Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Behavior Displacement in Sedentary and Screen Time Among Older Adults(2024) Li, Mengying; Choe, Eun Kyoung; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this thesis, I examine sedentary and screen-based activities among older adults, aim- ing to offer insights for designing effective behavior displacement interventions. While displacement represents a potentially effective intervention in reducing sedentary behavior, research in this area has largely overlooked older adults. Through a 7-day diary study and debriefing interviews, I examine reasons and factors that influence older adults’ decisions to displace sedentary and screen-based activities. I find that attention demand and overall productivity and quality of activities are key factors that influence older adults’ decisions to engage in displacement. I identify internal and external catalysts for displacement and preferred displacement strategies by older adults in various conditions. These findings emphasize the importance of designing personalized and adaptive interventions to reduce sedentary time, considering the diverse preferences and agency of older adults.Item UNDERSTANDING MANAGED RETREAT THROUGH A MULTI-STAKEHOLDER LENS: A CASE STUDY ON THE LOWER EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND(2021) Miralles, Andrea Maria; Paolisso, Michael J.; Alcañiz, Isabella; Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Due to concerns about increasing sea levels and climate displacement, there has been a growing interest in the adaptation option of managed retreat. In managed retreat, shorelines move inland acting as a natural buffer to coastal climate impacts, while coastal communities move to higher ground through voluntary home buyouts. Managed retreat is also highly controversial, as it is poorly understood and presents significant challenges to equity. In order to address these issues, this thesis research provides a multi-stakeholder analysis on the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland focused on understandings and trust in managed retreat processes. Key findings from this research are that communities, government and non-governmental organizations have different understandings of managed retreat, that retreat discussions need to occur at official levels now, that equity must be a central component of planning, that trust is necessary for successful retreat and that any future retreat must emphasize community agency and collaboration.Item Educational Experiences Amid Crisis, Trauma, and Displacement: An Ethnographic Case Study of Children Abducted by the Islamic State in Iraq(2020) Webb, Amber D.; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Education in emergencies (EiE) is a growing field within discourse on humanitarian aid, international development, and global education. It brings to the fore the challenges of educating children in crisis-contexts, a growing problem in regions around the world. Since the 1990s, increasing attention has been paid to this vulnerable population of children; however, evidence-based practice has historically been weak but improved considerably over the last decade. In this dissertation study, I aim to add to the body of literature and empirical research in the field of education in emergencies. I offer succinct problems and interventions that can enhance educational outcomes for a particular group of crisis-affected children in Iraq. Specifically, I examine the lives of five Yazidi children who had been abducted and held captive by the Islamic State before returning to their families now residing in displacement camps far from their native homeland. Using qualitative methods consistent with ethnography and case study research, I present findings garnered from the five participants that offer a window into their lived realities. As a bounded case, data collection was consolidated to Yazidi children living within a single camp in Iraq from 2016-2017. The findings suggest several key barriers and opportunities for accessing quality education during periods of crisis. These findings are divided into three categories that reflect psychological, institutional, and cultural factors impacting the education of displaced and traumatized Yazidi children. The trends that emerge in each of these categories display important points of consideration for how educational aid is conceptualized and delivered during emergencies. The research also extrapolates on the findings to speculate broad reforms that can transform for the better how the field of EiE operates globally. Implications for research and theory include a need to advance theoretical discourse on children caught up in crisis, methods for facilitating research in active conflict zones, and uncovering opportunities for greater cross-sector holistic service provisions for children.Item Here to Stay: The Disaster, Displacement, and Biomimetic Response(2020) Lorenzana, Dan; Hu, Ming; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Natural disaster can be felt all around the globe especially in the Philippines where millions of people have been displaced without any shelter. With the average of 20 typhoons hitting Philippines each year. People are still living in unsafe structures that affects the day to day of their livelihoods during and after natural disaster. According to Internal Displacement, earthquakes, floods and violence have driven millions away from their homes in 2018 alone. This acceleration in displacement can be felt in cities with growing slums and outdated infrastructure. This thesis will investigate a new integrated urban and building design typology for climate adaptation that uses and integrates Biomimicry as a design technique. This exploration hopes to use as a establish design criteria in the Philippines where typhoon is very prominent.Item Social Enterprise Development: A preventative approach to homelessness and displacement in Point Breeze, Philadelphia(2019) Huntington, Cassandra Aaryn; Gabrielli, Julie; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social enterprise development focuses on creating economic value to help solve social problems. This thesis tests the viability of this concept by creating a mixed-use, mixed-income property in a low-income neighborhood in South Philadelphia. A profit-sharing financial model is used to support both affordable housing and transitional housing for homeless adolescents. The thesis uses biophilic design principles and values to explore architecture’s role in healing from adolescent trauma and preventing future health issues. This thesis presents a preventative solution to social issues rather than a reactive solution. Prevention of chronic homelessness and prevention of displacement are key to addressing social injustice and help break cycles of poverty in low-income communities. This thesis exemplifies architecture’s ability to provide equal access to both housing and services to help the most vulnerable members of society and help them become self-sufficient and contributing members of the community.Item ANTÍGONAS EXILIADAS DE LA GUERRA CIVIL DE LAS ESPAÑAS (1936-1999): CONCHA MÉNDEZ Y ERNESTINA DE CHAMPOURCIN(2019) Bort Caballero, María de la Luz; Naharro-Calderón, José María; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) left a marked influence on the culture and literature of contemporary Spain. After Franco violently toppled the Second Spanish Republic, those with progressive ideas were persecuted, executed, and more than a half a million were forced into a nearly forty-year diaspora. These displacements left diverse traces buried in private memories and certain literary and cultural practices. Despite active research in the last four decades, there are still untapped questions and silences. Particularly, works by exiled women writers and intellectuals that have been relegated to the margins. They offer unexplored spaces of memory and insights into the experiences of forced uprootings. Through poets Concha Méndez (1898-1986) and Ernestina de Champourcin (1905-1999), this thesis delves into geographies of memory, and seeks to broaden the relevance of poetry written in exile, biased by the male canon and its scholarship. It posits the recognition of fresh and close readings of repression and resistance while looking through the violet lenses of equity. These poets refused to abandon their own voices or be silenced due to their marginalized condition as women and exiles. The figure of the classical archetype, Antigone, and the dialogic theories of María Zambrano, allow for a further exchange with these authors’ poetry, oral testimonies and remembrances. The entombment of Antigone, for Zambrano, represents both a challenge and a liberation where expulsion is redeemed by the affirmation of the feminine self. Even though these women were banished to the same location, Mexico, D.F., Concha Méndez offers insights into the study of the plight of her terminal exiles. Meanwhile, Ernestina de Champourcin represents the possibility of interrogating a reconstruction of exile as she attempts a definite return to Spain. However, both voices and experiences coexist within the trauma of loss, solitude, survival, a search for refuge, and the reinvention of oneself. They call for a review and rethinking of categories such as inner exile, and propose new multidisciplinary lenses in order to read alternative discourses of exodus in a feminine mode.Item ESSAYS ON NONPARAMETRIC ESTIMATION OF HETEROGENEOUS CAUSAL EFFECTS(2018) Noh, Sungho; Kuersteiner, Guido M; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation studies semi- and non-parametric estimation strategies for the distribution of heterogeneous causal effects with applications to labor economics and macroeconomics. \par In the first chapter, I propose a nonparametric strategy to identify the distribution of heterogeneous causal effects. A set of identifying restrictions proposed in this chapter differs from existing approaches in three ways. First, it extends the random coefficient model by allowing potentially non-linear interaction between distributional parameters and the set of covariates. Second, the treatment effect distribution identified in this chapter offers an alternative interpretation to that of the the rank invariance assumption. Third, the identified distribution lies within a sharp bound of distributions of the treatment effect. An estimator exploiting the identifying restriction is developed by extending the classical version of statistical deconvolution method to the Rubin causal framework. I show that the estimator is uniformly consistent for the distribution of causal effects. \par In chapter two, I apply the nonparametric method developed in the previous chapter to the estimation of heterogeneous effects of displacement on earnings losses. Using the Current Population Survey (CPS) individual-level data from 1996 to 2016, I show that the decline in labor incomes of displaced workers is not only substantial in magnitude compared to their non-displaced counterparts, but also varies significantly within groups characterized by, for example, tenure and educational attainment. I find that displaced workers, on average, lose 19\% of their potential earnings while the dispersion of losses among workers is wide. In addition, estimated quantile effects of displacement are more dispersed when the local unemployment rate is higher. \par In the third chapter, co-authored with Guido Kuersteiner, we develop a new asymptotic theory for flexible semi-parametric estimators of dynamic causal effects in data with discrete policy interventions. Our framework extends existing theory of propensity score weighted estimators to weakly dependent processes. We show uniform consistency and asymptotic normality by applying a newly-developed asymptotic theory for the series estimator over a non-compact support. The estimator proposed in this chapter captures non-linear and asymmetric impulse response functions that are often difficult to be accommodated in parametric models.Item Determination of Mixed Mode Energy Release Rates in Laminated Carbon Fiber Composite Structures Using Digital Image Correlation(2012) Puishys, Joseph Francis; Bruck, Hugh A; Mechanical Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Carbon fiber composites have recently seen a large scale application in industry due to its high strength and low weight. Despite numerous beneficial attributes of composite materials, they are subject to several unique challenges; the most prevalent and troubling is delamination fracture. This research program is focused on developing an appropriate damage model capable of analyzing microscopic stress strain growth at the crack tip of laminated composites. This thesis focuses on capturing and identifying the varying stress and strain fields, as well as other microstructural details and phenomena unique to crack tip propagation in carbon fiber panels using a novel mechanical characterization technique known as Digital Image Correlation (DIC).Item Moving Social Disorder Around Which Corner? A Case Study of Spatial Displacement and Diffusion of Benefits(2011) Wyckoff, Laura Ann; Paternoster, Ray; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prior research seeking to understand the spatial displacement of crime and diffusion of intervention benefits has suggested that place-based opportunities - levels and types of guardianship, offenders, and targets - explain spatial intervention effects to places proximate to a targeted intervention area. However, there has been no systematic test of this relationship. This dissertation uses observational and interview data to examine the relationship, in two street-level markets, between place-based opportunities and spatial displacement and diffusion of social disorder. The street segment is the unit of analysis for this study, since research shows crime clusters at this level and it is a unit small enough to accurately represent the context for street-level crime opportunities. The study begins by investigating if catchment area (an area proximate to an intervention area) segments with similar opportunities to the target area segments differentially experienced parallel intervention effects as compared to segments with dissimilar opportunity factors. These analyses resulted in null findings. The second set of analyses examined if place-based opportunities predicted the segments which fall into a high diffusion group or a displacement group, as compared to a low/moderate group. These analyses resulted in primarily null findings, except for the measures of public flow and the average level of place manager responsibility which positively predicted the segments in the high diffusion group, as compared to the low/moderate diffusion group. A third set of analyses was also performed where the outcome measure was the odds of the occurrence of a social disorder incident in a measured situation period in the segment during the intervention. These analyses revealed that the situations within segments which had a greater number of possible targets and offenders with a lack of guardianship were more likely to experience incidents of social disorder, reinforcing past findings about the relationship between social disorder and opportunities at place. Place-based opportunity factors are likely important factors in understanding parallel spatial intervention effects, but the null findings suggest additional research is needed to better understand these effects.