Undergraduate Works

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Open Access
Afro-Nordic Raciolinguistic Landscapes
(University of Oregon, 2024-07-01) Frost, Amara; Weissler, Rachel
The Nordic countries, starting in the 2000s, began to shift away from using the term “race” and focused on other identifiers such as ethnicity, which has led to a disconnect between racialized terminologies and their implications. The present research examines racial language use in Nordic countries and explores key themes through a raciolinguistic approach to define race and how the ideas of race may influence language use within this locale. Additionally, this research focuses on the Afro-Nordic experiences around racial language use in Nordic countries. Key themes that were found as a part of the research using academic texts were racial terminology, racial naïveté, and the denial of race. Using these themes, we explore sociolinguistic aspects around race, ethnicity, and identity and the implications of race. The findings of this paper were the complexities around the disuse of race within the Nordic countries and how that relates to identity and the concept of ethnicity when it comes to defining individuals.
Open Access
The Foster Care System: A Segue to Sex Trafficking
(University of Oregon, 2024-07-01) Mackey, Blu; Todahl, Jeff
Sex trafficking is a prevalent and persistent human rights, social justice, and economics issue. Fueled by a multi-million-dollar industry, this complex global epidemic is compounded by poorly resourced government and private sector response systems. The United States foster care system in particular serves youth at risk for sex trafficking and is well-positioned to provide trauma-informed services that support youth and act as a buffer for harm. However, given overall poor systems alignment and inadequate access to trauma-informed therapy and healthcare services, U.S. foster youth—who are disproportionately lower income and of historically excluded ethnicities—are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. As a result, advocacy groups have urged government officials to use their power for positive reform through the construction of systems and equitable foster care practices that account for race, ethnicity, and social class. This systematic literature review explores the evolution of sex trafficking in the United States between the years 2000 and 2023, examines systems response, and investigates a more effective approach to foster care and systematic reform in response to the prevalence of sex trafficking.
Open Access
Breaking the Mold: A Content Analysis of ESPN’s Written and Broadcast Coverage of the 2023 Women’s College World Series
(University of Oregon, 2024-07-01) Montes, Nina-Grace; Shontz, Lori
This project investigates whether the 2023 Womenʼs College World Series media coverage exhibits gender biases in its softball coverage similar to those researchers have found in coverage of other womenʼs sports: sexualization, stereotyping, and downplaying importance, among many others. Specifically, it compares ESPN's coverage of the Womenʼs College World Series to its male counterpart: the College World Series baseball championship. Through a comparative content analysis of live game broadcasts and written articles during the championship series, the research found that some elements of softball broadcasts had higher production values than baseball broadcasts, with more creative elements such as graphics, music, player segments, and replays. Comparatively, baseball broadcasters used more action-packed language and had more excitement in their delivery and utilized more creative elements. The results suggest that womenʼs sports coverage is improving, although there is still room for improvement.
Open Access
Somos de Muchas Voces: Science and Environmental and Climate Justice Radio Reporting in the Willamette Valley
(University of Oregon, 2024-07-01) Rios, Maya; de Onís, Catalina
Effective communication is vital for communities that are typically disregarded and devalued in the dominant scientific discourse; for these communities to convey quality research, culture-centered scientific communication is crucial. This paper explores the significance of environmental and climate justice communication in the Pacific Northwest and emphasizes the need to recognize and address the disproportionate burden faced by communities of color and low-wealth communities. Despite a plethora of English-language publications in the United States, a significant portion of the population, including Spanish speakers, lacks access to culturally resonant scientific information. This lack of access hinders these communitiesʼ ability to contribute to environmental policies and other concerns that affect them. This paper presents a project conducted in collaboration with Radio Poder—a Spanish and Indigenouslanguage radio station in Oregon that aims to create Spanish-language science programming focusing on environmental and climate justice. By centering the voices of Spanish-speaking communities and featuring Latine scientists, practitioners, and activists, among others, the project seeks to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and public understanding to foster inclusive environmental and climate justice communication.
Open Access
Introduction
(University of Oregon, 2024-07-01) Dragoo, Christabelle; Schmitt, Kyla; Taylor, James
The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program prepares low-income, first-generation college students and students from underrepresented groups to pursue graduate study that culminates in PhD degrees. At the encouragement of the McNair Foundation, Congress named the program to honor the legacy of Ronald McNair, an African American NASA astronaut and physicist who died aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. Each year, the UO supports approximately twenty-eight qualifying undergraduate McNair Scholars who show potential and commitment to complete doctoral-level work.
Open Access
OpenAI's Fault Lines: Cracks in a Groundbreaking “Capped-Profit” Organization
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Collins-Burke, Drew
Influential artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI has a unique corporate structure featuring a non-profit/capped-profit (NP/CP) model. In the NP/CP model, a non-profit organization has control over a for-profit arm that offers financiers a fixed return based on their initial investment, as opposed to offering unlimited potential return. OpenAI’s NP/CP structure is intended to reduce the negative impacts of shareholder capitalism on high-stakes artificial general intelligence (AGI) development projects. This paper evaluates OpenAI’s organizational successes and failures, comparing its approach to the pitfalls many shareholder corporations fall into: excessive profit motives, lack of transparency, and negligence towards societal impacts. It also explores how OpenAI’s structural features, such as investor profit caps and non-profit authority over the for- profit arm, have aided the company in avoiding some common issues with shareholder corporations. However, CEO Sam Altman’s high-profile ousting and reinstatement, OpenAI’s lack of open-source practices, and Microsoft’s influence raise concerns about the overall efficacy of this structure. Through an analysis of OpenAI's structure, actions, and public statements, this paper investigates the hybrid NP/CP model’s potential for mitigating the negative impacts of shareholder capitalism on responsible AGI development, highlighting its successes and limitations. The paper concludes that OpenAI’s ability to develop AGI safely within this organization model is possible but uncertain.
Open Access
COINdinistas and Contradictions: US Adoption of Counterinsurgency in 2007
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Li, Alex
Multiple theories of politics—specifically, rational actor theory and organization theory—have been used to explain decision-making processes for military actions. Rational actor theory states that military actors base decisions on value calculations and incremental changes. Organization theory suggests that military organizations push a specific doctrine to preserve power in the face of civilian challenges or criticism. While organizations generally wish to appear rational, doctrinal decisions may betray irrationality. This paper aims to identify a clear history of US counterinsurgency (COIN) and test the existing literature on organization and rational actor theory against the US military’s readoption of the counterinsurgency doctrine in 2007. The US military COIN operations in Iraq that accompanied the Surge of 2007 followed a legacy of failed COIN experiments. Beginning in Vietnam with the strategic hamlet program, the continued use of COIN despite its empirical inefficacy throughout the 20th century demonstrates the military’s pattern of irrational action. This paper concludes that COIN existed quietly in the background of the Cold War before its implementation in 2007. Moreover, COIN’s doctrinal adoption in 2007 is better explained through organization theory as the military organization pushed COIN onto a desperate Bush administration. Finally, the history of COIN indicates that rational actor theory is insufficient to explain doctrine during low-intensity conflicts.
Open Access
Transitive Inference as an Intrinsic Process
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Murray, Austin; Chaloupka, Ben
The present study tests participants’ ability to infer implicit relationships between stimuli by building hierarchical—ranking by some value—relationships, a process known as transitive inference. For example, if you know person A is taller than person B and person B is taller than person C, you can infer that person A is taller than person C without directly comparing the two. The literature has provided contrasting results regarding whether prior knowledge of the hierarchy is needed for participants to infer the indirect relationships. This study aimed to resolve this discrepancy by investigating whether participants could learn an implicit hierarchy of six art stimuli (A > B > C > D > E > F) without prior knowledge using a transitive inference task (N = 78). After being trained on all pairs of adjacent stimuli in the hierarchy (e.g., A > B or D > E), participants were tested on all possible pairs of stimuli (e.g., A > C or B > F). Participants were able to infer relationships between untrained items two steps apart in the hierarchy (e.g., B > D) just as well as they remembered trained relationships. They were especially successful in judging untrained relationships three steps apart in the hierarchy (e.g., B > E). This suggests that participants were able to generalize across the trained pairs to form the hierarchy, even without prior knowledge of the underlying structure. Our results support the idea that humans possess an intrinsic ability to infer implicit relationships between stimuli.
Open Access
The Influence of Positive Maternal Involvement on the Relationship Between Maternal Emotion Dysregulation and Preschooler Internalizing and Externalizing Problems
(2025-02-20) Prunuske, Jin
Children of mothers with elevated emotion dysregulation (ED) may be at greater risk for developing internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) problems and, in turn, future psychopathology. While previous studies have investigated early risk pathways that may explain this association (e.g., unsupportive maternal responding), our understanding of factors that protect against the downstream effects of maternal ED on child outcomes is limited. To explore prospective protective factors, the current study examined the moderating role of positive maternal involvement on the relationship between maternal ED and preschoolers’ INT and EXT problems. This study included 178 mother-child dyads, where maternal ED was assessed using the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, positive maternal involvement was assessed using the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire – Preschool Revision, and preschoolers’ INT and EXT problems were assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist. Maternal ED and positive maternal involvement had significant direct effects on preschoolers’ INT and EXT problems; however, the moderating effect of positive maternal involvement on the relationship between maternal ED and preschooler INT and EXT problems was nonsignificant. Further examination of factors that may mitigate risk among children of mothers with elevated ED is necessary to inform effective prevention and intervention efforts.
Open Access
Letter from the Editor
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Schmitt, Kyla
I am so excited to wrap up this Winter Term by sharing the latest edition of the Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal (OURJ)—Volume 23, Issue 1, Winter 2025. This issue—as is so often the case in the ‘turbulent’ world of undergraduate publishing—has been a long time coming. Three of the articles included in the pages that follow were accepted in the summer and fall of 2024, well before the previous year drew to a close. Is this publication late, or is it a carefully crafted retrospective: a year in academic research? The world may never know…
Open Access
Art Feature: “Body Fluidity”
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Betancourt, Gio
“Body Fluidity” deals with the complexities of the human body, especially in the case of genitalia. People are assigned a specific sex/gender based on the development of their genitalia before birth. Throughout puberty or even during birth, it may become apparent that someone is intersex due to external appearances or hormonal differences internally. In other cases, some individuals feel as though the sex/gender they were assigned by society does not align with their own sense of self and may transition to a different gender or deconstruct gender altogether in a way that subverts society's expected norms. In all of these instances, we see the body as fluid, not binary, not one gender or the other, but as the home of the soul, which inhabits a body unique to everyone else's. In this way, this piece is representative of undergraduate research; through research you may uncover new findings, some of which deconstruct old findings to represent a better understanding of a topic. My art piece is meant to do that—deconstructing the binary instilled into society for centuries and replacing it with a new understanding of the human body.
Open Access
Journal Editorial: “Research as Learning and Being”
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Zaman, Ahmar
Every developing child is learning to understand the world and their place in it. They do this through touching, experimenting, questioning, and watching the world around them; every question they have is their own research question to make sense of their world.
Open Access
Art Feature: “Heavy Under Pressure”
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Betancourt, Gio
Created during my study abroad trip to Greece, “Heavy Under Pressure” deals with the complexities of gravity underwater. As someone who had not swam in a body of water for a long period of time, being submerged in water felt heavier than usual, as if my body was made of stone. To illustrate this point, I rendered my hand with goggles wrapped around to signify swimming and the heaviness felt when trying to move your joints underwater. This piece captures the science of gravity underwater, and how complexly the human body adapts to different environments, even if impacted by different feelings.
Open Access
Meet the Editorial Board
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Schmitt, Kyla; Sechrist, Ava; Olds, Charlotte; Nguyen, Ethan; Tippetts, Keegan
2 pages
Open Access
Cover Art: “Beyond Fruition”
(University of Oregon, 2025-02-20) Betancourt, Gio
“Beyond Fruition” describes navigating the unknown. Although planning is a great habit for all events, some situations are out of your control, and an individual must problem-solve to figure out solutions to unplanned occurrences. This piece was unplanned initially and became complete through navigating new ways to find answers to issues that I was confronted within the process. Likewise, undergraduate researchers are problem-solvers. Their entire task is to navigate the unknown planned or unplanned, they may navigate unplanned obstacles along the way.
Open Access
THE NBA AS A MODEL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS AND STRATEGIES
(University of Oregon, 2024-06) Wilkinson, Rowan; Clithero, John
This thesis explores the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) development into a global brand, analyzing its international business development strategies and their implications for organizations endeavoring to extend into foreign markets. Through an extensive literature review and empirical analysis, this thesis elucidates the NBA’s development from a struggling domestic sports league to a dominant global entity, identifying key factors and strategies that have contributed to its success in foreign markets. Drawing upon comparative analysis with another athletic organization, Major League Baseball (MLB), and a retail corporation, J. Crew, this thesis attempts to illustrate the strategies employed by the NBA to enter foreign markets and accomplish sustained growth as strategies applicable across industries. By analyzing similarities and differences in approach across these organizations, this thesis works to dispel the notion that the NBA’s success internationally is a unique phenomenon, and in fact, should be looked to for gainful insight into international business. As a result, this thesis puts forth actionable recommendations for international business development, derived from the NBA’s experience and success. This thesis highlights the importance of technological modernization, the cultivation of strong relationships with foreign markets through methods such as localization, and a commitment to innovation and technical transformation. Through analyzing these factors' role in the development of the NBA internationally, this thesis demonstrates these strategies as essential tools for organizations looking to maximize their international success and penetrate foreign markets. To conclude, this work emphasizes the NBA’s international success as a model for international business development. By utilizing the strategies demonstrated by the NBA and discussed in this thesis, businesses can position themselves for sustained growth and competitiveness on the international stage.
Open Access
School District and Community Factors and the Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on Chronic Absenteeism
(University of Oregon, 2024-11) Espinoza, Juan; Harbaugh, William; McWhorter, Brian
This study uses school district level variation in COVID closures and census data to quantify the effects that virtual and hybrid instruction had on the increases in post-pandemic chronic absenteeism. We find statistically significant evidence of a positive relationship with our best model estimating that each 1% increase in the proportion of the 2020/2021 school year spent away from fully in-person instruction increased chronic absenteeism by 0.20%, after controlling for race, income, education, school expenditures, and family structure. This thesis includes collaboratively produced work.
Open Access
Robux IRL: How Games Can Create a Positive Impact on Children's Development of Financial Literacy
(University of Oregon, 2024-11) Rodriguez Baquero, Sofia; Foxman, Maxwell; Hinkle, Lindsay
This paper explores the relationship between using Roblox and learned financial habits in children. Even as required personal finance courses become common in high schools across the U.S., we need to do more to support the development of financial literacy in the next generation. Video games provide the opportunity to make this education engaging and immersive, which gives kids the chance to learn by doing. Roblox is a free online gaming and game creation platform that currently has around 80 million daily users. This research studies broadly how games and personal finance are being factored into education before looking specifically at the role parents can play in these relationships. It also analyzes Roblox as a platform to understand how different features and aspects of the platform influence consumer behavior in children. Through active parent involvement and honest conversations about the value of money, Roblox can go from being purely for entertainment and socialization to being a tool for building healthy financial habits in young people. The final chapter of this research is a new guide for parents on how to treat Roblox with their child and understand the economic and social implications of using it.
Open Access
Menstrual Tracking Applications and PMDD
(University of Oregon, 2024-11) Grunwald, Hannah; Raisanen, Elizabeth; Spitzley, Kate
Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) is a psychiatric and gynecological condition marked by affective, cognitive, and physical symptoms that predominantly manifest during the luteal phase, occurring in the week before menstruation and resolving after the onset of menstruation, affecting 1.2-6.4% of individuals who menstruate (Naik et al. 2023). Symptoms of PMDD heavily overlap with those of other psychiatric disorders but the condition is distinguished by the cyclical timing of symptoms occurring in the week before menstruation and resolving after the onset of menstruation. The Carolina Premenstrual Assessment Scoring System (C-PASS) is a standardized computer algorithm that uses the basis of the Daily Record of Severity of Problems (DRSP) to help distinguish clinical presentations of PMDD and other menstrual disorders with data being derived from a self-reported record of symptoms over a two-cycle span (Eisenlohr-Moul et al. 2017). During a clinical study, the C-PASS showed that its conclusion agreed with physicians’ diagnoses with face-to-face clinical evaluation 94.5% of the time (Epperson and Hantsoo 2017). With over 200 million downloads of menstrual tracking apps, the potential for a diagnostic tool like C-PASS to be incorporated into an app should be considered to facilitate accurate clinical diagnoses of PMDD (Levy & Romo-Avilés, 2019; Naik et al., 2023).
Open Access
Best Practices in Education: A Look Into the Educational Delivery Models That Produce the Best Outcomes for Children with Disabilities
(University of Oregon, 2024-12) Bullard, Hailey; Durany, Karen; Rovak, Angela; Zinser, Jarrod
Education is a fundamental right for all individuals. Yet, students with disabilities often face significant barriers to achieving their full potential. Various methodologies and modalities of educating this diverse population exist; thus, it is difficult to select one that produces successful outcomes consistently. This research aims to understand which model of education elicits the best outcomes for students with disabilities. By reviewing existing literature, this study seeks to highlight evidence-based practices that not only enhance academic achievement but also promote social and emotional development in the child. As such, the findings of this research will strengthen efforts to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for those with disabilities. This research seeks to answer the question: What educational delivery model produces the best outcomes for students with disabilities and how can we implement these methods into the classroom?