RSS 1.0Sociology Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UMKC)
The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of Sociology. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Recent Submissions
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The Impact of COVID-19 on Care Work and Paid Work in the United States
(2022)Informed by disaster literature, the current study offers a quantitative, social structural analysis that reveals the inadequacy of the market to provide care during the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2021. This thesis focuses ... -
Retirement Satisfaction of Married Individuals in the Health and Retirement Study
(2020)High levels of satisfaction in retirement are as much a guarantee as promising immigrants to the United States happiness in their new American life. The authors of the United States Constitution understood this concept and ... -
Whitewashing or amnesia: a study of the construction of race in two Midwestern counties
(2019)This inter-disciplinary dissertation utilizes sociological and historical research methods for a critical comparative analysis of the material culture as reproduced through murals and monuments located in two counties in ... -
Adding Insult to Injury: How Neoliberal Ideology Convinces the Disadvantaged to Blame Themselves for Poor Health
(2019)Health outcomes are strongly tied to social class. Childhood environment, level of education, income, and even neighborhood characteristics are strongly correlated with negative health outcomes such as obesity, diabetes, ... -
Surveilling Women’s Bodies in Pursuit of Fetal Anatomical Normality: Framing Risk and Responsibility in American Print News Coverage of the Zika Virus
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019)In 2015, the mosquito-borne Zika virus made international news as it spread rapidly across northeastern Brazil. These stories were not fundamentally concerned with Zika virus infection itself. The primary focus of the ... -
Trust and Inequality: Are Perceptions of Inequality Influencing Trust?
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2018)Previous research has demonstrated a significant relationship between trust and inequality at both the individual and national levels (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010), but it is unclear whether the absence of trust produces ... -
Governing Corporations: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Expanding Role of Business in Society
(univ, 2018)This thesis explores the evolving role of business in society and the recent development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, in order to form a greater understanding of the changing nature of contemporary ... -
A Stress Process Model of Caregiver Depression in the Health and Retirement Study
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017)This paper answers the research question, “What factors influence caregiver strain for an adult providing parental care”? Drawing on the stress process model and role theory, the three major conceptual domains of the ... -
Health care access of Hispanic immigrants in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area
(University of Missouri–Kansas City, 2016)The purpose of this study is to discover what factors affect health care access for Hispanics in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The Hispanic population is the largest and fastest growing immigrant groups in the US and ... -
Barriers to Social Change: Neoliberalism and the Justification of the Status-Quo among Low-Income African Americans
(2016)Neoliberalism has been the dominant political-economic model in the United States since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 (Harvey, 2005). Few studies have shown how the political-economic model of neoliberalism influences ... -
A Narrative Inquiry and Self–Study of Practice Investigation into Experiences with Older Adults and Aging via an Online College–Level Gerontology Course
(2016)The population of older adults in the United States is increasing to new heights. Society members trained in gerontological education, health care of elders, and service providers for older adults will be needed in the ... -
Dance as a Community of Practice: Exploring Dance Groups in the Kansas City Area through the Lifespan
(2015-08-04)This dissertation examines the embodied cultural practice of dance among several groups in the Kansas City area. The dance groups were studied as Communities of Practice (CoP), as outlined in the Lave-Wenger model of ... -
Detrimental Determinants: The Impacts of Neoliberalism on Pro-Environmental Behaviors
(2015-07-28)The mounting evidence of anthropogenic climate change in the past 30 years has beckoned the social sciences to illuminate and address the complex phenomena underlying actions that impact the environment. While many studies ... -
Aspiration Differences in Female High School Students Based on Parents' Education Level
(2015-05-26)This study uses data from 61 in-depth interviews with high school junior and senior girls to examine differences in educational aspirations by parental education level. By examining how young adults’ aspirations are ... -
A Tale of Two Risks: The Framing of HIV Transmission Risk in Health Brochures
(2014)The framing of a health issue such as HIV transmission risk may directly impact public opinion, which plays a significant role in the formation of health policies. Brochures are an important piece of HIV treatment and ... -
Online Vaccine Opposition: Identifying Trends and Contextualizing Criticism
(2015-05-26)While there are studies that that have been done to show how content attributes of vaccinecritical websites have changed over time, there is very little discussion about the social and historical context of that criticism ... -
Investigating trustworthiness and tolerance of others and shared power within youth-adult partnerships
(University of Mssouri--Kansas City, 2000)The purpose of this study was to broaden the limited body of research concerning the relationship between trustworthiness and tolerance of others and shared power within a youth-adult partnership. The theoretical models ... -
The Risk of Recidivism and the Positive Achievement Change Tool Pre-Screen (PACT-PS): An Initial Validation and Basic Program Implementation Evaluation
(2014-04-02)The juvenile justice system has long been challenged to provide security for communities, while also providing treatment and sanctioning youthful offenders. This task includes the process of determining which offenders ... -
"Defective childhoods": television news and the social construction of the 'child in need'
(2013)The modern media, particularly television news, produces and airs news reports and special programs presenting social justice and human rights stories. Some of these news reports feature children with identified emotional, ... -
Modernizing the public space: gender identities, multiple modernities, and space politics in Tehran
(2013)After the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, surprisingly, the presence of Iranian women in public spaces dramatically increased. Despite this recent change in women's presence in public spaces, Iranian women, like in ...