Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Experience Of Being Loved: Physical Affection From Parents As Remembered From Childhood, Ellen Senter Denny

Doctoral Dissertations

This project provided a description of the experience of physical affection as remembered from childhood. In-depth, non-directive interviews were conducted with 21 adult participants who were asked to describe their experiences of receiving physical affection from their parents during childhood. The raw data consisted of transcriptions of the interviews, and a method informed by phenomenology and hermeneutics for the purpose of describing the thematic structure of the experience was employed.

The ground of Being Loved provided the context upon which three themes became figural. It included the awareness of feelings that participants experienced, such as love, security, being cared for, …

An Investigation Of Automaticity In Learning Disabled (Ld) And Non-Clinical Adults, Kerry Towler

Doctoral Dissertations

Dyslexia research has implicated phonetic dysfunction in the phoneme-grapheme associations which underlie reading skills. Expert readers of normal developmental etiology have required less mental effort, faster processing speed, and reduced focal attention when applying reading subskills. Readers with dysphonia and poorly automatized reading subskills have required more time, mental effort, and attention. Dyslexia automaticity deficit has been attributed to left hemisphere neuro-cortical disruptions of the underlying neurological substrata that support developmental acquisition of reading subskills. Effects of inefficiently automatized phoneme-grapheme skills accumulate over time resulting in poor reading skills that are detrimental to academic achievement.

Using neuropsychological methodology, adults with …

Psychological Adaptation Of Mainland Chinese Female International Students: A Phenomenological Inquiry, I-Wen Chan

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to obtain a description of Mainland Chinese female international students’ experiences of adjustment in the U.S. Thirteen participants were asked the one question that guided the study: “Please tell me in as much detail as you can, regarding being a female and originally from China, your process of adapting to your studies and living in the United States.” Participants described their experiences in individual audio-taped in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, creating thirteen separate transcripts. These transcripts, serving as the primary data source, were analyzed using a phenomenological method. Analysis revealed six …

Political Advocacy On The Web: Issue Networks In Online Debate Over The Usa Patriot Act, Margot Leigh Emery

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how people and organizations used the World Wide Web to discuss and debate a public policy in 2005, at a point of time when the Internet was viewed as a maturing medium for communication. Combining descriptive and quantitative frame analyses with an issue network analysis, the study evaluated the frames apparent in discourse concerning two key sections of the USA Patriot Act, while the issue network analysis probed hypertext linkages among Web pages where discussion was occurring. Sections 214 and 215 of the USA Patriot Act provided a contentious national issue with multiple stakeholders presumed to be …

Justifying Leadership: A Social Cognitive Approach To Understanding And Predicting Egotistic And Philanthropic Leadership, Katherine R. Helland

Doctoral Dissertations

This study extends the current literature on egotistic and philanthropic leadership by considering the role of social cognition in explaining self-serving versus collective- serving leadership behaviors. Specifically, this study proposed that the overt traits and behaviors that constitute egotistic and philanthropic leadership are surface manifestations of the justification mechanisms (JMs) stemming from uninhibited and inhibited power motives. Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify the JMs that egotistic leaders rely on to enhance the rational appeal of self-serving influence behaviors and the JMs that philanthropic leaders rely on to enhance the rational appeal of collective-serving influence behaviors. Additionally, …

A Multi-Source Model Of Perceived Organizational Support And Performance, Sarah Kay Nielsen

Doctoral Dissertations

The two-fold purpose of this field study was to examine: 1) the collective contributions of supervisor support (PSS), coworker support (PCS), and direct report support (DRS)to an employee’s global sense of organizational support (POS), and 2) the additive value of counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) to a performance outcome model of POS that also includes in-role and extra-role performance. To this end, the researcher predicted a 360-model of POS such that PSS, PCS, and DRS would better predict POS than any individual support variable alone. Additionally, the researcher hypothesized that POS would predict in-role performance, extra-role performance, and CWB over time. …

The Impact Of Authority And Agendas In The Management Of Public Authorities: Studying The Relationship Between Public Transportation Authority Boards And Executives, Robert August Schneider

Doctoral Dissertations

Public authorities are a popular form of quasi-governmental institutions and have been extensively chronicled in regards to effective public service delivery. Authorities are exceptionally popular within the public transportation industry but have slowly lost their fiscal power due to the strengthening of parent governments. This dissertation examines the authority structure in public transportation to understand the linkage between this loss of fiscal power and executive management of public authorities by studying the governing board-executive manager relationship. In particular, this dissertation examines the structure and relationship by studying factors impacting relationships and connections between deceased fiscal power and the members recruited …

Benefits, Corporate Motives, And Communication Patterns In Strategic Philanthropic Relationships As Perceived By Nonprofit Partners, Gregory Grant Rumsey

Doctoral Dissertations

Businesses are increasingly held accountable both to their owners and to the larger society in which they operate. Accordingly, many companies are extending their resources to meet community needs through philanthropic partnerships with nonprofit organizations. Such ventures, however, have drawn close scrutiny of motives and benefits. For example, some consumers register skepticism when evaluating the sincerity of corporate intent in cause-related marketing arrangements. Attribution theory suggests that altruistic reasons for corporate good deeds may be discounted in the context of apparent self-interest. Likewise, a debate between shareholder and stakeholder theorists introduces questions about possibly conflicting obligations facing corporate managers. Some …

Exploring The Relationship Between Time-Series Data Collection And Duration Of Treatment In A University Clinic: A Survival Analysis, Justin D. Winkel

Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between participation in time-series research and the duration of psychotherapy. In previous research, 50 patients were accepted into the Time-Series Study at the University of Tennessee Psychological Clinic. Study participation included a significant degree of patient involvement, including repeated assessment of process and outcome variables totaling 120 items which patients were asked to complete twice a week. It was hypothesized that participation in this type of research may have resulted in shorter treatment duration due to increased subject burden, or may have motivated patients to stay in treatment, thus increasing …

An Investigation Of Sense Of Identity Among College Students, Christine Susie Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study the construct, Sense of Identity was examined. Specifically, variables conceptually related to Sense of Identity will be described, and the nature of any relationships with personality traits including the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness were explored. Additionally, the study examined the nature of the relationships between narrow personality traits and Sense of Identity. Lastly, the relationships between Sense of Identity and extracurricular activities were investigated. Sense of Identity was positively related to the Big Five personality traits with a range of r=.32 to r=.46 with p<.01. Additionally, the selected …

Boffin's Books And Darwin's Finches: Victorian Cultures Of Collecting, Michael W. Hancock '89

Doctoral Dissertations

Although wealthy continental virtuosos had passionately and selectively accumulated a variety of natural and artificial objects from the Renaissance onwards, not until the nineteenth century did collecting become a conspicuous national pastime among all classes in Britain. As industry and empire made available many new and exotic goods for acquisition and display, the collection as a cultural form offered the Victorians a popular strategy of self-fashioning that was often represented in the literature of the age as a source of prestige and social legitimation. Through interdisciplinary readings of Victorian fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry, my study examines how textual representations …

The Thematic Meaning Of Face-To-Face Conflict Experiences: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Investigation, Thomas Rhett Graves

Doctoral Dissertations

Face-to-face interactions are the experiential basis for our reflected understandings of the social world. Face-to-face conflict (as a form of social transaction) is present across different forms of social conflict (e.g., international or intergroup conflicts). Understanding the phenomenology of face-to-face conflict thus provides insight concerning experiences of social conflict and our evaluations of it. In this investigation, a hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to describe the thematic meanings of face-to-face conflict experiences.

Eleven dialogical interviews were conducted concerning situations in which participants “experienced a conflict between themselves and another person(s)” and comprise 17 hours of recorded dialogue between the participants …

Scripted Vs. Real: An Analysis Of Parent-Child Interactions In African American Sitcom Families And Real Life Families, Syrenthia Johnson Robinson

Doctoral Dissertations

This is an exploratory study of the parent-child interactions in African American families as they are portrayed on television and as they are experienced in real life. The research methods- frame analyses, focus groups, and a parent-child relationship questionnaire- facilitated the exploration of common interactions between parents and their children, such as their verbal communication styles (conversation orientation, conformity orientation), conflict management styles (avoiding, accommodating, confronting, compromising, collaborating) and level of closeness (disengaged, separated, connected, enmeshed).

To examine the parent-child relationships depicted in African American television families, four television shows were included in the analysis: My Wife & Kids, Family …

Understanding Environmental Concerns And Contexts: A Multilevel Exploration Of Economic, Social And Natural Environment Contexts On Environmental Concerns, Sean Thomas Huss

Doctoral Dissertations

That social, economic, and environmental context affect human attitude and agency is a central yet untested assumption in much of sociology. The effect of context on individual attitudes is particularly important when considering how and when environmental policy gains support from the public. Drawing on Ecological Modernization and Economic Contingency theories, this dissertation investigates the influence of economic, social, and pollution contexts on environmental concerns. These theoretical perspectives suggest that failure to protect the environment is a function of political processes that privilege economic concerns over environmental concerns. Drawing on literature indicating that periods of economic growth function as windows …

An Examination Of Competitiveness And Personality In Relation To Academic And Sales Performance, Matthew Charles Valenti

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate potential non-linear relationships between competitiveness as measured by the Revised Competitiveness Index and performance in both college students (Study 1) and insurance agents (Study 2). In addition, relationships between competitiveness and personality were explored. All participants completed the 16PF Fifth Edition to measure personality and the Revised Competitiveness Index to measure self-reported competitiveness. Study 1 consisted of 188 undergraduate students, and performance was defined as college GP A. Study 2 consisted of 30 licensed insurance agents and performance was measured by raw sales, sales efficiency, cross sell, average commission earned, and commission …

Molar And Molecular Perspectives On Mothers' Responsiveness To Their Clinic-Referred And "Normal" Children, Vanessa Ann Vigilante

Doctoral Dissertations

An abundance of research has investigated the mother responsiveness construct as an aggregate measure of the degree to which mothers react sensitively to what their children say and do. While the aggregate measure has proven useful in accounting for the ways mothers and children join in dyadic harmony, there is a dearth of information regarding the aggregates’ components. Twenty clinic-referred and thirty-two volunteer mother-child dyads were observed in their home settings for 1 hour per dyad. Observers monitored mother and child responsiveness during the dyadic interactions and childrens’ neutral, positive, and negative responses were recorded. The mother’s responsive social reactions …

Depression, Cognition, And Anosognosia In Alzheimer's Disease: A Rorschach Analysis, Lisa Lillard Oglesby

Doctoral Dissertations

Research investigating the relationship between depression and anosognosia, or lack of insight, in Alzheimer's disease has reported positive, negative, and no correlation. One possible reason for the discrepant findings may be due to depression not being accurately assessed or cleanly defined. Overlap between the symptoms of depression and dementia make discerning the presence of depression in dementia difficult, especially when diagnosed by interview or self-report methods. Further, the role cognitive dysfunction associated with Alzheimer's disease and premorbid psychological functioning play in depression and anosognosia also remain poorly understood, as does the effect on the phenomenological perspective of the individual with …

Dendroclimatological Analysis And Fire History Of Longleaf Pine (Pinus Palustris Mill.) In The Atlantic And Gulf Coastal Plain, Joseph P. Henderson

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to use longleaf pine trees at three major sites in the Southeastern Coastal Plain to: (1) determine how longleaf pine trees respond to climate, (2) reconstruct past climate conditions using long tree-ring chronologies, (3) determine the effects of atmospheric teleconnections on longleaf pine growth, and ( 4) reconstruct fire history from fire-scar data. The native range of longleaf pine and its associated communities extends from southeastern Virginia south and westward to the Trinity River in eastern Texas. I collected samples from living and remnant longleaf pine wood in coastal South Carolina, Eglin Air Force …

Investigating Forgiveness In Relation To Offensive Experiences Among Black And White Respondents, Allen R. Bellamy

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary focus of this dissertation was to investigate the degree to which Blacks and Whites are able to forgive their own and other ethnic groups for those who have offended them. In relation to forgiveness, furthermore, this project examined psychological and emotional variables such as anxiety, anger, racism, and forgiving personality among the participants. Four-hundred and eighty two participants were recruited for this study. Personal narrative accounts were obtained from participants who were asked to describe an offensive act committed by another person(s) with specifying details of the offender. Findings indicate that when controlling for Forgiving Personality and rated …

Empathic Accuracy And Adolescent Romantic Relationships, Peter T. Haugen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation describes a study that seeks to understand the role of empathic accuracy in adolescent romantic relationships. Such relationships are important in their own right and play a central role in shaping the general course of development in adolescence. Five specific questions are examined in this project. First, is there a gender difference in empathic accuracy? Second, does empathic accuracy improve over the course of a relationship? Third, does empathic accuracy improve with age? Fourth, is empathic accuracy related to relationship satisfaction? Fifth, is an individual’s hiding something when discussing disagreements related to a decrease in the partner’s empathic …

Intention To Leave And Organizational Commitment Among Child Welfare Workers, Shakira Alicia Kennedy

Doctoral Dissertations

Little is known about the factors that contribute to organizational commitment among child welfare workers. Yet, since the early 1960s, child welfare has been plagued with high staff turnover rates that threaten the quality and continuity of services provided to vulnerable families. Child welfare organizations must be innovative and use proven models to assist in detecting when a worker has the intention of leaving the organization. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between intention to leave and organizational commitment among child welfare workers. Data were collected on 70 child welfare workers in North Carolina. The Three-Component …

Sense Of Identity And Life Satisfaction In College Students, Beverly Carol Huffstetler

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the relationships between sense of identity, life satisfaction, and the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (inverse of neuroticism), extraversion, and openness. It considered overall life satisfaction as well as the life satisfaction subsets of personal, extrinsic, school, and outcome satisfaction. The present investigation was a secondary analysis of an archival data source. The data were collected from 2,300 students at a large, southeastern university. Significant correlations were found for sense of identity in relation to all aspects of life satisfaction. Sense of identity added incremental validity to the Big Five normal personality traits …

Anaclitic And Introjective Personality Distinctions Among Psychotherapy Outpatients: Examining Clinical Change Across Baseline And Therapy Phases, David Dix Kemmerer

Doctoral Dissertations

S. J. Blatt and colleagues (e.g., Blatt, 1995; Blatt & Blass, 1996; Blatt & Shichman, 1983) have theorized that individuals develop and function along two basic lines— that of interpersonal relatedness and that of self-definition. These two modes, while moderately-oscillatory across the lifespan, suggest two respective, relatively-fixed, personality configurations—the anaclitic and the introjective. It is suggested that psychopathology arises when investment in the themes of one’s preferred personality configuration become enduringly over-emphasized. Individuals with anaclitic psychopathologies tend to be plagued by feelings of helplessness and weakness, and they tend to have fears of being abandoned; they generally have a depleted …

Developing An Integrated Model Of Interactivity In The Context Of Travel-Related Web Sites, Juran Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates relationships among interactivity as functional features, actual interaction and perception, its moderators (i.e. experience) and its consequences (i.e. attitude, trust and purchase intention) in the context of travel-related Web sites. This study is expected to contribute to the body of knowledge by clarifying the concept of interactivity in an important advertising/marketing context. An experimental design is used to explore key questions about relationships among types of interactivity, with a focus on exploring similarities and differences in Human-to-Human and Human- to-Computer interactivity, as well as moderators and consequences of the interactive experience at travel-related Web sites.

How Factors Related To Social Control Might Contribute To Juvenile Delinquency Among African American And Caucasian Females, Andridia Victoria Mapson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined how social control factors might contribute to delinquent behavior (status and criminal offenses) among African American and Caucasian females using Hirschi’s 1969 model of social control. Secondary data was used from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). Data were used for African American and Caucasian girls from Wave I, resulting in a sample of 837. The results indicated that the social control variables did not decrease status offenses with the exception of involvement, which had a negative statistically significant relationship. There were no differences among the races. When looking at criminal offenses, results indicated …

Biological Anthropological Aspects Of The African Diaspora; Geographic Origins, Secular Trends, And Plastic Versus Genetic Influences Utilizing Craniometric Data, Martha Katherine Spradley

Doctoral Dissertations

The African Diaspora refers to the forced emigration of Africans to European and British colonies for the purpose of providing slave labor. Enslaved Africans that arrived in the New World were subjected to a new environment and plantation labor. When dramatic shifts in living standards or exposure to a new environment occur, physical changes may take place within the given population. These types of changes over the short-term are known as secular changes and are thought to be the result of an improvement or decline in environmental conditions, particularly nutrition (Cameron et al., 1990).

Significant craniofacial secular changes have been …

Framing The Internet In China: Cross-Cultural Comparisons Of Newspapers’ Coverage In China, Hong Kong, Singapore, The United States, And The United Kingdom, Xiang Zhou

Doctoral Dissertations

This study introduced the framing theory, Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchical model, and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions into a cross-cultural comparative analysis of news coverage of the Internet in China from 2000 to 2004 in selected newspapers in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Significant differences were found to exist across the societies in both the salience of Internet-related issues and the usage of generic news frames. The issue of Internet diffusion and use was most frequently mentioned in the newspapers from China, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. newspapers paid most attention to the issue …

The Decoupling Hypothesis: A New Idea For The Origin Of Hominid Bipedalism, Adam David Sylvester

Doctoral Dissertations

Theoretical adaptive landscapes and mathematical representations of key constraints of evolutionary and primate biology are used to propose a new hypothesis for the origin of hominid bipedalism. These constraints suggest that the selective pressure that produced this novel form of locomotion was the need for effective suspensory and terrestrial movement. This testable hypothesis, termed the Decoupling Hypothesis, posits that bipedalism is an adaptation that enables the shoulder to maintain a high degree of mobility, a feature important to suspensory behaviors, in the face of significant demands for a high degree of stability, a feature important for highly effective terrestrial quadrupedism. …

Disentangling The Meaning Of Multisource Feedback: An Examination Of The Nomological Network Surrounding Source And Dimension Factors, Brian J. Hoffman

Doctoral Dissertations

This study combines internal and external approaches to construct validation in examining the construct validity of multisource feedback (MSF). First, consistent with prior MSF research, within source agreement was greater than across source agreement, the MSF instrument was equivalent across sources, and source and dimension latent factors characterized the MSF data. Next, existing MSF construct validity research was extended by examining the pattern of relationships between factor analytically derived source and dimension factors and externally measured constructs (e.g., assessment center dimensions, personality constructs, and intelligence). The pattern of relationships between MSF dimensions and conceptually similar and dissimilar external constructs suggested …

Essays On Tax Competition, Brian Christopher Hill

Doctoral Dissertations

Essay 1

This essay empirically researches the setting of multiple tax rates by county governments in the presence of tax competition and agglomerations. Previous empirical evidence outside the tax arena suggests that firms earn rents in the presence of agglomerations from external economies of scale. As a result, governments might be able to extract a portion of these rents from businesses through higher tax rates. This paper empirically examines how local governments set sales and property tax rates, the two largest taxes paid by businesses at the state and local level, taking into account tax competition pressures and agglomerations. Using …