Browsing by Author "Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin"

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    Canadian Educators' Roles and Perceptions in Responding and Intervening in Online Harm: A Sociological Analysis
    (2022-12-08) Mukherjee, Mohana; Adorjan, Michael C.; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Dean Schwartz, Kelly
    Intense social media use today puts youth at risk for problems that contribute to addictive behaviours, social withdrawal and online harm like cyberbullying and sexting. While most cyberbullying incidents occur at home, the problems spill over to the classroom, making it an issue that educators cannot ignore. Currently, schools shoulder the responsibility to address online harm; however, ambiguity regarding how cyberbullying is conceptualized creates a challenge for school staff to keep pace with providing adequate protection for their students. Thus, to support schools in developing effective online harm interventions, this study aims to understand how Canadian K-12 school teachers perceive cyberbullying, its root causes and the perceived barriers that complicate school efforts to build a culture that prevents online harm. While several studies have examined students’ perceptions of cyberbullying, there is a critical gap in the research literature about how in-service and pre-service educators make sense of cyberbullying. A qualitative methods approach was employed, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 educators (eight pre-service teachers, seven early-career in-service teachers and eight late-career in-service teachers) to advance knowledge regarding current attitudes and beliefs about intervention, the content and benefits of teacher-training programs and technology policies in Canadian schools. Semi-structured interview protocols were used, and symbolic interactionism was employed to construe the meaning-making process of educators’ perceptions of cyberbullying. The interview data was reviewed and coded using NVivo qualitative data analysis software to identify the predominant themes. The findings of the thesis suggest that prospective and current teachers recognize that cyberbullying and sexting are escalating issues that present a problem in the school environment. The teachers use different strategies to manage cyberbullying, particularly in the context of the unique characteristics associated with cyberbullying and sexting. Finally, in terms of the perceptions related to training to mitigate problems like cyberbullying, pre-service educators’ responses suggest that not many have adequate classroom management training before beginning their teaching careers and feel unprepared for managing student behaviours, both offline and online, in their classrooms. The research presented in the thesis offers a unique contribution to the literature and extends the knowledge base on how cyberbullying is managed in the school environment.
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    Collaborative Policing: A Case Study of the Red Deer Domestic Violence Collaborative Court Program
    (2015-12-23) Wang, Lucy Meng Yi; Gibbs-Van Brunschot, Erin; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Adorjan, Michael; Miller, Byron
    Canadian police agencies are increasingly expected to collaborate with community agencies to resolve or prevent crime but little empirical evidence documents the complexities of these partnerships. This exploratory case study addresses this gap by examining the Domestic Violence Collaborative Court Program (DVCCP) in Red Deer, Alberta. DVCCP is a response to domestic violence initiated by partnerships among the police, the judicial system, as well as social and community services. Twelve DVCCP agency representatives and three DVCCP clients were interviewed. The interviews reveal that although the benefits of collaboration clearly prevail, several challenges were identified. The benefits include: information sharing, consensus decision-making, providing clients with a continuum of service, and connecting clients with the collaborative. The challenges consist of: large time-commitment, sustainability of consistent funding, and unintended impacts of independent organizational decision-making. This paper contributes to collaborative policing literature by suggesting practical recommendations for success for existing or new community partnerships.
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    Coming Home a "Veteran": The military-civilian transition in Canada and Canadian military identity
    (2021-11-19) Tremblay, Myriam; Yessenova, Saulesh; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Hill, Alexander; Towers, Frank
    The military-civilian transition (MCT), despite having no concrete definition, is understood as the transition between a military member’s career and their reintegration into the civilian world. Canada’s defence strategy, “Strong, Secured, Engaged”, considers the MCT to fall within its strategic framework. There are gaps in what we know about the MCT in Canada, especially as MCT policies continue evolving. The purpose of this research is to understand the experiences of nine former members of Canadian Armed Forces based on the information obtained through semi-structured interviews about their releases, which took place between 2012 and 2016, and self-report questionnaires. The focus of this research is on negotiation of identity following military service by using a social psychological approach and identity theories. The main themes that emerged from this research are: (1) Training and indoctrination, (2) Making meaning from military service, (3) Uniforms and identity, and (4) Storytelling and identity. This thesis argues that: (1) current MCT frameworks fail to account for the civilian-military transition, which is the first transition that members experience throughout their military careers, while seeking to address the MCT; (2) the construction of the “veteran” reveals tensions between military culture and Canadian values and highlights tensions in post-military identity formation; and (3) understanding operational culture and military training is key to understanding how members adapt to the civilian world and when they engage in identity negotiation throughout and after their careers.
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    Community Members' Experiences and Responses to the Extra Judicial Measures Community Referral Pilot Program in Atlantic Canada
    (2022-09) Yazdani, Alhan; Adorjan, Michael; Patterson, Matt; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin
    Restorative justice has become central to Canada’s responses to youth crime, especially under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which emphasizes significant alternative responses to the formal criminal justice system (Tomporowski et al., 2011). Restorative justice offers benefits that are argued to instill more robust cognitive transformation (i.e., a change in thinking about one’s actions in relation to a crime and the harm it caused particular parties and the wider community), and ultimately helps to instill safer communities and prevent crime (LeBel et al., 2008). In relation to youth crime in Canada, restorative justice plays a prominent role under the YCJA. Yet not all provinces have implemented restorative justice programs to the same degree. For this qualitative research, secondary sources were analyzed involving qualitative interviews with community volunteers who were part of a pilot Community Referral Program (CRP) that was implemented in Atlantic Canada in 2013. The tensions between formal and informal approaches to responding to crime are highlighted by the experiences of volunteers of the CRP, including community leaders, as well as how these tensions lead to role ambiguity and other obstacles. Shedding light on the experiences of volunteers, their challenges, and opportunities for improvement will help provide crucial knowledge to inform best practices going forward, and ultimately benefit all parties involved, as well as the wider community.
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    Emergent Clinical Issues in Problem Gambling
    (2010-04) Battersby, Malcolm; Casey, David; Currie, Shawn; Currie, Cheryl; el-Guebaly, Nady; Gainsbury, Sally; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Lobo, Daniela S. S.; MacKay, Terri-Lynn; Marshall, Liam E.; Nilsson, Thomas; Sévigny, Serge; Smith, Garry J.; Tavares, Hermano; Westphal, Jim; Williams, Rob; Zohar, Joseph
    The "Emergent Clinical Issues in Problem Gambling" conference took place Friday, April 9 & Saturday, April 10, 2010 at The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Presentation and discussion topics included competing perspectives on etiology and conceptualization of gambling disorders.
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    An Examination of Homicide Clearance in Canada
    (2021-12-21) Lee, Winnifred; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Adorjan, Michael; Brodie, Ian
    While there is fear over homicide, crime statistics reveal that homicides are generally on the decline in Canada and have one of the highest clearance rates among other types of crimes (Moreau, 2018). However, recent years also show that unsolved homicide rates are increasing, with no clear explanation behind the recent trends. Studies examining the factors affecting homicide clearance reveal contradictory findings, particularly the role that victim’s characteristics play in homicide clearance. This thesis explores how victim, accused, and situational/incident characteristics affect clearance outcome and the speed in which homicide cases are cleared through using 1991-2015 data from the Homicide Survey. My results indicate that many factors influence homicide clearance, and that victim, accused, and situational/incident characteristics must be considered when examining homicide clearance.
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    Examining the Role of Inequality in Security Consumption
    (2022-12-20) Novakowski, Dallas; Mourali, Mehdi; Agarwal, James; Radford, Scott; Goode, Miranda; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin
    A growing body of evidence suggests that economic inequality causes humans to take more risks and engage in aggressive behaviours. In a ‘winner-takes-all’ environment, risky activities such as gambling, lying, and crime can be a person’s only means of keeping up with competitors and accessing contested resources. There is comparatively little research investigating whether people anticipate risk-taking and conflict from their neighbors in unequal environments. An informative context for examining the distrust-inducing effects of inequality is the security market, which offers goods that protect customers from the actions of malicious agents. For instance, barred windows are purchased because they (supposedly) protect consumers from break-ins. Given the costly nature of these security products, security consumption is generally only worthwhile if a consumer expects that other people have harmful intentions. This project provides evidence that economic inequality increases consumers’ willingness to purchase security products through three studies: 1) experimental manipulations of inequality in an economic game context, 2) experimental manipulations of distributional fairness and income visibility, and 3) multilevel analyses of the effects of nation-level inequality (k = 32) on individuals’ consumption of security goods (n = 79,776).
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    An Exploration of Incivility in a Homeless Shelter as Identified by Frontline Staff
    (2018-01-12) Salt, Valerie; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Adorjan, Michael; Lucas, Jack
    Homeless shelters are institutions for populations who are deemed as ‘uncivil’ by their homeless status, but research has yet to systematically explore frontline staff’s identification and response to incivility in a shelter context. This exploratory mixed methods study addresses this gap through content analysis and quantification of daily activity logs written by frontline staff in a Canadian homeless shelter. The findings reveal that client incivility in this shelter can be categorized into offences which disrupt the general shelter environment, are verbally offensive to staff or clients, or involve physical contact with staff or other clients. Frontline staff hold substantial discretion in the consequences clients face for such behaviour ranging from surveillance to banishment. This study contributes to the incivility literature by identifying the types, patterns and frequency of client incivility to provide a benchmark of incivility in a shelter context.
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    Gambling and Risk Behaviour: A Literature Review
    (Alberta Gaming Research Institute, 2009-03) Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin
    Determining the connections between gambling and other forms of risk activity is a complicated task. The research literature is not clear on the nature of the relationship between gambling and risk activity and, specifically, whether behaviours that appear somewhat similar derive from the same or different sources. On the one hand, researchers tend to use risk activities to predict certain other risk activities – a strategy that relies on the assumption that these activities stem from different sources. Still other studies suggest that risk activity, including gambling, are symptomatic of an underlying issue or issues and are therefore related and unsuited to use in causal models. In this review, we take a high level approach and establish the factors that are commonly associated with and used to explain both gambling and various risk activities. Demographic features come to the fore, including age, sex, socioeconomic status (SES) and family background. We then consider particular types of risk activities which are frequently discussed in the research literature. While the range of risk activity is far‐reaching, we limit our discussion to particular types of risk activity – those that tend to be most frequently discussed in tandem with gambling activity, including: alcohol use, drug use, smoking, and suicidal behaviour; also briefly referring to other less prominent types of risk activity, such as ‘risky’ sexual activity. The relationship between drinking and gambling, for example, is a mainstay of the gambling literature. Finally, we consider the explanations used to link these behaviours together, drawing specifically upon sociological, psychological and economic accounts of these behaviours. To establish these connections and identify themes, an extensive review of the literature was conducted using a number of databases, as detailed in Appendices One and Two. The initial search of the literature involved the identification of over 80,000 items, which were subsequently reduced through the use of Endnote (a bibliographic software) to include only the material deemed best suited to exploring the question of gambling’s link to other risk activity.
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    An Investigation of the Relationship Between Gambling-Related Stigma and Help-Seeking Behaviours Among Online, Offline, and Mixed-Mode Disordered Gamblers
    (2022-09) Leslie, Rashida Diandra; McGrath, Daniel S.; Lee, Kibeom; Stea, Jonathan N.; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin
    Previous research has revealed differences in the experience of negative consequences and the likelihood of help-seeking relative to a gambler’s preferred mode of play (i.e., exclusively online, exclusively offline, and mixed-mode). Little research has identified and compared mixed-mode gamblers to exclusively online and offline gamblers, and although stigma has been recognized as a common barrier to seeking help for disordered gambling, there is a paucity of research that has examined the relationship between stigma and disordered gambling. Thus, the primary goal of the present study was to examine relationships between preferred gambling mode, gambling-related stigma, and help-seeking behaviours in a sample of disordered gamblers. A total of N = 517 disordered gamblers (n = 166 online gamblers, n = 171 offline gamblers, and n = 180 mixed-mode gamblers) completed measures related to their past six-month gambling behaviours, lifetime decision to seek help, endorsement of perceived and experienced stigma, and coping orientations toward gambling-related stigma. Results showed that (a) compared to offline gamblers, mixed-mode gamblers reported worse disordered gambling severity and a greater number of gambling-related harms; (b) the likelihood of lifetime help-seeking did not differ between groups; (c) among mixed-mode gamblers, secrecy and withdrawal coping orientations were negative and positive predictors of help-seeking, respectively; (d) a willingness to educate people about the realities of having gambling problems was predictive of help-seeking among offline gamblers; and (e) experienced stigma was a positive predictor of help-seeking, regardless of preferred gambling mode. Possible reasons for differences in help-seeking predictors and implications of this research are discussed.
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    Making Up Reasons: constructivism, functionalism, and reasons
    (2021-05-28) Stein, Joshua David; Baker, John; Liebesman, David; Haji, Ish; Star, Daniel; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Dick, David
    This dissertation expounds and defends a theory of what it is for some fact to be a reason. The goal of the dissertation is to combine the role of reasons in justifying behavior with the role of reasons in motivating behavior, to give a more robust, practically viable account of reasons that can be applied across a range of domains and disciplines. In advancing this view, the dissertation advances the unorthodox philosophical view that in order for some fact to be a reason, that fact must both justify and motivate the agent acting in the relevant way. The analysis of being a reason advanced in this dissertation is formulated as follows: Some fact R is a pro tanto reason for an agent S to do an act of type φ in a circumstance C iff (1) R is evidence that S ought to φ and (2) R entails S φ-ing in C promotes or protects something of value. Condition (1) and (2) correspond to the justifying and motivating roles of reasons, respectively. In defending this analysis, the dissertation takes a functionalist approach to considering the roles. On a functionalist approach, some fact is a reason if and only that fact functions as a motivation and justification for action. The methodology of this dissertation includes assessing whether the analysis I have proposed above and various competing analyses are correct in their assessment of whether some fact is a reason in a range of cases. This approach to assessing the extension of the concept of being a reason helps to refine and clarify the analyses; it establishes where the differences in case judgments lie between analyses of reasons. The dissertation then argues that the analysis expounded and defended in this dissertation is especially well-positioned to account for the way that reasons are used in personal deliberation and social interaction. As reasons are used to predict, anticipate, explain, and influence the behavior of other agents, an analysis of reasons should improve our understanding of these practical uses.
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    News Media and the Military: Portraying and Responding to Right-Wing Extremism in the Canadian Armed Forces
    (2024-01-02) Shanti, Davina; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Hiebert, Maureen Sharon; Adorjan, Michael C.
    In 2019 a Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) reservist was found to have been recruiting fellow reservists into a neo-Nazi paramilitary group known as The Base. The news of this event was reported in national headlines and an investigation into allegations of extremist recruitment was conducted by the CAF. While concerns of discrimination and racism within the military are not new, for instance, the scandal known as the Somalia Affair from the early 1990s involved allegations of racism within the military. The finding that the CAF was used to recruit members into right-wing extremist (RWE) groups was alarming. Traditional news media is vital to reporting and investigating stories, yet how stories are presented to the public can impact where people might stand on certain issues. News reports on RWE in the military could lead to diminished trust between the public and the CAF and could be damaging to the CAF’s reputation. This thesis explores how the Canadian news media portrays RWE in the CAF, whether the CAF acknowledges the presence of extremism in their organization, and how the CAF responds to this issue. Using a content analysis approach, news articles from The Globe and Mail and Departmental Plans from the Department of National Defence (DND) and the CAF are examined. The content of these sources is used to determine whether parallels can be drawn from news media reports on RWE in the military and reports generated by the CAF itself. The findings indicate that in the context of RWE, the CAF is generally portrayed negatively by the news media. More importantly, the findings suggest that the news media highlights the social and political context in Canada which might allow RWE beliefs to thrive. In contrast, reports from the CAF and DND prioritize presenting solutions to addressing RWE within the military by drawing focus on aspects of culture change. Ultimately, the CAF is not immune to the political and social influences that might divide Canadians. An environment that continues to provoke hate or violence motivated by hate places the CAF in a vulnerable position where it is not exempt from the influence of extremist beliefs.
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    Still in the Closet: LGBTQ People and the Lack of Protections in Conflict Zones
    (2023-09-18) Arnold, Jordan Tyler; Hiebert, Maureen; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Voth, Daniel
    LGBTQ people have been steadily gaining protections over the last several decades but there is still more progress to be made, especially in conflict zones. LGBTQ people are targeted specifically due to their sexual orientation or gender identity in peacetime, however, this targeting becomes more extreme and violent during times of conflict. One of the more egregious examples of violence targeted towards LGBTQ people was during the Syrian civil war by both the government regime forces as well as other groups like ISIS. The central question of this thesis is why do LGBTQ people face human rights violations in conflict zones despite there being legal protections for civilians? Using securitization theory, I will explore the relationship between securitization of protections for LGBTQ people and the securitization of LGBTQ people as threats. I will use the Syrian civil war as the case study for my analysis to demonstrate that the current protections are not sufficient to adequately protect LGBTQ individuals in states that do not recognize their rights.
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    The Gender Gap in Political Knowledge in Canada
    (2016) Giles, Janine Lee; O'Neill, Brenda; Young, Lisa; Franceschet, Susan; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Stephenson, Laura
    Since the 1990s, Canadian federal election studies show that women and men do not hold equal amounts of campaign knowledge. The political science literature suggests that changed gender roles, increased feminist socialization, and improved socio-economic resources over time should have eliminated the gender differences over time. Acquiring and maintaining political knowledge, however, is a complex phenomenon. I argue that the gender gap can be explained by taking into account women and men’s individual and aggregate-level political resources, personal motivations, cognitive engagement in electoral campaigns, and their roles as mothers and fathers. First, I test the conventional explanations of the gender gap. Using the 1997 to 2008 Canadian Election Studies, I examine the impact of the individual-level socio-economic status, gender role change, and individual political motivation on women and men’s knowledge of campaign facts. Even with these factors included in the model, the gender gap in knowledge of party leaders remained ten points in favour of men and for party promises eight points in favour of men. Two alternative explanations of the gap are then tested. First, I examine the gender gap during the five-week Canadian federal election campaign. Flooded by political coverage in media, political advertising and political discussion, the impact of gender changes across the campaign. I find that the rate change in providing correct responses is different for women and men during federal elections campaigns, which suggests that women engage later in the campaign compared to men. The gendered rate change in providing correct responses does not change the overall gender gap, however. Second, I test the impact of political resources at the local level on the gender gap in campaign knowledge using the 2006 Canadian Census. The analysis shows that compared to men, women’s knowledge of the party leaders is positively affected by the employment rate at the constituency level. Local education rates, on the other hand, have an impact on neither women nor men’s knowledge of party leaders. Women living in areas with the highest employment rate provided correct responses five percentage points higher than women living in areas with the lowest rate of employment on average.  
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    VLSI-Inspired Methods for Student Learning Community Creation and Refinement
    (2021-08-06) Cao, Sheng Lun; Behjat, Laleh; Gibbs Van Brunschot, Erin; Moshirpour, Mohammad; Dimitrov, Vassil
    The unprecedented global pandemic COVID-19 significantly disrupted how educational contents are delivered in academic institutions, rapidly accelerating the adoption of online and blended learning. This thesis explores the creation and refinement of optimized student learning communities as a mean to support online and blended learning in the pandemic and post-pandemic setting. Students enrolled in courses at a university can be modelled as an enrolment network similar to a circuit netlist. Learning communities are created by clustering students into groups, optimizing for maximum internal connection to support student learning, and minimum external connection to reduce disease transmission. Three VLSI-based clustering algorithms: Hyperedge Coarsening, Modified Hyperedge Coarsening, and Best Choice, are modified to cluster student enrolment networks. Further experimentations are conducted for Best Choice to fine-tune its clustering parameters. The learning communities created by the clustering algorithms are further refined by the Simulated Annealing algorithm using the same optimization criteria. Experiments are performed to fine-tune the algorithmic parameters of Simulated Annealing. The Learning Community Creation and Refinement Framework combines all three stages of network modelling, learning community creation, and learning community refinement. The proposed framework is tested on both the 3rd year Electrical Engineering Fall 2020 enrolment dataset and a very large Fall 2020 and Winter 2021 enrolment dataset. Best Choice performed the best among the clustering algorithms, capable of creating learning communities for the optimization criteria for a given maximum cluster size. Simulated Annealing is able to refine the clustering results by significantly increase cluster quality. The framework is capable of creating and refining learning communities for both the small and the large enrolment networks, but it is better suited for creating tailored learning communities at a program level. Future work, including creating student learning communities based on other optimization criteria, should be explored.