Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The federal income tax burden has shifted from those who hold capital for the production of income to those who provide labor for income as legal, political and economic paradigms and theories compete. Many tax code revisions are enacted without full disclosure of cost, and proposed revisions have been enacted in a political context in which benefit and cost are bifurcated and perceived disparately by voters. A comparative shift of the tax burden to those who work has resulted in both real and comparative economic decline. A need exists for multidisciplinary, multi-method study and analysis of competing interests which can include and weight varying objectives and legal, political and economic policy-making paradigms and theories. Equitable revisions in the U.S. tax code cannot occur in the absence of a matrix or matrixes which reconcile, or at least which attempt to reconcile, competing interests, agendas and neo-ontologies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: People high in need to evaluate (NE) are especially likely to form attitudes toward objects of all kinds, and people high in need for cognition (NC) are especially likely to think carefully when acquiring and using information. Using data from the 1998 National Election Study Pilot and the 2000 National Election Study, we show that citizens high in NE were more likely to vote, to work on behalf of candidates, to gather information about politics through the news media, to react emotionally to candidates, to generate reasons to like and dislike candidates, and to manifest consistency between their candidate preferences and their attitudes on issues and toward parties. In addition, being high in NC enhanced the likelihood that a citizen would work on behalf of candidates and enhanced media use and emotional responsiveness in the presidential election context. Thus, two general, non-political dispositions of citizens appear to play important roles in shaping a number of significant cognitive, affective, and behavioral phenomena in the world of politics.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Criminology provides insight into crime and why people act in deviant ways. But policy makers and community leaders who seek to understand why crime is occurring in their community require more than just explanations, they require answers to the question – so what do we do now? What action steps follow from the proposed theory of crime? In other words criminologists need to provide practical answers to crime reduction. The presentation will demonstrate how various criminological theories were presented to policy makers and community leaders to address the level of violence in the City of Wilmington, Delaware.

Publication Type: Traditional Presentation
Abstract: Give special needs students job skills training and the opportunity to do environmental science while on the job. How? Partner with a Community Based Instruction program. Participants will be introduced to the process of getting a partnership started and prompting the program’s evolution.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Social psychology has identified two key variables for the understanding of attitude development: the need to evaluate and the need for cognition. Most importantly, the interaction between these two personality traits tends to predict patterns of attitude change (Petty, 2003).

We wish to ascertain whether these expectations about the impact on attitude stability of the interaction between need to evaluate and need for cognition can be transferred to vote choice.

The analysis uses panel data from the 2000 American National Election Study and the 2003 Ontario Election Study to ascertain whether those who switched sides between the campaign and the post-election waves differed in their levels of need to evaluate and need for cognition.