Browsing by Subject "participation"
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Item A comparison of participants and non-participants in a serum sample survey in Texas City, Texas.(2008-05-20) Carlos H. Martinez; Edilma Guevara, Ph.D.; Elizabeth T. AndersonLack of participation and response can affect the validity and generalizability of epidemiologic surveys. Participation has decreased in recent decades, and thus there is a need to determine reasons for and implications of this change. Usually respondents have better health, habits, and socioeconomic status and are interested in their health, being described as a “worried healthy” group. It is unclear if this explanation applies to minorities. The Environmental Risk, Coping, and Hispanic Health Project of the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities of UTMB, a population-based survey conducted in Texas City, Texas, included an interview of the randomly selected participants and an invitation to donate blood for biological measures. The study represented an opportunity to compare the characteristics of participants in the initial survey who, subsequently, provided blood sample and those who declined. In this Capstone the hypothesis that disadvantaged and less healthy groups are less likely to participate in serum sample collection as part of a sero-epidemiologic study was tested. The specific aims included: to determine the percentage of respondents declining to donate blood; to compare the characteristics of those who donated blood and those who declined, for the whole sample and across ethnic groups; and to examine the association with stress. We found that participation was lower than in similar surveys, with different response rates by ethnicity. We did not find great differences between respondents and nonrespondents, other than age, smoking habit, and perceived poor health. The only factors that were maintained in a multivariate analysis were age, family income, and smoking habit. We also found interaction between age and ethnicity, with advanced age being related to less likelihood of nonresponse in all ethnicities except in Non-Hispanic Blacks, where the direction was the opposite. A comparison of respondents and nonrespondents across ethnicities showed no additional factors, with the exception of results within US-born Hispanics. In addition to age, being a smoker and reporting poor health were associated with nonresponse, while low income was associated with less likelihood of being nonrespondent. For all participants and across ethnicities perceived stress did not have an association with responseItem Political participation and transformation in urban China, 1993 and 2002(Texas A&M University, 2008-10-10) Lou, DiqingMy dissertation examines political participation in non-democratic countries. Specifically, it looks into China's urban political participation in the past decade and examines how Chinese urban citizens are mobilized to participate in politics when an authoritarian regime has been experiencing dramatic economic change. The theoretic question of this dissertation is the evolvement of state-society relations during the economic development and how the change of the state-society relationship is reflected in individual behavior. I found that while the social context such as the workplace served as fundamental grassroots institution to mobilize citizens' political participation in the early 1990s, China's urban political participation has shifted to lean more and more on individual resources. Political participation in non-democratic regimes is a unique and rapidly developing field in the studies of political behavior. Scholars studying citizens' political participation in USSR and China have long noted that political participation in an authoritarian regime is mobilized and controlled by the state and citizens are organized by the state to participate in politics to provide for regime legitimacy. In the dissertation I tested this paradigm within the context of China's economic development. The data I employ are the 1993 China's Social Mobility and Social Change Survey and the 2002 Asian Barometer Survey. Both data sets contain highly congruent batteries of questions on citizens' political behavior and political attitudes that provide the basis of comparison across time. The data sets were collected across China in 1993 and 2002 respectively representing the population of adult residents (excluding Tibet). The comparison of urban political participation in the past decade exhibited a general and measurable decline of citizens' participation in the economic reform. I found Chinese citizens' political participation has shifted largely from the pattern of "grassroots-state-mobilization" to "individual-voluntary-mobilization" during the economic reform. I argue that this is largely resulted from the change of state-society relations as individual citizens are granted with more autonomy in political liberalization and become less dependent on the state for economic sources.Item Predictors of minority parents' participation in a school-linked selective prevention program for aggressive children(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Escobar, Clarissa MarieThe present study examines the issue of minority participation in a multi-faceted prevention program for youth with problem behavior. Historically, participation in such research programs has been low (Myers, Alvy, Richardson, Arrington, Marigna, Huff, Main, & Newcomb, 1990; Coie, 1996; Spoth & Redmond, 2001). Targeted prevention programs, which design their interventions for populations that are susceptible to negative outcomes, face more obstacles to participation than most participants of universal prevention programs. Targeted populations, specifically families with children with problem behavior, are usually under great duress, suffer multiple hardships, and have high adversity characteristics, (e.g., low socioeconomic status, insularity, single-parent families, and low levels of education). As has long been documented, minority status is usually associated with this heightened risk status (Prinz & Miller, 1991). A common suggestion in the prevention and therapeutic treatment literature is the use of minority staff members to increase the likelihood of participation of minority parents (Prinz, Smith, Dumas, Laughlin, White & Barron, 2001). This argument is most prevalent in the literature regarding Latino clients (Sue, Fujino, Hu, Takeuchi, & Zane, 1991). This study attempts to predict minority parents' participation quality (PQ) from demographic variables (e.g., level of adversity, ethnicity), participation rate (PR) (e.g., amount of participation measured by minutes and contacts), and ethnic matching. This study also offers insight on how PQ and PR relate to one another. The results of this study imply that PQ and PR relate differently for Latino parents than they do for parents from other ethnicities. The relationship of these variables has implications for frequency of dosages in an intervention, especially for interventions that attempt to reach distinct populations.Item Sporadic voters: how attitude change influences voter turnout(2009-06-02) Owens, Christopher T.This dissertation investigates the important role attitudes play in determining the participation levels of a large number of Americans. Over the past 30 years the prominent theories in the political participation literature have stressed the importance of socioeconomic status in explaining voter turnout. More recently, some have suggested that voting is a habit that most Americans acquire over their lifetimes. I contend that this previous work is incomplete in that it overlooks a large segment of the public that I describe as sporadic voters. Using National Election Study panel data from the early 1970s and 1990s, I find that neither socioeconomic status nor habit explains the voting behavior of sporadic voters. Sporadic voters decide to participate in elections based on their political attitudes at the time of any given election. If they have stronger partisan attachments, greater campaign interest or more external efficacy sporadic voters will be more likely to show up at the polls regardless of changes in education, age or income.Item Understanding the Participation of Marginal Groups in Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal(2012-02-14) Dahal, SmritiParticipation has been promoted and studied in diverse disciplines including tourism, development, planning, health, politics, and others. In natural resource conservation, the shift from centralized to decentralized decision making which emphasizes community involvement in planning, implementation and monitoring of programs has been broadly encouraged, especially in developing countries. Although considered a more effective alternative to top down decision making, participatory conservation initiatives have been criticized for many reasons, mainly the exclusion of marginalized groups in programs which lead to unequal distribution of socioeconomic benefits. This inequality is conditioned by social, physical and political structures which act as barriers to sustainable development of resources and communities. Using a political ecology approach, this research explored the participation of marginal groups (poor, women, and lower caste) in Nepal's Annapurna Conservation Area. The main objectives of this study are: 1) To examine the perceived benefits of Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) and how marginal groups fare in the distribution of benefits; 2) To analyze the level of participation of marginal groups in local management institutions; and 3) To identify the barriers to participation as perceived by marginal groups. Field work for this dissertation was conducted during August ? October 2010 using both quantitative and qualitative data, and employing participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Results indicate that benefits of the project were distributed unequally, and targeted towards elite members of the community. Findings also indicated that although marginal groups were involved in local management institutions, their representation was marginal and had not led to empowerment. Lastly, barriers to participation of communities were complex and deeply rooted in traditions and social norms. Overall, the findings indicate that the definition of marginal groups go beyond gender and caste, and are more significantly defined by wealth, poverty, education, and access to information. The study concludes that ACAP needs to re-orient its conservation and development projects by adopting a more inclusive form of participation and that these projects should aim to overcome the barriers identified by the marginalized households.Item "We Are Even Poorer, But There Is More Work" An Ethnographic Analysis of Ecotourism in Nicaragua(2010-01-14) Hunt, Carter A.This research examines ecotourism outcomes in the context of large-scale tourism development in Nicaragua and focuses on Morgan's Rock Hacienda and Ecolodge. Since ecotourism involves the imposition of Western constructs of nature, biodiversity, communities and conservation, our attempts to evaluate or certify ecotourism are likewise derived from these constructs. Failing to recognize the context where ecotourism occurs may lead to evaluations that place excessive emphasis on poor performance while overlooking relative successes. Initial evaluations of this ecotourism project revealed deception, exploitation, and minimal dedication to ecotourism principles; however, continuing participant observation and ethnographic interviewing among employees and residents forced re-evaluation. In relation to unchecked tourism development in the region, and given the desperate Nicaraguan socio-economic reality for most rural residents, the project must be considered a moderate success. This dissertation later invokes the dominant literature on local reactions to tourism development coming out of the field of tourism studies that uses stage-based models to show that increasing experience with tourism leads to increasingly negative reactions to tourism. This is contrasted with ecotourism research that has shown how increasing participation in ecotourism leads to more favorable attitudes towards ecotourism projects. This dissertation examines these two seemingly disparate perspectives in the context of an ecotourism project. Three groups representing different levels of involvement with ecotourism are compared. The results support traditional tourism theory, suggesting fruitful opportunities for integration of research on conventional forms of tourism with research specific to ecotourism. Finally, a political ecology approach is adopted to reveal mutually reinforcing cycles of capital accumulation and impoverishment leading to environmental degradation in the region resulting from tourism development in the region, as originally described in the influential book Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America. While that work focuses primarily on agricultural activities, here recent ethnographic research on ecotourism in southwestern Nicaragua is contextualized within rapid tourism development in the region and examined through a political ecological lens to reveal how tourism is responsible for the same destructive cycles revealed above. Despite achieving certain on-site success, even ecotourism contributes to, if not enables, larger processes of environmental exploitation in the Nicaraguan context.