UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Addressing the Employment Gap with Workplace Supports for Transition-Age Autistic Youth and Young Adults(2022) Chen, Briella Baer; Yakubova, Gulnoza; Special Education; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Transition-age youth and young adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have notably low rates of employment, compared to not only their peers without disabilities, but also compared to their peers with different disabilities. As such, the adoption of additional workplace tools and accommodations to better support transition-age autistic individuals is needed. This dissertation aimed to address this employment gap through examination of different employment supports for transition-age autistic youth and young adults. Chapter 2 is a synthesis of the literature on the use of video-based intervention (VBI) to teach vocational skills to transition-age autistic youth and young adults. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this synthesis evaluated 22 studies, finding VBI to be an effective vocational training and support tool for this population. However, the synthesis also identified a lack of authentic implementation of VBI for vocational skills, or implementation by practitioners in real workplace settings. Chapter 3 is an experimental study which sought to examine the effectiveness of VBI when implemented in authentic employment settings and how to train practitioners to do so. The study had two aims: to evaluate the effects of a behavioral skills training (BST) package on vocational support practitioners’ creation and implementation of VBI, and to evaluate the effects of the resulting practitioner-created and -implemented VBI on the vocational skill acquisition of transition-age autistic adults in authentic workplace settings. This study ultimately found that both the BST package and resulting VBI were effective and socially valid. Chapter 4 is a qualitative study that sought to expand upon the topic of workplace supports for autistic youth and young adults by interviewing 12 currently or formerly employed transition-age autistic individuals. The qualitative study had two major aims: to determine what transition-age autistic individuals identify as key workplace supports, as well as their experiences with and views of technology-based work supports, specifically. Through qualitative interviews and analysis, the study identified six major themes for key workplace supports, and four for technology-based supports. The themes, their related subthemes, and practical implications for employers are discussed.Item Employment Writing in Group Outplacement Training Programs(2017) Brearey, Oliver James; Wible, Scott A; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation provides an empirical account of rhetorical and writing practices in outplacement, which comprises a collection of for-profit and governmental organizations that offer consulting and counseling services to aid displaced professional workers—who are usually highly experienced in their fields—in finding new employment. Outplacement organizations offer training and support in job application letter, résumé, and networking script writing; capabilities assessment; job-finding strategies; networking and interview preparation; and ongoing opportunities for out-of-work people to provide each other with mutual support. Neither job-placement agencies nor recruiters, outplacement training programs are sites of teaching and learning that prepare experienced professionals to find new employment independently. In outplacement, out-of-work people learn to apply their professional capabilities to the task of finding new employment. Through participant observation in group outplacement training programs, interviews with outplacement practitioners and participants, and analyses of published outplacement training manuals and other textual artifacts produced by outplacement organizations, I discern three distinct ways in which outplacement consultants, the providers of the service, help outplacement candidates, the service’s recipients, to engage in rhetorical and writing-based job-finding practices. First, as they compose in practical job-finding genres by writing résumés, job application letters, and networking scripts, outplacement candidates learn to both identify their professional capabilities and connect them to new workplace opportunities. Second, as they compose in reflective genres, including those of life writing, outplacement candidates learn to negotiate tensions between their personal goals and the contemporary realities of professional employment. Third, as they learn job-search strategies that include tasks such as composing audio-visual job-finding texts and participating in both traditional and distance-mediated, multimodal employment interviews, outplacement candidates become familiar with technological innovations in personnel recruitment and learn how to adapt, throughout their careers, to the continually changing contexts of professional hiring practices. My dissertation makes a unique contribution to rhetoric and writing studies by focusing on the rhetorical and writing work that out-of-work people do at key moments of transition in their professional lives as they move from workforce displacement, through unemployment and outplacement, and toward reemployment.Item The Impact of Child Care Subsidies on Child Care Problems, Child Care-Related Work Disruptions, and Mothers' Desire to Switch Care(2007-06-15) Forry, Nicole DeSanctis; Hofferth, Sandra L.; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Work requirements implemented through welfare reform have led to a focus on moving mothers into employment. As a consequence, the labor force participation rates of single mothers have increased dramatically in the last decade, increasing the importance of child care policies. Although numerous studies have examined the impact of child care subsidies in assisting parents to obtain employment, very few have examined the impact of subsidies on maintaining employment. This study sought to determine whether families with a child care subsidy differed from families without a subsidy on three child care-specific variables assumed to affect a mother's ability to maintain employment: child care problems, child care-related work disruptions, and a desire to switch care arrangements. The mediating roles of child care costs and type of care on the relationships between child care subsidies and these variables were also examined. Data for this study come from two samples of low-income single mothers. The first was a study of 40 mothers in a mid-Atlantic county interviewed before and after receiving a child care subsidy. The second was a subsample of 658 mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being study. Data were analyzed via multivariate techniques and path models on both static and dynamic models, including comparing changes by the same parents over time. Receipt of a child care subsidy was found to be a significant predictor of experiencing fewer child care problems and child care-related work disruptions across datasets and using multiple methods. Parents were also less likely to report desiring to switch their care arrangement when they had a child care subsidy compared to when they did not have a subsidy. Finally, the use of formal child care was found to mediate the relationship between child care subsidy status and child care-related work disruptions for parents in one of the samples. Policy and program recommendations for assisting low-income families balance work and family by minimizing experiences with child care-related work disruptions are discussed.Item THE ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF AMERICAN INDIAN CASINOS(2006-08-07) Kim, Wooyoung; Evans, William N.; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation analyzes the impact of American Indian casinos on social and economic outcomes of reservation residents using restrict-use data from 1990 and 2000 census long form. Federal legislature in 1988 allowed Indian tribes in certain states to open casinos and since then, over 400 casinos have opened, 240 of which have Las Vegas-style games. I demonstrate that casino operations increased employment rates and wages. The impact was primarily for Indians and larger for low-skilled workers among Indians. Employment rates of Indians increased by 6.0 percentage points for those with less than high school degree and by 5.5 percentage points for those with high school degree. Young Indian adults responded by dropping out of high school and not enrolling college even though many tribes had generous college tuition subsidy programs. High school enrollment rates fell by 4.8 percentage points for 18 year old Indian males, by 5.1 and 8.7 percentage points for Indian females aged 17 and 18. The high school graduation rate of those aged 20-24 fell by 9.6 percentage points and by 11.5 percentage points for Indian males and for Indian females, respectively. College entrance rate fell by 5.3 percentage points and by 8.8 percentage points for young Indian males and Indian females, respectively. Economic changes on gaming reservations also altered the incentives to marry and have children. Ever married rates of males increased by 2.6 to 5.0 percentage points for those aged 18 to 21. Ever married rates of females did not show any statistically significant changes except among 24 year old Indians. The fraction of females (aged 18 to 25) having children fell for both Indians and non-Indians by 3.4 to 3.7 percentage points.Item Affecting Children and the Effect of Children(2006-04-27) Cristia, Julian Pedro; Evans, William N; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the first half of my dissertation, I estimate the causal effect of a first child on female labor supply. This is a difficult task given the endogeneity of the fertility decision. Ideally, this question could be answered by running a social experiment where women are randomly assigned children or not. Using field data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), I mimic this hypothetic experiment by focusing on a sample of women that sought help to become pregnant. After a certain period since they started receiving help, only some of these women are successful. In this instance, fertility appears to be exogenous to labor supply in that pre-treatment labor supply is uncorrelated with subsequent fertility. Using this strategy, I estimate that having a first child younger than a year old reduces female labor supply by 26.3 percentage points. These estimates are close to OLS and fixed-effects estimates obtained from a panel data constructed from the NSFG. They are also close to OLS estimates obtained using similarly defined samples from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses. The second part of my dissertation explores the problem of an educational authority who decides his revelation policy about students' educational attainments in order to maximize mean educational achievement. Incentives in an educational context are different from those in the marketplace. Schools cannot pay students to motivate them to attain higher levels of education. However, there is still a role for incentives. Since students care about which signal they can get from the school (pass/fail, GPA), the school has a tool to influence students' behavior. Using a theoretical model, I explore the optimal way to use this tool, i.e., the optimal way to reveal educational achievements. I find that this optimal revelation policy is dependent on the distribution of students with respect to ability. I show that this optimal scheme could be: a) classify individuals in two groups and just reveal this information, b) reveal all information, c) set a critical standard and group all individuals together below this level and provide full information about students' productivity above it.Item EMPLOYMENT AND MARRIAGE: PATHWAYS OFF OF WELFARE?(2005-02-01) Roberts, Tracy Elizabeth; Martin, Steven P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Does the way women exit welfare affect their probability of returning to welfare? Using data drawn from the 1979 - 2000 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, I examine the effect of marital and employment transitions on recidivism rates. I find that women who combine employment and marriage after exiting welfare, in that order, have significantly lower risks of recidivism than other women. Women who marry but do not enter employment have higher recidivism rates than women who combine employment and marriage, but they are less likely to return to welfare than women who are only employed. The data suggest that simply encouraging marriage or women's employment may not reduce welfare recidivism. The best policy strategy to reduce welfare dependence and encourage healthy marriages may be to strengthen work support programs and improve the circumstances of employment (and opportunities for strong marriages) for low-income men and women.