All Faculty Deposits

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/70873

The "All Faculty Deposits" collection contains works deposited by faculty and appointed delegates from the Elements (EFARs) system. For help with Elements, see Frequently Asked Questions on the Provost's website. In general, items can only be deposited if the item is a scholarly article that is covered by Virginia Tech's open access policy, or the item is openly licensed or in the public domain, or the item is permitted to be posted online under the journal/publisher policy, or the depositor owns the copyright. See Right to Deposit on the VTechWorks Help page. If you have questions email us at vtechworks@vt.edu.

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Review of Emotion Regulation Psychosocial Interventions for Children and Adolescents with ADHD
Breaux, Rosanna; Majusiak, Charity; Cash, Annah R.; Pham, Stephanie N.; Le, Michelle (MDPI, 2026-06-01)
Emotion dysregulation (ED), emotional responses that impair goal-directed behavior, have been argued to be a core characteristic of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and are associated with functional impairment beyond the core symptoms of ADHD. Additionally, deficits in emotion regulation (ER), the ability to increase, decrease, or maintain the intensity, duration, and trajectory of emotions are common among children and adolescents with ADHD. Despite this, treatment efforts to improve such ER abilities and to decrease ED in youths with ADHD have been limited, particularly during the adolescent developmental period. Clinical knowledge was used to inform PsycInfo and Google Scholar searches to identify the relevant literature. This narrative review discusses transdiagnostic interventions (cognitive behavioral therapy, the Unified Protocol for Children/Adolescents, dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness-based interventions) that can be used to target ER in ADHD, and interventions for youths with ADHD that either have been found to improve ER outcomes or that directly target ER/ED for youths with ADHD and their families. We end our review by highlighting the gaps and limitations in the existing literature prior to drawing conclusions and making recommendations for future research in this important area.
Pawsitive Connections: Understanding How Informal Pet Interactions Relate to Daily Youth Functioning
Mitropoulos, Tanya; McDonald, Shelby; Calderwood, Charles; Breaux, Rosanna (Wiley, 2026-06-01)
Introduction: Human-animal interaction (HAI) has been linked to well-being across functional domains and throughout the lifespan. Limited research has explored specific types of informal HAIs with pets or the impact of HAI in daily life. Methods: Over 2 weeks in 2021, caregivers of youth (N = 42; ages 6–17, M = 12.21; 50% male) reported daily on their child's pet interactions (seven HAIs [e.g., walking, petting, taking care of], time spent with pets) and academic, emotional–behavioral, and interpersonal functioning. Our sample consisted of youth who owned at least one pet, had a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment through our Child Study Center in the southeastern United States, and whose caregivers completed at least three daily ratings. Results: We found that the type of HAI mattered in whether it was associated with better or worse outcomes for youth, with taking care of pets being robustly associated with better academic and emotional-behavioral functioning but playing with and napping with pets being linked to more difficulties. Napping with pets was associated with more difficulties for adolescents (12+), but unrelated to difficulties for children. Conclusions: Taking care of pets (but not playing with or simply spending time with pets) is beneficial for youth functioning; however, HAI may be problematic for youth with elevated psychopathology symptoms.
From Notes to Networks: Using Obsidian to Teach Metadata and Linked Data
Long, Kara; Yunes, Erin (Code4Lib, 2026-10-21)
In this article, we describe a novel use of the note-taking software Obsidian as a method for users without formal training in metadata creation to develop culturally relevant data literacies across two digital archiving projects. We explain how Obsidian’s built-in use of linked data provides an open-source, flexible, and potentially scalable way for users to creatively interact with digitized materials, navigate and create metadata, and model relationships between digital objects. Furthermore, we demonstrate how Obsidian’s local and offline hosting features can be leveraged to include team members with low or unreliable internet access.
Designing for Honest AI Use: What Happens When Students Must Disclose?
Kaufman, Eric K. (Virginia Tech Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies, 2026-08-13)
Asking students to disclose their AI use seems straightforward—until you try it. This lightning talk reflects on efforts to require student disclosure of generative AI use across four graduate-level courses, including three asynchronous online offerings. In response to growing ambiguity around academic integrity, I introduced a combination of explicit syllabus language, ongoing communication, and an AI transparency checklist that asked students to document how AI tools were used across stages of their work (e.g., ideation, drafting, editing). The goal was to move away from a policing model of academic integrity toward a transparency-based approach that treats AI use as permissible but accountable. Students were encouraged to view AI as a partner in their learning process while maintaining responsibility for accuracy, attribution, and original thinking. What emerged was more complex than anticipated. While some students engaged with the transparency framework as intended, others continued to use AI in ways that were undisclosed or inconsistent with course expectations, including cases referred for academic misconduct. These mixed outcomes suggest that requiring disclosure alone does not resolve the challenges faculty face. Instead, transparency appears to surface a deeper issue: many students lack clear frameworks for deciding when and how AI use supports—or undermines—their learning. This session will share practical materials (including a reusable transparency checklist) and reflect on implications for teaching. I argue that disclosure requirements must be paired with intentional efforts to build student judgment and AI literacy, reframing integrity as a function of visible process, not just final products.
Bidirectional relations between parent emotion socialization and youth psychopathology and neurodiversity
Breaux, Rosanna; Pham, Stephanie N.; Le, Michelle; Shroff, Delshad M. (Routledge, 2026-08)
Over the past few decades, the field of parenting research has begun to examine the reciprocal effects of children and their parents on each other’s behaviors and well-being (e.g., Pezzoli et al., 2024; Wang & Gai, 2024). Consistent with this shift, this chapter reviews the bidirectional associations between caregiver (e.g., biological parents, legal guardians) emotion socialization (ES) and youth psychopathology and neurodiversity. We do this by first defining ES, then discussing the growing focus in research on ES practices within clinical child and neurodiverse samples, followed by briefly reviewing research on ES practices among caregivers of children with various mental health diagnoses (i.e., internalizing, externalizing, disordered eating, and neurodiversity). We next summarize the literature that investigates caregiver effects (i.e., how caregiver ES predicts child outcomes) and child effects (i.e., how child factors impact caregiver ES practices) prior to discussing the limited, but growing literature that simultaneously examines bidirectional caregiver and child effects. We conclude by making recommendations for future research directions.
Parent Profiles as Predictors of Emotion Dysregulation in Adolescence: Comparing Youth With and Without ADHD
Pham, Stephanie N.; Breaux, Rosanna; Langberg, Joshua M.; Becker, Stephen P. (Taylor & Francis, 2026-06)
Objective: Parents and caregivers substantially contribute to youth emotional development. Emotion dysregulation is a significant, pervasive concern for youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, with adolescence being a salient but understudied developmental period. Several parent-related factors have shown to independently predict youth Emotion dysregulation. However, it is unclear whether there are underlying patterns of co-occurring parent-related factors that relate to emotion dysregulation in adolescents. This study examined potential latent profiles of parent factors and whether parent profiles (1) differed among parents of adolescents are diagnosed with or without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and (2) were associated with adolescent emotion dysregulation outcomes. Method: The study sample included 266 adolescents (54.1% male; 81.6% White; 51.1% comprehensively diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Results: Three distinct parent profiles emerged: Low Internalizing/Emotion dysregulation and High Authoritative Parenting (62.5% of sample), Moderate Internalizing/Emotion dysregulation and Permissive Parenting (10.9% of sample), and High Internalizing/Emotion dysregulation and Moderate Authoritative Parenting (26.6% of sample). Results indicated that parents of adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are more likely to be in the High Internalizing/Emotion dysregulation and Moderate Authoritative Parenting profile. Profiles characterized by authoritative parenting practices were generally associated with less emotion dysregulation, though no significant differences in self-reported adolescent emotion dysregulation were observed across profiles. Conclusion: These findings underscore the potential for parent psychopathology, emotion dysregulation, and parenting practices to serve as targets for interventions aimed at reducing emotion dysregulation, particularly in neurodiverse populations.
Fatty acid regulation and phosphatidylethanolamine biosynthesis are important for hepatitis E virus replication
Yadav, Kush K.; Bhandari, Menuka; Mahsoub, Hassan M.; Park, Young Bin; Le, Huong Van; Choi, Jae Mun; Brown, Hannah M.; Rajashekara, Gireesh; Kenney, Scott P.; Meng, Xiang-Jin (National Academy of Sciences, 2026-07-07)
Hepatitis E virus (HEV), a leading cause of viral hepatitis globally, is associated with adverse outcomes during pregnancy. Despite its clinical significance, the mechanisms driving enhanced HEV replication during pregnancy remain poorly understood. In this study, we uncover a lipid-mediated pathway that facilitates HEV replication, with potential implications for pregnancy-associated pathogenesis. Lipidomic profiling reveals a marked upregulation of oleic acid during HEV infection in both human liver cells and in HEV-3ra-infected pregnant rabbits. We showed that oleic acid significantly enhances HEV replication, possibly through interaction with a predicted fatty acid–binding domain (FABD) located within the papain-like cysteine protease region of the HEV ORF1 polyprotein. We further demonstrated that phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) levels are elevated during HEV-3ra infection in pregnant rabbits, and that inhibition of PE biosynthesis by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockdown and silencing of phosphatidylserine decarboxylase/ phosphoethanolamine cytidylyltransferase genes that are responsible for PE synthesis resulted in decreased HEV replication, indicating that PE is important for HEV replication. Additionally, we found that placental lactogen hormone, which is elevated during late pregnancy, stimulated fatty acid accumulation and potentiated HEV replication, therefore providing a potential explanation for pregnancy-associated adverse outcomes. Collectively, our findings reveal an important role of host lipid metabolism in HEV replication and offer mechanistic insights into lipid-dependent enhancement of HEV replication and a potential role of lipid reprogramming in HEV pathogenesis. The results may inform potential future anti-HEV therapeutic strategies targeting lipid pathways.
From Collectivism to Sustainability via Social Capital: Case Studies of Three Social Enterprises from India
Talukdar, Shahidur Rashid (Scientific Forefront, 2026-08-13)
The sustainability of socio-ecological systems surrounding us is crucial for our collective future. To achieve sustainability, it is essential to harness various forms of capital, including natural, physical, human, and social capital. This paper posits that developing countries can leverage their abundant social capital—rooted in collectivist traditions—to enhance social, economic, and environmental sustainability. This argument is supported by case studies of three notable social enterprises in India. The watershed development initiatives and natural resource management efforts led by Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) demonstrate that social capital can significantly improve livelihoods, promote gender equity, preserve natural resources, and encourage ecologically balanced development. The success of Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad (LIJJAT)—a social enterprise that employs over 45,000 owner-workers—illustrates how harnessing social capital can empower women and promote sustainable livelihoods. Similarly, the achievements of Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL) showcase the transformative power of social capital in creating a thriving cooperative model that not only generates substantial economic benefits but also supports the livelihood of its 1,000 employees and serves 3.6 million members. By helping millions of rural farmers, AMUL is crucial in alleviating poverty and reducing inequality. These examples underscore the significant potential of social capital in driving sustainable development across various sectors in India. Given these organisations’ impact, scale, and enduring success, such initiatives can be replicated in many other developing countries.
Ethylene Glycol Toxicity Presenting as a Rapidly Deteriorating Focal Neurological Exam and Reversible Cerebral Herniation Syndrome
Klein, Andrea L.; Rose-Inman, Hayley; Stromberg, Paul E.; Seifert, Allison; Moore, Andrew B. (Elsevier, 2026-06-01)
Ethylene glycol toxicity is an exceedingly rare toxic encephalopathy. Ethylene glycol is the primary toxin in antifreeze and exhibits its toxicologic effects via metabolites glycolic and oxalic acids, driving a profound metabolic acidemia. Classically, ethylene glycol toxicity presents as inebriation without focal neurological deficits. Here we describe a case of a healthy older adult who ingested antifreeze and presented with 1 h of dysarthria, left-sided facial droop, and left-sided hemiplegia and rapidly progressed to a clinical cerebral herniation syndrome from which he ultimately fully recovered. This case is an example of the breadth of altered mental status presentations that are possible with ethylene glycol toxicity, while modeling the classic laboratory and imaging findings of the toxic encephalopathy. The epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, management, and prognosis of ethylene glycol toxicity will be discussed.
Evaluation of Permanent Deformation Characteristics of BMD Surface Mixtures under Incremental Loading in Accelerated Pavement Testing
Tong, Bilin; Habbouche, Jhony; Flintsch, Gerardo W.; Diefenderfer, Brian K. (American Society of Civil Engineers, 2026-06)
Balanced mix design (BMD) has advanced the development of engineered asphalt pavement, especially those incorporating high reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) contents. Accelerated pavement testing (APT) provides a means to replicate traffic loading and more rapidly assess pavement performance, yet the influence of varying stress levels on rutting behavior remains insufficiently understood. This study evaluated the rutting performance of six BMD mixtures, having different RAP contents, under incremental APT loading using a time-hardening approach to model rut depth. Mixtures with 45% and 60% RAP exhibited numerically greater rutting than the 30% RAP control mixture, following adjustments made to enhance cracking resistance, although all but one met specification requirements. The time-hardening model effectively captured load-dependent rutting behavior, and deformation-equivalency ratio trends reflected strain hardening while confirming mixture sensitivity to higher loads. Examination of Load Equivalency Factors (LEFs) offers a new perspective for assessing damage accumulation for BMD evaluation, and the results indicate that HRAP (>30% RAP) BMD mixtures can be designed to exhibit lower damage rates than the 30% RAP mixtures.
Privatizing the Internet: Competing Visions and Chaotic Events, 1987-1995
Abbate, Janet E. (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2010)
The National Science Foundation played a key role in the history of the Internet by overseeing its transition from government to private operation. In the process, NSF was forced to balance the competing visions of scientists who wanted a purely academic network, politicians such as Al Gore who wanted a broader National Research and Education Network, and private industry, which wanted to offer commercial networking services. This article describes the conflicts, trade-offs, and unexpected events that led to a technical and social transformation of the Internet.
Industry-specific effect of CSR initiatives: Hotels and airlines
Casado-Diaz, Ana B.; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Ruiz-Moreno, Felipe; Sellers, Ricardo (Emerald, 2014-04-01)
Purpose: This study aims to examine the relationships between a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and its performance and risk. The authors hypothesize that industry-level effects are highly determinant of the sign and magnitude of these relationships to establish a ranking of industries to identify the position of the most prominent tourism-related industries: hotels and airlines. Based on the cybernetic model of decision making and the heuristics thereof, shareholders base their investment decisions derived from CSR announcements on the idea that the industries behave differently; their fixed costs being a relevant factor. Design/methodology/approach: The authors estimate the industry-specific effects of CSR initiatives on firms' performance and risk using a sample of 583 announcements from the Spanish Stock Market. Findings: The results show that while CSR announcements have a positive effect on performance when the authors do not account for industry-specific factors, once the authors incorporate these factors into the analysis, the authors find that firm performance and risk vary quite substantially as a function of the industry to which the firm belongs. Interestingly, while the hotel industry presents an average behavior (standing at 9th position in returns, 15th in terms of risk, and 8th according to the ratio returns/volatility), the airline industry presents the worst situation of all industries: last in performance and last in risk. Practical implications: The results help managers assess their decisions and allocate CSR resources optimally. Originality/value: This article is the first attempt to empirically test and comprehensively detect the different relationships between CSR and firm performance across industries.
Is Sustainability Maturity Inferable from Corporate Reporting? A Feasibility Study
Boone, Stephanie; Landers, Myles; Gabler, Colin; Brubaker, Eric Reynolds (2026-08-07)
Sustainability has evolved from a peripheral concern to a core strategic differentiator, yet product managers and engineers must grapple with uncertainty about how to make product decisions that align with their firm’s sustainability strategy. A firm’s sustainability strategy and maturity are typically obscure and therefore handled through assumption. Prior research shows that sustainability signals exist in firms’ disclosures. The present study uses publicly available sustainability-related reports from a broad set of 38 firms to investigate whether sustainability maturity can be inferred directly from firms’ public reporting. Reports were analyzed using layout-aware text extraction, semantic embeddings, and a centroid-based similarity approach aligned with the Hierarchy of Sustainable Business Strategy (HSBS) framework. This method assesses whether corporate disclosures contain measurable signals of sustainability positioning. Results demonstrate the feasibility of using an automated natural language processing approach to infer theoretically defined sustainability maturity levels from corporate reports. While we find that sustainability maturity levels are detectable, the main contribution is not classification but uncertainty reduction for product developers: externally available disclosures can provide an early-stage proxy for organizational positioning, enabling engineers to reason about alignment and implementation risk when making product decisions. This reframes sustainability maturity from an assumed unknown into a measurable contextual factor for decision making in product development.
ROPES Hub Research Brief: Information Sharing Between Institutions in Support of Change
Richardson, Amy Jo; Knight, David B.; Lee, Walter C. (2026-08-05)
Beyond Strength: Black Women’s Perceptions of Physical Activity and Mental Health Through Superwoman Schema and Black Feminist Theory
Turner, Breana; Jiles, Kristina; Thompson, Sydney; Mbanzendore, Kayla; Wenzel, Sophie; Hosig, Kathy (SAGE Publications, 2026-06)
Introduction: Black women experience disproportionate burdens of chronic disease and mental health challenges and are less likely to meet recommended levels of physical activity. However, existing research remains limited in centering Black women’s lived experiences and perceptions related to health behaviors. This study examined Black women’s perceptions of health behaviors through a culturally congruent lens guided by Superwoman Schema (SWS) and Black Feminist Theory (BFT). Methods: Eighteen focus groups (N = 81) were conducted with Black women across Virginia between January 2024 and December 2024. Participants were grouped by generation and assigned to SWS- or BFT-guided discussion questions. Discussions were facilitated by Black women researchers and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis. Deductive codes informed by SWS and BFT were combined with inductive coding to generate themes. Results: Themes emerged related to: Mental and Emotional Health, Health Infrastructure, Burden of Black Womanhood, Societal Imposition, and Divine Intervention. Participants described physical activity as a form of emotional regulation. Participants described key barriers and facilitators influencing engagement in physical activity and mental health care, including therapist concordance, hair politics, expectations of strength, and religious framing. Conclusions: Using culturally congruent frameworks illuminates how intersecting racialized and gendered expectations shape Black women’s health behaviors and engagement, underscoring the importance of centering lived experience in advancing health equity.
Beyond Extraversion: Exploring Leadership Efficacy in Introverted College Students
Kaufman, Eric K.; Martin, Perry D. (2026-07-28)
Leadership education has expanded significantly across higher education, yet little is known about how personality shapes students’ developmental experiences. Meta-analytic research consistently identifies extraversion as a strong predictor of leader emergence, raising concerns that leadership environments may implicitly privilege visible, high-energy behavioral norms. This qualitative study examines how college students who identify as more introverted construct leadership efficacy within leadership-rich collegiate contexts. Guided by Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy framework and informed by Eysenck’s (1967) arousal-based personality theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 undergraduate students engaged in leadership-focused living-learning communities. Findings indicate that leadership efficacy among introverted students develops through distinct pathways: scaffolded mastery experiences (particularly teaching and mentoring roles), relationally proximal role models, potential-focused encouragement from credible sources, and intentional regulation of cognitive-emotional energy. These findings extend self-efficacy theory into leadership education by illustrating personality-mediated efficacy construction. Implications suggest that leadership educators can expand developmental access by diversifying mastery pathways, broadening leadership archetypes, recalibrating feedback practices, and designing programs attentive to cognitive-emotional sustainability. Expanding who perceives themselves as capable of leading may be as consequential as refining leadership education curricula.
Harrisonburg, VA: Conceptual Downtown Master Planting Plan and Focus Area Designs
Gilboy, Elizabeth; Gleason, Harry; Kakkadan, Sneha; Ekberg, Caitlyn (Community Design Assistance Center, 2026-04-30)
Using Imagination & Creation to Facilitate Immersion & Transferability in Technical Writing Assignments
McNabb, Kayla B. (2015-03-07)
“Imagination and Creation in the Technical Writing Classroom: Innovative Methods for Encouraging Rhetorical Decision-Making and Transfer” Rhetorical decision-making, with the explicit goals of increasing critical thinking skills and preparing students for transferring their classroom experiences to real-world situations, has become a primary concern of college writing courses across the country (CWPA 2014 Outcomes Statement). In technical and professional writing classrooms, where emphases on genre knowledge and meeting audience expectations are the norm, creativity and imagination may seem like an unlikely fit for fostering such skills. This panel’s members believe such a use of creativity and imagination is beneficial to developing critical and rhetorical awareness in technical environments. We will present three different strategies for teaching students to be rhetorically decisive and able to transfer those skills by focusing on creativity in professional and technical writing classrooms. Presentation 1: Analysis as a mode of exploration and discovery in technical writing classrooms. When teaching writing, it is important encourage students to be creators, rather than hasty replicators. Taking things apart and putting them back together is an essential way of understanding causes and effects. To help students become informed decision-makers, writing teachers have the opportunity engage them with this deconstruction and reconstruction. Drawing on the concepts of mentor texts and tactile learning, this presentation will share a set of strategies for helping students engage with form and content by discovering the ways written documents, physical objects, and processes function. Presentation 2: Using imagination and creation to facilitate immersion and transferability in technical writing assignments. To help students better understand the contexts for their assignments, teachers must craft assignments that allow for a level of immersion. There are three approaches to creating immersion through imagination and creation that seem particularly useful in technical writing classrooms: client-based projects, problem-based learning, and innovative real-world writing situations. Moving from more traditional to more progressive assignments, this presenter will show how innovative methods will encourage students to use their imaginations while creating tangible, useful texts and provide them the opportunities to practice rhetorical decision-making that will be beneficial in future writing contexts. Presentation 3: Rhetorical analysis as a means of engaging students’ imaginations and creativity. A quick review of technical and professional writing programs reveals that the majority of technical and professional writing courses focus on production, with courses ranging from report and grant proposal writing to designing online content. The underlying emphases are sound: audiences, purposes, genres and forms, with a detailed focus on conventions. What is often lacking is a perspective about the impact of that writing: What are these documents designed to do? How are they received? What are their short- and long-term impacts? Such a perspective requires creativity and imagination. Emphasizing the value of self-reflection, critical reading and analysis, and a multicultural context, while not being limited by perceived boundaries between literature, composition, and professional writing, this presentation describes a capstone course emphasizing rhetorical decision-making helps students gain qualities Cicero believed were essential to making human social life possible: practical experience, expert knowledge, and a sense of responsibility for private and public life.
Tourist satisfaction and travel expenditures: A reference-dependent behavioral economics perspective
Jung, Hyojun; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Elsevier, 2026-07)
Motivated by limitations in priord research that assumes linear and symmetric satisfaction–spending relationships, this study applies a reference-dependent framework grounded in prospect theory to examine how tourist satisfaction measured relative to culturally and motivationally shaped reference points influences expenditure behavior in inbound tourism. Using a pseudo-panel of international tourists visiting South Korea and estimating a two-way fixed effects model, the results show that expenditure responds to deviations from reference points rather than to absolute satisfaction levels. Spending responses differ across gain and loss domains, with larger effects in the loss domain, and exhibit nonlinear dynamics. These findings suggest that reference-dependent evaluations systematically translate into observable tourist spending behavior, advancing behavioral perspectives in tourism expenditure research.
Efficiency and Equity in Screening for Participants in Representative Cybersecurity Studies
Chen, Po-Yu; Oh, Jinwoo; Hsing, Hsiang-Wen; Lau, Nathan; Beltz, Brandon; Wu, Peggy; Zhu, Quanyan (Springer, 2026-07-31)
Human factors research in cybersecurity confronts the practical challenge of how to recruit and screen participants with the skills necessary to perform demanding, ecologically valid tasks. Credible results from hacking studies rely on participants possessing sufficient technical skills to maneuver inside a representative network in a cyber range. Screening via self-reports can be unreliable, while rigorous skills testing is resource intensive. This paper presents empirical research investigating the effectiveness of cybersecurity certifications and cyber range skills tests for screening domain-specific competence. The Guarding Against Malicious Biased Threats (GAMBiT) project recruited participants with a two-stage screening process. The project screened 269 candidates for a final sample of 61 qualified participants. We compared the capability between the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) certification and a custom Capture-the-Flag (CTF) assessment (“Cedar Bunny”) at predicting actual performance in a two-day cyber range experiment. Results indicate that OSCP holders scored significantly higher on the skills test (p < 0.001) and progressed further in the hacking experiment (p = 0.002) than non-holders. Skills test scores correlated moderately and positively with hacking progress (ρ = 0.344). Furthermore, hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that the skills test provided incremental predictive validity (ΔR2 = 5.2%) beyond certification alone. These findings suggest that while certifications are efficient proxies and skills tests can be effective supplements for identifying viable, albeit non-certified, participants. We propose a mixed screening approach to balance recruitment efficiency and participant diversity.

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