Psychology Commons^™

Stigma And Disclosure Of Chronic Pain In Higher Education: A Qualitative Study, Jennifer K. Davenport

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Students with chronic pain represent an overlooked population in higher education institutions, due to the barriers their conditions present and the stigma associated with chronic pain. There is existing research examines treatment of elderly populations and best practices for university students with disabilities, facing discrimination. This study sheds light on a gap in the existing research, where a niche population of students in chronic pain navigated disclosure issues and stigma in the academic environment. The purpose of the qualitative research study was to examine how anticipated or experienced stigma associated with chronic pain conditions influenced disclosure of chronic pain for …

Teen Stress And The High School Experience: Fostering The Adaptive Abilities To Survive And Advance, William P. Dewitt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose if this study is to examine the stress experience of teenagers during their high school years. The study uses existing research to identify causes of stress and stress- management techniques and then gathers students’ perceptions through surveys and a group interview to provide student voice on the issue of stress.

Recent nation-wide efforts have been made in schools to provide more supports for the social and emotional well-being of students, but despite these efforts, stress levels of high school students remain elevated. Understanding the ways in which students identify stress and the adaptive abilities they use to manage …

Through The Elementary School Years: Self-Regulation Predicting Social Competence With Student-Teacher Relationships As Mediators, Kelsie Anderson

Honors Theses

Using a longitudinal, nationally representative dataset, ECLS-K:2011, research was conducted to determine the predictive relationship between Self-Regulation in kindergarten and first-grade years and Social Competency in the third- and fourth-grade years of elementary school. Along with this, Student-Teacher Relationships were studied to determine if they could mediate the relationship between Self-Regulation and Social Competency. These aspects have been extensively studied individually in previous research, but this study looks at how these aspects work together and the implications that these relationships have. The current study documented that a) Working Memory predicts indices of Behavioral Engagement and Internalizing Behavior Problems in the …

Training Teachers To Differentiate Instruction To Address Work Completion Problems In Math, Elisabeth Kane

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

This dissertation investigated an adaptation of functional analysis methodology, performance deficit analysis (PDA), and its use in training teachers to differentiate instruction for students having difficulty completing independent math seatwork. Participants included three middle school teachers and one of their students who was referred for having difficulty completing his or her work. Behavioral skills training was used to individually train each teacher to interpret her student’s PDA data, determine if the student had a skill or performance deficit, and select appropriate motivational and instructional strategies to increase the student’s performance. To answer the research questions, a multiple-baseline-design across teachers was …

Importance Of Mental Health Awareness In Schools, Alexandra Elliott

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

We all have different experiences and beliefs that shape our perspectives and impact our mental health. The concept of mental health exists in Western civilization but is absent in others, so it is important to be sensitive when discussing the terminology of mental health by itself. There is ample evidence of a disproportionate amount of mental health issues among people living in low-income areas due to lack of resources in these communities. In fact, mental health resources are disproportionately accessible to white, affluent individuals in Western civilization. This senior capstone research project is intended to find ways to reach new …

Achieving Positive Mental Health And Academic Achievement For Students With Behavioral And Emotional Issues In Elementary School, Reynalda Fuentes

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Elementary students, their peers, and teachers today are being affected by emotional and behavioral issues that some students struggle with at school. In order to understand why it is affecting their academic achievement and mental health, this report answers the following research questions to investigate how these problems affect schools, classrooms, and teachers, as well as what appears to be contributing factors to this problem, and what are some of the solutions. In review of the literature on preventions and interventions placed at elementary schools the research shows that frameworks such as The Multi-tiered System of Supports, and the incorporation …

Severity Of Coercive Sexual Harassment In Professor–Student Interaction And Peer Bystander Responses, Donna M. L. Heretick, Inna Learn

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

The risk for female students in academia of sexual harassment by male faculty and staff remains a national crisis. This study examined effects of severity of coercive sexual harassment (CSH) by a male professor of a female student on peer bystander intervention responses. A total of 180 undergraduate and graduate college students who volunteered for an online survey were randomly assigned to one of three vignette conditions that varied severity of CSH. Following Bowes-Sperry’s ethical model of bystander behaviors, it was predicted that severity of CSH would affect cognitive appraisals and emotional reactions, which would further predict intentions for intervention …

The Impact Of School-Based Mindfulness Programs On The Externalizing Behavior Of Students, Madison Ruhlmann

Honors Program Theses

Interventions involving mindfulness in schools are becoming increasingly commonplace. Mindfulness is a way of directing attention towards the present moment without passing judgement, and has been adapted as a psychological treatment over the past forty years. The goal of this review is to summarize how schools have used interventions featuring mindfulness; and particularly the impact on externalizing behavior in the classroom. Online database search techniques were utilized in the collection and analysis of these studies. The findings of this review show that mindfulness interventions may be valuable in the reduction of externalizing behavior in the classroom, but the current research …

The Impact Of Religiosity And Personality On Resilience And Coping Strategies, Leah Eldred

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The purpose of the current study was to examine the impact of religiosity and personality on resilience and coping strategies amongst undergraduate college students. Participants completed four different questionnaires measuring religiosity, personality, resilience, and coping skills, as well as a demographic questionnaire. A two-way factorial ANOVA statistical analysis and correlation analyses were conducted. The findings indicated that participants who were pessimistic reported more use of maladaptive coping strategies than optimistic participants. The main implication of this study was that people who are more pessimistic can be taught how to utilize adaptive coping strategies rather than the maladaptive ones that they …

Teachers’ Experience With Problematic Behavior And Educational Support: A Phenomenological Inquiry, Kristen Michelle Brashear

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation was conducted to discover how teachers of elementary and middle school-aged children experience the phenomenon of problematic behavior in their classrooms and the support they receive from the educational system in this regard. The literature review revealed that there is a dearth of research using a purely qualitative approach to exploring the experience of teachers in this area. The idea that teachers are rarely asked how they experience problematic behavior and support was evident in the findings of this study. I conducted this study using a phenomenological approach to interview six teachers from three states. The interviews were …

Mindfulness And Testing: An Exploration Of The Benefits Of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Meditation Practice On Test Anxiety, Anastasia Quirk

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Test anxiety is a growing concern for students as it can negatively impact student performance. Mindfulness is a practice of focused breathing meditation intended to increase awareness of oneself and the present moment and decrease anxiety. With the recent increase in mindfulness practices in schools, this research examines the potential impact of mindfulness-based cognitive practice on anxiety levels, test anxiety, and standardized test scores through the use of the ACT standardized placement test, the TAI-G, a self-administered Test Anxiety Inventory, and the Biodot, a device measuring physiological indications of anxiety. Using analysis of variance and paired samples t-tests, a significant …

Emotional Regulation & Therapeutic Rapport With Adolescents: Exploring The Effectiveness Of The Expressive Therapies Continuum, Kasey Larsen

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Art therapy is a beneficial service for adolescents who face obstacles connecting emotionally, behaviorally, and academically. Creative techniques and therapeutic rapport can facilitate connection with the self, focus, and emotional regulation. Teens, especially struggling with mental health, often have difficulty functioning in the average public-school setting. Research supports a positive correlation to art therapy services and effectiveness in a school setting. The intention of this capstone was to test the effectiveness of the expressive therapies continuum (ETC) in supporting emotional regulation with two high school girls in a therapeutic day school. The method of research includes a pre-, post-, and …

Text Messaging Between School Counselors And Students: An Exploratory Study, Nicholas R. Gilly

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

This exploratory case study examines the impact of text messaging on mentoring relationships when used as an outreach between school counselors and high school students, where established relationships are lacking. An SMS gateway was used to mediate communication between school counselors (N=2) and students (N=5) over a three-month timeframe. The SMS gateway converted email, sent from counselors, to text messages, which were received on mobile devices of students and allowed students to respond back to counselors. Findings indicate that the use of text messaging may ease scheduling of face-to-face meetings between counselors and students, but evidence does not support any …

Engaging Professional Advocacy Through Community-Based Participatory Research And Community Engagement, Anastasha Homa-Earl

Graduate Student Research Symposium

Community engagement (CE) and service learning are trending in institutions of higher education, with instructors including community-based coursework to encourage applied, experiential learning (Henderson, 2017; Johnson, 2013). Counselors are called to advocate both for their clients and for the counseling profession overall, in addition to their role as change-makers in regards to the accessibility of services (ACA, 2014; ACA 2018). Some research suggests that interprofessional collaboration can be beneficial for addressing social advocacy efforts, and that advocacy and experiential learning can help to develop professional identity (e.g. Mellin, Hunt, & Nichols, 2010; Luke & Goodrich, 2010; Myers, Sweeney, & White, …

Identity And Advocacy: The Missing Components In Promoting Social-Emotional Health And Self-Regulation For Multiply Marginalized Girls, Jovonne Tabb, Temple S. Lovelace, Mary Comis, Olajumoke Oshokoya

Graduate Student Research Symposium

Girlhood has been a topic of great interest in the last decade. As individuals have examined the lack of girls in STEM or the increase of bullying in girls, there has been a push to understanding the differential experiences along gender-based lines. In this study, the researchers highlight the results of the successful implementation of a group-based curriculum that utilized identity and advocacy as critical components in a treatment package focused on self-regulation. Using a pretest-posttest design, the researchers found a statistically significant difference in several key areas that are of key importance when supporting the needs of adolescent girls. …

Emotional Intelligence Methods Utilized By Successful Major League Baseball Closers To Perform Successfully In High Pressure Situations, Joshua Rosenthal

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative case study is to understand the similarities that exist in the descriptions of emotional intelligence methods utilized by retired successful Major League Baseball closers to appraise, express, regulate, and utilize their emotions to perform successfully in high pressure situations.

Methodology: The dissertation was a qualitative case study. Twelve of the top 50 retired save leaders in Major League Baseball were interviewed to understand the similarities in the descriptions of emotional intelligence methods used to perform successfully in high pressure situations. This study attempted to understand what exactly elite closers did to utilize emotional intelligence …

Developing Intercultural Communication And Understanding With Adolescents Through Virtual Exchange, Sarah E. Wilkinson

Public Administration ETDs

Globalization, advances in communication technology, and growing international contact have resulted in increased interconnection of populations from different social, ethnic, and cultural groups. Intercultural competency skills such as intercultural understanding and communication are now necessary requirements to function in culturally diverse communities, workplaces, and society. Adolescence has been identified as an opportune developmental stage for interventions aimed at improving intergroup attitudes. This study conducted pre- and post-program surveys with 313 U.S. students ages 10 to 17 to examine if participation in an intercultural global virtual exchange impacted attitudes of intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and perspective-taking. Paired samples t-tests were conducted …

Exploring Differential Effects Of Therapeutic Alliance Across Treatment Therapies, Alexandra T. Tonigan

Individual, Family, and Community Education ETDs

Effects of therapeutic alliance has been widely studied for depression, anxiety, and interpersonal problems and been found to have small to moderate positive outcomes. Consistent findings are lacking, however, regarding the relationship between therapeutic alliance, treatment therapy, and client characteristics, in alcohol use disorder (AUD) treatment.

The current paper utilizes data from Project MATCH to assess the differential effects of therapeutic alliance on 12-month alcohol abstinence across clients receiving Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), and Twelve Step Facilitation (TSF) treatment. Moreover, higher order interactions were explored to determine whether such effects differed across client characteristics. This research …

Predicting Academic Dishonesty Using Personality, Impulsiveness, Morality, And Somatic Faking, Lauren Barbee

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Violations of academic honor are relative to many of the same factors that lead to dishonesty by individuals subject to the criminal justice system. Malingering is defined as the feigning of psychological or physical ailment for gain, which is a technique regularly used to exploit both academic institutions and the U.S. court system. While malingering in legal environments is generally to receive less harsh sentencing, access to drugs, or other benefits, the aim of faking illness in students is to avoid consequences for missing required classes or examinations. The purpose of this research is to identify the relationship between “faking-bad” …

Daniel Gomez

Barrio Writers

No abstract provided.

Lgbtq Training For Aquatic Employees: Impact On Attitudes And Professional Competencies, Austin R. Anderson, Eric Knee, William D. Ramos

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

This study examined the impact of a LGBTQ diversity training on the attitudes and professional competencies of aquatic employees within a campus recreational sports setting. While diversity training is often discussed as a key component of inclusive aquatic programming, little empirical research examining the outcomes associated with such trainings exists. As such, members of the research team developed, implemented, and evaluated a four-month long training program consisting of one in-person training session and monthly inclusion handouts discussing issues related to the inclusion of LGBTQ participants. A comparative quantitative research design was used to measure employee’s attitudes towards the LGBTQ population …

Together We Can Do So Much: A Systematic Review And Conceptual Framework Of Collaboration In Schools, Amy-Jane Griffiths

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Effective collaboration is associated with positive outcomes for students and is a key component of equitable educational opportunities. There are challenges to effective collaboration, however, as our understanding of it differs based on the various definitions in the literature. The purpose of this systematic review is to identify the common constructs across definitions of collaboration as a means to develop a universal model that can be used in the schools. Through the development of a “building blocks” framework, we provide a common definition and identify the steps that must be taken before true collaboration can occur. This model highlights the …

Fathers’ Perceived Co-Parenting And Children’S Academic Readiness Among Chinese Preschoolers: Longitudinal Pathways Through Parenting And Behavioral Regulation, Lixin Ren, Rebecca Y.M. Cheung, Courtney Boise, Xuan Li, Jieqiong Fan

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Co-parenting quality has frequently been linked to young children’s social–emotional functioning, but limited research has focused on the relationship between co-parenting and children’s early academic skills, or the underlying mechanisms through which co-parenting influences children’s development. Using data collected from urban China, the present study examined how fathers’ perceptions of co-parenting quality was related to their preschool-aged children’s academic readiness (i.e., receptive vocabulary, reading, early math; N = 336), and whether father’s parenting practices and children’s behavioral regulation mediated the link between co-parenting quality and child outcomes. Findings suggested that the relation between co-parenting quality and children’s academic readiness was …

Parent Perceptions Of The Acceptability, Effectiveness, And Experience Of Engaging In The Group Stepping Stones Triple P Intervention For Parents Of Children With Disabilities, Tara B. Delach

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The challenges associated with parenting are often compounded for parents of children with developmental disabilities. Children with developmental disabilities are at increased risk for exhibiting mental health concerns and challenging behavior compared to their typically developing peers. Parents who are raising a child with a disability tend to experience increased demands, higher levels of stress, and greater challenges associated with the physical, emotional, and behavioral needs of their children than do parents of typically developing children. Parent training interventions grounded in social learning theory and behavioral principles have proven to be effective in improving both child and parent outcomes in …

Positive Communication Across The Lifespan: Early Childhood Aces To Vias, Adam Pyecha

College of Arts and Letters Posters

Felitti et al., (1985; 1998) developed Adverse Childhood Experiences test (ACEs), after researching adults suffering from obesity and addictive overeating. Positive correlations were linked with traumatic childhood experiences, such as severe physical, sexual and mental abuse with those participants struggling with obesity. ACEs is widely accepted in the field of psychology, proving individuals with higher ACEs scores indicate higher probability for mental illness and high risk deviant like substance abuse and felony crime. Identifying students with high ACEs before entering grade school may give educators and institutions the ability positively alter character and behavior outcomes of these victimized children. Nicholson, …

Reliability Of Index And Subtest Discrepancy Scores On The Wj-Iv Cognitive, Kacy Stinson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Many guidebooks and publication manuals for intelligence tests recommend that practitioners calculate subtest and index level discrepancy scores along with many other types of scores. The reliability of the discrepancy scores, however, are not provided in the test manuals. The purpose of the study was to determine the reliability of the discrepancy scores in the Woodcock Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities (WJ IV COG, 2014). Using data from the WJ IV technical manual, the reliability of the discrepancy scores were examined at both the subtest and index level. The results were compared to the reliability criteria recommended by the assessment …

Families First: Impact On Parent Knowledge, And Association Between Program Quality And Child Symptom Severity, Cibrian Johnson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Families First parenting workshops were developed for caregivers of children recently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The primary site hosts inperson workshops, but webcasts the workshops to remote sites in different areas of the United States. The purpose of this study was to assess whether parents have an increase in knowledge after participating in Families First workshops at a remote site, and to assess whether program quality ratings and child symptom severity are associated with parent knowledge. The current study addressed the following research questions:

1. Do parents participating in the Families First workshops at a remote site …

Working Memory And Study Strategies: Effects On Performance Gaps, Chloe Stearns

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Working Memory (WM) is a critical contributor to learning. Those with low WM (LWM) are frequently at a disadvantage compared to those with high WM (HWM). Effective study strategies like practice retrieval, and self-explanation have been found to increase retrieval performance. This study compared the use of effective strategies between those with HWM and LWM, to determine whether the effect of study strategies on verbatim, inference, and total retrieval test scores differed due to WM when effective strategies were provided. Results indicated no significant difference in strategy quality between those with HWM and LWM. When looking at retrieval performance, WM …

Learning Context Matters In Maths Performance, Jeny Raphael

Teacher India

PISA collects background information to understand contextual factors that affect the performance of students. Building on the evidence, Jeny Raphael discusses the impact of the learning environment on the character strengths of students, and its connection to their maths performance.

Applying The Homework, Organization, And Planning Skills (Hops) Intervention To Elementary Students With Adhd, Ayanna Maia Peake

Dissertations

Students need appropriate executive functioning (EF) skills to improve their academic achievement. The Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) Interventions were implemented for 16 sessions with three elementary students with ADHD and executive functioning (EF) deficits. The study aimed to improve the homework, organization, and time management skills of each participant. The interventions were expected to decrease both EF deficits and teacher reports of homework behavior difficulties. This study used a multiple baseline across participants single subject research design with interventions implemented concurrently. A behavior rating scale provided pre and post-intervention data on the participants’ EF deficits. Classroom teachers also …