Social Work Commons^™

The Role Of Athletic Trainers In The Mental Health Care Of Student-Athletes, Dominic J. Palumbo

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of athletic trainers (ATs) in the mental health care of NCAA Division I student-athletes. Previous research has explored the current experiences of both student-athletes and ATs, along with the current models of care that are prevalent in Division I athletic training rooms. Research described the student-athlete population as unique. According to Beauchemin (2014) the life of a student-athlete “presents challenges and stressors related to athletic status that can lead to a compromised well-being.” This compromised well-being could potentially lead to mental health diagnoses among the student-athlete population. Along with student-athletes, …

Developing A Platform For Integrating Disability Issues Into City Municipality Decisions; Case Study: City Of Knoxville, Sravanthi Pamu

Masters Theses

The People with Disabilities (PWD) & Senior Citizen (SC) are isolated from the mainstream society, and they face several barriers in everyday life. There is no communication platform for them to express their concerns, in turn, participate in the city municipality policy decisions related to PWD- & SC-friendly city development. The purpose of this research is to integrate disability and senior citizen issues in the city of Knoxville to the city council decisions. The comprehensive literature search is done to identify the frequently mentioned disability and age-friendly city factors. An effective survey was designed to identify the issues in collaboration …

Those Who Choose To Stay: Narrating The Rural Appalachian Queer Experience, Amy Michelle Jordan

Masters Theses

“Those who choose to stay” is a qualitative exploratory study compromised of four LGBT youth from rural towns in East Tennessee. These young adults were recruited through LGBT listservs, pride festivals, and word of mouth. Each young adult was interviewed over the course of one to three hours. The interviews were then transcribed and coded using Atlas.ti software, allowing codes to surface from the text. Four main themes were discovered: religious atmosphere, family, coming out, and peer networks.

Religious atmosphere was generally found to be a destructive part of these youths’ environments, making them fear for their safety and worry …

Perceived Racial Discrimination By Students Of Color Among Social Work Programs In The United States: A Cross-Sectional Study, Mira Hanna

Masters Theses

Social work is a profession that is based upon principles such as social justice and dignity and worth of the person. As such, social work education ought to reflect those values by ensuring that all students receive an adequate education in an environment characterized by fair and equal treatment of all students, including students of color. There is a lack of research, however, that addresses the experiences of students of color in colleges of social work across the United States. This study addresses this gap in literature by conducting a secondary data analysis of the data gathered using the Bowie-Hancock …

The Relationships Between Internalized Heterosexism, Spirituality, And Mental Health In Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Young Adults, Jon Raymond Bourn

Masters Theses

Minority stressors like internalized heterosexism have been found to be related to suicidality among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals (e.g., Savin-Williams & Ream, 2003). Additional research is needed, however, to better understand the factors that may serve as moderators (i.e., protective factors) in the relationships between minority stressors and negative mental health outcomes, such as depression and suicidality (e.g., Szymanski et al., 2008). The current study attempted to examine the relationships between internalized heterosexism and two negative mental health outcomes associated with suicide, psychache (defined as unbearable psychological pain) and depression, in a sample of LGB young adults. Given …

Assessment Of Social Workers’ Attitudes Towards People With Physical Disabilities, Ann Charlotte Eubank

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes of social workers in Tennessee towards people with physical disabilities. A non-probability, convenience sample of social workers who were members of the National Association of Social Workers Tennessee Chapter (NASW TN), and accept email communication, were sent the on-line survey. Two hundred sixty five social workers responded to the survey and one hundred sixty eight respondents (N=168) completed the survey in its entirety and were included in analysis. The respondents’ attitudes were assessed as either empowering or oppressive based on concepts and constructs of empowerment and oppression identified by disability …

Self-Reported Family Income And Expenditure Patterns For A Cohort Of Tanf-Reliant African American Women: Outcomes From A Longitudinal Study In Miami-Dade County, Florida, Stacia Michelle West

Masters Theses

This mixed-method study was designed to analyze the impact of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 on a cohort of welfare-reliant African American women in Miami-Dade County. A snowball sampling technique was utilized to identify and conduct in-person interviews with women who were receiving welfare benefits from January 1997 to March 2000. The study intended to determine the participant characteristics, employment and wage histories, annualized income, and annualized expenditures over the time span. The results indicate that the average age of recipients was 34.5 years old with four children. The average educational attainment for the cohort …

Paternal Involvement With Special Needs Children, Emily Lauren Furst

Masters Theses

The focus of this study is paternal involvement of fathers with special needs children. Role salience, parental satisfaction, reflected appraisals, and contextual variables were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between empowerment and paternal involvement. It was also hypothesized that financial strain would moderate the relationship between empowerment and paternal involvement, as mediated by the identity theory variables and contextual variables. The researcher additionally hypothesized that empowerment would be more important to men facing higher levels of financial strain. These hypotheses were investigated using data from the Pathways Research Project, which evaluated Tennessee’s Early Intervention System (TEIS). TEIS provides services to …

Domestic Violence: Professionals’ Attitudes Toward Its Causes And Intervention, Hannah Katherine Mccreery

Masters Theses

Community organizations work with and provide services for perpetrators and victims of domestic violence on a daily basis. The individuals who work for these agencies have a direct impact on perpetrators and victims. This study investigated the attitudes and perceptions of domestic violence professionals to assess the differentiating effect of gender, occupation within the field, age, education level, and years of experience in the field. Findings revealed significant differences between genders and occupation groups, particularly in attitudes toward interventions and treatment practices and beliefs about the causes of domestic violence. Implications for future research and policy are reviewed.

Examining The Relationship Between Toddler Self-Regulation And Maternal Self-Efficacy, Yu-Chuen Huang

Masters Theses

The present study examined the relationship between maternal self-efficacy and child self-regulation during the toddler years. Using a local database, the current study focused on specific dimensions of maternal self-efficacy in an effort to move beyond global descriptions of the construct. The results showed that maternal self-efficacy was negatively associated with child dysregulation ratings. In addition, the instrumental care dimension of maternal self-efficacy was the most influential predictor of child dysregulation ratings. Moreover, negative emotionality and sensory sensitivity have stronger associations with maternal self-efficacy than the other aspects of child dysregulation. However, this study found no gender or socioeconomic differences …

The Role Of Touch In The Care Of Toddlers Among Bofi Foragers In Central Africa, Min-Jung Jung

Masters Theses

The current study examined three types of touch (caregiving, social-affectionate, and passive) and toddlers‟ daily experience of physical interaction with caregivers among Bofi foragers, a semi-nomadic group of hunter-gatherers in Central Africa. With the purpose of describing a more holistic view of touch interactions and childhood experience in toddlers, rather than the extant Western, single-caregiver, mother-centric view, this study described the stylistic touch patterns that Bofi forager children experience and the influence of child characteristic factors (age, gender, and birth order) and social ecological factors (four types of caregivers: mother, father, adult relatives, and juvenile relatives). Based on cultural characteristics …

Relationships Among Parenting Styles, Ethnicity, Gender, And Adolescents Internalized Distress In Impoverished Families, Tao Liu

Masters Theses

The principal objectives of the study were to examine the concurrent and long-term effect of parenting style and its interaction with the ethnicity and gender on adolescent internalized distress in low income families. The data were from the first two waves of the Three City Study. Nine hundred and fifteen mothers from Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio reported their parenting behaviors on authoritative, harsh, permissive, and disengaged parenting; and their adolescent children responded to the Brief Symptom Inventory 18 to indicate their internalized distress. The results of the study indicated that disengaged and harsh parenting were significantly associated with adolescent …

Depressive Symptoms In An Urban Kurdish Refugee And Immigrant Population: An Exploratory Study, Natalie Kay Worley

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the prevalence of depressive symptoms among the elderly Kurdish immigrant and refugee population living in the greater Nashville, Tennessee area. Nashville has the largest population of Kurds living outside of Kurdistan (Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, 2004), but as is the case for many immigrant and refugee groups, little empirical research exists to aid social service practitioners in addressing the unique needs of this population (Williams & Westermeyer, n.d.). The investigator draws on the limited research about mental health in other immigrant and refugee populations as a basis for the …

Psychosocial Correlates Of Methamphetamine Use, Greg Joseph Eisinger

Masters Theses

Methamphetamine (MA) abuse is a devastating problem which has been sweeping the United States from west to east and has reached epidemic proportion in many areas. Literature on the drug itself, its history, and effects are reviewed. The current project aimed to examine the psychosocial correlates of MA use using Hudson's Multi-Problem Screening Inventory (MPSI).

The MPSI was given to a control group of undergraduate social work students (n=17) and a group of past-year MA users (n=15). All participants supplied demographic information and completed a questionnaire on their MA-use habits. Differences between users and non users were examined across the …

A Study Of Political Activity Among Social Work Students, Elizabeth A. Shelton

Masters Theses

This localized study explored the level of political activity of students at the University of Tennessee College of Social Work. Students were asked to respond to several demographic questions and answer questions regarding the frequency with which they performed certain tasks of political activity. Additionally the study explored relevant literature to establish a framework of national political behavior and political behavior within the field of social work. Political behavior is most strongly predicted by the age of the student with little regard for race, gender, or religious background. Students with a higher level of family history of political interest and …

Early Literacy And Children With Special Needs: An Examination Of Resources In The Home Environment, Juli Meagan Dolezal

Masters Theses

Early literacy development of young children is an area of research that is receiving increasing attention from scholars in the fields of early childhood general and special education. However, researchers in both fields have failed to examine the broad contextual features of the home environment and ways that these features may facilitate or impede literacy development. In an attempt to close the gap on research on early literacy development of young children with special needs, a measurement tool was developed for the purposes of obtaining a more holistic representation of resources available in home environments and gathering information about possible …

Running Away From An Adolescent Residential Treatment Facility: Does Adult Involvement Make A Difference?, Michael Lee Burford

Masters Theses

This paper focuses on whether running away from adolescent residential care facilities is related to having off grounds passes with an adult resource. It is hypothesized that as off grounds passes increase in frequency and duration, runaway behavior will decrease in frequency and duration. Data were collected from two hundred closed client files. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used for finding Spearman’s rho correlation and linear regression analysis of the variables. Results show a weak negative relationship exists between number of passes and both number of runaway occurrences and hours spent on the run. Because data are collected …

A Differential Analysis Of Factors That Contribute To Kin Support Among Employed African Americans, Jacqueline R. Clay

Masters Theses

The study is an analysis of factors that contribute to kin support and family bonds among a sample of employed African Americans (N=188). The secondary analysis examined differential levels of kin support for female and male respondents, and assessed the comparative influence of other variables, including income level, education level, religious bonds, and family bonds. Findings pointed out that there was a clear contrast between genders in relation to strength of kin support. Female respondents demonstrated higher levels of support for close relatives (m=1.58, SD=.62), as well as stronger family bonds (F(4,153)=4.080, p<.005, R [squared] of .096), based on frequency of contact, proximity of relatives, and so forth. Implications are discussed in relation to social work family intervention in an era of widespread public reductions in income maintenance programs such as Temporary Aid to Needy Families.

Empathy And The Mssw Curriculum: Are Students’ Levels Of Empathy Influenced By The Curriculum?, Melissa Rene Routh

Masters Theses

Empathy has been recognized as an important element in the helping profession, specifically within the field of social work. It has been acknowledged as an important component for promoting, restoring, maintaining, and enhancing clients’ well-being. Evaluation of empathy research has demonstrated contradictory conclusions about the impact of graduate education on students’ levels of empathy. While the social work curriculum assumes reciprocal empathic communication is an attained skill developed throughout the MSSW curriculum, little research has been conducted on the extent of empathic communication obtained through the social work curriculum. This study assessed the impact of graduate social work education on …

Frame Analysis Of The Living Wage Campaign And Social Work Implications, Katherine Ann Mcclernon-Chaffin

Masters Theses

The general aim of this study was to examine the living age movement and how frame alignment fits into social work practice. This research was developed from a limited empirical and theoretical base surrounding the living wage as a social movement. Frame alignment is becoming a tool that more and more people should know how to use. Frame alignment has been a key component in propelling social movements into society in order to effect change. This research is an examination of frame alignment, specifically the living wage movement and how it fits into effective social work practice.

The data were …

Social Validation Of A Creativity Measure, Elizabeth Kay Bennett

Masters Theses

A series of three rating forms, based on the Developmental-Ecological Model of Creative Potential in Young Children (Moran, Sawyers & Tegano, 1987), and a checklist were designed to assist preschool teachers in identifying creative children. The rating forms and checklist were completed, one per day for four consecutive days, by 15 teachers who were unaware that they were rating creative behaviors. The Multidimensional Stimulus Fluency Measure (MSFM), measure of young children's creative potential, and an IQ test were individually administered to the 40 children involved. Correlations were computed to assess the relationships of IQ and creativity, as measured by the …

Southville Revisted, Marvin A. Rubenstein, Cynthia T. Soloway

Masters Theses

Southville Revisited is a quantitative-descriptive study which examined (1) the extent to which Jews in Memphis identify with traditional Jewish values; (2) the effectiveness of current goals and objectives of the Memphis Jewish communal agencies in satisfying the needs of the community; (3) the comparison of the 1979 sample of the population with the respondents in the Southville Survey of 1959; and (4) new directions in planning and in expanding Jewish communal services to meet changing needs evidenced in the current study.

In order to accomplish these goals, the researchers utilized approximately 75 percent of the questions derived from the …

A Survey Of Children Admitted To Church Of God Home For Children In Sevierville, Tennessee, January 1965 To December 1967, Dorothy Jones Farnham

Masters Theses

It was this study's purpose: (1) to determine if those children admitted to the Church of God Home for Children had legal residence within a 100-mile radius of the institution and (2) to learn if most admissions were referred by ministers of the Church of God.

A schedule was formulated for use in collecting the data. Table, taken from the schedule, were made so as to examine the hypotheses and indicated areas in which further research could be indicated.

The findings of this study would show that state of residence for those children accepted has changed to include a wider …

A Study Of Interpersonal Relationships Among Job Corpsmen--Tremont Conservation Center, Townsend, Tennessee, James Clair Richardson

Masters Theses

During the period August 1 to December 15, 1967, the Tremont Conservation Center's drop-out rate was 40 per cent. There had been considerable concern over the frequency of drop-outs at the Center and other Job Corps Centers had reported terminations exceeding 50 per cent. This study was undertaken with the intent of answering one question, that being, was the degree or quality of interpersonal relationships between one corpsman with his fellow corpsmen relevant to the length of time he would stay in the program?

The writer constructed and used two sociometric tests, one to measure the degrees of group acceptance …

A Study Of The Development Of Services, Facilities, And Professional Standards Of Catholic Charities Of Tennessee, Inc., 1962 - 1967, Louis Jules Junod

Masters Theses

The purpose of this paper is to study the development of the social welfare program of Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Inc., from 1962 to 1967 and to determine if development ha resulted in improved services, facilities, and professional standards.

The material for this study was gathered by personally interviewing the top executive at each agency. Also, except in East Tennessee, the locations were visited, employees talked with, and facilities observed. In addition, the central files of the Executive Office of Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Inc., the files of the area offices, and the central files of the diocesan chancery office …

An Examination Of A Maternity Home As A Setting For Milieu Therapy, Louise Greene Hartman

Masters Theses

Area of Investigation

Milieu therapy, defined as a scientific manipulation of the environment aimed at producing changes in the personality of the patient, has been used extensively in psychiatric hospitals, in work with children, and in various residential settings. This study was designed to explore the milieu and the services of the Florence Crittenton Agency, Knoxville, Tennessee, with emphasis on examining the maternity home as a setting for milieu therapy. The study of the milieu included: (1) the organization and functioning of the agency; (2) the residence; (3) the residential peer group; and (4) the services, including: (a) the social …

A Comparative Study Of The Degree Of Social Functioning Of Children In The Church Of God Home For Children, Sevierville, Tennessee, J. Delbert Mitchell, Edna Earle Pressley

Masters Theses

Purpose of the Study: It was this study's purpose: (1) to compare the degree of social functioning of a sample of children who reside in an institutional environment with an equal sample of children who reside in individual family situations, (2) to suggest guide lines for the development of an instructional program to aid the children in the Church of God Home for Children with improving their individual social development if the suggestion for such a program is indicated by this study, and (3) to generate interest in additional research studies as a part of this institution's program.

This study …

A Study Of School-Age Children For Whom Service Was Terminated With The Chattanooga Psychiatric Clinic Between July 1, 1961, And June 30, 1963, John Paul Baggett

Masters Theses

This study was designed to investigate the following hypotheses:

1. Referrals of children to the Clinic will tend to cluster around two time points--school entrance and the shifts from elementary to junior high school.
2. Proportionately, more school referrals than those referred by other sources will be of children in the lower socio-economic class.
3. Children referred by schools will terminate service earlier in the clinic process than those referred by other sources.
4. Proportionately, more children from one-parent families will be referred by other sources than by schools.
5. There will be more referrals of children who are the oldest child in the family …

A Study Of Factors Affecting Discontinuance Among Patients Attending The Chattanooga Psychiatric Clinic, Nancy Louella Alverson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Recognition Of Non-Financial Problems And Needs In Interviews With Applicants For Adc, Elizabeth Powers

Masters Theses

In no other way does a democracy more clearly demonstrate its conviction regarding its responsibility for the total welfare of its people than in its social legislation. And our present public assistance laws may be viewed as the highest expression of that conviction. The enactment of their most recent revisions, the 1956 Public Assistance Amendments to the Social Security Act, afford a very broad legal base on which the public assistance agency can act to convert the ideals of service to needy individuals and families into reality.