Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of An Aqua-Titanium Necklace On Running Speed When Examined At The Individual And Group Levels, Nathan A. Weber, Mychal A. Machado, Duane D. Wood

Modern Psychological Studies

Results from previous evaluations of athletic wearables infused with Aqua Titanium have been mixed with respect to ergogenic effectiveness. This might be due to exclusive reliance on group designs in previous studies. The purpose of our study was to evaluate and compare the individual and group differences in responsiveness to an Aqua-Titanium necklace. Using a single-subject (reversal) design, we measured the running speed of 10 healthy adults across baseline (no necklace), test (Aqua-Titanium necklace) and placebo conditions using a 61-m indoor track. The entire sample was then considered for group analyses. Results showed that our single-subject and group analyses produced …

Behavioral Health Crisis Intervention For Emergency Department Patients Pending Psychiatric Hospitalization, Colten Wayne Larsen

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Emergency departments (EDs) are often the first access point to services for suicidal patients (Miller et al., 2017) and assessment of risk. Suicide has become the second-most common cause of death for Americans, yet those at the most risk often have limited access to appropriate care. In addition, suicidal patients spend more time in the ED than those with other presenting problems. Compounding the problem is these patients who have the longest length of stay are medically stabilized but don’t receive treatment interventions related to their presenting problem. Together, these findings indicate a need for accessible intervention in the ED. …

"Moral Of The Story": How Children’S Books Regulated Race Relations Starting Before The Civil War To Today, Faleya Scales

History: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The relationship between the racial content displayed in children's books and the development of relationships between blacks and whites has consistently been one that has been overlooked. The purpose of this article is to address the correlation between the two topics while also explaining how racial propaganda in children's books has affected the psychology of those in the relationship. Children's books are key components of everyone's childhood and understanding how they have impacted how we think and behave in relationships with the other race is the key topic highlighted in this article. Not only do you get a perspective into …

A Review Of Mixed Methods Community-Based Participatory Research Applications In Mental Health, David E. Jones, Robin Lindquist-Grantz, Melissa Dejonckheere

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

The aim of the paper was to methodologically review the intersection of mixed methods research (MMR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) in the field of mental health research. We classify this intersecting approach as MMCBPR. The methodological review of empirical literature was conducted between October 2017 and March 2020 of full-text articles in Scopus, Pubmed, ProQuest Central, Web of Science, and EBSCOhost search engine databases in the English language. Twenty-nine studies meeting the inclusion criteria were included in the final analysis. We found some evidence of MMCBPR but it was limited by factors such as a lack of explicit rationales …

Exploring Optimism And Purpose In Life As Mediators Of The Association Between Childhood Socioeconomic Status And Common Cold Susceptibility, Stephanie Munduruca, Vivian Luong, Brooke N. Jenkins

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Americans suffer from 1 billion colds a year. Correspondingly, previous research has shown that lower socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood is associated with lower adult health, including decreased resistance to the common cold. This correlation between childhood SES and common cold susceptibility may be mediated by an individual's optimism and purpose in life. Of interest, several studies have found evidence that higher childhood SES is associated with a higher purpose of life and higher optimism. Furthermore, previous evidence has confirmed that higher optimism and higher purpose of life are linked to better …

Teaching Materialism Through Storytelling: A Collection Of Short Stories And Learning Materials, Zoie Zvonar, Katherine Arnold

Honors Projects

This collaborative projects seeks to combine the disciplines of psychology and writing into a collection of short stories and learning materials dedicated to teaching young students the psychological concept of materialism. In order to accomplish this goal, Zoie Zvonar and Katherine Arnold have designed and created a set of materials that seek to inform, educate, and instill in those young students what materialism is, how to recognize it in our own lives, its consequences, and potential strategies to lower high materialistic tendencies. Zoie Zvonar created the companion guide, learning activities for both students and instructors, and an additional resources list …

Psychologists' Use Of Touch In Individual Psychotherapy With Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Clients, Caroline M. Kobek Pezzarossi Ph.D, Irene W. Leigh Ph.D, Daniel S. Koo Ph.D

JADARA

The use of touch in psychotherapy is a topic often undiscussed in graduate training programs. Stenzel and Rupert’s 2004 study showed that nearly 90% of clinicians never or rarely offered touch to clients during a session. This study examined the use of touch in a psychotherapeutic setting with culturally Deaf clients, since touch is a culturally accepted, even expected, practice. Results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference among culturally Deaf therapists compared with the Stenzel and Rupert’s (2004) findings, but there is a statistically significant difference in those who identify as hearing and work with culturally Deaf clients. …

A Qualitative Study Of Differences Among Hearing Parents In Positive Experiences Raising A Deaf Child: An Emergent Model Informed By Positive Psychology​, Amy Szarkowski, Patrick J. Brice

JADARA

The current qualitative study explored the positive, internal, and growth-enhancing experiences hearing parents derived from raising a child who is deaf or hard of hearing. Based on characteristics of parents’ process and outcomes of the parenting experiences, three distinct parent patterns were identified. Reflective Positive Parents reflected deeply about their experiences, quickly and easily identified positive experiences, and were open to making adjustments to meet their child’s needs. Engaged Parents contemplated their experiences, yet decisions about how to best support their children in many remained unresolved; this group identified both positive and negative aspects of parenting and attempted to align …

Coachmotivation: Developing Transformational Leadership By Increasing Effective Communication Skills In The Workplace, Megan L. Schuller

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

Communication is an intrinsic part of the human experience and has been widely studied empirically and practically within organizations. It is the bedrock for many workplace behaviors and outcomes such as employee trust, engagement, job satisfaction, and transformational leadership. Nonetheless, effective communication continues to be a challenge for organizations across a variety of sectors. The current study examined whether a communications training, CoachMotivation (CM), increased perceived effective communication. CM is derived from clinical psychology skills for behavior change, namely, the Motivational Interviewing concepts of open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summary statements. This study also considered the Big Five personality traits …

International Travel: A Quantitative And Qualitative Analysis About How Study Abroad Opportunities Enhance One’S Global Perspective And Self-Awareness, Kristen Zink

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

As the world is becoming more interconnected, the importance of having a well-rounded, global education is necessary. To meet those needs, many students are electing to study abroad during their time in college. Although research has been done to examine the direct benefits of studying abroad, there has been little research done to differentiate the impacts of short-term and long-term study abroad. This research looked at how students reflected on both their short-term and long-term study abroad experiences and it examined the benefits of both lengths of travel. A quantitative analysis was done to analyze the benefits of short-term study …

Sensitive Periods For Psychosocial Risk In Childhood And Adolescence And Cardiometabolic Outcomes In Young Adulthood, Jenalee R. Doom, Kenia M. Rivera, Estela Blanco, Raquel Burrows, Paulina Correa-Burrows, Patricia L. East, Betsy Lozoff, Sheila Gahagan

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Greater psychosocial risk in childhood and adolescence predicts poorer cardiometabolic outcomes in adulthood. We assessed whether the timing of psychosocial risk from infancy through adolescence predicts cardiometabolic outcomes in young adulthood. Young adults and their mothers participated in a longitudinal study beginning in infancy in Santiago, Chile (N = 1040). At infancy, 5 years, 10 years, and adolescence, mothers reported on depressive symptoms, stressful experiences, support for child development in the home, father absence, parental education, and socioeconomic status (SES) to create a psychosocial risk composite at each time point. Young adults (52.1% female; 21–27 years) provided fasting serum samples …

Effects Of Alcohol Intoxication On Hostile Attribution Bias And Relational Aggression In Women, Alita M. Mobley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol intoxication is consistently linked to physical and sexual aggression in men, but not women. The lack of evidence supporting the relationship between alcohol and aggression for women could be due to a failure to measure relational aggression (i.e., harmful social manipulation), the form of aggression more commonly employed by women. Further, alcohol intoxication may interfere with the interpretation of social cues, resulting in greater perceived provocation in ambiguous social interactions and increased aggression. The current study examined the relationship between alcohol intoxication and relational aggression in women and the extent to which interpretation of social cues (i.e., hostile attribution …

Editorial: Investigating The Impact Of Current Issues On Leisure, Tourism, And Hospitality In Psychological Science, Anestis K. Fotiadis, Chris A. Vasilliadis, Tzung-Cheng Huan

All Works

No abstract provided.

Cyberchondria And Health Anxiety During The Covid19 Pandemic, Macey Grisso

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in mental health issues/problems. This research sought to assess whether cyberchondria during the pandemic resulted in an increase in health anxiety levels. A total of 45 participants from Longwood University completed either survey A, which contained a 6 item cyberchondria measure and the 18 item Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI), or survey B which contained a modified version of the cyberchondria measure and the SHAI. Survey B was modified to explicitly mention COVID-19 in the items. Our results found no difference in health anxiety levels between the two participants and an additional …

The Effect Of Covid-19 Related Stress On Self Perceived Level Of Health Behaviors, Holly Carper, Jacob Auerbach, Meghan Griffin

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

In our presentation, we looked to answer if Covid-19 related stress impacted health behaviors. In past research, any disruption in ones everyday routine can cause stress, thus changing their behavior. We looked to see how significantly the pandemic's stress has impacted people's health behaviors. We hypothesize that the pandemic will have had a negative impact on health behaviors in individuals.

The Risk Of The Pandemic: Covid-19s Effect On Risk And Protective Factors, Stephanie Willis

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Depression and Anxiety are mental health problems that affect the way a person thinks or feels. 36.4% of college students are affected by depression in their time at university and 41.6% of students are affected by anxiety. There are a variety of risk and protective factors that can contribute to higher or lower levels of mental health problems. Two of the more common factors are the amount of social interaction and financial stability. Covid 19 is a virus that has affected the health of many individuals. The virus has caused a global pandemic and in itself is an uncontrollable event. …

The Effects Of Different Living Environments On Anxiety During Covid-19, Nicole Copeland, Italy Gayles

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Because COVID-19 is such a new topic, we wanted to study how the virus impacted students' education by forcing students to learn via an online learning environment and how the change in learning environments affected students' anxiety levels. We chose to create a study where participants completed a survey that asked them to recall their thoughts and feelings from six months ago about taking online courses during the Spring 2020 semester. Most students were sent home for the last two months of the Spring 2020 semester. In the same survey, participants stated their thoughts and feelings about taking online courses …

The Effects Of Covid-19 Social Isolation On Binge-Drinking Behaviors In College Students, Grace Walton, Abigail Goldberg, Liam Mullen

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Alcohol sales have increased drastically during the COVID-19 quarantine (Rehm et al 2020) and people have begun drinking 2-3 more drinks on average, than they did prior to COVID-19 (Lechner et al 2020). We predicted that social isolation due to COVID-19 would negatively correlate with a person's number of binge-drinking episodes. 40 participants completed a survey and answered questions about the number of social contacts they maintain and their drinking habits. Participants took both the AUDIT-C and CAGE-4 questionnaires, which provide an accurate quantifiable value of a person's likelihood to engage in binge-drinking. There was no significant correlation present between …

An Exploration In Health Behavior: Conformity And Mask Usage, Kathryn Bates, Robert J. Rodenbaugh, Autumn Wiesner

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has started, preventative health behaviors have been encouraged as the way to beat this virus. In addition to increasing handwashing, face coverings or masks have become a part of our daily lives. It is important to understand when people are most likely to wear a mask in order to be able to help encourage everyone to partake in this behavior. We looked at the effects conformity had on mask usage. In a survey, we described a scenario with different numbers of people in a group wearing a mask and asked the participants to decide if they …

Overworked Essential Healthcare And Patient Satisfaction, Angel Rowlett, Mariah Snoddy

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Since Covid-19 has made its devastating impact on the world, patient care and adequate treatment has negatively affected the medical community and has caused a major shift in the way patients perceive healthcare providers. Adding long and stressful hours to an already jarring relationship can lead to an even more bleak or obstructive outcome.

The Impact Of Personality Traits On Panic Buying Behavior, Andrew Larsen, Genevieve Mcalexander, Kinsey Pomeroy

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

We are interested in panic buying behavior during a pandemic within an undergraduate population. Since there is minimal research on COVID-19, we hope that our research will contribute to further investigations on this pandemic and other related psychological concepts and issues within the field. This is important because previous research has studied the relationship between buying behavior and natural disasters; however, there is a small amount of literature on COVID-19 because this is a new and rising topic that is changing day by day. Preparedness and risk perception are in tandem. We want to increase people’s knowledge about how to …

Relationship Between Big 5 Personality Traits And Covid-19 Health-Related Behaviors, Kelly Higgins, Alyssa Martin

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The Big 5 personality traits are typically assessed in order to understand the behavior of individuals. The major traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience (McCrae & John, 1991). Health-related behaviors regarding COVID-19 include wearing masks and properly social distancing (CDC, 2020a, CDC, 2020b). Previous research examined the relationship between the Big 5 personality traits and either mask use or social distancing and concluded that there were correlations between personality and the likelihood that participants would engage in COVID-19 precautionary behaviors (Zajenkowski, Jonason, Leniarska, & Kozakiewicz, 2020, Aschwanden et al., 2020, Carvalho, Pianowski, & Goncalves, 2020, Abdelrahman, …

Relationship Among Routine Preference And Openness To Experience, During Covid-19, With Rates Of Psychological Distress, Meghan Petrocelli, Haley Schultz, Morgan Thomas

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This study will examine the relationship between preference for routine and psychological distress, and the personality trait openness to experience and psychological distress. Through research, we found that during the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a rise in rates of psychological distress. Psychological distress can be caused by a variety of different elements; however, in this case, we wanted to study how preference for routine and openness to experience relate to undergraduates students psychological distress. Our overall research question is “ Does routine preference and openness to experience have a relationship to rates of psychological distress? ” We predict that …

The Life-Saving Drug That No One Knows About: Naloxone Education And The Health Belief Model, Sarah Tilford

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Naloxone hydrochloride, popularly known by the brand name Narcan, is an emergency treatment used to reverse an overdose on opioid drugs. The CDC reports upwards of 26,000 individuals saved by naloxone between 1996 and 2014 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015). Despite this success rate, those outside of the medical field largely remain unaware of what naloxone is or how they can use it in an emergency, leading to needless loss of life. Many studies focusing on naloxone access and education have been unable to offer findings meant to increase the use and ownership of the drug by lay …

The Relationship Of Classroom Variables And Academic Achievement Across The Preschool Year, Olivia Leblanc

Content presented at the Roesch Social Sciences Symposium

Preschool education is designed to foster school readiness among three to five-year-old children before entering kindergarten. Past research suggests that elements of the classroom, such as quality of teacher-child interactions, can influence the development of academic and social skills during the preschool year. Utilizing data from a longitudinal correlational study, the current study investigates the relationship between classroom variables and academic achievement throughout the preschool year. The findings suggest that there is a significant relationship between classroom variables and student outcomes, which calls for further research investigating the importance of high-quality preschool programs for young children.

Research Questions:

1. What is …

Judaism And Pacifism, Grace Rolfes

Content presented at the Roesch Social Sciences Symposium

The research explores and uncovers the truths concerning Judaism and its impacts toward peacemaking. It correspondingly exposes the Jewish relationship towards the choice of nonviolence and the commitment to the common good.

Relationships Between Religiosity, Spirituality, Gender, Psychological Distress, And Treatment Preference, Reid Wollett

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

The underutilization of mental health services by college students is an enduring problem, highlighted by increasing popularity of mental health awareness efforts. One strategy used to understand this problem is examining college students’ attitudes toward seeking psychological help. The present study sought to examine college students’ attitudes toward seeking both psychological and religious forms of help, and the roles of religiosity/spirituality, psychological distress, and gender in predicting treatment preference. Understanding what kind of treatment students prefer and the important predictors of this preference may help us to address more effectively the problem of mental health service underutilization. In a large …

Investor Behavior In The Midst Of A Global Pandemic, Abigail N. Bates

Honors Projects

Investors partaking in portfolio and asset management through the stock market and other avenues do so with certain reasoning and methods in hand. Each investor may have different interests and risk tolerances that guide their choices for investment. Behavioral finance allows for an in-depth look at an investor’s actions and the influencing psychology behind it. Before this approach was popularized, early studies of finance assumed that investors were always rational in their decision making and put resources only into opportunities that would increase their utility or happiness. The behavioral finance approach takes a more comprehensive look at these behaviors and …

Consequences Of The Ambiguous Insult: A Review Of Literature On Gender, Race, And Lgbtq-Based Microaggressions, Emily Halvorson

Modern Psychological Studies

For over thirty years, microaggressions have been studied for their weight on members of groups like ethnic and racial minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ community. Microaggressions are the routine, derogatory interactions like slights gestures, snubs or minor insults. Microaggressions yield physical and psychological distress to victims and communicate to marginalized groups the biases and prejudices against them harbored by majority group members. This taxonomy divides the experiences of microaggressions into the categories of gender, racial and LGBTQ-based sectors, as well as the subcategories that are relevant to the experiences of the members when faced with microaggressions.

The Relationship Between Religiosity And Attitudes Toward Women At A Conservative Christian College, Sara Kemp

Modern Psychological Studies

Research suggests that religiosity influences attitudes toward women more strongly than does any other demographic. In many studies, it has also been indicated that men hold more conservative gender attitudes than do women. Many religious denominations have been represented in such research, but no previous studies have included Seventh-day Adventist participants. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward women amongst students at a Seventh-day Adventist college in the Midwest. A total of 74 students, 88% of which were Seventh-day Adventist, participated by completing the Centrality of Religiosity Scale and the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. …