Digital Commons Network^™

Everyday Food Practices Among Three Low-Income Groups: Rural, Homeless, And Refugee, Amy L. Redman

Doctoral Dissertations

Lower-income groups are more susceptible to diet-related diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (CDC, 2010). They are also more likely to need food and nutritional assistance (USDA, 2011). Yet very little is known about the day-to-day food practices of these individuals and families. Many times those who are relatively adjacent in terms of income are assumed to have similarities in food consumption (Hupkens, Knibbe, & Drop, 2000); however, this has not been empirically examined. The main objectives of this research are to 1) gain an exploratory in-depth understanding of the everyday food practices of individuals in three low-income groups: …

Created In The Image Of: Mormonism And The Rhetorical Production Of Identity In Privately-Published Family Histories, Michael K. Peterson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative study of seven privately-published family histories written by descendants of Mormon polygamists. Using methods of discourse and rhetorical analysis, these texts and various interviews are analyzed with the contention that identity is a rhetorical production and that the authors (either intentionally or unwittingly) fictionalize each of the identities involved---their own, their readers', and their ancestors'---to bring them together in moments of Burkean identification. These moments of identification are also analyzed in terms of communal and generational memory, temporal proximity, and communal discourses. An important conclusion in this study is that this rhetorical production of identity …

Anxious Lives: Tracing The Life Course Of A Medical Diagnosis Through Illness Narratives, Jennifer J. Esala

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of medical diagnosis, specifically anxiety disorder diagnosis, from the perspective and through the narratives of people who have been diagnosed. In this study, I address two core research questions. First, how does social materiality (e.g., bodies and objects) contribute to, shape, and lend empirical understanding to the experience of an anxiety disorder and the experience of illness in general? Second, how does medical diagnosis translate from the medical institution into the lives of people who have been diagnosed, and how do those diagnoses transform in and through the social lives of people? To address these …

Adolescent Sexual Orientation And Parent-Child Relationship Quality, Rose Anne Medeiros

Doctoral Dissertations

The literature on gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) young people commonly assumes that GLB adolescents have difficult relationships with their parents, due to their parents' difficulty accepting their sexual orientation. However, research tends to show that the family experiences of GLB individuals are diverse. The current research compared the family experiences of GLB and non-GLB college students, specifically, levels of conflict with parents during the respondent's last year of high school, parent-child relationship quality, and physical and psychological assaults by parents during the same time frame, as well as perceived social support from parents at the time of the survey. …

The Effect Of Peer And Parental Smoking On Adolescent Smoking Initiation: Exploring Potential Moderators, Jeffrey Allen Eaton

Doctoral Dissertations

The factors that contribute to smoking initiation among adolescents are poorly understood. The current approaches to smoking prevention may have achieved their maximum potential as evidenced by a stalling in the decline in smoking rates. To date, approaches to smoking prevention based on social and individual factors have previously met with limited success. A promising new approach will be to examine the interaction between social and individual factors and the effects of their interaction on smoking initiation. Parental and peer smoking behaviors are well-known risk factors for smoking initiation. Several theoretical models suggest that perceptual or interpretative processes may moderate …

Family Structure, The State Children's Health Insurance Program (Schip) And Child Outcomes, Minghua Li

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three separate but interrelated essays that investigate how family structure and public policy are linked to health and developmental child outcomes. Each essay employs two or three waves of the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) as the primary data source. The first essay broadly investigates how family structure, including the less typical non-traditional families such as single father and grandparent households, are related to a wide of array of child outcomes with a focus on the interplay of parent-child gender. The results from this study show that children in single father families have better health …

Parenting In The Age Of Prozac: Parental Decision -Making In Social Context, Nena F. Stracuzzi

Doctoral Dissertations

Within recent years, prescriptions written for children's emotional and behavioral problems have increased significantly. Although this issue has garnered a great deal of public notice, it has received scant sociological attention. In this study, I investigate parents of children with problems, and those without, in an effort to gain insights into the social contexts that shape decisions around diagnoses and treatment. The bases of the theoretical underpinnings of this research are situated at the intersection of medicalization and mother-blame.

Survey data were collected from 235 parents in a single New Hampshire community. Respondents answered several open-ended questions on the questionnaire …

The Relative Impact Of Childhood Stressor Domains On Young Adult Depression And The Mediating Role Of Social And Personal Resources, Paul A. Muller

Doctoral Dissertations

Numerous studies have documented the harmful effects of childhood exposure to adversity on adult psychopathology. The relative impact of different types of stress, however, is less certain. Moreover, while there is very good evidence that childhood exposure to adversity does increase the likelihood of experiencing psychopathology, less is known about the mechanisms through which this happens. It is my hypothesis that childhood adversity exhibits effects on psychological distress in young adulthood, at least in part, through its damaging impact on the development of social and personal resources---specifically, by affecting a reduction in family support, peer support, self-esteem, and mastery. Further, …

When Does Gender Matter? Explaining The Transition To Adulthood As A Gendered Process, Kimberly Autumn Mahaffy

Doctoral Dissertations

Most gender theory and research focuses on two points in the life course: childhood and middle adulthood. Less attention is given to the period in between. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether and how the transition to adulthood is gendered. To what extent do school, family, and labor market contexts have a different effect on adolescent girls and boys as they become adults?

Using data from the High School and Beyond 1980 Sophomore Cohort Study (1980--1992), 1 examine how social context differentially affects the plans for the future and adult status outcomes of young women and men. …

"The Tawnee Family": The Life Course Of Indian Value Adaptation For Eleazar Wheelock's Indian Scholars, Stacy Lynn S Hogsett

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of value adaptation by the southern New England Indians who attended Moor's Charity School, in Lebanon, Connecticut, between 1743 and 1770. These Indians were part of New Light Minister Eleazar Wheelock's extended household, dubbed by one student, the "tawnee family." This designation distinguished these Indian scholars as surrogate members of the Wheelock family. I analyzed how the Indian students adapted to, resisted and reformed the values taught at Moor's as they grew to adulthood.

I drew my analysis from letters collected in the Eleazar Wheelock Papers housed at Dartmouth College. My arguments are drawn principally …

The Field Of Meanings Of Childlessness In Contemporary Film Culture, Susan Marie Ross

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine contemporary cultural meanings of female childlessness and come to understand these meanings in relation to historical meanings of childlessness. The contemporary shifts in the meaning of childlessness reflect America's struggle with women's changing social roles, particularly since the mid-1960s. As more women are stepping outside of the domestic sphere and forging new nondomestic pathways, the meaning of childlessness is undergoing changes and reflects our culture's ambiguity about women's new roles.

In order to examine the shifts in themes regarding childlessness, this study focuses on the thematic analysis of 67 films released by …

Student Achievement, Parental Effort And Schooling, Andrew James Houtenville

Doctoral Dissertations

When evaluating public education programs that are aimed at improving student achievement, it is often assumed that a child's family background is an exogenous factor, albeit an important factor. However, parental decisions may be influenced by such programs. It is the assertion of Becker and Tomes (1976) that distortions in parental behavior (time allocation) may be one of the reasons that compensatory education fails to improve student achievement. In short, parents reduce their own effort when school services (schooling) is increased. However, theoretically parental responses are ambiguous; parental effort can increase or decrease in response to increased schooling. This dissertation …

Illusions Of Change: An Analysis Of The Fatherhood Discourse In "Parents Magazine", 1929-1994, Candice Leonard

Doctoral Dissertations

This project explores the question of women's expectations and experience across the transition to parenthood. Specifically, the source of women's unmet expectations about the genderedness of household division of labor and familywork are examined, bridging the literatures on expectation formation and information-seeking behavior.

The centerpiece of the study is a comprehensive, context-sensitive analysis of the fatherhood discourse in Parents Magazine from 1929 through 1994, which uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. Importance is placed on the fact that this is primarily a male-produced discourse that defines fatherhood for women. It was found that there are significant differences by author sex …

Structural Inequalities, Family And Cultural Factors, And Spousal Violence Among Anglo And Hispanic-Americans, Jana Lynn Jasinski

Doctoral Dissertations

There is some evidence that rates of spousal assault are higher among Hispanic Americans compared to Anglo Americans, however, very little empirical research has focused extensively on Hispanic Americans and their risks for spousal violence. There is even less research that considers different Hispanic groups. This study used the 1992 National Alcohol and Family Violence Survey to examine the relationships among structural inequalities, family relations, and spousal assault among a sample of 1,768 Anglo and Hispanic Americans.

The results indicated that Hispanic Americans were more likely to use minor or severe physical violence against their spouses, however, there were also …

Professionalization Of Occupational Therapists: A Study Of Emergent Identities, Lou Ann Sooy Griswold

Doctoral Dissertations

The unprecedented demand for occupational therapists and resulting growth in student numbers necessitates the need to understand how students acquire professional ideology, learn expected role behavior, and identify themselves as occupational therapists. This ethnographic study includes interview data from a series of three interviews with 37 trainees, from freshmen to the first year of employment, who had been or were in the occupational therapy program at Worcester State College, in central Massachusetts. Students included women and men who were preparing for either a first or second career. Interviews with six academic faculty and seven fieldwork supervisors in three areas of …

Punitiveness And Public Opinion On Abortion And Capital Punishment In The United States, Kimberly Joyce Cook

Doctoral Dissertations

The intriguing paradox of opposition to abortion and support for capital punishment is the central concern of this dissertation. Others have argued that these are inconsistent life views. However, there is some evidence that these views are rooted in traditional morality and political conservatism. Beyond traditionalism, is the desire to punish those who violate the social order. Punitive respondents desire to secure obedience to the law or moral code by means of punishment. Criminal abortion laws allow the authority of the state to punish those who have or perform abortions. Capital punishment is one means of punishing those who are …

Homicide In Black Families: A Quantitative Analysis Of Trends And Patterns In The United States, Margaret Susan Plass

Doctoral Dissertations

Little homicide research has been done which is both race, and victim/offender relationship specific. This dissertation provides such an analysis, with a quantitative description and analysis of murders which occurred between black family members in the United States between 1976 and 1987.

Data for this project was obtained from the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Report. The first half of this dissertation examines patterns (and time trends) of family, acquaintance, stranger, and spouse, parent, and child homicide rates for blacks in America in terms of variables such as age, gender, weapons and circumstances.

Many of the most interesting descriptive patterns discovered related …

Higher Education And Life Chances: A Study Of Occupational Attainments And Attitudes Among Some Public University Graduates, Richard Peter Talbot

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates the post-graduate educational and occupational experiences of the 1968 and 1978 graduates of a state flagship university. First, it explores the influence of parental variables upon respondents' choice of curriculum and of post-graduate study. Second, it examines the occupational placement of the respondents by cohort and by gender. Third, it explores the present attitudes of the respondents by cohort and gender.

A stratified random sampling of the graduates (N = 433) via a mailed survey questionnaire shows that more men than women in the 1968 cohort return their forms. There is the suspicion that only those who …

The Influence Of Kin Support And Parental Attitudes On The Care Of Deinstitutionalized Developmentally-Disabled Children, Susan Carol Herrick

Doctoral Dissertations

Are there characteristics of the handicapped child and/or his family which correlate with parents' perceptions of positive kin support? How does kin support affect the child's placement outcomes? How does the child's locus in the historical context of the deinstitutionalization movement influence his/her communitization?

To answer these questions, 93 families whose children were residents at Laconia State School and Training Center for mentally retarded people in New Hampshire were engaged in face-to-face interviews between 1984 and 1985. Each parent was read a list of possible resource groups (family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, other parents, clergy, doctors, and "others") and asked how …

The Effect Of Parental Aggression On Children's Cognitive Development, Susan Elizabeth Craig

Doctoral Dissertations

The study investigated the relationship between parental aggression and children's cognitive development. Parental aggression was studied in terms of both verbal aggression and use of physical force. Indexes developed from form N of the Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus, 1979) were used to measure both variables at three levels: low, middle and high. The dependent variables were measures of the child's (A) cognitive style, (B) cognitive functioning and (C) self-esteem.

Previous research indicates a relationship between abuse and cognitive development: Ackly (1977), Elmer (1967), Martin (1979). A methodological limitation of these studies is that they used samples of children previously identified …

Family Systems Through Family Photograph Albums, Saundra Lee Gardner

Doctoral Dissertations

This study views the family photograph album as a visual construction of social reality which represents how the family perceives and defines its world. This popular cultural artifact is used to examine the social and geographical boundaries of this world as well as the family's conceptualization of gender. How social class, family structure and lifecycle stage affect the process of reality construction is also explored. Data collection from twenty families residing in New England form the basis for this analysis.

The findings indicate that social class has the greatest impact on the family's visual representation of itself. Working-class families are …