Journal of Undergraduate Research

Katherine Westmoreland and Christopher Karpowitz, Political Science Background In the 2014 presidential election, only 36% of eligible voters cast a ballot on Election Day. Voter turnout is especially low in non-presidential elections and the already bleak number of voters is heightened when examining young voters, withonly 21.3% of 18-19 year-olds voting in 2014. Political science […]

Laura Boyer and Joel Selway, Political Science Department Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play an important role in international development. While the NGO sector addresses hundreds of issues and annually administers millions of dollars in aid (Hall-Jones 2006, Djelic 2006), these organizations are often Western based, which generates debates regarding the appropriateness of Western-based interventions in developing […]

Robert Francis and Daniel Nielson, Political Science Introduction A recent trend in both development research and practice has dealt with increasing the transparency of government and international development institutions. While donors and stakeholders are able to put significant legal and social pressure on large development organizations, this same pressure has not materialized in regards to […]

Taylor Rawson and Dr. Darren Hawkins, Political Science Introduction Scholars have long researched public support for foreign aid within donor countries. Democratic governments are held accountable by their constituencies, and as a result, public opinion is of importance. However, although the United States is by far the largest aid donor, the American public grossly overestimates […]

James Martherus and Quin Monson, Department of Political Science Groups like Seeds of Peace that seek to promote conflict resolution often attempt to do so by humanizing an outgroup. For example, to reduce conflict in Israel, I might gather Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis and have them engage in activities designed to produce mutual empathy […]

Ian Hansen and Dr. Darren Hawkins, Political Science Using survey data from across Latin America, I sought to determine whether compulsory voting laws have negative effects on constituents’ views toward democracy. I expected to find that such laws influence voters to have lower appraisals of democracy in their country. The analysis yielded results that lend […]

Holly Henrich and Dr. Chris Karpowitz, Political Science Department Introduction Currently, the United States ranks as the 86th country in women’s representation in government,with 18.2 percent of seats in the House of Representatives and 20 percent representation in the Senate (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2014). With a nation that is half comprised of women, questions are raised […]

Eric Reuben Smith Abstract Corruption undermines the effectiveness of international development. The financial integrity of non-governmental organizations (NGO) can be improved by donor-to-organization contact, but foreign donors rarely travel to countries such as Uganda. This project involved a randomized design to compare the size of project bids by NGO management when approached by potential donors […]

Madison Dayton Daines and Quin Monson, Department of Political Science Introduction I believe that the religion a person was socialized in has lingering affects on his or her political values. Parents play the most prominent role in the political direction of their children both early in life and up through young adulthood (Niemi and Jennings […]

Kalifa Smith and Dr. Jessica Preece, Political Science Women are greatly underrepresented in politics. Researchers have studied many potential explanations for this such as the competitive nature of politics, gender role socialization, institutional structures, etc. Yet there is little research on the role of religious socialization on women’s political ambition. In this study I hypothesize […]