Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Testing The Psychology Of Working Theory Among Economically Marginalized Workers, Willy Anthony Diaz Tapia

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

TESTING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORKING THEORY AMONG ECONOMICALLY MARGINALIZED WORKERS

byWilly Anthony Diaz Tapia The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2022 Under the Supervision of Professor Kelsey Autin In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that approximately 39.7 million U.S. Americans lived in poverty of which 6.9 million were considered the working poor. People from economically marginalized communities experience significant challenges in many areas of life and work is no exception; yet their work lives continue to be underrepresented in vocational literature. The Psychology of Working Theory (PWT) is one of the first vocational theories developed explicitly to better understand and …

Workplace Stressors And Withdrawal Intentions In Law Enforcement: The Role Of Living A Calling, Kristin Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Working in law enforcement is considered a dangerous and challenging profession. Not only do law enforcement officers experience stress related to job tasks but they experience additional job stress related to organizational processes and procedures. Ongoing exposure to job stress can lead to low job satisfaction and high job turnover (Biggs, Brough & Barbour, 2014). However, the job turnover for those in law enforcement is only approximately ten percent. To date, there has been no research examining this discrepancy or predictors of low withdrawal intentions in law enforcement. This study looks to examine the relationship between living a calling, job …

The Development Of The Degrees Of Freedom Scale, Darius Wright

Theses and Dissertations

The Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA) is a person-environment fit model used to predict turnover intention, determined by the satisfaction of one’s values being reinforced at work. A unique component of this framework looks at how one responds when work values are not being met: either by trying to change the outcome with the workplace or adjust oneself to the outcome. What is unknown however, are the factors that influence the different responses. There is evidence to suggest that there are objective external factors that might play a role in these decisions. This study aimed to capture these factors using …

Assessing Pediatric Chronic Pain Treatment Engagement: Development And Initial Validation Of The Pediatric Pain Perceived Behavioral Control Measure, Nina Linneman

Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric chronic pain significantly impacts functioning across all domains of life and often carries forward into adulthood. Chronic pain is often complex to treat and pediatric non-adherence to treatment recommendations has been indicated to be upwards of 55%. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior as a framework, the aim of the present study was to develop and validate two measures of perceived behavioral control for chronic pain treatment recommendations with a clinical adolescent patient sample (patient and parent proxy versions). The measures underwent development, data from a pediatric chronic pain clinical sample were collected, and an exploratory factor analysis was …

Men, Athletic Identity, Masculinity, And Alcohol: An Examination Of Health Risk Patterns In Male Collegiate Athletes, Travis Love

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of study was to examine the health risk behaviors (alcohol use /abuse) of male student athletes and the relationship these behaviors have to their athletic identity and conformity to masculine norms. Alcohol usage has been identified as a significant health risk behavior exhibited by male collegiate athletes and the study sought to examine the correlations with and athletic identity and conformity to masculine norms using the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS), Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI-46), and the AUDIT-C. Correlation analyses and multiple regression analyses were utilized to statistically explore the relationship between the three variables. Results …

Stand Up Eight: Adversity, Resilience, And Career Adaptability, Samantha Schams

Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between adversity and career adaptability. The objectives of this study are: 1) to better understand the relationship between adversity and career adaptability. 2) to examine whether race, gender, socioeconomic status, or resilience moderate this relationship. 3) to compare career adaptability and resilience. These objectives were addressed in a quantitative analysis of survey results gathered of adults living in the United States who speak English. To test for a curvilinear relationship between adversity and career adaptability, we completed a regression analysis of the data using adversity, squared …

Gender And Ptsd: An Examination Of Socialized Masculinity As Moderator Of Ptsd Symptom Development, Kirsten Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

This study seeks to explain observed gender differences in PTSD risk and protective factors and subsequent PTSD symptoms by use of a Masculine Heuristic moderator variable. Drawing from heuristic and gender role theories, this study utilizes a sample of male and female trauma survivors to examine the interaction between a Masculine Heuristic style and trauma exposure in the development of PTSD symptoms. Structural Equation Modeling and moderation analysis were used to explore these constructs. Results are discussed and incorporated into current literature, while limitations of the current study and suggestions for future research are explored.

Individual Differences In Structure Learning, Philip Newlin

Theses and Dissertations

Humans have a tendency to impute structure spontaneously even in simple learning tasks, however the way they approach structure learning can vary drastically. The present study sought to determine why individuals learn structure differently. One hypothesized explanation for differences in structure learning is individual differences in cognitive control. Cognitive control allows individuals to maintain representations of a task and may interact with reinforcement learning systems. It was expected that individual differences in propensity to apply cognitive control, which shares component processes with hierarchical reinforcement learning, may explain how individuals learn structure differently in a simple structure learning task. Results showed …

Contextual Creativity: The Role Of Ambiguity In Creative Cognition, Sarah K. C. Dygert

Theses and Dissertations

This body of work is composed of three individual papers that each seek to explain individual differences in creative cognition. Paper 1 used structural equation modeling to examine the ways in which creative problem solving and creative idea generation relate or differ. Results from Paper 1 demonstrate that divergent thinking and creative problem solving are best represented as a bifactor model, bearing distinct domain-specific factors, as well as a shared domain-general factor. Though working memory and fluency of memory retrieval explained significant portions of the domain-specific constructs, they only explained ~2% of variance in the domain-general factor. Paper 2 explores …

The Role Of Knowledge Representations In Rule Transfer On A Novel Problem-Solving Task, Megan J. Raden

Theses and Dissertations

Although the independent roles of working memory capacity (WMC) and knowledge in problem solving have been thoroughly researched, there is significantly less work that has explored how WMC and knowledge interact during problem solving. The present study investigated how the quality of knowledge representations contribute to rule transfer in a problem-solving context and how WMC might contribute to the subsequent failure or success in transferring the relevant information. Participants were trained on individual figural analogies rules and then asked to rate how similar they thought the rules were to determine how stimulispecific or abstract their rule representations were. Their rule …

The Effect Of Strategy Instruction And Spatial Ability On Spatial Problem Solving, Nia Scarboro

Theses and Dissertations

High spatial skills tend to be a strong indicator for predicting STEM success. There are varying abilities when it comes to spatial skills, despite that spatial skills are adaptable and can develop with proper training. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the role of strategy instruction on spatial thinking performance. More specifically whether or not a response elimination strategy (count the number of folds and multiply by two) or a visualization strategy (imagining unfolding the paper) would be more beneficial in terms of improving Paper folding task score. Students participating in this experiment were undergraduate students from St. …