Digital Commons Network^™

Organizational Citizenship & Counterproductive Workplace Behaviors: Personal Trauma & Workplace Conduct, Patricia Giaccone

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The influence of a survivor-advocates personal trauma history on their work and ability to cope with its challenges are inadequately understood. This research project aimed to distinguish if there was a significant difference in engagement between survivor-advocates and nonsurvivor-advocates in organizational citizenship behaviors or counterproductive workplace behaviors. Furthermore, this study looked at organizational employment tenure as a factor affecting such engagement. The data for this quantitative research project was collected from a nationwide pool of respondents who worked directly with victims of domestic violence in the United States resulting in a total of 54 participants completing the anonymous survey. Exploring …

Implementing Acceptance And Commitment Therapy To Reduce Caregiver Stress And Enhance Procedural Fidelity For Families Affected By Autism Spectrum Disorder, Casey K. Marsh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rate of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is increasing each year (CDC, 2022). Although the severity of symptoms is specific to individuals, the families of those diagnosed are often also affected in a variety of ways. Caregivers of children with ASD experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and stress. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on caregiver stress and procedural fidelity. Three caregivers of children with ASD were trained using an ACT curriculum and caregiver stress was measured using two self-report scales, before and after six ACT …

Nonverbal Cues In Real-World, High-Stakes Deception, Nancy L. Carr

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Decades of low-stakes deception research, in which participants lied without risk of severe personal, professional, or legal consequences, produced few reliable deception cues. As a result, deception detection methods based on low-stakes findings generated limited accuracy. More research was needed to identify reliable deception cues performed in real world scenarios. To address the problem, this within-subjects mixed methods study coded videos of public figures’ nonverbal (NV) cues during real-world high-stakes (RWHS) baseline, deception, and confession (BDC); tested each cue for significance; and identified demeanor (descriptively and quantitatively) for each condition. The qualitative study described how each subject’s behavior changed between …

Traumatization Of In-Home Supportive Services (Ihss) Workers, Joseph Choi

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe Korean-speaking IHSS workers’ experiences with trauma in the Los Angeles area. The theory guiding this study is the ecological view on psychological trauma by Mary Harvey (1996). Harvey’s theory posits that each individual’s reaction to traumatizing events will be influenced by the source of one’s identity, through the combined attributes of community and a sense of belonging. As many Korean-speaking IHSS workers work exclusively with other Korean consumers, this theory can help explain the strong emotional and social ties Korean-speaking IHSS workers feel bound to in their daily operations. It is …

Mental Health Of Western Tennessee Police Officers, Jasmin Marie Powell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this grounded theory study is to understand the group think regarding mental health and wellness of police officers in the western Tennessee region. The theory guiding this study is group think, a theory first defined in 1972 by Irvin Janis. Irvin Janis, a psychologist introduced the phenomenon of groupthink and described it as a group of people, in this research case police officers, where loyalty was required from members and that this can cause both positive and negative side effects. The research population for this research will consist of 92 participants, including males and females, of different …

Mitigating The Negative Effects Of Perceived Stress Using Wellness And Resiliency Training Programs On Job Satisfaction In Public Safety Officers In The United States, Benjamin T. Iobst

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The following quasi-experimental, cross-sectional, survey-based quantitative research study investigated the role of wellness and resiliency training programming in mitigating the adverse effects of stress on job satisfaction (JS) in US Public Safety Officers (PSOs). This research measured the dimensions of perceived stress, such as technological stress, critical incidents, organizational stressors, work-life balance, and social-conflict stress. Additionally, this research examined the relationship between these stressors, wellness, and resiliency education and their effect on job satisfaction in PSOs. It was found that perceived stress has a statistically significant negative correlation with job satisfaction (rs = -.466, p < .001). Additionally, organizational stress (rs = -0.556, p < 0.001), work-life balance stress (rs = -0.452, p < 0.001), critical incident stress (rs = -0.306, p < 0.001), and social conflict stress (rs = -0.298, p < 0.001) have a statistically significant negative correlation with job satisfaction, whereas technological stress does not (rs = -0.109, p = 0.129). Finally, it was found that resiliency training does not have a statistically significant relationship with job satisfaction (U (195) = 4647, p = .971) or perceived stress (U (195) = 4434.50, p = .608) based on the conditions that were tested. Police departments can use results from this research to guide and develop policies and training to address stress and job satisfaction in the public safety industry.

Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnoses Within Bipoc Communities, Angela M. Houghton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

With a pressing need to examine racial and ethnic differences in ASD detection to discern potential inaccuracies in diagnosis within groups, this study used a transcendental phenomenological design to explore the explanations for misdiagnosis within Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) households, comparing their encounters with Whites. The research involved six parents and one family member of children who were originally wrongfully identified, only to in the future confirm ASD. Through semi-structured conversations, the study delved into the distinctive trials of BIPOC households. Data analysis respected the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen technique, with thematic exploration used to recognize repetitions, highlighted differences in …

Teaching With Pedagogy And Empathy, Mamoona Muzammil, Muzammil Arshad, Washain Muzammil

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Chemistry)

Mental illness is common and can affect anyone. Each year the University welcomes students with Mental Health Issues. One in four adults in the US will experience a mental illness in their lifetime, however according to a NUS survey, eight out of ten students will experience a mental illness while in higher education. For some student’s mental illness can be a lifelong disability. Others can experience short term issues that emerge around difficult or stressful life events, while some students may be more at risk of experiencing mental illness in relation to their ethnicity, gender, sexuality or socio-economic background. Although …

Perceived Control And Mistake Management: A Study On Behavioral Responses, Kaitlyn Kilburn, Alexander T. Jackson

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Mistakes at work can be quite costly for organizations. Mistakes can vary from minor to extreme, and mistakes cost organizations millions of dollars each year (Macciola, 2021). Perhaps what is just as crucial as mistakes is how people respond to mistakes and the factors influencing how people respond to mistakes, such as one’s perceptions of control, who identifies the mistake, and the type of mistake. Perceived control refers to an individual’s perception of the amount of power they have over their surroundings and the challenges they may encounter (Thompson, 1981). Perceived control promotes a sense of responsibility for outcomes (Skinner, …

Ageism In Hiring: The Influence Of Implicit Cues On Perceptions Of Candidate Warmth, Competence, Suitability, And Trainability, Morgan A. Greene, Courtney L. Baker

River Cities Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference

Hiring discrimination in the U.S. is an illegal practice for people who are 40 and older (Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 1967). Previous research has shown that not only is discrimination still prevalent (Harris, 2022; Abrams et al., 2016), but as much as 48% of people have experienced some type of ageism (Wilson et al., 2019). Furthermore, 90% of all discriminatory decisions are made before the hiring process even begins, typically during the resume screening process (Harris, 2022). Older age in applicants may signal to recruiters that the candidate has lower technology skills and trainability (VanBorm et al., 2021).The current …

Communication In Noise Is The Window On Cognition, R. Haven Wiley

Animal Sentience

As Griffin surmised, communication is the window on cognition, but as shown here, only if it is noisy. This commentary is an invitation to consider the full implications of the evolution of noisy communication. A combination of Information Theory, Signal Detection Theory, and Natural Selection, in a unified theory of the evolution of communication, reveals that noise is inevitable. All organisms are thus decision makers. Perception, thought, freedom of decision, self-awareness, metabolism, and natural selection all share the consequences of signals in noise. A full understanding of each requires attention to the errors of receivers. Griffin’s hunch is correct with …

Racial Bias In Risk Allocation And Resource Utilisation: A Contributing Factor To Ethnic Minority Overrepresentation In Missing Person Investigations?, Amy Van Langeraad, Fiona Gabbert, Adrian J. Scott

International Journal of Missing Persons

Statistics from the National Crime Agency reveal that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are over-represented within the missing population in the United Kingdom, and previous archival studies have shown there is a discrepancy in the recovery of ethnic minority missing persons compared to White missing persons. A wider body of research shows that racial bias is prevalent in the criminal justice system and law enforcement, resulting in different outcomes for victims depending on their racial background. Such outcomes have yet to be examined in the context of missing persons. Therefore, this study tries to address this gap in the literature …

Lived Experiences Involving Family Decision-Making Processes For Placing Older Adults In Long-Term Care Facilities In Arkansas, Jennifer Elaine Carpenter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although family members play an important role in decisions regarding their loved ones in long-term care facilities, their experiences have not been explored. Guided by Bowen’s family system and Simon’s decision-making theories, this qualitative study utilized phenomenology. The research question was: What are experiences involving the decision-making process for family members when placing family members in long-term care facilities in Arkansas? Purposive sampling resulted in face-to-face interviews with a sample of 11 such family members over 18 years of age. Data trustworthiness was established by using reflexivity and rich thick descriptions. Member checking was used with participants to verify transcripts …

Cross-Country Comparison Of Depressive Symptoms And Social-Emotional Aspects In University Students From Brazil And Germany During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Results From Two Cross-Sectional Surveys, Aneliana Da Silva Prado, Sabrina Baldofski, Elisabeth Kohls, Alessandra S. Bianchi, Fernanda S. Oda, Joanneliese De Lucas Freitas, Christine Rummel-Kluge

Pacific Faculty Work

Background The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected students' mental health, increasing pre-existing psychosocial vulnerabilities. University students worldwide have presented differences in their mental health status; however, cross-country studies comparing students' mental health during the pandemic are lacking. Aims To investigate potential differences between university students from Brazil and those from Germany with respect to (a) depressive symptoms and alcohol and drug consumption, (b) social and emotional aspects (loneliness, self-efficacy, perceived stress, social support and resilience) and (c) attitudes towards vaccination. Method Two online cross-sectional studies were conducted with university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil (November 2021 to March 2022) …

‘Foundations Of The Mind, Brain, And Behavioral Relationships’: A Combined Faculty And Student’S Perspective Of A New Textbook On Clinical Neuroscience, Richard J. Addante, Jahdiel Perez Caban, Sarah E. Smith

Psychology Faculty Publications

The textbook, ‘Foundations of the Mind, Brain, and Behavioral Relationships’ (Moini et al., Citation2023), is one of the newest textbooks in neuroscience to arrive. The market for textbooks in the field of neuroscience is competitive among several excellent comparators, but critical market gaps still remain to be filled, notably the area of clinical neuroscience that is both advanced in content but accessible to students. One of the reasons that this gap has existed in the field is precisely because it can be a very difficult a mark to hit: how does one present neurobiological content that is …

Burnout And Employee Satisfaction Of Mental Health Clinicians In Corrections, Jeremy C. Capuyon, Lindsay Gietzen

Pacific Journal of Health

Approximately 1.9 million individuals are currently incarcerated within the United States. Rehabilitation and preparation for parole back into the community is common goal amongst correctional facilities. Mental health clinicians (social workers and psychologists) within the correctional facilities are providers who assist in the rehabilitation of inmates. Unfortunately, mental health clinicians in correctional facilities experience high rates of burnout and low levels of job satisfaction, resulting in an increase in turnover rates. This research project looks to investigate the impact burnout and employee satisfaction has on mental health clinicians who work in correctional settings. Furthermore, this research project compares burnout and …

On The Role Of Prediction In Streaming Hierarchical Learning, Ramy Mounir

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today's world, AI systems need to make sense of large amounts of data as it unfolds in real-time, whether it's a video from surveillance and monitoring cameras, streams of egocentric footage, or sequences in other domains such as text or audio. The ability to break these continuous data streams into meaningful events, discover nested structures, and predict what might happen next at different levels of abstraction is crucial for applications ranging from passive surveillance systems to sensory-motor autonomous learning. However, most existing models rely heavily on large, annotated datasets with fixed data distributions and offline epoch-based training, which makes …

Friend Support Preferences In College Students, Kathy Berenson, Thea Albin, Shannon Walker

Psychology Faculty Publications

Emotion socialization is the process by which a child’s caregivers teach them how to understand and appropriately express emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1998). We investigated the relationship between the emotion socialization strategies experienced in childhood and mental health outcomes in young adulthood. Additionally, we examined how this relationship may differ as a function of socioeconomic status (SES).

A Fisher Information Theory Of Aesthetic Preference For Complexity, Sébastien Berquet, Hassan Aleem, Norberto M. Grzywacz

Psychology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

When evaluating sensory stimuli, people tend to prefer those with not too little or not too much complexity. A recent theoretical proposal for this phenomenon is that preference has a direct link to the Observed Fisher Information that a stimulus carries about the environment. To make this theory complete, one must specify the model that the brain has about complexities in the world. Here, we develop this model by first obtaining the distributions of three indices of complexity measured as normalized Shannon Entropy in real-world images from seven environments. We then search for a parametric model that accounts for these …

Navigating Non-Orthogonality: Exploring Latent Mean Differences In Unbalanced Conditions, Jay B. Jeffries

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Researchers understand that conducting numerous pairwise comparisons between group means increases the Type I error rate, prompting the use of planned contrasts like orthogonal contrast sets. Implicit to orthogonal contrast sets is the principal assumption that groups are balanced in size. Further, when dealing with complex variables like latent constructs, specialized modeling is necessary. Understanding how violations of the assumptions of an orthogonal contrast set and the latent variable model approach can help identify variation in the accuracy of group mean difference. However, hindrances to the accuracy of latent mean orthogonal comparisons when this assumption is untenable remains unsettled. This …

Navigating Non-Orthogonality: Exploring Latent Mean Differences In Unbalanced Conditions, Jay B. Jeffries

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Researchers understand that conducting numerous pairwise comparisons between group means increases the Type I error rate, prompting the use of planned contrasts like orthogonal contrast sets. Implicit to orthogonal contrast sets is the principal assumption that groups are balanced in size. Further, when dealing with complex variables like latent constructs, specialized modeling is necessary. Understanding how violations of the assumptions of an orthogonal contrast set and the latent variable model approach can help identify variation in the accuracy of group mean difference. However, hindrances to the accuracy of latent mean orthogonal comparisons when this assumption is untenable remains unsettled. This …

An Empirical Analysis Of The Mmpi-3 Suicidal/Death Ideation Scale, Brittany Barnes Rhodes

Theses and Dissertations

Suicide is a significant concern in society and is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and around the world. Suicidality is particularly prevalent in outpatient psychological treatment centers, with some studies estimating a tenfold increase in prevalence in this setting compared to the population at large. Several measures have been developed to assess suicide risk potential based on symptom frequency and combinations of risk factors, and broadband personality measures have also incorporated suicidality scales into their tests. The current study was focused on assessing the effectiveness of the Suicidal/Death Ideation (SUI) scale on the third …

The Impact Of Race-Related Stress On The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (Mmpi-3) Of An African American Community Sample, Cassandra Clayton

Theses and Dissertations

Black Americans have endured profound racial discrimination and systemic injustices rooted in the historical legacy of slavery in the United States. These injustices persist today, permeating various facets of life, such as social interactions, education, politics, legal systems, and employment opportunities. Previous research has explored the cultural ramifications of these experiences, which often lead to race-related stressors and negative impacts on the psychological well-being of Black Americans. However, the exploration of how discrimination and racial stressors impact personality test scores of African Americans, such as on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, 3^rd edition (MMPI-3), is limited. This study investigated …

Nature Brings Happiness: Contact With Nature As Mediator Between Nature Relatedness And Well-Being Among Urban Communities In Indonesia, Bartolomeus Yofana Adiwena, Ratna Djuwita

Psychological Research on Urban Society

Well-being is one of the most important elements and is known to be closely related to various aspects of human life, such as physiological health. Previous studies demonstrate that the natural environment positively contributes to well-being. However, most research on the natural environment and well-being mainly focuses on situational factors, such as contact with the natural environment, and ignores dispositional factors, such as nature relatedness. Thus, the current study aims to examine the role of nature relatedness (dispositional factor) and contact with nature (situational factor) in improving well-being among urban communities in Indonesia. This study uses a cross-sectional design and …

Internalized Racism And Mental Health: The Moderating Role Of Collective Racial Self-Esteem, Steven M. Sanders, Tiffany R. Williams, April T. Berry, Claudia Garcia-Aguilera, Kiera Robinson, Reniece Martin, Paigean Jones

Psychological Sciences and Counseling Faculty Research

Internalized racism is the internalization of beliefs about racism and colonization that contribute to the acceptance of negative messaging or stereotypical misrepresentations that inform perceptions about worth and ability. Internalized racism is associated with psychological distress in racially diverse people. Collective racial self-esteem is a potential protective factor that can serve as a moderator in reducing distress and facilitating psychological well-being. The sample for the present study consisted of 526 participants who self-identified as African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, Latinx American, or American of Arab or Middle Eastern descent. The researchers used regression with the Process macro to investigate the …

Pisa 2022. Assessing Creative Thinking For A Better Future, Lisa De Bortoli, Catherine Underwood

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

Creative thinking was assessed as an innovative domain for the first time in PISA 2022. This report presents the creative thinking results for Australia as a whole, for the Australian states and territories and for the other groups in PISA 2022. It is one of two thematic reports providing additional high-level analysis of Australia's 2022 PISA performance. Differences in results are only reported if tests of statistical significance showed that these were likely to be real differences; that is, differences were unlikely to be caused by chance.

Workplace Psychological Well-Being: An Extension And Validation, Lauren E. Piroutek

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

Psychological well-being (PWB), positive human functioning, and flourishing, have primarily been studied in the context of the full life span with limited research within the context of the workplace. The well-being research conducted in the workplace is often limited to constructs such as work engagement, job satisfaction and subjective well-being. Furthermore, the research on PWB that has recently been performed tends to overlook existence needs (e.g., adequate pay and benefits, safety) which play a critical role in the tangible and psychological needs of the modern-day worker. This paper adds to the growing workplace psychological need fulfillment literature by extending and …

Stress On The Brain: An Investigation Into The Impact Of Stress On Learning, Memory, And Metamemory Processes, Felicia M. Chaisson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While acute anxiety or stress has been shown to enhance certain cognitive functions, such as memory for emotionally salient stimuli, its effects on memory for emotionally neutral information remain ambiguous. Successful memory encoding and retrieval often involve control processes—both self-initiated and directed—that dictate organization during learning. Previous research indicates that these processes facilitate the contextual binding and organization of information. However, multi-domain evidence suggests that stress during encoding may be disrupted due to changes in neural mechanisms at play. This dissertation explores how stress impairs cognitive control, identifies potential underlying neural correlates, and examines broader metacognitive influences. Chapter 1 begins …

Expert Consensus In A Politically-Charged Environment: Motivated Reasoning In Information Processing, Austin L. Katz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the abundance of information online, what drives news consumption? It has been theorized that there are two distinct conflicting motivations which operate simultaneously when consumers encounter new information: the motivation to reach accurate conclusions and the directional motivation to reach conclusions that are consistent with a person’s preexisting beliefs or predispositions (e.g., Kunda 1990). This experiment tests situations in which both motivations are simultaneously made salient in the context of reading headlines to decide what news to read and how accurate the news is likely to be.

A new fact-check manipulation was used to draw attention to the accuracy …

Strategies To Overcome Burnout In Women In Behavioral Health Leadership, Pamela Atueyi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The global mental health landscape is currently facing a significant crisis, characterized by an unprecedented surge in patient demand and a concurrent shortage of therapists. This imbalance has led to overwhelmed mental health facilities, prolonged access and wait times for patients, and diminished quality of care. Several factors contribute to this crisis, including the increased prevalence of mental health issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing stigma surrounding mental health treatment, and systemic problems, such as the lack of training programs, leaders not feeling supported, and low retention rates. This study explored significant burnout levels among women behavioral health …