Robert Ferber Dissertation Award 
Seymour Sudman Dissertation Award 

 2008.
  Sergio Wals
   Hua Qin

  Honorable Mentions
  Karin Hendricks
  Jennifer Lodi-Smith

 2007.
  Sarah Kiefer
  James Melton

 2006.
   Kathryn Branscomb
   Ruchi Bhanot
   Dustin Wood

 2005.
  Meera Murthi
   Elizabeth Radziszewski

 2004.
  María-Isabel Martínez-Mira
  Kevin Rock
  Young Mie Kim

 2003.
  Leo Zulu
  Reeshad Dalal

 2002.
  Fabio Fonti
  Junyong Kim

2008

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT:
Sergio Wals, Department of Political Science

Immigrants' Political Suitcases: A Theory of Imported Socialization

If a person lived for 30 years in Mexico or Nicaragua or Taiwan or Slovakia before immigrating to the U.S., it is hard to imagine that experiences in that country of origin did not leave a lasting imprint, a lasting imprint relevant to political behavior once the person arrived in the U.S. Yet, strikingly, prior research has paid no serious attention to socialization influences that cross nations' borders. No work has peeked inside the immigrant's political suitcase to assess whether socialization has been imported. This research project contends that we must do so if we are to develop more comprehensive accounts of immigrants' patterns of political behavior. Hence, this dissertation represents a critical first step toward development and testing of a theory of imported socialization. It seeks to understand how immigrants' political socialization experiences in their countries of origin shape the way they view the new polity after migration; the extent to which immigrants' political baggage affect their degree of political engagement and the direction of that engagement; and finally for how long the content of immigrants' political suitcases remains consequential throughout their civic lives in America.

SUDMAN AWARD RECIPIENT:
Hua Qin, Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences

The Impacts of Rural-to-Urban Labor Migration on Rural Environmental Conservation: Empirical Evidence from Chongqing, Southwest China

The relationship between population and the environment holds an important role in research on the linkage between human society and ecological systems. As the most populous nation in the world and a country with vast supplies of natural resources, China provides a particularly important case for population and environment research. The increasing rural-to-urban labor migration in China since the early ‘80s has formed the largest population flow in world history. The primary objective of this study is to obtain a better understanding of how rural out-migration impacts the rural environment through its influence on household livelihoods and community interaction processes. The analysis will be based mainly on empirical data collected from Chongqing Municipality , where the rural-to-urban labor migration rate is currently the highest in China. This research will use a mixed-methods approach to combine both quantitative and qualitative methods. Specifically, three different methods of data collection and analysis will be employed: secondary data, household surveys, and key informant interviews. The rural household survey is a critical component in this research as it is the key mode to collect primary quantitative data. This study will be the first in-depth research on the impacts of rural-to-urban labor migration on the rural environment in China . The research findings will have the potential to provide policy implications for China 's endeavor to construct a “resource-efficient and environment-friendly” society.

FERBER AWARD Honorable Mention:
Karin Hendricks, Department of Music Education

The Relationship between the Sources of Self-Efficacy &
Changes in Competence Perception during an All-State Orchestra Event

The belief that talents are malleable and that achievement can be developed through determination and effort has led music teachers to seek out strategies that more effectively motivate their students. However, self-efficacy perception, a potentially profound catalyst in achievement motivation, has received little attention in music education inquiry. This study seeks to clarify key environmental and intrapersonal influences upon musical ability development by observing the sources of self-efficacy within the context of a high school All-State Orchestra environment. By so doing, this research intends to illustrate means for fostering musical self-belief, motivation, and subsequent achievement. Surveys were adapted from prior self-efficacy research to reflect the distinctive requirements of a large instrumental ensemble rehearsal setting. Research studies in self-efficacy perception not only help to explain human behavior, but they may also aid in the empowering of individuals as they come to recognize the potential control they have over their own beliefs, behaviors, circumstances, and abilities. Therefore, by observing the sources of musical self-efficacy within a challenging performance environment, this study can assist music educators in more fully understanding how competence beliefs enable musicians to attain greater levels of musical and self-mastery.

SUDMAN AWARD Honorable Mention:
Jennifer Lodi-Smith, Department of Psychology

Examining the Social Investment Hypothesis: The Relationship of Social
Role Investment & Personality Trait Development in Adulthood

This dissertation addressed how the commitments people make to important social roles relate to changes in personality traits. At two different times, a sample of 312 Illinois residents age 19 to 86 were surveyed. Four primary conclusions can be drawn from my dissertation findings. First, while the specific patterns varied between age groups, investment in family and community roles related to conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability across adulthood during the first wave of assessment. Second, personality traits during the first wave of surveys predicted changes in social role involvement over the time. For example, for older adults, agreeableness predicted increases in overall levels of involvement in social roles. Third, involvement in social roles at the beginning of the study influenced changes in personality traits over time. This pattern was especially robust for individuals over 60. For example, involvement in family and community roles during the first assessment predicted increases in both conscientiousness and emotional stability during older adulthood. Finally, social investment and personality traits changed together over time. While these relationships varied somewhat with age group, a general pattern emerged across all three age groups such that normative patterns of change (i.e., spending less time with one's family of origin during young adulthood; becoming more invested in work in midlife) corresponded to increasing conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability. These patterns revealed a complex relationship between how social roles and personality traits develop over time, highlighting many important lifespan experiences from establishing adult roles to caregiving.

2007

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT:
Sarah Kiefer, Department of Educational Psychology

Beliefs about the Causes of Social Success: Development during Early Adolescence, Consequences for Students’ Social Goals, and Variations by Gender and Ethnicity

This longitudinal survey research study examines the development of beliefs about social success and how these beliefs shape the social goals that young adolescents pursue in their peer relationships. Social goals are an important part of social competence and have been found to be important to not only students’ social adjustment but also academic engagement and achievement. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that shape these goals. Self-reports of beliefs about the social world (e.g., responsibility, sincerity, status, toughness, and pretending to care) in the fall of the school year are used to predict subsequent social goals in both sixth and seventh grades. It is likely that adolescents’ beliefs about social success in the peer world will play a role in shaping the goals they pursue in their own peer relationships. This is the first study to examine changes in early adolescents’ social goals and beliefs about social success over time, using a longitudinal design across the transition from elementary to middle school. Further, this study examines the antecedents of social goals, while previous research has been predominantly cross-sectional and focused on the consequences of social goals. This study utilizes an urban, low-income, and racially diverse sample population and explores gender and ethnic variations in beliefs and social goals. Thus, this study expands our understanding of social goals during early adolescence by highlighting the unique impact of beliefs about social success on the goals that adolescents pursue with peers, and has implications for developing effective strategies and interventions to support students’ social goals in school.

SUDMAN AWARD RECIPIENT:
James Melton, Department of Political Science

Rediscovering the Party System and Its Effect on Voter Turnout

By defining the choices available for citizens to choose from, the structure of a country’s party system can influence whether its citizens turn out to vote. Three characteristics of a country’s party system—the number of parties, their competitiveness, and their distribution on a left-right ideological continuum—are especially crucial. To date, scholars’ explanations of voter turnout across countries tend to either ignore or pay little attention to how these party system characteristics affect people’s decisions to turn out and vote. This dissertation seeks to identify how each of the three characteristics of the party system, as well as the three in combination, influence turnout. To test the effects of these characteristics, I will undertake a study that combines surveys and experiments. The subjects for the experiments will be both U.S. and Canadian citizens. The experimental design will allow me to manipulate each of the three party system characteristics to determine their independent and joint effects. Moreover, this design will help to alleviate several problems found when using surveys alone, specifically over-reporting of voter turnout and imprecise estimates of party position. The pilot studies I have conducted thus far suggest each of these characteristics has a significant effect on turnout, with competitiveness and the ideological distribution of parties having the largest effects.

2006

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT 1 :
Kathryn Branscomb, Department of Human & Community Development

Undergraduate Students as Parents: Managing Multiple Roles During Emerging Adulthood

Stressors associated with managing family, school, and work demands place many student parents at risk for dropping out of school, and their young children at risk for exposure to poverty and inadequate child care. This study will examine the experiences and support needs of low-income 18–25 year old undergraduate student parents at colleges across the U.S. Research questions will examine how student parents’ role management capabilities and support needs vary by their developmental characteristics, sociodemographics, and existing sources of support. Undergraduate student parents will be recruited nationally from doctoral granting, masters granting, baccalaureate, and associates colleges to participate in a web-based survey. Campus child center directors at each location will also be surveyed to determine services available at each site and their perceptions of student parent needs. By addressing a gap in the existing literature and informing the practices of policy-makers and program specialists, results of this project will ultimately facilitate the creation of campus-based programming to strengthen young student parents’ abilities to complete their educations while successfully navigating family and work roles.

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT 2:
Ruchi Bhanot, Department of Human & Community Development

Links Between Parents' Differential Intrusive Support & Girls' Math Ability Perceptions

This dissertation addresses the continuing gender gap in enrollment in math and science academic fields by females that has been partly attributed to their lower perceptions of their abilities in these subjects. These perceptions begin declining for girls as early as middle school, although girls’ performance equals that of boys. Parents are important socializers of girls’ ability perceptions, as parents’ own gender stereotyped evaluations of abilities influence their daughters’ perceptions. Further, it appears that parents convey these stereotypes while helping with homework. Using a family-systems approach, this dissertation examines whether parents’ differential treatment of brothers and sisters while doing math homework reminds daughters of their parents’ ability stereotypes about math. Using parent and sibling survey reports, I examine how parents’ treatment of children within the same family is linked to girls’ ability perceptions in math.

SUDMAN AWARD RECIPIENT:
Dustin Wood, Department of Psychology

Development of Dispositions & Behaviors in Random &
Self-Matched Freshman Roomate Pairs

My research is broadly concerned with understanding how an individual’s dispositions and personality characteristics are impacted by one's social environment. A difficulty in studying the impact of social environments on personality development is that people select their own social environments to a considerable extent, making similarity between individuals and their environments difficult to interpret. Within my dissertation, I have focused on understanding personality and dispositional development within a unique social environment: the context of randomly-assigned freshman roommates. By conducting a panel survey of these roommates over three waves—starting before they have met one another, and resurveying them at two points later in the school year—I hope to demonstrate that these roommates begin the school year no more similar to one another than would be expected by chance, but become more similar with the passing of time on dimensions including interests and preferences, social activities, and potentially more basic personality traits such as orderliness and extraversion. Additionally, by contrasting these roommates with self-matched roommates, I hope to improve our understanding of the role of selecting one’s interpersonal environment in personality development.

2005

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT:
Meera Murthi, Department of Educational Psychology

Communal Violence Against Women in India: Responses from Hindu & Muslim Communities

This transnational survey research is concerned with violence against women (VAW) in the context of the escalating violence between Hindu and Muslim groups in India. This conflict and the ensuing violence are more commonly known as communal violence. The primary question this study seeks to address is how do attitudes toward women, Hindu/Muslim communities, and violence against women and communities influence attributions of blame when assessing communal violence against Hindu and Muslim women? Communalist discourse and conflicts thrive on stereotypes and negative attitudes about women and communities, and incite violence by perpetuating these misconceptions. This research thus approaches the topic of VAW by first examining the gendered positions of women, and then by assessing their positions as community members (i.e., as Hindus or Muslims). This study utilizes a survey interview methodology with Hindu and Muslim women and men from six neighborhoods in Mumbai—three that have experienced violence and three that have maintained peace. This research is an attempt to bring together theoretical insights from the distinct literatures on gender violence and communalism, because the discourse and the violence in communal conflicts target women as victims. The findings from this research will be used for education and violence prevention programs conducted by women’s groups and NGOs in Mumbai, dealing with issues of violence and communalism. In a country that has witnessed increasing polarization of communities and marginalization of women, this study is a timely effort to promote awareness and psycho-education around these issues.

SUDMAN AWARD RECIPIENT:
Elizabeth Radziszewski, Department of Political Science

Social Networks, Public Opinion, & Foreign Policy: The Roots of Support
for EU Membership & the War in Iraq in Eastern Europe

From facilitating a search for employment in urban Africa to disseminating information about elections in a small town in California, social networks are an intrinsic part of our lives, often dictating the emergence of norms that shape social and political attitudes. In their simplest form, social networks represent immediate relationships with friends and family. They also include more distant, yet local bonds formed among inhabitants of villages, towns, and leaders of their communities. How then, do social discussions and interactions—phenomena deeply ingrained in so many environments across the globe—influence public opinion on foreign policy and affect the direction of international negotiations? This project studies the role of personal social networks—informal interpersonal discussions and interactions—and their ultimate significance in shaping public opinion and political attitudes of policymakers on foreign policy. Focusing on Poland as a case study and relying on survey data and in-depth interviews, the project examines how network relations shape views on two critical, yet very different foreign initiatives: European integration and involvement in the war in Iraq. It also traces the mechanism through which networks induce conformity with particular beliefs on foreign policy.

2003

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT:
Leo Zulu, Department of Geography

Rescaling Conservation: The Political Ecology of Community-Based
Forest Management in Southern Malawi

Over the past decade, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), the re-scaling of conservation to the village level, has become the vogue in Africa. But initial evidence suggests that CBNRM often fails to meet its promise of improvements in local participation in forestry initiatives, economic and administrative efficiency, social equity, development, and resource management. This research seeks to investigate CBNRM's actual effects within the context of miombo woodland use in southern Malawi. The study will use diverse research methodologies within a geographic political ecology framework. It uses 1) satellite remote sensing and image analyses to characterize recent forest cover change, 2) spatially explicit regression analyses with geographic information systems (GIS) to provide a linkage to possible social-spatial and biophysical factors associated with that change, and 3) various interview and survey methods to provide contextual information on institutional arrangements and relations of power involving forests and forest use in the study area.

SUDMAN AWARD RECIPIENT:
Reeshad Dalal, Department of Psychology

Meta-Analytic & Experience-Sampling Investigations into
the Structure of Behavior at Work

Do the same employees who vandalize machinery also support and defend organizational objectives? Could a given employee simultaneously argue with his/her supervisor and volunteer to do extra work? More generally, one could ask whether behavior such as stealing, vandalism, ignoring instructions, and spreading malicious rumors about coworkers is necessarily the “opposite” of behavior such as praising the organization to outsiders, doing everything a “good” employee would do, and helping coworkers. These queries speak directly to the structure of employee work behavior, and answering them would greatly aid us in determining how to accurately measure employee performance. The present research attempts not only to shed light on these questions, but also to analyze certain cognitive aspects of survey responding. Study 1 is a quantitative review of existing published cross-sectional (static) research in the area. Study 2 adopts a dynamic approach and examines the structure of work behavior over time.

2002

FERBER AWARD RECIPIENT:
Fabio Fonti, Department of Business Administration

When One Relationship Is Not Enough: Toward a Theory of Multiplex Embeddedness

This work investigates how being involved simultaneously in many types of relationships with other industry members can constrain or enhance organizational performance. Although many studies have shown how an organization is influenced by its interaction with other members of an industry, they have focused only on one type of relationship at a time. More realistically, within the same industry each organization is involved simultaneously in many relationships with other organizations (e.g. communication, advice, knowledge transfer, etc.), which all at the same time affect its choice of action. Mr. Fonti investigated such multiplexity through a 12-month field study of a whole industry. Using in-depth surveys, he conducted 90-minute face-to-face interviews with entrepreneurs and CEOs from every firm in a specific industry, during which he collected information on flows of communication, trust, and knowledge transfer between the organizations in the industry. This in turn allowed Mr. Fonti to plot the interorganizational structure of the industry as a whole. Preliminary results show that higher levels of multiplex embeddedness (i.e., simultaneous involvement in many relationships with other organizations) are associated with higher organizational performance.

SUDMAN AWARD RECIPIENT:
Junyong Kim, Department of Business Administration

Counterfactual Thinking: An Underlying Mechanism of
Post-purchase Evaluation & Satisfaction

To explain wide variation in satisfaction judgments following equivalent consumption experience and to explain seemingly inconsistent patterns of repeat buying behavior, a dual-mechanism framework of counterfactual thinking that integrates the two distinctive mechanisms of counterfactual thinking—automatic and deliberate process—is proposed. A scale that probes both automaticity and motivational aspects of thought generation process is developed to investigate the nature of post-consumption evaluation process that leads to different counterfactual thoughts. Results from two experimental studies and one panel survey show that when post-consumption evaluation is focused on the outcome, the process is largely automatic, and consumers will feel less satisfied if the outcome is irreversible rather than reversible. However, when the focus of the evaluation is on the decision itself and if consumers consider themselves highly responsible (e.g., they did not rely on another's advice) for the decision, a deliberate mechanism dominates the process and consumers may feel more satisfied if the outcome is irreversible.