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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    Developing effective communication for climate change adaptation and disaster risk mitigation
    (2021) Lim, JungKyu Rhys; Liu, Brooke Fisher; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Preparing for natural disasters and adapting to climate change can save lives. However, little research has examined how organizations can effectively communicate climate change adaptation and disaster risk mitigation behaviors. This dissertation employs two studies to examine how to effectively communicate disaster mitigation and preparedness to help at-risk publics better prepare for natural disasters. Fragmented studies so far have not provided an integrated model to identify the most effective factors for explaining and predicting disaster preparedness behaviors and policy support. Moreover, studies have not yet developed and tested communication messages that can motivate publics’ disaster risk mitigation through experiments. Thus, in Study 1, this dissertation attempts to build an integrated model and identify the key factors that motivate disaster preparedness behaviors and policy support through three large-scale online surveys (N = 3,468). Two of the most common federally declared disasters in large disaster-prone states are studied: wildfires and hurricanes with floods. Study 1 finds that social norms and self-efficacy strongly motivate disaster preparedness behaviors, while response efficacy strongly motivates policy support behaviors. Then, based on Study 1 and consultation with eight communication experts, Study 2 develops messages using social norms and efficacy. Study 2 tests the social norms and coping appraisal messages through four between-subject online experiments (2 X 2 X 2 X 2) with an additional vicarious experience condition in flood- and hurricane-prone states (N = 5,027). Injunctive norms and disapproval rationale strongly encourage at-risk publics to take mitigation behaviors, and vicarious experience seems promising for message design. Additionally, this dissertation reveals at-risk publics’ awareness, behavioral engagement, preferred communication channels, and information sources for preparing for hurricanes and wildfire risks. Weather forecasters and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including the National Weather Service (NWS), were the preferred information sources for preparing for hurricane risks. Conversely, local and state fire departments were the preferred information sources for preparing for wildfire risks. By developing and testing messages on the strongest factors using preferred information sources, the dissertation provides guidance for risk communication researchers and professionals.
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    EFFECTS OF MEDICAID STATE PLAN DENTAL BENEFITS ON DENTAL VISITS AMONG NON-ELDERLY ADULTS
    (2018) Marthey, Daniel Joseph; Franzini, Luisa; Health Services Administration; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey and optional Health Care Access module, I analyzed dental visits between insurance types and between three levels of Medicaid dental coverage for non-elderly adults in each state defined as no benefits or emergency-only, offering 1-4 services and offering 5 or more service types. I find Medicaid adults are less likely to experience a dental visit compared with adults covered by private insurance. I also find a statistically significant relationship between the level of benefits offered to beneficiaries and the odds of experiencing a dental visit in the previous year. Understanding factors associated with the use of dental services is necessary to adequately address health needs of the Medicaid population and unnecessary emergency room use for non-emergency dental services.
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    Essays on Migration and Health
    (2013) Knaup, Amy E.; Betancourt, Roger; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Migration is often thought of as a risky endeavor in which a migrant trades a known low return for an unknown but potentially higher return. However, migration has been empirically linked to insurance mechanisms through remittances. Chapter 1 unifies the risk-taking and insurance-seeking behaviors of migration into a single framework by framing the migration decision as one of income diversification in which multiple agents within a household to decide whether or not to migrate. Each migration strategy (no migration, partial migration, and full household migration) has its associated risks which are weighed against the returns the household could gain through choice of that particular migration strategy. I test the framework by estimating the probability of each migration strategy for Indonesian households during the period 1993-1998. The framework performs reasonably well in the case of urban households. However, the framework's predictions do not hold as well for rural households, which may be linked to the fact that they function within a larger insurance network than the nuclear family. In Chapter 2, I find that the response of return migration to GDP per capita can differentiate migrants who are seeking increased consumption for their household (i.e., consumption-oriented migrants) from migrants with intentions to invest at origin (i.e., investment-oriented migrants). Each type of migrant should have differential responses to GDP per capita at destination and may have differential responses to GDP per capita at origin. Using data on Mexican households between 1992-2002, I show that migrants returning from the USA exhibit characteristics of consumption-oriented migrants and migrants returning from internal locations exhibit characteristics of investment-oriented migrants. Chapter 3 is a published work in collaboration with Sandra Decker, Jalpa Doshi, and Daniel Polsky which uses Medicare claims data linked to two different surveys--the National Health Interview Survey and the Health and Retirement Study--to describe the relationship between insurance status before age 65 years and the use of Medicare-covered services beginning at age 65 years. Although we do not find statistically significant differences in Medicare expenditures or in the number of hospitalizations by previous insurance status, we do find that individuals who were uninsured before age 65 years continue to use the healthcare system differently from those who were privately insured.
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    RISKY BUSINESS: CHANCE AND CONTINGENCY IN AMERICAN ART AROUND 1900
    (2012) Greenhalgh, Adam Robert; Promey, Sally M.; Kelly, Franklin; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    My dissertation exposes and interprets unnoticed points of intersection between American visual culture and the rhetoric, logic, and imagery of institutions and disciplines dedicated to rationalizing chance--insurance, census, statistics, probabilism--around 1900, when popular, mathematical, and philosophical conceptions of the accident were undergoing considerable revision. Following the Civil War, experts in a number of disciplines and commercial enterprises counted, measured, and classified individual experiences, bodies, and lives. Statistically minded theorists recognized that, given a large enough sample, phenomena previously considered random or divinely predetermined, such as death, injury, accident, disease, and crime, occurred regularly and were, to a degree, predictable. Anthropometrists also noticed that anatomical and physiognomic traits were distributed according to statistically evident norms. Innovative graphic techniques were developed to visualize, dramatize, and publicize the previously invisible trends, laws, and patterns revealed by such statistical analysis. Insurance underwriters gathered vital statistics and compiled actuarial charts, effectively quantifying lives and configuring individuals in terms of risk. Insurance advertisements portrayed the modern world as a place of hazard and imminent peril manageable only through accident and life coverage. My dissertation demonstrates that this statistical and actuarial calculus manifested in works of art as Americans began to think, speak, and visualize their world in terms of risk, odds, and contingency. Organized as a series of case studies, my work demonstrates that visual culture fully engaged with the abstract concepts--chance, risk--and mathematical disciplines--statistics, probabilism--that informed this emergent worldview. My study builds on recent social histories of chance, enhancing and complicating them by considering understudied imagery--insurance advertising; composite photography; statistical graphics--and period documents overlooked by art historians--census questionnaires; actuarial life tables; Edward Bellamy's 1888 novel Looking Backward--to reveal not only how this material informs major artworks, but also how works of art participated in underwriting an emerging conception of the world as an ultimately indeterminate, chance-based system. Individual chapters focus on artworks clustered roughly around the year 1900: Winslow Homer's mid-1880s paintings of peril at sea, blurry pictorial photographic portraiture by Edward Steichen, and George Bellows's painting Forty-two Kids (1907).