Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Assessing Sexual Minority Women’S Barriers And Facilitators To Seeking And Accessing Mental And Physical Healthcare: A Mixed Methods Study, Charlotte A. Dawson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sexual minority women (SMW) experience greater mental and physical health concerns when compared to heterosexual women. Three key areas of health SMW report these disparities are: mental health, binge eating/body size, and sexual and reproductive health. SMW also report difficulties accessing healthcare in these three areas. An exploratory sequential mixed methods design was utilized to assess barriers and facilitators to healthcare access for young SMW. Study 1 included 20 semi-structured interviews with SMW, resulting in themes of barriers and facilitators identified by participants. These themes were converted into scale items. In Study 2, an expert panel of mental and physical …

Body Dissatisfaction And Disordered Eating Among College Women’S Social Networks: An Investigation Of Perceived Changes Following A Dissonance-Based Body Image Intervention, Rachel I. Macintyre

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Body dissatisfaction is associated with numerous health consequences and is pervasive among college women. Effective interventions exist that reduce body dissatisfaction in college women by helping them resist sociocultural pressures to conform to the appearance ideal, such as the Body Project. Yet research is limited on whether social and behavioral processes help participants reduce their engagement in sociocultural appearance-ideal messages and contribute to the intervention’s effectiveness. The primary purpose of the present study was to examine these social and behavioral processes, including the changes in college women’s social networks associated with their participation in the Body Project. Undergraduate and graduate …

A Model Of Individual, Relationship, And Societal Factors And Mental Health And Well-Being In Partnered Sexual Minority Women: The Central Role Of Relationship Satisfaction, Charlotte A. Dawson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sexual minority women (SMW) are at increased risk for mental health disorders, substance abuse, and physical health problems compared to heterosexual women. For heterosexual individuals, romantic relationships have been found to be protective against a variety of health issues. Less research, however, has focused on the association between romantic relationships and health in same-sex couples. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential protective nature of being in a relationship for SMW and to test a model investigating the central role of relationship satisfaction in the association between individual, relationship, and societal factors and mental health and well-being …

Views Of Feminist Family Therapy: A Q-Methodological Inquiry, Bronwen Cheek

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The feminist critique of family therapy has had a growing impact on theory and practice for almost two decades (Hare-Mustin, 1978; Bograd, 1990). Writings on feminist family therapy (FFT) reveal both common and diverse opinions about what FFT is. The present study examined how views of FFT are segmented using Q-methodology (Stephenson, 1953; Brown, 1980; McKeown & Thomas, 1988), a small-sample empirical technique for identifying emergent viewpoints and studying their similarities and differences. A Q-sort instrument of 60 statements was constructed to sample diverse discourse on FFT. Magraw's (1992) interviews with leading experts in FFT served as a primary source …

The Relationship Between Needs And Interpersonal Problems Of Women In Four Interpersonal Categories, Valarie Elaine Sikes-Nova

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study empirically assessed the relationship between needs structure and interpersonal presentation in women. Proposed indices for selective attention were assessed as to their ability to detect pathology. The relationship between interpersonal presentation and interpersonal problems were also studied. The measures used were The Picture Identification Test (Chambers, 1976), The Interpersonal Adjective Scales-Revised (Wiggins, 1985), The Inventory for Interpersonal Problems (Horowitz, 1986), and The Marlowe-Crowne Social-Desirability Scale (1964).

Subjects were assigned to one of four interpersonal categories (Friendly-Dominant, Friendly-Submissive, Hostile-Dominant, Hostile-Submissive) on the basis of their self-reported IAS-R and one category on the basis of their counselor-reported IAS-R scores. Subjects …