic maternal health outcomes across the perinatal continuum
Three Essays on Education and Health Economics
No full textThe first chapter explores the impact of online education on student outcomes by comparing students pre-2020 school closures to students post-2020 school closures. Using student-level panel data from a large U.S. school district spanning 2017-2023 and two outcome variables, reading tests and end-of-level exams, I estimate the effects on different demographic groups, the dynamics of these effects over time, and how these effects differ across students ages. I find a significant decline in student performance after the move to online learning, with additional adverse effects on students who are classified as low-income, female, special education, or ELL. Mechanisms contributing to this decline include socioeconomic disparities, challenges faced by students who are in special education and language learning programs. These findings underscore the need for targeted interventions to mitigate disparities and support students following moves to online education.
The second chapter investigates the impact of the removal of universal free school meals on student test scores following the expiration of the Keep Kids Fed Act in 2022. After its expiration, some states extended the policy, while others did not, creating a natural experiment to examine the effects of losing universal access to free meals. By using a triple difference-in-differences model and data from the Stanford Education Data Archive, the Census Household Pulse Survey, and the Common Core of Data, I find that the removal of free meals led to a significant decline in math and reading language arts test scores. These findings not only provide valuable insights into the effects of food security policies on educational outcomes, but also highlight the critical intersection of social and education policy. The results underscore the complementary role that policies aimed at addressing food insecurity play in supporting academic achievement, suggesting that effective education policy cannot be fully realized without addressing the broader social determinants that influence student performance. These findings advocate for a more integrated approach to policymaking, where food security and educational access are seen as complementary tools for student success.
The third chapter explores the effect of umpire inaccuracies on domestic violence reports. Using pitch-by-pitch data from Major League Baseball and crime reports from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, I show an increase in the number of domestic violence reports when MLB teams lose with an inaccurate umpire. This effect is focused to losses in games with extremely inaccurate umpires, played in September, and played on Thursdays and Saturdays. Additionally, the effect is driven by umpire\u27s calls favoring the opposing team. I show this effect to be robust to different specification of domestic violence timing, and driven by domestic violence that occurs after a game. I find no evidence of an effect on other crime
Risk Factors and Fraud Loss Magnitude: Informing Anti-Fraud Strategies
No full textFraud research posits risk factors may be utilized to identify individuals who are predisposed to perpetrate fraud (ACFE 2024). I find perpetrators who exhibit the following risk factors result in statistically higher fraud losses: living beyond their means, excessive pressure to perform within the organization, having excessive control issues regarding their job, are reluctant to take vacations, have a “wheeler-dealer” attitude, or addiction problems. I further find perpetrators who exhibit risk factors which are likely to be observed in a work setting are more likely to result in higher fraud losses. However, perpetrators who exhibit risk factors which are more personal/nonwork are more likely to result in lower fraud losses. This research provides insights to inform the development and refinement of anti-fraud practices and policies to identify risk factors before the fraud is conducted or earlier during fraud perpetration in comparison to conventional data sources
Coming Out to My Christian Loved Ones: Online Workshop Effectiveness For Increasing LGBTQ+ Individuals and LGBTQ+ Ally Communication Efficacy and Impacts On Personal-Enacted Identity Gaps
No full textIt is not uncommon for passages from the Christian Bible to produce schisms in families, friendships, mentorships, workplace relationships, individual churches, and denominations. These challenging conversations are often around LGBTQ+ topics. Many marginalized LGBTQ+ individuals and allies in these spaces become outgroup members who feel insecure and less confident enacting aspects of their own identities or identities they support. A lack of communication efficacy for how to navigate LGBTQ+ related conversations with Christian loved ones may lead to detrimental physical, mental, and emotional outcomes.
This study surveyed 134 LGBTQ+ individuals and allies as well as conducted semi structured interviews with 24 LGBTQ+ individuals and allies to glean how effective online facilitation modules created for this research study were in increasing communication efficacyand decreasing personal-enacted identity gaps when navigating the revelation of an LGBTQ+ identity, or supporting someone with an LGBTQ+ identity among Christian others.
Results of within subjects paired t-tests reflect a .57244 increase in communication efficacy and a .36955 decrease in the personal-enacted identity gaps for LGBTQ+ individuals and allies who took part in the “COMMable Workshop” online facilitation modules. Themes emerging throughout interviews and open-ended survey data revealed that participants gaining a better understanding of where “the other side” is coming from, experiencing a sense of community that built confidence, learning relevant biblical information, and being intentionally asked to take part in self-reflection all contributed to their increases in communication efficacy. Allyship education and learning to cope with prejudice were themes that emerged contributing to decreases in personal-enacted identity gaps
Native mass spectrometry techniques and molecular dynamics simulations for characterizing the conformational landscape of peptides, protein-ligand complexes, and integral membrane proteins
No full textBiopolymers are versatile molecules that perform myriad cellular functions such as gene regulation and high-energy molecule synthesis. Alterations in biomolecular structure such as those arising from mutations can disrupt important cellular processes and lead to disease. Therefore, accurate biopolymer structure characterization plays an outsized role in improving human health.
X-ray crystallography, cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy are the most powerful techniques for obtaining high-resolution, 3D structures.Valuable structural insight is also obtained using optical rotation, small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, and Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) spectroscopy. Over the past few years, remarkable advances in computational power and algorithm development have revolutionized the field of biopolymer structure prediction. For example, leveraging machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), AlphaFold and Open fold have demonstrated a remarkable ability to predict biopolymer structure from sequence. Although powerful, these techniques are limited in their ability to provide information about challenging systems where the structure is either unknown or highly flexible under physiological conditions. In this work, studies are presented in which structural information is gleaned from challenging biopolymer systems using novel computational and experimental methods.
In Chapter 2, a new structure characterization methodology based on hydrogen-deuterium exchange-mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) in combination with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations is introduced. The approach is used to describe the structural motifs of the unstructured peptide, Nt17, a conserved sequence in Huntingtin protein and associated with Huntington’s Disease progression. The model is used to show that, although highly flexible, Nt17 is intrinsically primed for facile conversion to α-helical conformation upon binding with molecular partners.
Having shown that HDX reactivity is predictive of the degree of structural flexibility and bias (propensity to form 2° structural elements such as α-helix, β-sheet, and β-turn) for intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), the work in Chapter 3 explores an extension of structure characterization to protein-ligand systems. In this study human FK506 binding protein (FKBP12) structure is examined in the absence and presence of two, well-recognized ligand molecules (i.e., FK506 and rapamycin). The work provides a better understanding of binding/unbinding events, competitive binding, and folded/unfolded conformer heterogeneity. Native MS and HDX-MS were utilized in conjunction with MD simulations to understand this select intrinsically disordered region (IDR) and IDR-drug conformational landscape.
Chapter 4 explores the functional property prediction of Proteorhodopsin, by integrating experimental studies with MD simulations validation. Here, a novel linear regression model accurately predicts the spectral tuning of UV-visible data of the PR mutant. Chapter 5 examines the effects of lipid and membrane environments on folded states of PR which have been validated in the literature based on biophysical analyses. The stability of the PR pentamer and hexamer in detergent micelles and the lipid bilayer is investigated. The potential for PR to serve as a standard model system for future studies, is also investigated.
Chapter 6 describes an extension of the novel experimental and modeling approaches for the characterization of membrane activated peptides (MAPs). Experiencing structural transitions through change in solution conditions (e.g., pH), these molecules present one of the most challenging systems to characterize. Preliminary studies suggest that the advanced experimental and computational techniques described in Chapter 2 to Chapter 5 may offer the best opportunity to detail such structural transitions
A Sense of Purpose in Life and Efforts to Increase it in Higher Education
No full textA sense of purpose in life, defined as a dispositional tendency to pursue goals and activities in line with one’s overarching life direction (Hill, 2016), has been discussed as a key individual difference factor to foster in today’s college students (Colby, 2020; Pfund, Bono, & Hill, 2020). As such, the present dissertation sought to understand the psychosocial and academic benefits associated with having a sense of purpose in life in college via two studies: 1. Assessing changes in a sense of purpose in life across the first year of college and how these changes were associated with academic performance and psychosocial indicators of well-being at the end of that first year in a representative sample of a cohort (2019-2020) of undergraduates from West Virginia University (WVU) 2. Understand the utility of the CliftonStrengths® questionnaire and strengths-based touchpoints through the WVU Purpose Center (in collaboration with Gallup) as it relates to undergraduate academic success, sense of purpose in life, and psychosocial well-being. Study 1 demonstrated that increases in purpose in life were associated with better academic and psychosocial outcomes. Study 2 demonstrated minimal evidence of the predictive validity of the CliftonStrengths® questionnaire, but some evidence in favor of touchpoint exposure being associated with higher levels of self-efficacy and a higher GPA. Findings suggest that a sense of purpose in life is an important individual difference factor to cultivate in college students, but that CliftonStrengths®-based initiatives may not be the most effective means of facilitating purpose development or academic success
Back to the Future Self: Parsing Age Effects in Future Self-Continuity through Goal Orientation and Life Satisfaction
No full textFuture self-continuity, the psychological feeling of connectedness between the current and the future self, is a relatively novel concept that is associated with and has been used to predict a variety of outcomes. Though work investigating individual differences is comparatively rare, a robust demographic difference found in previous literature is the presence of an age effect, where older adults are more likely to feel a greater connection to their future self than younger adults. This finding has been replicated a number of times, but potential mechanisms behind this observed age-related increase have yet to be fully uncovered. Limited previous work has shown initial evidence that life satisfaction may play a mediating role between age and future self-continuity. Additionally, we hypothesize that the shifting of goal orientations across the lifespan may account for the observed age effect seen in future self-continuity. Using a series of hierarchical regression models, age emerged as a significant predictor of future self-continuity after controlling for covariates and other study variables. A series of parallel mediation models revealed significant indirect effects for both gain-oriented goal-orientation and life satisfaction. These results demonstrate that in young adulthood, the increased likelihood of having goals directed towards gains and growth may lead to decreased future self-continuity. Additionally, being highly satisfied with life may lead to increases in future self-continuity. These findings advance the understanding of the trajectory of future self-continuity across adulthood and offer future directions for the continued study of these relations across multiple measures of future self-continuity
