Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Exploration Of Mechanisms Of Change In Compassion Focused Therapy Groups: A Pilot Study In A College Counseling Center Population, Jennifer Lynn Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

Objectives. This study explored mechanisms of change for Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) groups. The feasibility and acceptability of a new group therapy protocol were assessed in a college counseling center population.Method. Seventy-five participants engaged in eight transdiagnostic CFT groups. Group CFT consisted of 12 weekly sessions. Participants completed measures of fears of compassion, flows of compassion, self-reassurance, self-criticism, shame, and psychiatric distress at pre, mid, and post time points. Significant and reliable change was assessed. Potential mechanisms of change were examined using correlations. Self-report feasibility and acceptability data were collected from therapists and participants respectively.Results. Significant and reliable change was …

Personality Inventory Dsm-5: A Spanish Translation For Hispanics In The United States, Jessica Abigail Carmona

Theses and Dissertations

The Personality Inventory DSM-5 (PID-5) was created to measure personality pathology and help in the development of a dimensional conceptualization of personality disorders (Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012). It measures five maladaptive personality traits: Negative Affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition and Psychoticism. The PID-5 has also garnered significant support for its hierarchical structure, five-factor structure across samples and translations, and its ability to predict variance in internalizing and externalizing disorders (Krueger & Markon, 2014). The current study builds on this literature by translating the PID-5 into Spanish spoken in Latin America and testing the replicability of the five-factor structure, …

Factors Associated With Parent Reactions To The Diagnosis Of An Autism Spectrum Disorder, Emily Irene Anderberg

Theses and Dissertations

Receiving a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is often a pivotal moment for parents. The diagnostic feedback session can provide helpful information for moving forward with their child’s care but can also be filled with conflicting emotions. A few studies have looked at common parent experiences and have suggested actions for providers, but there is little information about how providers can predict parent reactions to the diagnosis and adjust their feedback accordingly. This study investigated factors related to parent reactions to the diagnostic disclosure session using a) interviews with providers that commonly diagnose autism; b) a focus group with parents …

The Mother Domain: A Mediated Model Of Maternal Gatekeepers And Depressed Fathers Among Newlyweds With Children, Clare R. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Paternal depression is an understudied topic and research connecting it to maternal gatekeeping is still in its infancy. Research has found that the marriage relationship can be associated with both depression and maternal gatekeeping. This study focuses on how these three areas are related. A subsample of the CREATE project was used including 216 couples, or 432 married parents. Two separate SEM mediational models were tested to examine father depression as a predictor of maternal gatekeeping, with marital instability as the mediator in one model and partner connectedness as the mediator in the other model. Both parent reports were used …

Learning Aggression: The Association Between Parental Psychological Control And Adolescent Relational Aggression, Jennifer Jaeun Byon

Theses and Dissertations

Late adolescence and early emerging adulthood are important developmental time periods during which transitions to adulthood begins including independence from one's parents. While adolescents spend more time away from their homes, especially as they start attending college, the influence of their parents is still salient. Parental psychological control has been shown to impact adolescents' developmental outcomes, including their engagement in relational aggression. While past research has focused mostly on children and young adolescents, the current study seeks to explore the bidirectional associations between parental psychological control and relational aggression among late adolescents and early emerging adults. It also seeks to …

The Effects Of Premarital Education Promotion Policies On U.S. Divorce Rates, Tiffany Lura Clyde

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has documented the effects of divorce on children, families, communities, taxpayers, and society. Accordingly, local, state, and national governments have enacted policies aimed at strengthening marriages and reducing divorce. Currently, ten states have enacted some form of premarital education promotion policy. However, no research has documented whether the implementation of premarital education promotion policies has actually decreased the divorce rate in implementing states. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate empirically the effectiveness of premarital education policy implementation on reducing early divorce rates. Prior to running any empirical analyses, an implementation study was conducted to understand …

Simple Behavioral Interventions For Typically Functioning Adolescents With Work Refusal In A Classroom Setting, Kerry J. Farr

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to test the effectiveness of 2 different behavioral interventions: a high-probability request sequence and a differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors (DRA) procedure in a classroom setting. The aim of the interventions was to reduce the frequency of task refusal as well as increase the frequency of task compliance in adolescents in a general education setting. The study included 4 adolescents with the same teacher who were reported by their teacher as completing 50% or less of their course work since the beginning of the school year. The teacher implemented the interventions with the participants to test …

A Content Analysis Of Ethnic Minorities In The Professional Discipline Of Clinical Psychology, Pedro L. Perez Aquino

Theses and Dissertations

A more diverse population in the United States calls for the inclusion of REC minority populations in research to improve treatment and clinician cultural awareness. A content analysis is proposed to analyze the inclusion level of REC minority groups in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Five questions are explored to organize and present the findings of the content analysis. Results demonstrate the low level of inclusion of REC minority groups as well as congruence between most studied topics and each REC minority group in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. These results should encourage researchers and clinicians to push for more …

Sleep, Stress, And Sweat: Implications For Client Physiology Prior To Couple Therapy, Christina Michelle Rosa

Theses and Dissertations

Physiological state greatly influences one’s ability to emotionally regulate and connect to a partner in couple therapy. As individuals encounter real or perceived threats in relationships, they are likely to experience sympathetic nervous system (SNS) responses of fight, flight, or freeze, thereby inhibiting the ability to connect with a partner or therapist made possible by the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). This study, guided by the Polyvagal theory, examines the influence of client sleep, daily stress, and exercise on physiological baseline prior to a couple therapy session. Participants included 23 married couples who attended couple therapy at the Brigham Young University …

Coding Rupture Indicators In Couple Therapy (Crict): An Observational Coding Scheme, Annalisa Ward Carr

Theses and Dissertations

The therapeutic alliance, a construct representing agreement and collaboration on therapy goals, therapy tasks, and the emotional bond between client(s) and therapist, is a robust predictor of therapy outcomes in individual, couple, and family therapy. One way to track the therapeutic alliance is through ruptures and repairs. Ruptures are breaks, tensions, or tears in the therapeutic alliance. Ruptures and repairs influence the therapeutic alliance and consequently therapeutic outcomes. Currently, there is a lack of research addressing ruptures and repairs in couple therapy. The first step in researching alliance ruptures is to have a reliable way to assess alliance ruptures. This …

The Effects Of Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams In Two Middle School Art Classrooms, Kimberly Davis Monson

Theses and Dissertations

Classroom management is a common challenge in middle schools. Class-wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a multi-tiered intervention designed to decrease problem behaviors at the classroom level (Wills et al., 2010). It is comprised of evidence-based practices such as teaching classroom expectations, increasing teacher praise, and using positive reinforcement in an interdependent group contingency. CW-FIT has shown promise in a variety of school settings, but it has not been tested in middle school art classrooms. This was initial investigation examining the effects of CW-FIT using a single-subject ABAB design in two middle school art classrooms. Results indicated that class on-task …

The Association Of Spirituality And Well-Being In South African And Ugandan Samples, Alicia Jane Doman

Theses and Dissertations

Literature has shown a correlation between spirituality and well-being, but this has not been thoroughly studied outside North America, with very few studies conducted in Africa. This study compared data from two sub-Saharan African nations, Uganda and South Africa, that differ markedly in terms of multiple factors that affect well-being, such as mortality rates and access to healthcare, as well as educational and personal growth opportunities. Survey data were collected using the measures of The Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale and Ryff's Personal Well-Being Scale. There were four racial groups represented in the data: Black South Africans, Coloureds, White South …

Understanding The Processes And Outcomes Of The Lds Addiction Recovery Program's Pornography Addiction Support Groups, Adam Michael Scalese

Theses and Dissertations

This study qualitatively investigated the processes and outcomes associated with the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ (LDS) Addiction Recovery Program (ARP), with a specific focus on their Pornography Addiction Support Group (PASG) meetings. Researchers interviewed 24 (21 males, 3 females) individuals with varying experiences in PASG meetings. Their interview content was broken down into themes. Primary findings suggest that PASG participants experience a significant amount of shame due to their pornography use behaviors. Member-to-member sharing in meetings facilitates self-compassion and lessens shame. Participants reported strong spiritual process in PASG meetings and some spiritual outcomes. Attendance in PASG …

Social Withdrawal And Indices Of Adjustment And Maladjustment In Adolescence: Does Parent Warmth And Extraversion Matter?, Mallory Abigail Millett

Theses and Dissertations

Social withdrawal is often associated with a number of indices of adjustment and maladjustment, but little research exists that attempts to uncover potential protective factors. This study longitudinally examined the moderating role of parent extraversion and parent warmth on the association between two types of social withdrawal (shyness and unsociability) and later indices of adjustment and maladjustment. Participants were 463 families from the flourishing families project. Results showed no longitudinal associations between social withdrawal and later indices of adjustment or maladjustment. However, when parent extraversion was added as a moderator, shyness was positively associated with prosocial behavior for those with …

Sri Lankan Widows' Mental Health: Does Type Of Spousal Loss Matter?, Katrina Nicole Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined mental health outcomes for widowed Tamil women in Sri Lanka to identify any associations between type of spousal loss and several outcomes, including internalized stigma as a result of widowhood, anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and posttraumatic stress symptoms. A sample of 381 Tamil female widows living in Eastern Sri Lanka were surveyed in 2016 to understand their experiences in a post-disaster and post-war context. Type of spousal loss was separated into seven categories: war-related death, death as a result of tsunami, illness-related deaths, accidental death, suicide, disappearance, and other. Path analysis was used to assess whether type …

Psychotherapy Presenting Concerns And Utilization Trends Among Latino-American And International Latino Students In A University Counseling Center, Jessica Ann Kirchhoefer

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines current trends of university counseling center utilization among Latino students at a large, private, western university. We examined counseling center data for Latino (n=1,231) and European American (EA) (n=18,125) students who presented for counseling services from 1996-2013. Latino students were divided into three subgroups, U.S. born Latino students (USB), international Latino students (IB), and Latino students who were born internationally but who are now U.S. citizens (IBUS). These three subgroups were compared with the EA student group on multiple variables; therapy utilization, length of treatment, Outcome Questionnaire (OQ) score at intake, OQ change, therapy usage by gender, …

Visual Artifacts As A Mediating Factor In Collaborative Museum Design, Jacquelyn Claire Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

The process of museum exhibit design includes a variety of activities, including collaboration on teams, consulting learning theories, following process models, brainstorming, performing evaluations, and using visuals. Although some articles mention these topics, very few provide specific details about these practices. This dissertation, which includes three articles, explores how design and visual communication occur in exhibit design. The first article examines how exhibit design teams function. The second article describes how they use visual representations to engage team members in ideation and concept development as they planned for new exhibits. This is based on the assumption that designers need to …

Media And Parents: Socializing Factors Of Relational Aggression, Kjersti Maye Summers

Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to relational aggression in various contexts has been found to predict relationally aggressive behavior in adolescents. Past research has examined socializing factors of relational aggression separately. The current study expounds upon this research by looking at three important contexts for socialization of relational aggression during adolescence together: media relational aggression, parental psychological control, and couple relational aggression. Specifically, this study looked at how these different socializing factors combine to predict relational aggression. Participants consisted of 423 adolescents and their parents. A person-centered approach was used to determine different profiles. Latent profile analysis found three profiles, including "average" (78%), "high …

Europe's (Lack Of) Welfare Chauvinism: Evidence From Surveys And Spending, Ethan Davis

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Immigration’s effect on European welfare states is complicated. On one hand, increased immigration might undermine social solidarity and impose greater fiscal burdens on redistribution, reducing support for welfare spending. On the other, natives could respond to greater globalization with economic anxiety, increasing support for redistribution in order to mitigate risk. Welfare chauvinism predicts a mixed effect—increased spending for programs that middle-class natives use and reduced spending for programs that benefit immigrants disproportionately. I test this theory by analyzing (1) European attitudes towards immigration and welfare spending and (2) actual spending on these programs, particularly social housing. Additionally, I present a …

An Analysis Of Esl Learner Preferences For Native Accent Retention And Reduction, K. James Hartshorn

Faculty Publications

Though most ESL learners desire a “native-like” pronunciation, researchers have observed that some may want to retain features of their L1accents as a means of maintaining identity. This raises important questions about the best ways to teach L2 pronunciation. Therefore, the aims of this study were to discover how pervasive a preference for accent retention may be and to identify possible reasons learners exhibit this preference. To accomplish this, a scale was designed to assess a preference for accent retention, and potential explanatory variables were identified. Analyses of 350 ESL learners identified varying levels of a preference for accent retention, …

Enhancing Social, Emotional, And Language Learning In Children With Language Impairment, Bonnie Brinton, Phd, Martin Fujiki, Phd

Journal of Undergraduate Research

We were extremely grateful to receive a 2016-2018 Mentored Environment Grant. Our project was entitled Enhancing Social, Emotional, and Language Learning in Children with Language Impairment. The purpose of this project was to employ a multiple baseline, single subject design to investigate the efficacy of a social communication intervention designed to foster emotional and language learning simultaneously for children with developmental language disorders (language impairment). The treatment program was designed to be administered within the service delivery model (and constraints) of the public school system.

Dataset On Political Institutions In Authoritarian Regimes Around The Worlds, Joel Selway

Journal of Undergraduate Research

1. Evaluation of how well the academic objectives of the proposal were met

The Dataset was completed and two papers were produced. One has been sent out for review and the other presented at an annual political science conference.

A Nonhuman Primate Model Of Anxiety-Induced Alcohol Abuse And Alcoholism, J. Dee Higley

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This is the final report for the MEG Grant titled: A nonhuman primate model of anxiety-induced alcohol abuse and alcoholism. The formal phase of the project ran from June 1 through August 23, 2016, with the students learning how to safely work with their research subjects, joining a research team, and collecting their data. Following the formal phase, the students returned to BYU where they used the data they and the other students collected to write scientific manuscripts and posters to present their data. Eight students took part: Elizabeth Wood, Alexander Baxter, Natalie Lange, Travis Norseth, Esther Page, Spencer …

Evaluation Of An Eeg Task For Detecting Latent Infections, Ryan Weels, Savanah Bishun, Bruce Brown

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Ultimately our goal is to develop methods for diagnosing neuropsychiatric illnesses through measurement and analysis of the electrophysiological stream of consciousness. In this project we test how well EEG adaptations of the Sternberg (1966) memory search task and the n-back cognitive task can discriminate between individuals who are positive for Herpes-simplex-1 and healthy controls.

A Blueprint Or Change: How Punk Music In Belfast Affects Activism Today, Hannah Williams, Jacob Hickman

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Though art can be found in all walks of life, it lends itself particularly well to the expression of political frustration. During the deeply rooted religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland, commonly referred to as the Troubles, many artists and musicians used their creativity to speak out against the violence of the conflict. Born into a society of religious division and hatred, youths of the 1970s and 1980s often turned to the local punk music movement in order to bridge and speak out against the religious divide. Many believe this was critical to eventual peace in …

Analyzing A Corpus Of President Trump’S Public Statements To Reveal Possible Media Bias, Kevin Zalewski, William Eggington

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In recent years, America has become extremely politically divided. As political polarization has increased, so has distrust of the media, especially during President Trump’s current term of office. The Media Insights Project reports that “just 17 percent of Americans give the news media high marks for being ‘very accurate.’” In this partisan political landscape, it can be difficult to know where to turn for unbiased, unspun news coverage. Where can a person learn what the president has said on a given topic without some type of filter coloring the information? This possible bias is a problem that corpus linguistics can …

Moral Transformation Of Religious Conflict: Believers & Bonfire In Belfast, Northern Ireland, Brinnan Schill, Jacob Hickman

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to investigate the cultural and historical implications of contemporary religious changes among two case studies of millenarian movements, drawing specifically on ethnographic field research already conducted in a Hmong village in Northern Thailand, and continuing research on conflict transformation among the Protestant and Catholic communities of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Drawing from both written and visual ethnographic methodology, the aim of this project is to use the unique qualities of a visually supplemented narrative to illustrate and explicate how people within these millenarian movements interpret religious conflict as an “enchanted” (Gell 1994) narrative of persecution, …

How To Get The Attention Of Government Officials: A Test Of The Effectiveness Of Social Proof Treatments, Aubriana Wolferts, Darren Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Social proof treatments—informing people about the behavior of their peers—have generally been shown effective in influencing subjects to engage in behavior due to a psychological desire to conform.1 Social proofs are more effective when they describe what peers typically do rather than what peers generally approve of, and when the social proof is more salient and closely related to the desired behavior.2

A Regional Party In Yorkshire?: The Proof Is In The Pudding, Elizabeth Whatcott, Dr. Joel Selway

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Within the United Kingdom, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have all gained regional assemblies which manage local affairs including health care, economic growth, education, and other services. However, the Parliament in Westminster has devolved few responsibilities to local authorities in England. Under the Blair premiership, the government began a process of referendums that would introduce regional assemblies into the Northern regions, but after the North East referendum rejected the proposal in 2004, the devolution process sputtered to a halt. However, regionalism may be gaining new life in England. The Yorkshire Party, a regionalist party that explicitly seeks a regional assembly …

Explaining Variation In Support For Refugees And Recent Immigrants In The United Kingdom, Katy Smith, Joshua Gubler

Journal of Undergraduate Research

On the heels of the Brexit vote and growing anxiety accompanied with leaving the European Union, immigration in the United Kingdom persists as a breaking point between native Britons, immigrants, and recent asylum seekers. To dispel the fervent animosity between these groups, humanization needs to occur in order for each party to see the others as their equal and develop long-term peaceful solutions. Decreasing ethnic conflict is often accomplished through increased positive interactions between groups. The perception is that many more refugees are being admitted into the country and yet most Brits are not acquainted with any. Introducing citizens to …