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The Psychological Significance Of Cultural And Religious Values Among The Arab Population, Michel Sherif Mikhail Jun 2024

The Psychological Significance Of Cultural And Religious Values Among The Arab Population, Michel Sherif Mikhail

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Values, which are the guiding principles and beliefs of our lives, have an influence over one’s psychological health. This study aims to investigate how Schwartz’s four higher-order values (conservation, openness to change, self-transcendence, and self-enhancement) and religious values influence psychological health among the Arab population. Methods: A total of 1,023 respondent from nine Arab countries aged 18 to 71 filled an online survey with measures of the following constructs: Schwartz’s four higher-order values (Portrait Value Questionnaire-21), religious values (Sahin’s Index of Islamic Moral Values), and general psychological health (General Health Questionnaire-28). Results: Two models of multiple regression were …


Evaluation Of Cultural-Linguistic Factors In Speech-Language Testing With English Learners, Mayra Alejandra Reyes Ruiz Jan 2024

Evaluation Of Cultural-Linguistic Factors In Speech-Language Testing With English Learners, Mayra Alejandra Reyes Ruiz

Theses and Dissertations

As the population of schools increases in diversity, school psychologists are challenged to provide equitable assessments for English Language Learners. However, due to lack of training in non-discriminatory assessment, inconsistent administration practices, and lack of knowledge of language development, in some districts, ELLs are overrepresented in Special Education, including Speech Language Impairment. For fair and a valid assessment, it is imperative that practitioners understand the cultural and linguistic development factors that affect ELL test performance. The Culture-Language Test Classifications, and Culture-Language Interpretive Matrix provide practitioners with information on the degree of cultural loading and linguistic demand required on a test, …


How Do Cultural Norms Shape Healthy Eating In African Americans? The Role Of Cultural Congruence And Mindsets Of Health In Healthy Eating Intentions Among African American College Students, Danyel Smith Jan 2023

How Do Cultural Norms Shape Healthy Eating In African Americans? The Role Of Cultural Congruence And Mindsets Of Health In Healthy Eating Intentions Among African American College Students, Danyel Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Targeting dietary behaviors is a predominant strategy to reduce rates of obesity among African Americans, across the lifespan. Notably, dietary behaviors are shaped by social, cultural and environmental affordances. This study integrated Theory of planned behavior (TPB), identity-based motivation, and mindset theory to unearth cultural mechanisms that inform motivations to eat healthy among African American college students. This project employed a cross-sectional (Study 1) and experimental design (Study 2) to contextualize the antecedents of intentions to eat healthy among African American college students. Recruitment occurred via university-wide digital channels. Eligible participants: were 18+ years; Black/African American; were undergraduate students; and …


Race, Racial Matching, And Cultural Understanding As Predictors Of Treatment Engagement In Youth Mental Health Services, Wendy Chu Apr 2022

Race, Racial Matching, And Cultural Understanding As Predictors Of Treatment Engagement In Youth Mental Health Services, Wendy Chu

Theses and Dissertations

Racially marginalized youth experience barriers that impact their ability to maximally benefit from mental health services; thus, efforts to identify strategies that support youth treatment engagement may address mental health and treatment disparities. This study examined the role of youth race, youth-therapist racial matching, and youthreported therapist cultural understanding on youth’s early treatment engagement in mental health services. The youth sample (n = 1159; Mage = 13.8 years, SD = 2.9; 52.1% female) comprised of 778 (67.1%) Latinx, 221 (19.1%) African American, 139 (12.0%) White, and 21 (1.8%) Asian American clients. The therapist sample (n = 126; Mage …


Clinical Adaptations Of Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, And Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy As A Result Of Culture And Language, Rebecca Wade Jan 2022

Clinical Adaptations Of Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, And Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy As A Result Of Culture And Language, Rebecca Wade

Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive Behavioral Therapies are frequently used and highly effective; however, most of the research is conducted on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations who are relatively homogeneous. The present study evaluated the use and adaptations of Cognitive Therapy (CT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) based upon WEIRD status, language, and cultural values as measured by Hofstede's country comparison (2021). In a survey, therapists worldwide (n=121) reported their use and adaptation of the techniques within their therapeutic orientation. Although no significant differences were found between WEIRD or language groupings specific to CT, CBT, or …


When Being Strong Hurts: Trauma And The Strong Black Woman Stereotype, Cynthia Nicole White Jul 2021

When Being Strong Hurts: Trauma And The Strong Black Woman Stereotype, Cynthia Nicole White

Theses and Dissertations

There are several research studies which suggest that, when confronted with stress or trauma, Black women in the United States seek help less than other populations, particularly White women. Part of the reason for this reluctance towards help-seeking may be explained by the American cultural stereotype of the Strong Black Woman (SBW). The Strong Black Woman is one who overcomes all obstacles, remains strong despite problems, and sacrifices herself for others. Research on the Strong Black Woman stereotype is scarce, but the limited research that exists found that the stereotype consists of 3 factors: Mask of Strength, Self-Reliance/Strength, and Caretaking. …


Profiles And Culture: Multi-Level Latent Profiles Based On Personality Traits And Facets And Profile Influences On Performance Outcomes Across Cultures, Weiwei Liu Jul 2021

Profiles And Culture: Multi-Level Latent Profiles Based On Personality Traits And Facets And Profile Influences On Performance Outcomes Across Cultures, Weiwei Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Personality research has traditionally adopted a variable-centric approach but recently more studies have adopted a person-centric approach. A person-centric approach can provide additional insights in that it explores for multiple unobserved subgroups within a population and examines the extent to which relationships may differ across subgroups. The current study adds to this growing area in four ways. First, studies have attempted to identify common personality profiles, but results have been inconsistent and very few studies have examined work-relevant samples. The current study addresses this issue based on a large sample that is diverse in terms of industries, occupations, and countries. …


Culturally-Relevant Factors That Influence Healthy Eating Among African American College Students, Danyel Smith Jan 2020

Culturally-Relevant Factors That Influence Healthy Eating Among African American College Students, Danyel Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Obesity is a national epidemic in the US, disproportionately affecting African Americans, such that the obesity prevalence in African Americans (49.6%) surpassed the national prevalence (42.4%) in 2018. Those same disparities exist at the collegiate level, such that 27.4% of a sample of African Americans college students had obesity, surpassing the national prevalence of obesity (12.1%) in 2018. Diet, an important driver of obesity, is influenced by several psychological, social, and environmental factors. However, cultural factors influencing diet are understudied among African American college students. The overarching goal of the current study was to identify culturally-relevant factors that promote healthy …


Deaf Cultural Socialization: Exploring The Role Of Parents In Deaf Cultural Identity Development, Macrae Husting Aug 2019

Deaf Cultural Socialization: Exploring The Role Of Parents In Deaf Cultural Identity Development, Macrae Husting

Theses and Dissertations

There is an assumption in the Deaf identity literature that suggests that parents’ hearing status determines the cultural identity and well-being of deaf and hard of hearing individuals. This dissertation challenges that assumption. It does so by proffering an alternative explanation of the role that parents play by introducing two forms of socialization as mechanisms through which parents influence their child’s cultural identity development and well-being. Deaf cultural socialization is the process by which parents transmit messages to children regarding the importance and meaning of Deaf culture and membership in the Deaf community. Minority status socialization is the process by …


An Evaluation Of A Culture Interview Checklist For Behaviorally-Oriented Clinicians, Joshua Hursel Addington Jul 2019

An Evaluation Of A Culture Interview Checklist For Behaviorally-Oriented Clinicians, Joshua Hursel Addington

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there have been calls from within the field for behavior analysts to develop awareness of the impact of client culture on treatment. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a checklist as a tool for increasing the frequency of questions about client culture asked by behavioral clinicians during mock intake interviews. A multiple baseline across question types (diet, communication and reward/discipline) was used to evaluate the effects of a vague prompt and the Culture Interview Checklist (CIC). When instructed to ask questions about culture, none of the participants increased the number of questions asked …


Examining Justifiable And Unjustifiable Cultural Biases In Psychological Science, Jordan D. Hyde Dec 2016

Examining Justifiable And Unjustifiable Cultural Biases In Psychological Science, Jordan D. Hyde

Theses and Dissertations

Research in cultural psychology suggests that mind and behavior are necessarily cultural. The implications of this perspective call into question assumptions of scientific psychology's cultural neutrality and indicate that it may be a form of cultural community in its own right. As such, it seems that it will necessarily be defined by certain cultural biases that are exclusive of other cultural biases. Nevertheless, providing that scientists can strive to identify their explicit and implicit cultural biases, and so long as they can define their sciences in terms of cultural biases that are rational and mandatory within the internal logic of …


The Heart Of Strength: The Strong Black Woman Schema And Cardiovascular Disease Risk, Jasmine A. Abrams Jan 2015

The Heart Of Strength: The Strong Black Woman Schema And Cardiovascular Disease Risk, Jasmine A. Abrams

Theses and Dissertations

Black women are disproportionately affected by cardiovascular disease (CVD). While chronic stress has been identified as a key contributor to CVD risk, research has not identified the specific mechanisms through which stress influences CVD risk among Black women. Research suggests that in response to stress, Black women who internalize the SBW Schema engage in high effort coping, avoidant coping, postponement of self-care, and other maladaptive health behaviors and experience premature health deterioration. However, it is important to consider that internalization of the SBW Schema may exert differential effects on the physiological profiles of Black women due to varied interpretations of …


Forbearance Across Culture, Yin Lin Jan 2015

Forbearance Across Culture, Yin Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Forbearance is defined for the purpose of the present dissertation as, “the attempt to suppress the visible signs of negative emotion (i.e., emotional expression) and visible behaviors (i.e., the expression of negative vengeful or avoidant motives) in response to a hurt or offense, often (but not always) for the sake of group harmony.” I reviewed the literature on forbearance and cross-cultural studies in suppression of emotion or emotional expression under the framework of New Big Five personality processes and cultural models of self and relating. Then I offered three propositions about forbearance. Furthermore, I collected three samples and …


Notions Of Spirits As Agents Of Mental Illness Among The Akan Of Ghana: A Cultural-Psychological Exploration, Annabella Opare-Henaku Apr 2013

Notions Of Spirits As Agents Of Mental Illness Among The Akan Of Ghana: A Cultural-Psychological Exploration, Annabella Opare-Henaku

Theses and Dissertations

The study explores lay conceptualizations of mental illness among the Akans of Ghana as influenced by their cultural worldview. Akan, the largest ethnic group in Ghana, is noted for the use of supernatural attributions for various health-related issues. The supernatural attributions are based on Akan ontological belief that the universe is unitary such that there is no clear distinction between physical and spiritual occurrences. This worldview guides Akans in how they deal with a wide range of issues including their mental health. Clinicians and other mental health professionals who rely solely on biomedical approaches to mental health fail to meet …


Children Who Have Experienced Trauma: An Examination Of The Role Of Race, Ethnicity, And Cultural Factors In Presenting Symptoms And At Three Month (Or First Recorded) Follow Up, Stephanie Susanne Genser Wolf Apr 2013

Children Who Have Experienced Trauma: An Examination Of The Role Of Race, Ethnicity, And Cultural Factors In Presenting Symptoms And At Three Month (Or First Recorded) Follow Up, Stephanie Susanne Genser Wolf

Theses and Dissertations

Child traumatic stress is a pervasive problem that affects the well-being and healthy development of children from all races, ethnicities, and cultures. Major factors known to affect trauma symptoms include type of trauma, level or severity of trauma exposure, and age and gender of children. Utilizing Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, this study measured the additional influence of children’s race, ethnicity, and cultural factors on symptoms after trauma. A dataset of children in treatment after experiencing trauma (0-21 years, N = 10,115) from The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), a federally funded initiative that collected longitudinal data across 56 research and …


Efficacy Of Reach Forgiveness For Foreign And Virginia Students, Yin Lin May 2012

Efficacy Of Reach Forgiveness For Foreign And Virginia Students, Yin Lin

Theses and Dissertations

People agree that forgiveness is a virtue in essentially all countries. However, different cultures have different ideas about how willing one should forgive and under what circumstances. Although the study occurred in the USA, I recruited both foreign-extraction and Virginia born-and-raised female college students (N=102) to participate a six-hour REACH forgiveness intervention, promoting their forgiveness through psychoeducational groups. In my thesis, I investigated whether students of foreign extraction and Virginia-born students would respond similarly to the intervention. I operationalized culture in two ways—by country and by individual self-reported self-construal. I measured forgiveness using two measures—decisional forgiveness and emotional forgiveness. I …


Parent And Professional Perspectives About Autism Spectrum Disorders In South India: Beliefs, Practices, And Parent-Professional Relationships., Neeraja Ravindran Apr 2012

Parent And Professional Perspectives About Autism Spectrum Disorders In South India: Beliefs, Practices, And Parent-Professional Relationships., Neeraja Ravindran

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experience of parents and professionals living in a large metropolitan city in South India who were raising and/or working with a child with an autism spectrum disorder. The study explored the unique perspectives of parents and professionals regarding their beliefs and practices about autism, as well as the nature of the parent-professional relationship. Nineteen parents (all mothers) and 21 professionals were interviewed in person at four schools, an early intervention program, a hospital clinic, and a physician’s office. Themes were developed using qualitative software, and reliability was established through multiple …


Cultural Factors And Communication During Medical Consultations With Hiv-Positive Racial/Ethnic Minority Patients, Lillian Stevens Aug 2010

Cultural Factors And Communication During Medical Consultations With Hiv-Positive Racial/Ethnic Minority Patients, Lillian Stevens

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationships between cultural characteristics, communication variables, and medical outcomes in HIV-positive racial/ethnic minority patients. Participants included 33 patients and 5 providers across two urban, community medical clinics. The patient sample was 61% African American, 24% Latino, and 15% Other/Mixed. The majority (73%) were male. Providers included one White female physician, one White male nurse practitioner, two White female nurse practitioners, and one White male physician assistant. In this descriptive study, patients completed self-report ratings of their desire for engagement in decision-making prior to their scheduled medical consultation. After their consultations, patients rated their provider regarding engagement …


Forgiveness, Individualism, And Collectivism, Joshua N. Hook Jan 2007

Forgiveness, Individualism, And Collectivism, Joshua N. Hook

Theses and Dissertations

Although the scientific study of forgiveness has flourished in recent years, the study of the effects of culture on forgiveness has been minimal. The present thesis reviews the literature examining the effects of individualism and collectivism on forgiveness. In Study 1, four scales are created that are hypothesized to relate to the study of culture and forgiveness. Evidence for the reliability and validity of these scales are presented. In Study 2, the effects of individualism and collectivism are empirically tested. Collectivistic forgivers understand forgiveness within the context of reconciliation, social harmony, and relational repair. Collectivistic forgiveness primarily involves a decision …


Making Friends To Last A Lifetime: An Ethnographic Study Of Parasocial Relationships And Soap Opera Characters, Emmalee Elizabeth Haight Pryor Jan 2002

Making Friends To Last A Lifetime: An Ethnographic Study Of Parasocial Relationships And Soap Opera Characters, Emmalee Elizabeth Haight Pryor

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to build theory about parasocial relationships and to examine what affect, if any, religion had on parasocial relationships. Using qualitative methods, the researcher watched the show three times with five women followed by an in-depth interview. The women chosen were LDS stay-at-home moms who had watched a soap opera for at least a year.
From this data came several surprising findings about religion and soap opera viewing. The women said they did not feel guilty about the content of the shows, rather the time required to watch. This guilt was alleviated by structuring their …