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A Comparison Of Defensiveness In Mmpi-2-Rf Profiles Of Male Sex Offenders And Child Custody Litigants, Kyla M. Jones Nov 2023

A Comparison Of Defensiveness In Mmpi-2-Rf Profiles Of Male Sex Offenders And Child Custody Litigants, Kyla M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Clinical evaluations have had a long-standing role in criminal and civil legal proceedings due to the intersection between various legal criteria and aspects of psychological functioning. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) and its subsequent versions have been among the most commonly utilized and empirically supported measures of personality and psychopathology in assessing forensic populations. One application for which MMPI instruments have been particularly useful is in the evaluation of sex offenders. This is in part due to the tests’ built-in validity scales, as MMPI underreporting scales are found to be effective in assessing sex offenders’ …


An Examination Of Mmpi-3 Score Patterns Of Sex-Trafficked Women, Edleen De Jesus-Sanchez Oct 2023

An Examination Of Mmpi-3 Score Patterns Of Sex-Trafficked Women, Edleen De Jesus-Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

Sex trafficking is a hidden crime that affects many vulnerable groups such as women and children. Prior research has demonstrated that individuals currently or formerly engaged in sex trafficking experience heightened levels of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other mental health concerns. Most of these studies relied on structured interviews and, to date, no empirical studies have evaluated the psychological difficulties of sex trafficking victims with an empirically valid measure. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-3 (MMPI-3; Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2020a) is a personality assessment measure widely used to assess sexual abuse survivors, substance abusers, and various inpatient and …


Towards Explainable Ai: Predicting Linear And Nonlinear Feature Relations Of Datasets, Nimmy Chhaganbhai Patel May 2023

Towards Explainable Ai: Predicting Linear And Nonlinear Feature Relations Of Datasets, Nimmy Chhaganbhai Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes critical decisions in an opaque way without explaining the reasoning behind them. Decision support systems are often built as black boxes. This has generated interest in Explainable AI (XAI), an area of research that explains AI algorithms and provides more insight into their internal decision-making process. Advancements in XAI have enhanced machine learning (ML) models’ interpretability, explainability, and transparency. Additionally, there has been speculation on whether it is possible to predict the type of dataset used in the model by analyzing the results. In this research, we proposed a methodology for determining the linearity or non-linearity …


Trauma And Linguistic Markers For Symptom Severity In Prolonged Exposure For Primary Care, As Observed Through The Use Of Narrative Review, Robert Alexander Ryan Apr 2023

Trauma And Linguistic Markers For Symptom Severity In Prolonged Exposure For Primary Care, As Observed Through The Use Of Narrative Review, Robert Alexander Ryan

Theses and Dissertations

Traditional trauma therapies used in the primary care setting (e.g., hospital, medical clinic, etc.) have posed challenges to patient success because they are not designed for the shorter duration treatment that is typical in primary care settings. One alternative solution is the Prolonged-Exposure for Primary Care protocol (PE-PC) that utilizes prolonged exposure using a brief take home assignment and several journaling prompts that are processed using principles from Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). Still in its early stages of development, the PE-PC protocol can provide symptom relief in as little as four, 30-minute sessions and reflects one of the first trauma …


Predictors Of Probation Outcome And Recidivism Among Nonviolent Drug Offenders In Mandated Treatment, Kira Elisabeth Johnson Mar 2023

Predictors Of Probation Outcome And Recidivism Among Nonviolent Drug Offenders In Mandated Treatment, Kira Elisabeth Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Since the early 1990’s, the criminal justice system has been attempting to address the growing numbers of drug crimes and incarcerations resulting from policy decisions meant to discourage drug use and trade. To address resulting overcrowding in the prison system, drug courts and state mandated drug programs were devised to supervise and treat offenders in the community. Many factors have been identified that affect recidivism and related outcome measures for those mandated to drug treatment programs and probation terms, including age, gender, race, duration of treatment, and dosage of treatment. The current study found that age, gender, treatment duration, and …


Effects Of Cumulative Trauma, Discrimination, And Racial Trauma Among African Americans, Brittany Renee Clayton Feb 2022

Effects Of Cumulative Trauma, Discrimination, And Racial Trauma Among African Americans, Brittany Renee Clayton

Theses and Dissertations

In the current study, we examined the impact of cumulative trauma, racial trauma, and everyday discrimination experiences within the African American community on psychological outcomes. One hundred and nineteen participants completed a series of self-report measures that analyzed their experiences of lifetime stressors, racial trauma, frequency of everyday discrimination, current posttraumatic stress disorder, depressive symptoms, and experiential avoidance levels. It was hypothesized that increased exposure to lifetime stressors, racial trauma events or experiences, and everyday discrimination would be associated with increased psychological distress. Correlations were conducted to identify and examine these relationships. This hypothesis was supported for lifetime stressor exposure …


Better Safe Than Sorry? Examining The Effectiveness Of Defensive Impression Management And Supplication Techniques In Attracting Minority Applicants To Public Safety Careers, Temitayo Opeyemi Lawal Dec 2021

Better Safe Than Sorry? Examining The Effectiveness Of Defensive Impression Management And Supplication Techniques In Attracting Minority Applicants To Public Safety Careers, Temitayo Opeyemi Lawal

Theses and Dissertations

The recent media coverage of fatal interactions between police officers and unarmed Black citizens has led to increased calls for law enforcement agencies to diversify their departments. However, many agencies struggle to attract qualified minority candidates due to the negative history between law enforcement and minority communities. This study examined whether the use targeted defensive impression management techniques, such as apologizing for past transgressions, and supplicative recruiting messages can influence attraction and job pursuit intentions for minority applicants. This study also explored whether applicant perceptions of an organization’s sincerity and value of diversity mediates the relationship between diversity recruiting messages …


Development Of A Correction For Defensiveness In The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Second Edition-Restructured Form (Mmpi-2-Rf) Profiles Of Adult Male Sex Offenders, Katie Marie Glauner Oct 2021

Development Of A Correction For Defensiveness In The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Second Edition-Restructured Form (Mmpi-2-Rf) Profiles Of Adult Male Sex Offenders, Katie Marie Glauner

Theses and Dissertations

Clinical and forensic psychologists often evaluate sex offenders to determine the level of risk they pose to the community and identify their treatment needs to reduce the risk of future recidivism. Personality assessments are administered in sex offender evaluations to aid in answering these referral questions, while also providing information regarding the evaluees’ response style to the test and descriptions of their personality functioning. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its revisions have been the most widely used personality assessments in sex offender evaluations, with previous research demonstrating that sex offenders often respond defensively to the test by minimizing …


Medication Assisted Treatment: Examining Enrollment And Demographic Factors Of Treatment, Antwana Letoya Drayton Sep 2021

Medication Assisted Treatment: Examining Enrollment And Demographic Factors Of Treatment, Antwana Letoya Drayton

Theses and Dissertations

Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) has been a long-standing epidemic concern related to the continuous growth of variations of the substance and its’ potency. Due to the versatility of the substance to be both an illicit drug and also a prescription medication, the interest in controlling and monitoring its’ use creates a greater public health concern. Treatment overtime has been revitalized to directly address the social, biological, and physiological difficulties of patients with OUDs. Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) has been explored and has become one of the most widely used plans for treatment of Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) related to pain …


Toward The Development Of A Practitioner-Friendly Delay Tolerance Assessment And Treatment For Typically-Developing Children, Kaitlynn Mary Gokey May 2020

Toward The Development Of A Practitioner-Friendly Delay Tolerance Assessment And Treatment For Typically-Developing Children, Kaitlynn Mary Gokey

Theses and Dissertations

Delay discounting is the decrease in the value of a reinforcer as a function of the delay to the delivery of the reinforcer. Individuals who exhibit steep delay discounting are commonly referred to as ‘impulsive’ and are at a greater risk of behavior problems such as poor academic performance, addiction, and excessive risk-taking. One effective intervention is a concurrent activity, in which the individual must complete a task demand during the waiting period. Rules and rulegoverned behavior also play a critical role in improving delay discounting rates across populations, and may be used as an intervention to promote self-controlled responses. …


Examining The Impact Of Illicit Drug Use On Prescribed Psychotropic Medication Adherence, Lauren Natalie Stroker Mar 2020

Examining The Impact Of Illicit Drug Use On Prescribed Psychotropic Medication Adherence, Lauren Natalie Stroker

Theses and Dissertations

The ever-increasing rates of prescription drug utilization in the United States, coupled with the high rates of non-adherence to psychotropic medications by patients, makes this area of research an increasingly important field of study. Previous studies have elucidated the critical factor medication adherence plays in the effectiveness of treatment and overall clinical outcomes for patients and the deleterious effect of non-adherence; one of them being substance (ab)use. The present study was conducted in an effort to add to the existing literature examining medication nonadherence and substance use. The current study looked to expand the research examining the relationship between substance …


Assessing The Impact Of Crisis Intervention Team (Cit) Training And Local Mental Health Resource Availability On Officer Perceptions Of Efficacy In Responding To The Mentally Ill, Chelsea Jordan Bennett Feb 2020

Assessing The Impact Of Crisis Intervention Team (Cit) Training And Local Mental Health Resource Availability On Officer Perceptions Of Efficacy In Responding To The Mentally Ill, Chelsea Jordan Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

Police officers are often the first responders to emergency mental health and crisis situations, with almost one-third of all mental health referrals stemming from law enforcement interaction. As a result of deinstitutionalization, a large number of mentally ill individuals have become involved in the criminal justice system and brought to police attention, resulting in unnecessary arrests and an overrepresentation of individuals with mental illness in jail populations. Recent decarceration trends have now placed the focus on diverting individuals with mental illness into treatment. However, officers often lack the proper skills, training, and knowledge of how to interact with individuals with …


An Evaluation Of The Utility Of The Performance Diagnostic Checklist - Human Services (Pdc-Hs): A Comparison Of Formal And Informal Assessment Strategies, Cherish Chalk Dec 2019

An Evaluation Of The Utility Of The Performance Diagnostic Checklist - Human Services (Pdc-Hs): A Comparison Of Formal And Informal Assessment Strategies, Cherish Chalk

Theses and Dissertations

The PDC-HS is a performance assessment tool that assists in the identification of variables contributing to performance problems among human service employees. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of the PDC-HS as a formal assessment strategy. Specifically, the PDC-HS was compared to an informal assessment strategy consisting of a single open-ended interview question and a single structured interview question. Participants included 40 supervisors in varying positions in the human services industry. Descriptive statistics were used to compare participant responses to the open-ended and structured questions to the results indicated by the PDC-HS. Results suggest that the …


Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-Iv (Mcmi-Iv) Profile Patterns And Scale Score Correlates For Jail Inmates Referred For Mental Health Services, Lauren Ashley Price Dec 2019

Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-Iv (Mcmi-Iv) Profile Patterns And Scale Score Correlates For Jail Inmates Referred For Mental Health Services, Lauren Ashley Price

Theses and Dissertations

Personality assessment measures have been heavily used and researched with criminal offender populations in the realms of clinical, forensic, and correctional psychology for reasons including assessing reoffending risk, informing predictions regarding future behavior, and treatment planning. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) features among the personality assessment measures widely used in evaluating criminal offenders. This current study compromised of adults male inmates (N=95) incarcerated in Brevard County, Florida examined scores from the recently released Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-Fourth Edition (MCMI-IV). The study’s goals included (a) providing reference data based on a sample of jail inmates receiving mental health services, (b) …


Consequences Of Public/Private Selves On The Stigmatized Individual In The Workplace, Dinah Miriam Camilleri Jul 2019

Consequences Of Public/Private Selves On The Stigmatized Individual In The Workplace, Dinah Miriam Camilleri

Theses and Dissertations

Although workplace discrimination based on group membership has been studied, there is little research focused on the experience of stigmatized individuals and the organizational outcomes of perceived stigmatization. This study aimed to determine whether perceived stigmatization leads to negative consequences such as emotional exhaustion, counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), and reduced job satisfaction through the process of public/private self-schematization. A sample of 302 employees identifying as religious minorities were surveyed three times over a period of four months. Findings indicate that self-schematization mediated the relationship between perceived stigmatization and emotional exhaustion while partially mediating the relationships between perceived stigmatization, job satisfaction, …


Self-Reported Malingering: Prevalence, Strategies, And Decision Making, Bethany Linn Hall Wellman Jan 2019

Self-Reported Malingering: Prevalence, Strategies, And Decision Making, Bethany Linn Hall Wellman

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Malingering is intentional fabrication or exaggeration of physical or mental symptoms for the purpose of gaining an external incentive, whether it be for a reward or a gain of some sort or avoidance of an unwanted outcome (Gorman, 1982). Understanding malingering behaviors for accurate identification is of vital importance due to both the economic burden on health care corporations, workers compensation and disability services when malingering goes unidentified, as well as the harm caused to individuals with genuine symptoms falsely suspected of malingering. Greater understanding of malingering practices to help improve resources for correct identification is an area within …


Substance Abuse And Other Factors That Influence Recidivism For Mental Health Court Graduates, Justine Maria Swanson Dec 2017

Substance Abuse And Other Factors That Influence Recidivism For Mental Health Court Graduates, Justine Maria Swanson

Theses and Dissertations

Mental health courts (MHC) were designed to divert the overwhelming number of individuals with mental illness involved in the criminal justice system from incarceration through specialty court proceedings intended to meet their unique needs. Individuals who have both mental health problems and substance use are at a disadvantage. For them, this combination contributes to more severe mental health symptoms, physical health issues, interpersonal challenges, and legal problems. The co-occurrence of mental illness and substance use is increasing in prevalence within both the community and justice system settings; however, few studies have explored the effectiveness of MHCs for this specific population …


The Growth, Structure, And Dynamics Of Crime In Cities, Marcos Oliveira Dec 2017

The Growth, Structure, And Dynamics Of Crime In Cities, Marcos Oliveira

Theses and Dissertations

Crime is ubiquitous in cities but lacks a statistical characterization that could lead to uncovering its underlying mechanisms. Cities are, however, in a constant process of organization making difficult to analyze urban phenomena. Yet, to understand urbanization and its consequences, we need to approach cities as evolving processes, instead of static objects. With this perspective, we examined regularities in crime regarding its growth, structure, and dynamics. We developed frameworks to examine the spatial, temporal, and periodic variations of crime in cities. Though thefts increase super-linearly with the population, we found burglaries showing a linear increase. Our analyses also confirmed crime …