University at Albany, State University of New York
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Investigating Post-adoption Abandonment of Mental Health Mobile Applications among Young Adults
Get PDFThe rising prevalence of mental health issues among young adults has driven increased interest in Mental Health Mobile Applications (MHMAs), which offer accessible and cost-effective solutions to traditional barriers such as financial limitations, stigma, and restricted healthcare access. Despite their promise, MHMAs frequently experience high rates of attrition and abandonment, significantly limiting their long-term effectiveness. Employing a mixed-methods, multi-stage research design, this dissertation explores the determinants of MHMA abandonment among young adults, emphasizing the interplay between technological inhibitors and enablers, individual user characteristics, and the mediating roles of user satisfaction and perceived usefulness.
Study 1 utilized quantitative text analysis, including topic modeling and semantic text classification, on 170,127 user-generated MHMA reviews to identify prominent inhibitors and enablers influencing user engagement. Study 2 extended these findings using a cross-sectional survey design with 314 young adult participants to test the relationships between composite inhibitors and enablers, user satisfaction and perceived usefulness, and MHMA abandonment. Results highlighted that while inhibitors such as usability challenges, intrusive features, unclear pricing structures, and privacy concerns were negatively associated with satisfaction and perceived usefulness, they unexpectedly predicted both direct and indirect pathways to abandonment. Notably, higher satisfaction and perceived usefulness, traditionally viewed as protective factors, were paradoxically associated with abandonment in instances of goal completion, a phenomenon termed the graduation effect. This effect describes users who discontinue MHMA use after achieving their intended mental health outcomes. These findings challenge conventional assumptions in information systems continuance theories and suggest that abandonment in digital mental health contexts often reflects successful user outcomes rather than dissatisfaction or system failure. Practically, this research advises MHMA developers to consider both the reduction of inhibitors and the incorporation of design strategies that support healthy disengagement or transition upon goal fulfillment.
This dissertation contributes to technology adoption and nonuse literature by integrating large-scale quantitative data analyses to mental health apps. Theoretically, this work complements post-adoption models by empirically distinguishing inhibitors from enablers and documenting suppression effects. Practically, MHMA designers are advised to reduce core inhibitors while embedding features that support both sustained engagement and intentional disengagement. Future studies should adopt longitudinal approaches and investigate abandonment behaviors across different populations to validate these mechanisms. Recommendations for future research include longitudinal studies to further validate these abandonment patterns and deeper exploration into demographic variations in MHMA engagement
Understanding Gendered Challenges with Trauma and Safety in Upstate New York Settlement: Perspectives from Central and South American Migrants and Service Providers
No full textWhile migrants face a variety of challenges in settling in the US including gendered risks for violence and exploitation, little research has investigated how safe they feel in the US, how trauma relates to challenges faced in settlement, and how migrant services potentially address gender-specific experiences including traumatic events and safety. This study aims to fill that gap by investigating the following questions: how does gender shape Central and South American migrants’ experiences of trauma and feelings of safety during migration and settlement in Upstate New York? Further, how do concerns of gender-specific needs and traumatic experiences impact the ways that local migrant service providers—a key part of many migrants’ settlement experiences—build their services and how they support migrants? To answer these questions, I employed two types of data. First, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 migrant service providers in Upstate New York on their perceptions centering around gender-specific challenges, trauma, and safety among their migrant clients. Providers were able to speak to ways that gender impacted challenges, trauma experiences, and safety during migration and settlement among their clients, but generally did not view these issues as part of their main concerns in programming and advocacy. They further discuss how their services are constrained by funding and resources which limits what they can focus on in their programming. Second, I surveyed 95 local Central and South American migrants who moved to Upstate New York between 2019-2024 to understand their gendered experiences in migration and settlement including trauma histories and feelings of safety. These surveys reveal that many new arrivals carry trauma with them, want to become independent more quickly, and generally feel safe and happy in the Upstate, and there are few statistically significant gender differences in these findings, though some note gender-specific challenges such as limited work opportunities. Altogether, providers and migrants outline gendered challenges at multiple levels. Funding changes stemming from continually shifting policies limit providers’ abilities for more gender-responsive programming and training around trauma. In addition, many migrants from this population come to the US having experiencing trauma but few services are available that directly address trauma or potential gender differences. Overall, neither providers nor migrants centered their main needs and challenges in settlement around gender, trauma, or safety. However, the process of settlement itself makes it difficult to become independent and as a result, these issues may not be at the forefront of their minds: instead, both providing services and settling in the US are characterized by legal challenges, funding issues, and limited agency and capacity for advocacy for both providers and migrants. Ultimately, this dissertation research furthers our understanding of how gender is viewed in settlement according to both providers and migrants and interrogates feelings of safety beyond research that illustrates heightened, gender-specific risks for migrants
How Will Artificial Intelligence Impact the Roles, Skills, and Design Processes of UX Professionals in the Next 5 Years?
Get PDFArtificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way we think about user experience (UX) design. This thesis explores how AI could impact the roles, skills, and design processes of UX professionals over the next five years. The research conducted consists of a mixed-methods approach, combining an online survey administered through Qualtrics to 50 survey respondents and a case study, which included individually interviewing 3 UX professionals over Zoom, to gather data and personal insights. The results show that while AI has the power and potential to make some parts of UX work faster, like research analysis, prototyping, and automating redundant tasks, it also brings challenges, especially around keeping designs truly human-centered and ethical. Some ethical concerns that emerged were the bias in the data that the AI systems are trained on, as well as concerns about privacy and transparency. As AI continues to rapidly grow and advance, it is critical that UX professionals be flexible, develop stronger communication skills, and learn how to work with AI without losing the human touch. This study highlights the importance of finding the right balance between using technology to innovate and ensuring that we do not lose sight of what really matters which is creating experiences that help people, not just impress them
Mental Health Advocates, Lawmakers Discuss Involuntary Commitment Expansion
Get PDFNew York has made it easier to involuntarily hospitalize people with severe mental illness as part of the state budget signed at the Capitol in early May by Gov. Kathy Hochul. State law previously allowed people with severe mental illness to be involuntarily hospitalized if two physicians determined they pose a threat to themselves or others. The updated law sets a standard to include people who are deemed unwilling or unable to support their basic needs, including food, shelter and medical care, due to their mental illness. However, opponents of the updated law say it could be misused to involuntarily commit unhoused individuals without mental illness and argue lawmakers should invest more in voluntary community-based mental health services
Technological Development of In-Cell NMR: Microfluidic, Metabolomic, and Fluxomic Approaches
No full textIn the fields of structural biology, metabolomics, and fluxomics, there is a driving, technique-based concern when it comes to high-resolution spectrometry and its marriage to biological and physiological relevance. Sample preparation often involves cellular perturbation, lysate separation schemes, combinations with non-biological reagents, and timeline slack. Conceptually, the farther we get from the cell, the greater the potential disparity between what exists in vivo and our in vitro manipulations. This is particularly true when seeking to collect data on transfected targets of interest, and on sensitive metabolic equilibria that occur on the order of minutes. The question remains: if we are insulting cells and decreasing their viability, or concentrating and derivatizing their components in preparation for spectrometric analysis, to what degree does our research truly describe what is going on at a systems level? With such sensitive internal structures and metabolic processes, are our manipulations negatively impacting the protein structure homeostasis and metabolic fluxes which we wish to study, and can we arrive at a supporting methodology to help provide greater confidence beyond the status quo confirmatory assays that already exist? More specifically, can we keep cells alive to study protein structure and metabolic fluxes in real-time? Novel transfection and bioreactor technology developed and advanced by our laboratory, in concert with in-cell NMR, provides us with a new array of potential solutions to these questions.
The integration of the Volume Exchange for Convective Transfer (VECT) methodology with in-cell NMR shows itself to be a reliable, high-throughput method for introduction of isotopically-labeled targets of interest to eukaryotic cells, without the perturbation, high mortality rates, or lengthy optimization timelines of other, common techniques like electroporation. Greater numbers of cells are transfected and kept viable, allowing labeled targets to be observed with atomic-level resolution, in the native cellular environment, over the course of days. The pairing of these technologies has achieved collection of important, and biologically v relevant structural data from inside the cell, serving as proof of concept for future work involving more relevant cell lines and targets of interest.
Observation of metabolite synthesis over time using stable isotope supplementation in media like 13C-glucose has been widely adopted for research into metabolic pathways, but lacks true, real-time analysis when cell lysis is required. Bioreactor technology has been used to increase the capacity for analysis of living cells by NMR, an inherently non-destructive technique. The combination of these two methodologies with our recent advances in cell alginate-collagen matrix packaging, media perfusion, and gasification have allowed our group to develop the Real-Time Pulse-Chase NMR (RTPCR-NMR) method, performing fluxomic analysis on living cells that visualized the introduction of stable isotope-labeled media as a “pulse,” quantifying the leading and trailing edges. We used this technique to observe changes to characteristic times and binding constants in three important metabolites indicative of glycolysis, TCA cycle, and alternate energy metabolism across two relevant cell lines. SH-SY5Y cell pulses were modeled and analyzed before and after differentiation. H9C2 cell pulses were modeled and analyzed to record the effects of hypoxia with and without the formin Diaphanous-1. Results for all aspects of this project speak to the capacity of these novel approaches to address the need to obtain real-time, structural and fluxomic data on unperturbed, living cells. They provide greater fidelity on the inner workings of the cell and what can now be achieved with these step-wise advancements. The door is now open to opportunities for even greater discovery
Boundary Conditions, Symmetries, and Bootstrap in 2D Conformal Field Theory
No full textThis dissertation contains two parts of study on the Friedan states and on the conformal bootstrap with symmetries.
The Friedan states are potential physical boundary states of the free boson. However, they exhibited a continuous spectrum in the open string sector, in contrast to more standard examples. The explicit expressions for the density of states of the Friedan states is obtained. Some pathologies and possible contradictions of these states are explored. The functions of the Friedan states are shown to be infinite, suggesting an infinite number of degrees of freedom in the theory.
The modular conformal bootstrap using the moment curve approach and focused on two-dimensional conformal field theory with is discussed. A refinement is made to incorporate conserved currents. Specializing to theories with symmetries, the anyon partition functions, which transform as a vector under modular transformations, are introduced. Applying the moment curve bootstrap to these leads to bounds on the minimum conformal weights in different sectors.
In the analytical approach, the correlated bounds between different anyon sectors are obtained, with the abelian symmetries, and , and with the non-abelian symmetry, .
The explicit bounds on the free boson theories with the presence of the symmetries are then calculated and compared with the bootstrap bounds.
Finally, some numerical bootstrap results with and symmetries are presented
Differences in Mental Health Care Use between Urban and Rural Populations in New York State, 2017-2022
No full textObjective
This study aimed to determine whether rural New York State residents receive mental health care at the same rate as urban residents, how poverty rates in New York State relate to rurality and mental health care use, and how pre-pandemic mental health care use rates compare to 2022 use rates. The goal was not to estimate the burden of disease, nor to estimate the number of patients engaged in care in each zip code, but to highlight the potential differences in service use between urban and rural New York State Office of Mental Health clients.
Methods
A secondary analysis was performed by merging existing data sources. The 2017, 2019, and 2022 Patient Characteristic Surveys were used to create the outcome variable. The frequency of New York State Office of Mental Health clients from each three-digit zip code was collected from the Patient Characteristics Survey, to calculate a measure of service use within each zip code. Poverty data was collected from American Community Survey estimates for 2017, 2019, and 2021. Serious Mental Illness data was collected from a 2014 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report. Geographic mapping was used to display service use rates and poverty rates. Three-digit zip codes were categorized as city or non-city. Differences in rates between groups were determined by Student T-tests (α=0.05). Relationships between poverty variables, rurality variables, and service use rates were estimated by linear regression models (α=0.05).
Results
50 three-digit zip codes were examined. Service use rates ranged from 0 to 235 per 10,000 population. City zip codes had higher service use rates than non-city zip codes. Service use rates slightly decreased from 2019 to 2022. Poverty rates showed a significant association with service use rates (r=0.5451, p=\u3c 0.0001). This association was stronger among city zip codes (r=0.912, p=\u3c 0.0001) than non-city zip codes (r=0.4410, p=\u3c 0.0001).
Conclusions
Non-city zip codes had lower rates of service use than city zip codes. Poverty correlates positively with service use rates in New York State. Non-city zip codes may have more unmet need than city zip codes
Identification of Fentanyl and Fentanyl Analogs Found in Human Urine Using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
No full textIdentification of fentanyl and its analogs in unknown samples is a frequent practice completed in forensic crime labs, as the fentanyl epidemic continues. With the continued increase in illicit drug use, crime labs are not able to keep up with the flooding of new fentanyl analogs being developed, resulting in new analogs slipping past the crime labs’ authority. This research is to start to develop a database of commonly found fentanyl analogs in New York State. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) is a widely used method for the detection and identification of illicit drugs in forensic crime labs. A database that contains fentanyl and its analogs allows for more efficient detection by NYS crime labs and others around the country. As substitutions to the fentanyl molecule can be made to slightly change the drug\u27s composition, there are many modifications to work around the current law. Crime Labs don’t have the capacity to create a database of newly found or closely related analogs due to the backlog of samples needed to be processed in the community. In this paper we utilized many different comment techniques to identify fentanyl derivatives through Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), Liquid-Liquid Extraction, and GC-MS, to identify novel fentanyl analogs in a vulnerable population in New York State that can be used to benefit the forensic chemistry field
Interfacing Neural Models: Biocompatibility and Fabrication of a Flexible, Self-Folding Microelectrode Array
No full textNeurodegenerative diseases pose a formidable challenge in modern medicine, necessitating the development of advanced research tools that can elucidate their complex pathophysiology. Recent advancements in neurodegenerative disease research have led to the development of three-dimensional (3D) neurodegenerative organoids using human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). These organoids closely mimic human brain architecture and functionality, providing a valuable tool for understanding complex diseases. Additionally, the ability to generate and study brain organoids consistently and in large quantities holds potential for a controlled in vitro setting and high-throughput drug screening. However, these models are complex systems requiring specialized maintenance, analysis, and manipulation techniques. Electrophysiology is a key method for studying neural activity. Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) are essential tools for recording and stimulating electrical signals from multiple neurons at once. Typically, traditional two-dimensional (2D) MEAs are well-established for in vitro studies; however, they are not suitable for modern 3D cell cultures, such as organoids. Applying 2D MEAs to 3D samples often requires compressing or slicing the tissue, which results in the 3D culture flattening and losing its original structure. Therefore, the development of new technologies, such as conformal MEAs, plays a pivotal role in advancing in-vitro brain organoid research. This work initially investigates the interface between neuronal cells and typical electronic materials. We evaluate the biocompatibility of materials that are potential candidates for use in devices that interface with neuronal cells. Biocompatibility refers to the ability of these materials to interact with living cells and tissues without causing an adverse response. Therefore, the biocompatibility of these materials used in electronic devices is crucial for the development of implantable devices, as well as in vitro biodevices, such as pacemakers, neuroprosthetics, microelectrode arrays, and future biomanufacturing applications. Here, we assessed the biocompatibility of a collection of diced silicon chips coated with a variety of metal thin films, interfacing them with different cell types, including murine mastocytoma cells in suspension culture, adherent NIH 3T3 fibroblasts, and hiPSC-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs). All materials tested were biocompatible and showed potential to support the neural differentiation of hiPSC-NPCs, creating an opportunity to utilize these materials in the scalable production of a range of biohybrid devices, such as electronic devices, for studying neural behaviors and neuropathies. Moreover, we developed a 3D Flexible, Self-folding Microelectrode Array (FSMEA) device, comprised of a bilayer of polyimide and SU-8 photoresist, or an SU-8/SU-8 bilayer, which utilizes the strain differences between two layers to drive self-assembly. Our studies have demonstrated that FSMEA devices can effectively record spontaneous action potentials and local field potentials in two types of 3D tissues, cortical organoids ranging from 800 to 1,500 µm in diameter, and human elongating multi-lineage organized cardiac (EMLOC) gastruloids. These FSMEAs represent a new class of strain-based 3D MEA devices, leading to a versatile platform for minimally invasive interrogation of complex 3D tissue dynamics. By leveraging their intrinsic ability to self-assemble, these devices enable intimate, conformal contact with heterogeneous organoid surfaces, thereby improving spatial coverage without compromising tissue integrity
A Social Exchange Perspective on Attentiveness as a Resource in Newcomer Relationship Development and Assimilation
No full textMy dissertation investigates the role of social relationships in newcomer socialization within organizations, emphasizing the importance of extra-role conversations in building affective trust and facilitating integration. I hypothesize that while attention to work-related tasks is crucial, engaging in extra-role conversations with supervisors and co-workers fosters affective trust, a key factor in socialization. I integrate social exchange theory, proposing that attention acts as a socioemotional resource exchanged in social interactions, leading to stronger affective trust and ultimately socialization outcomes. These informal interactions help newcomers adopt organizational values and integrate into social groups. I test my hypotheses using longitudinal archival data collected at three time points that measure perceived attentiveness in newcomers and the frequency of extra-role conversations as predictors of key socialization outcomes (adoption of organizational goals and values, and social integration), with affective trust as the mediating mechanism. This moderated mediation model was tested with both supervisors and co-workers as important, distinct social connections for newcomers. Results indicated that attentiveness predicted stronger affective trust, which in turn promoted value adoption with supervisors and social integration with co-workers. Moreover, the frequency of extra-role conversations amplified these effects, though the patterns differed across relational roles. This research offers practical insights for organizations to encourage informal interactions to support newcomer adjustment and emphasizes the need to further explore the mechanisms through which attention influences socialization