College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item A DISCOURSE ON CHILD MALNUTRITION: ANTHROPOMETRY, EMERGENT THEMES, QUALITY CONTROL MAXIMS, AND CLIMATIC AND ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS(2021) Sandler, Austin; Sun, Laixiang; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Malnutrition is a detrimental and significant plight for young children, responsible for 45% of all deaths among children worldwide. The aim of my dissertation is to assess the history of the science of anthropometry, synthesize the cumulative findings within the contemporary child malnutrition literature, dispute certain quality control maxims of anthropometric child-health surveys, and quantify the responsible latent factors of child malnutrition. These efforts are in service of a better characterization of malnutrition, a more reliable estimate of how many children are malnourished, and a better understanding of the geographical distribution and dynamic stochastic characteristics of malnutrition. It is essential to better understand malnutrition and its causes to suggest appropriate corrective policy. This dissertation consists of four principal essays, each from a unique conceptual perspective. The first essay is a historical and epistemological perspective of the science of anthropometry. I contextualize the legacy of child malnutrition efforts, including the link between eugenics and contemporary notions of “normal” child growth, the institutional power-struggle for child growth chart superiority, the obfuscated distinction between growth references and standards of growth, and the consequences of universal standards that do not reflect observable populations. The second essay is a systematic review of the literature, the largest of its kind to date. I synthesize 184 disaggregate empirical studies of the determinants of child malnutrition in Africa published since 1990. I find numerous opportunities for development within this corpus, in particular opportunities to enrich the scope, scale, and quantification of the field. The third essay is an analytical perspective on the quality control mechanisms applied to anthropometric surveys. I challenge the practice of rejecting datasets based on overlarge z-score standard deviation values and offer an alternative approach. The fourth essay is an econometric empirical analysis in Kenya and Nigeria of child malnutrition determinants. I use spatial Bayesian kriging and four-level random intercept hierarchical logit models to show the spatial heterogeneity of malnutrition prevalence, and to quantify various socio-economic and climatic determinants of child malnutrition. I find significant spatial and hierarchical relationships and determinants, which can move malnutrition rates by over 50%.Item Interdisciplinary Geospatial Assessment of Malaria Exposure in Ann Township, Myanmar(2020) Hall, Amanda Hoffman; Loboda, Tatiana V; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite considerable progress toward malaria elimination in Myanmar, challenges remain owing to the persistence of complex focal transmission reservoirs. Nearly all remaining infections are clinically silent, rendering them invisible to routine monitoring. Moreover, limited knowledge of population distributions and human activity on the landscape in remote regions of Myanmar hinders the development of targeted malaria elimination approaches, as advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is especially true for Ann Township, a remote region of Myanmar with a high malaria burden, where a comprehensive understanding of local exposure, which includes the characterization of environmental settings and land use activities, is crucial to developing successful malaria elimination strategies. In this dissertation, I present an interdisciplinary approach that combines satellite earth observations with two separate on-the-ground surveys to assess human exposure to malaria at multiple scales. First, I mapped rural settlements using a fusion of Landsat imagery and multi-temporal auxiliary data sensitive to human activity patterns with a classification accuracy of 93.1%. A satellite data-based map of land cover and land use was then used to assess landscape-scale malaria exposure as a function of environmental settings for a subset of ten villages where a malaria prevalence survey was carried out. While multiple significant associations were discovered, the relationship found between malaria exposure and satellite-measured village forest cover was the most significant. Finally, a separate detailed survey that explored a variety of land use activities, including their frequency and duration along with testing for clinical or subclinical malaria, was used to identify and quantify factors promoting an individual’s likelihood of malaria infection regardless of the environmental settings. This analysis established strong associations between malaria and individual land use activities that bring respondents into direct contact with forested areas. These results highlight that the current Myanmar malaria elimination strategies, which focus on prevention from within the home (i.e., bednets and indoor spraying), are no longer sufficient to remove remaining malaria reservoirs in the country. A paradigm shift in malaria elimination strategies towards targeted interventions that can disrupt malaria transmission in the settings where the exposure occurs are critical to achieving country-wide malaria elimination.Item THE ROLE OF PERSONALITY AND COGNITIVE-LINGUISTIC DEFICITS IN TEENS AND ADULTS WITH CONCUSSION(2018) Stockbridge, Melissa Dawn; Newman, Rochelle S; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Even the mildest form of traumatic brain injury, concussion, can result in adverse physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social consequences. Concussion injuries frequently result in patients who describe deficits in daily communication and overall “fogginess,” but whose deficits are not consistently captured on traditional assessments of language. The purpose of this research was two-fold: first, to examine typed written communication in order to better understand the kinds of cognitive and language deficits that adolescents and adults experience immediately and chronically following a concussion; and second, to examine the influence of a particular trait-like dimension of personality and temperament, the propensity toward more frequent, intense, and enduring negative affect (called dispositional negativity), on exacerbation of these deficits. Using a survey conducted entirely online, 92 participants aged 12-40 years old who had a recent concussion, a history of concussion, or no history of brain injury wrote two narrative samples and an expository sample, completed multiple tasks targeting word-level and domain general cognitive skills, and provided rich self-report information important to better understanding their personality, temperament, and mental health. Performance by recently injured participants suggested that deficits in narrative language, though likely influenced by problems in word-finding, memory, and attention, also existed beyond what could be explained by those deficits alone. Narrative-specific deficits were observed in written content, organization, and cohesiveness. Moreover, including dispositional negativity in models of concussion history (group) and self-reported somatic symptomology improved the sensitivity and specificity of these models, which supports the value of considering individual differences in personality when engaged in concussion management.Item An Examination of the Relationship Between Prior Musical Sophistication and Language Outcomes in People With Aphasia(2018) Fisher, Sarah J.; Faroqi-Shah, Yasmeen; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research suggests there is a neural relationship between music and language, such that higher levels of musical sophistication may be positively correlated with a person’s linguistic and cognitive functioning. Though most of the research has focused on neurotypical individuals, the implication is that musical sophistication could benefit a person with a neurological impairment such as aphasia, perhaps by preserving linguistic abilities after the person has sustained a stroke. The study outlined here seeks to replicate and expand on the findings of Faroqi-Shah et al. (in prep) by looking at musical sophistication’s influence on aphasia severity as well as on specific language and cognitive domains (e.g., syntax, auditory processing, memory, and cognitive control). Knowing what specific domains of language or cognition are involved could help researchers better understand the neural location of musical and linguistic resources as well as the behavioral benefit of increased reserve in a neurologically impaired individual.Item Clinical Practice in Prenatal Care: Perspectives of Latina Mothers, Healthcare Providers, and Scientists on Male Circumcision(2015) Colon-Cabrera, David; Freidenberg, Judith N; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines how the interplay between biomedical and ethnomedical perspectives impacts on reproductive health services and consumer decision to circumcise among Latinos in Prince Georges County, Maryland. International research influenced circumcision decision-making during prenatal care: little is known about how neonatal male circumcision (MC) is understood at local clinics; about what patients and providers know regarding circumcision benefits; and the reasoning behind the choices made regarding MC among Latinos. What are the beliefs, practices, and policies regarding MC at community clinics and the international research that influences these policies? Ethnographic research was conducted in three clinics in the state of Maryland including participant observation in the clinics, and interviews with healthcare providers, Latina women who sought services, and scientists and policy makers currently active in MC research. The study explored the interplay between biomedical and ethnomedical knowledge of prenatal care services. Interviews were also conducted with six scientists and policy makers currently active in MC research. The study found that as a reproductive health procedure MC illustrated a complex interplay between biomedical and consumer knowledge. Specifically, healthcare providers did not talk about MC to patients mainly because: 1) They thought that the majority of the Latina women seeking services did not want the procedure; 2) The clinics are constrained for resources and circumcision is not a priority when compared to other prenatal care topics deemed more important in the short prenatal visits. In addition, the policy makers and scientists made assumptions referring to the discussion of circumcision by reproductive and sexual health services clinics when providing prenatal care to clients. Their knowledge relied exclusively on the results of clinical trial data, and how this data could inform policy and clinical guidelines. This dissertation contributes to understanding how services impact MC decision-making and increase the pool of data in regards to the feasibility of overarching MC policies aimed at infants. In addition, this research recommends to critically examine MC as a biomedical practice that is now being rationalized as an HIV prevention strategy.