Digital Commons Network^™

The G-Bdt (Good-Bad Drawings Test): Using Human Figure Drawings With Individuals Who Are Incarcerated, Institutionalized, And/Or In Special Education, George A. Giacobbe, John D. Dooley

Books and Book Chapters

The G-BDT (Good-Bad Drawings Test) is a variation of the psychological projective test known as the Draw-a-Person test (DAP). The DAP requests a drawer to make two drawings: one of a person, and when it is completed and removed, another drawing of a person who is the opposite sex of the person in the first drawing.

There are currently many variations of the DAP including requesting drawings of a person, a house and a tree, drawing a family, a mother and child, or even animals, such as drawing a dog.

The G-BDT requests the drawer draw a person who is …

Assessing Reliability And Validity Of The Parental Responsiveness Rating Scale During Book Reading, Yuqi Zhang, Jennifer Locasale-Crouch, Brianna Jaworski, Khara Turnbull, Rachel Moon, Eve Colson, Fern Hauck, Nicole Geller

Graduate Research Posters

Parental responsiveness, defined as emotionally supportive behaviors, is consistently related to children’s development in research studies. It reflects attention to children’s emotional functioning through providing comfort, reassurance, and encouragement. However, measuring parental responsiveness in everyday practice has been challenging due to the complexity of available tools. The Parental Responsiveness Rating Scale (PaRRiS), a brief observational rating scale that quickly and directly measures the quality of parent-child interactions, shows promise in bridging this research-to-practice gap. Several small-scale studies in UK clinical settings found PaRRiS to be easily implemented, reliable, and valid. Additional studies are needed to explore PaRRiS’s potential use within …

Actionable Advocacy Journalism: Embracing Bias And Empowering Audiences With Calls To Action, Megan T. Schiffres

Richard T. Robertson School of Communication Student Scholarship

This thesis outlines the principles of actionable advocacy journalism, a new theoretical framework designed to empower audiences to take action in their communities. This framework proposes an update of journalistic ethics including the elimination of objectivity and demonstrates the positive impact of biased journalism on improving audience trust and strengthening community ties. It explores the historical roots of advocacy in journalism, examines the factors that led to the journalistic philosophy of objectivity, and explains its fundamental flaws. This thesis also outlines strategies for transforming news into a practical resource. These strategies combine the principles of solutions journalism with evidence-based persuasion …

Pk-12 Faculty And Staff Capacity To Support Student Mental Health, Chin-Chih Chen, David B. Naff, Xun Liu, Jennifer Murphy, Margaret Wallace, Sunny Shin, Kade Goldin, Shenita Williams, Caleb Armwood, Riley Jenkins, Marlene Gooding

MERC Publications

This report from the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) depicts findings from a regional survey of PK-12 faculty and staff exploring their professional capacity to meet the mental health needs of their students. Based on responses from approximately 1,000 educators in the MERC region, there were six dimensions of capacity: mental health knowledge, mental health training and confidence, multi-tiered systems of support, positive mental health culture, supportive policies and practices, and responsibility and impact. Findings in the report include position comparisons along these six dimensions as well as an exploration of how capacity varies by school size and demographic composition. …

Variability In Perceptions Of Complementary Health Approaches Among Graduate Student Trainees, Delaney C. Bilodeau

Theses and Dissertations

Complementary Health Approaches (CHAs) encompass a diverse range of practices which are often used both independently and alongside conventional medical treatments. Understanding how graduate students training in different fields perceive CHAs is important because these professional trainees will go on to occupy roles as healthcare practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and consumers. This study used sequential rank agreement methods (Ekstrøm, Gerds, & Jensen, 2019) to investigate variations in perceptions of CHAs in a sample of graduate students (N = 416) from 140 possible training programs. Ratings of CHA familiarity, perceptions of CHA legitimacy, and willingness to recommend CHAs were compared …

Transitions In Patterns Of Substance Use During Early Adolescence: Bidirectional Associations With Externalizing Behaviors, Courtney B. Dunn

Theses and Dissertations

Early adolescents who engage in polysubstance use, defined as the use of three or more different substances, are at particularly high risk of future substance use disorders and adverse psychosocial outcomes. However, little is known about the development of substance use patterns during early adolescence, particularly among youth living in urban settings. Although theory and research suggest that youth with greater externalizing behaviors (e.g., aggression, delinquent behavior) may be more likely to escalate to polysubstance use at an early age, few studies have examined bidirectional relations between externalizing symptoms and polysubstance use. The goal of this study was to (a) …

Prosthetic Attention In Upper Limb Loss: User Experiences, Clinical Perceptions, And Developing Candidate Items, Tanu Bhargava

Theses and Dissertations

The human hand is a powerful tool essential for performing a range of tasks from simple to complex, and it plays a crucial role in social interactions and environmental engagement. Upper limb (UL) loss disrupts these functions and significantly impacts daily life. Prosthetic devices can partially restore these abilities and improve quality of life, but they lack the intuitive control and sensory feedback of natural hands. Consequently, operating a UL prosthesis requires substantial attentional demands, a factor that potentially contributes to high rates of device dissatisfaction and disuse. For UL prosthesis users, managing attentional resources is critical to efficiently controlling …

Functional Family Therapy: A Multi-Year Statewide Program Evaluation, Natalie Finn

Theses and Dissertations

Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is a family-based treatment program for youth with externalizing behavior problems, often involved in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. FFT is an evidence-based program and has been implemented across many states, including the state of Virginia. Objective. The present study performed a program evaluation and observational study of the implementation and sustainment of FFT in Virginia, during the first five years of implementation. Method. Participants included all youth who participated in FFT in Virginia between October 2017 and June 2022. Secondary data analysis was conducted using data entered by therapists and supervisors into the FFT …

Transforming Accounting: Robotic Process Automation In The Accounting Environment, Leah Hall

Theses and Dissertations

Over the years, I have worked with many companies that run legacy accounting and operation systems that do not integrate. With the introduction of RPA, it provides these companies with the ability to integrate without the need for customization. This dissertation is my personal pursuit of understanding the risks associated with implementing RPA and identifying specific areas where organizations may face challenges. I accomplish this objective through three papers: a literature review, a survey, and an experiment. The literature review synthesizes RPA literature, organizing it by implementation state. The survey paper provides an analysis of how internal auditors rate particular …

Developing And Testing A Model Of Discrimination, Internalized Oppression, Mental Health, And Suicidality In Disabled Transgender And Gender Non-Binary (Tgnb) Individuals, Stephanie L. Cull

Theses and Dissertations

Transgender and gender nonbinary (TGNB) individuals experience high rates of discrimination and microaggressions that can lead to internalized cisgenderism and adverse mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Individuals with disabilities similarly experience high rates of discrimination and microaggressions that can lead to internalized ableism and increased adverse mental health outcomes. Although both of these populations have been researched separately, very little extant research has explored the intersections of disabled and TGNB identities. The purpose of this study was to explore a hypothesized pathway leading from microaggressions through internalized oppression and mental health to suicidal ideation within a …

Housing For Transgender And Gender Expansive People In The U.S. South, Aaron M. Kemmerer

Theses and Dissertations

Housing is a prominent issue for transgender and gender expansive (TGE) people around the world. There is a dearth of research about TGE people experiencing homelessness (TGE PEH) in the U.S. South. This dissertation aims to amplify the voices of TGE Southerners around the social concerns of housing and homelessness – this work also disrupts gendered and racialized narratives about housing injustice, exposing the salience of intersectional discrimination and cisgenderism in housing outcomes for TGE people. Using narrative and visual methods, this dissertation re-presents stories and recommendations from in-depth interview data collected from a small qualitative sample of Southern TGE …

Adaptable And Trustworthy Machine Learning For Human Activity Recognition From Bioelectric Signals, Morgan S. Stuart

Theses and Dissertations

Enabling machines to learn measures of human activity from bioelectric signals has many applications in human-machine interaction and healthcare. However, labeled activity recognition datasets are costly to collect and highly varied, which challenges machine learning techniques that rely on large datasets. Furthermore, activity recognition in practice needs to account for user trust - models are motivated to enable interpretability, usability, and information privacy. The objective of this dissertation is to improve adaptability and trustworthiness of machine learning models for human activity recognition from bioelectric signals. We improve adaptability by developing pretraining techniques that initialize models for later specialization to unseen …

Moonshine Babies, Arghavan Heydareslam

Theses and Dissertations

Moonshine Babies is a two-screen film made of collage/cut-out stop-motion and live-action. It is a visual poem based on my journals from when I recently started living in the US as an outsider. The experience left me feeling divided between the empty present and memories of the past. suggesting that there are collective memories among a group of interconnected individuals that unite them within a single narrative.

There was a moment when I asked, "If you are your memories, what does it mean to be somewhere you have no memories of and no one has memories of you there?"

Memories …

The Role Of Notch1 Signaling In Regulating Neurogenesis In The Olfactory Bulb Following Traumatic Brain Injury, Sarah A. Baig

Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, more than 20.5 million adults over the age of 40 suffer from olfactory dysfunction, with TBI attributing to 5-17% of all olfactory dysfunction cases. Although often initially undetected and less conspicuous than other cognitive and behavioral impairments, olfactory dysfunction may have a significant negative impact on patients' quality of life and ability to accomplish activities of daily living, therefore the pathophysiology of these disorders should be understood. The production of neural stem cells enhances the repair and regeneration of the injured brain following a TBI. One of the primary endogenous neural stem cell generation sites in …

Intersectionality, Racial Discrimination And Oral Healthcare Utilization Among Black Adults In Baltimore City, Maryland, Briona M. Phillips

Theses and Dissertations

INTRODUCTION: Oral health is essential for overall well-being, yet disparities persist, particularly among marginalized populations including Black adults. Limited access to and underutilization of oral healthcare services exacerbate these disparities. Discrimination, both individual and systemic, acts as a significant barrier to accessing care, contributing to disparities in oral health outcomes. Individuals facing discrimination experience mistrust and fear within oral healthcare settings, leading to delayed or avoided care. Therefore, investigating and addressing discrimination among Black adults is essential for promoting equitable access to oral healthcare, improving overall oral health outcomes, and lessening existing disparities.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this dissertation was …

Examining The Relationship Between Racism-Related Stress And Coping Among Black Adolescents: A Linked Lives Perspective, Kenna Yadeta

Theses and Dissertations

As Murry and colleagues (2018) note, racism serves as a family-level stressor, impacting both Black adolescents and their parents. As Black teens continue to experience frequent and varied racism experiences (English et al., 2020), their Black parents are facing a double challenge: bearing the weight of their own experiences with racism, while also parenting a Black adolescent through the same. Recent frameworks (e.g., Gilligan et al., 2018) highlight the linked experiences of Black families, in dealing with their stress and coping. As such, the current study aimed to explore the ways that both adolescent and parental experiences with racism related …

Doing A Good Search: Basic Rules And Search Tips, Roy E. Brown

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This updated handout, previous version published in 2023, serves as a reference for individuals learning effective database search practices. It covers fundamental search principles, including Boolean operators, question types, and potential databases for various questions for assignments or in the clinical environment. Notably, this version incorporates a diagram illustrating the search process.

Remember, the search process is iterative, involving repeated cycles of refinement. Your approach will vary depending on the specific question you're trying to answer.

Update of Doing a Good Search: Basic Rules and Search Tips (2023)

The original version appeared in the following article:

McGrath, J. M., Brown, …

The Extent To Which The Humanistic Approach In Japanese Juvenile Training Schools Affects Recidivism, Natalie Bui

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Japan’s juvenile justice system is regarded as one of the most unique and successful implementations of reformative justice. This approach has remained effective in maintaining Japan’s low rates of juvenile delinquency and recidivism, despite massive changes in Japanese society over the past decade. While Japan’s crime seems to be on an impressive decline, the United States continues to struggle with social control, juvenile delinquency, and, more recently, demands for justice reform from social movements like the Black Lives Matter Movement. The American juvenile justice system needs reform now more than ever and where better to get inspiration, than the industrialized …

Friends In Fiction: Bonding With Fictional Characters Introduced Through Fictional Narrative Positively Affects And Interplays With The Psychology And Social Behaviors Of Adults To Influence Engagement, Vishnupriya Alavala

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Just as people can form relationships with each other, they can befriend and interact with characters. As broadening media outlets continue to introduce fictional characters, it is vital to understand the effects relationships with characters, referred to as parasocial phenomena, have on individuals. In turn, this will offer a new perspective on the effects of engaging with fiction. Bonding with fictional characters introduced through television or print narratives affects and interplays with the psychology and social behaviors of adults. Most studies support the positive effects of parasocial phenomena in terms of personality, mindset, and social skills. Other studies state that …

Legal Pressure To Attend Substance Abuse Treatment, Angelicia Courteau

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

This paper was written to bring awareness of how the legal system does not take into consideration those who suffer from substance use disorder, as well as ACEs. Brian Luke Burijon’s battle with addiction while incarcerated was used as an example of how the legal system’s one-size-fits-all approach is flawed. Mr. Burijon opted for a treatment he did not feel was ideal for him because the alternative was to remain incarcerated for a long period. Mr. Burijon was unable to tolerate the treatment at the facility and left early, which resulted in his overdose death.

Haven: Exploring Trauma-Informed Design In Transitional Housing For Women And Children, Sydney J. Rakes

Theses and Dissertations

relevance

For 15 years, I have been a volunteer at a shelter for women and children. I interact with families and women who are suffering from the trauma caused by homelessness and domestic violence. In my observations, I have learned some spaces are more conducive to the staff and resident experiences than others. This project will be addressing how transitional housing for women and children can be designed to support the healing of trauma caused by domestic violence.

As of July 2023, there were about 150 women suffering from homelessness locally in the city of Richmond, Virginia (Homeward VA, 2023). …

Effects And Mechanisms Of Smartphone-Based Mindfulness Training On Emotional Experience, Polina Beloborodova

Theses and Dissertations

Emotional well-being is an important component of mental and physical health that includes both positive emotions and an absence of emotional symptoms (e.g., depressive- and anxiety-related). In this study, we examine psychological mechanisms that help to explain the effects of an digital mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) on emotional states. We conducted a randomized controlled trial wherein undergraduate student participants vulnerable to decreased positive and increased negative affect received a 2-week smartphone-based MBI or a structurally equivalent coping control intervention. Emotional experience, including depressive feelings, anxiety, and happiness, as well as subjective social well-being, including loneliness and felt connection to others, was …

Family Rejection And Affirmation Experiences Among Racially And Ethnically Marginalized Youth Who Identify As Transgender And/Or Gender Diverse, Angela Matijczak

Theses and Dissertations

Relationships with family members can be a vital source of support, and significant stressor, that contributes to mental health outcomes among transgender and gender diverse young adults who are racially and ethnically marginalized (TGD REMY). Guided by a life history narrative approach, this qualitative study explored family affirmation and rejection among TGD REMY across three aims: (a) how TGD REMY define their experiences of family rejection and/or affirmation, (b) whether and how experiences of rejection/affirmation change throughout the lifetime, and (c) whether and how experiences of rejection/affirmation differ by each family member. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 TGD REMY …

Identifying Mechanistic Pathways To Rigidity Associated With Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Traits Using A Novel Decision-Making Paradigm, Hannah L. Heintz

Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive and behavioral rigidity is observed across several mental disorders and is a defining characteristic of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), a highly prevalent and debilitating, yet understudied, disorder. In particular, treatments for OCPD are underdeveloped due to our poor understanding of the mechanisms leading to the disorder’s key feature of rigidity. Two related disorders, anorexia nervosa (AN) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), have shown distinct mechanistic pathways leading to symptoms of rigidity, indicating that this trait can arise as a result of a number of differentially impaired cognitive processes, each requiring unique interventions. To examine the relationship between symptoms of OCPD …

Reconciling Calculus Students’ Understanding Of Average Across Multiple Contexts, Franklin Yu

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

The idea of average is utilized in a variety of scenarios, yet the literature has indicated that students have multiple disconnected understandings for the concept of average. In this study, I provide an account of two students who reconciled their meanings for average by considering an average as a replacement with a constant value. This report discusses an intervention that teachers can leverage to help their students make their meanings for average coherent and conceptually based.

Full Issue

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Mindfulness Training On Prosocial Responses In Intergroup Relations: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial, Denise Yiran Zheng

Theses and Dissertations

Based on social identity theory and intergroup emotions theory, individuals feel for and act toward others based on their group-based social identities. Recent research shows that mindfulness can enhance prosocial responses toward others across group divides. The current research examined the effects of mindfulness training on prosocial behavior in intergroup relations where such behavior is difficult (e.g., with marginalized or devalued social groups). The study also examined potential mechanisms, namely state empathic concern and appraisal, that may explain how mindfulness increases prosocial behavior toward outgroups. This study compared the effects of a 2-week mindfulness training to a matched coping training …

How To Forget, Jesse D. Hoyle

Theses and Dissertations

How To Forget was born from a need to give tangible form to the psychic residue left behind by a life lived. Through the use of silk-screening of red clay mud onto ink-jet photographs, archival textiles, and site-specific installations, I attempt to tie and/or divorce myself from my own and my family's extended history and examine the function of memory within the dynamics of the archive. How To Forget takes a non-linear, non-chronological approach to this examination, compressing decades of time and space through the manipulation of the archive and my own self-portraiture, designed specifically to deny myself from its …

Obstacles To And Facilitators Of Services In Child Welfare In The Context Of The Family First Prevention Services Act, Juliet Wu

Theses and Dissertations

The child welfare system has generally focused on child wellbeing and protection in the context of abuse or neglect allegation, supporting caregivers with child rearing, and finding a stable, permanent home for children. Because children and caregivers involved with the child welfare system typically have complex needs, public departments of social services often collaborate with other entities to provide services to families. However, connecting families to services has often been difficult, with many barriers along the way that prevent families from receiving the services they need. The enactment of the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) in 2018 aimed to …

The Cultural Adaptation Of An Eating Disorders Assessment Tool For South Asian American Women, Neha J. Goel

Theses and Dissertations

South Asians (SAs) are less likely to be screened, referred, and treated for eating disorders (EDs), although they experience these serious health conditions at rates similar to those of their White counterparts. Available ED assessment tools do not adequately capture cultural nuances in the presentation of eating psychopathology in SAs. Thus, the current study culturally adapted the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q) to enhance its validity, applicability, and cultural relevance for SA women living in the US. During the cultural adaptation phase, the principal investigator consulted with participant experts (N=24) and research experts (n=4) to create the …