Digital Commons Network^™

Cyberbullying, Relational, And Social Aggression, Latitia Lattanzio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cyberbullying is a relatively new phenomenon that has only begun to be significantly investigated within the last decade. To date, researchers have failed to develop a uniform definition or determine appropriate terminology. These deficits have inhibited a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Although a comprehensive conceptualization of cyberbullying has yet to be established, the phenomenon has been recognized as a significant problem affecting our youth. Many of the existing studies are descriptive in nature and emphasize the need for more research. In an effort to drive future studies, many have postulated on the possible similarities between cyberbullying and traditional indirect …

Non-Symbolic Exact Quantity Representation In A Language-Impaired Population, John Verbos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The linguistic relativity hypothesis argues that language influences non-linguistic cognition. One version of the hypothesis suggests that language is a set of tools or technologies that variously enhance or dampen an individual’s capacity to perceive and operate upon the world in certain ways. A domain in which this may be tested is number, where it is hypothesized that counting language allows us to bridge our innate capacities for recognizing small exact quantities (subitizing) and approximating quantities larger than three or four (analog magnitude estimation). To test this, previous studies have asked adult participants who have limited or no access to …

An Exploratory Survey Of Factors Affecting Satisfaction With Educational Experiences For Parents Of Children With Cystic Fibrosis, Rebecca Perry Keenan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Consumer satisfaction has been studied extensively as it relates to service seeking behavior, positive perceptions of services rendered, and measurable benefit as a result of service delivery. Furthermore, numerous studies have explored the importance of a strong, collaborative home-school partnership for student success. Additionally, previous research has identified children with chronic illnesses as a special population frequently requiring individualized accommodations and modifications to promote success in the educational environment, and therefore testing the limits of the educational system to adequately meet their needs. Finally, research has described the common sequelae of Cystic Fibrosis, including wide-ranging physical, behavioral, and functional consequences. …

Bullying Of Linguistically Diverse Learners: Results From The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, Jenna Woodarek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bullying is a serious phenomenon yielding significant consequences for youth who are victimized, often targeted due to their perceived level of difference from their peers. This “otherness” can often be amplified in minoritized populations, especially those which have multiple, cooccurring vulnerabilities to be targets of bullying. After a period of bullying rates decreasing in the US, special interest group inquiries found bullying rates to be on the rise again and reportedly motivated by ethnicity or race, immigrant status, and proficiency in the English language. The present research study aims to expand upon the existing pertinent literature base specific to the …

Health Equity Through Spatial Justice: A Critical Phenomenology Of Urban Trail Makers, Arvin Simon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has increasingly demonstrated that race, class and place are powerful predictors of health and social justice. This study was conducted to identify the lived experiences of individuals who were hired and trained as part of a green job program that created trails within a city park in Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington Community. This program has historically hired individuals who were formerly incarcerated, many of whom identify as African American. We explored the personal and social experiences of working in nature to better appreciate the intersections of race, class and environment in an urban community. This current study is based on …

The Inheritance Of This Moment: An Exploration Of Temporality, Subjectivity, And Liberation In Non-Dual Contemplative Practice And Psychotherapy, Jeremy Axelrad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the meaning of “present-moment awareness” and its role in psychological healing and transformation. The current conversation around mindfulness, a secularized practice with roots in Buddhist contemplative traditions, has largely unfolded within a dualistic framework in which subject and object are separate from one another as well as from a discrete entity called a moment. While widely appreciated for its capacity to foster well-being and insight, mindfulness as construed above remains disconnected from Buddhist psychology’s non-dualistic view of experience, which radically challenges our ordinary understandings of subjectivity and temporality. In the current project, I sought to explore this …

Speaking From Places: A Phenomenological Deconstructive Study Of Children’S Places, Child-Centric Methods, And Politics., Sugandh Dixit

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation adopts an innovative phenomenological and deconstructive methodology to create a child-centric research process sensitive to facilitating, integrating, and representing children’s voices in designing their school playground. The study developed and employed two novel child-centric methods, an Embedded Walk and a Communal Child-Map Project in order to integrate parents’ and children’s experiences of the school spaces the authorities planned to renovate. Both methods reveal and complicate the socio-political dynamics that structure children’s, parents’, and researchers’ stances towards children’s places and worlds. During the Embedded Walk, children led their parents through their play spaces and they collaboratively documented the childrens’ …

Psychological And Family Variables Associated With The Treatment Of Pediatric Idiopathic Pain, Rachael Hoffman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined variability in treatment outcomes of children with idiopathic chronic pain. Specifically, the biopsychosocial model was used as a framework to consider the way that symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as parent response to pain contributed to the change in a child’s confidence in participating in daily activities following treatment in an inpatient chronic pain treatment program.

The Impact Of Mother And Father Stress On Child Externalizing Behaviors, Allison Mccobin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The impact of parental stress on child behavioral problems has often been examined through research. A large majority of research indicates a strong correlation between parenting stress and an increase in child behavioral difficulties. However, most studies have focused only on the impact that one parent’s stress has on the child’s behavior, rather than both or comparing the two. Using two separate cross-lagged structural equation models, data from the Fragile Families Child and Wellbeing Study (N = 1010) were analyzed to examine the differences between mother and father parenting stress on child externalizing behavior problems over time (ages three and …

Wellness And Karate, Cristina Kumpf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The promotion of wellness is an integral part of the counseling field and is considered to be a central focus to the counseling process (Barden, Conley, & Young, 2015; Myers, 1992). The counseling profession adopted the concept of wellness because it harmonizes with many of the founding principles of the ACA and is seen as a process of questing toward optimal health and well-being in body, mind, and spirit (Barden, Conley, & Young, 2015; Myers, 1992; Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000). Additionally, ACA Code of Ethics (2014) state that counselors “engage in self-care activities to maintain and promote their own …

The Psychology Of Self-Surrender: A Contemplative-Hermeneutic Study, Danny Sharara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the psycho-spiritual significance of self-surrender as a mode of being and experiencing. The author seeks to generate meaningful knowledge of self-surrender through a methodology that follows from the distinct nature of self-surrender as a psycho-spiritual/religious phenomenon that is grounded in direct experience. As such, this study draws on an integrative methodology that synthesizes elements of applied hermeneutics with autoethnography and contemplative practice. The author conducts an applied hermeneutic analysis of two psycho-spiritual texts; one that is rooted in the Zen Buddhist tradition and the other from the Sufi tradition. This is followed by a thematic analysis that …

The Myth Of Promiscuity: Examining Black Male Sexual Narratives And Sexual Identity, Seth Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black masculinity and sexuality are common topics across areas of philosophy, psychology, cultural studies and others. Yet, these topics are dedicated to the racial narrative of hypersexual Black male, the sexual objectification of Black men, and their presumed promiscuity. While such topics are important, there is little qualitative research that looks at the complexity and emotionality of African American men’s sexual experiences. Using the theoretical research on black masculinity and sexuality as its backdrop, this dissertation explores how heterosexual, African American men experience their sexuality. The study incorporates narrative inquiry and in-depth, semi-structured interviews to gather stories of five African …

Illuminating The Trauma Of The Closet Among Sexual Minorities: A Cinematic-Phenomenological Study Of Existential Rights, Nisha Gupta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a phenomenological research study about the lived experience of being in the closet as a sexual minority. This study’s research findings are represented in two distinct but overlapping ways: a traditional written hermeneutic interpretation, and a short film called “Illuminate” which cinematically brings to life the closeted lifeworld. To produce this film, I developed an innovative research method called “cinematic-phenomenology.” As a researcher, I conducted phenomenological research interviews with five self-identified sexual minorities about their lived experiences of being in the closet. During interviews, I helped participants describe their felt sense of the closet through symbolic imagery, …

The Zombie Apocalypse Has Already Happened: Queering Subjectivity In Zombie Film, Jessica Dunn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces the encounter between psychology as a human science and the viral zombie film genre using the collaborative works of Deleuze and Guattari in conjunction with the queer anti-humanist theories of Colebrook and Halberstam. I interwove thematic (i.e. plot, dialogue, character development) and cinematographic (i.e. shot composition, editing, lighting, musical score) analyses of fourteen viral zombie films with theoretical arguments regarding the deterritorialization of the human subject and its relevance to psychology as a human science. The films were selected from the plethora of viral zombie films released after the turn of the 21st century. The selection was …

Back In The Closet: A Queer-Modified Interpretive-Phenomenological Analysis Of Gay Men Creating An Identity Through Clothing, Jose Arroyo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How one dresses comprises their personal style, which subsequently informs one’s orientation to the world. Clothing is a global practice that demarcates our experience of self, others, and the world; and—as we are swathed in clothing since birth—those experiences are primarily split among gendered lines. Using Merleau-Ponty (2014/1945), I reconceptualize how clothing can be understood as inseparable from our body, and I use Deleuze and Guattari (1987/1980) to illustrate how clothing augments our embodied experience to produce a process of identification with our style. I also draw from queer theorists (Ahmed, 2006; Halberstam, 2011) to illustrate how we can disrupt …

The Title, Laurent Turgeon-Dharmoo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation seeks to address and redress clinical psychology’s disciplinary silence around the title of ‘Doctor’ and attempts to uncover possible meanings gathering around it by following several angles of disclosure: The self-disclosure angle recounts my own resistances and attempts at coming to terms with the title; The disciplinary disclosure angle critically reviews the scarce literature on the topic using discourse analysis; The empirical disclosure angle provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of data obtained from 27 Directors of Clinical Training and Training Clinic Directors, who were prompted to report how they use the title with various interlocutors, to outline …

A Qualitative Study Of Counseling Students’ Attitudes Toward The Use Of Medication Assisted Treatments With Opioid Dependent Clients, Bethany L. Ackerman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dissertation supervised by Dr. William Casile

Counseling students’ perceptions of medication assisted treatment for opioid addition was explored. This study sought to understand how the students’ attitudes and beliefs regarding the use of medication assisted treatments developed, and also how these attitudes and beliefs may affect client care and professional career choices. Specifically, this study examined how their professional counselor education experiences played a role in the formation/development of these attitudes and beliefs.

This qualitative study was conducted with six counseling students who participated in semi-structured, individual interviews. At the time of the study, all of the students were currently …

A Computational Model Of Team-Based Dynamics In The Workplace: Assessing The Impact Of Incentive-Based Motivation On Productivity, Josef Di Pietrantonio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large organizations often divide workers into small teams for the completion of essential tasks. In an effort to maximize the number of tasks completed over time, it is common practice for organizations to hire workers with the highest level of education and experience. However, despite capable workers being hired, the ability of teams to complete tasks may suffer if the workers' individual motivational needs are not satisfied.

To explore the impact of incentive-based motivation on the success of team-based organizations, we developed an agent-based model that stochastically simulates the proficiency of 100 workers with varying abilities and motive profiles to …

Life Satisfaction Typologies Among Roman Catholic Secular Clergy: A Q Methodological Investigation, Raju Antony

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Life satisfaction typologies among Roman Catholic secular clergy were studied using a Q methodological design. Using Q-Assessor, a web-based tool for Q methodological studies, 33 priests sorted and ranked 34 predetermined statements about their life satisfaction. By-person factor analysis and varimax rotation extracted three predominant category prototypes – pro-spirituals, professionals, and pro-relationals– representing three different views regarding the life satisfaction of clergy. The findings led to the creation of an explanatory model recognizing a multi-factorial pathway to understanding clergy life satisfaction.