Psychology Commons^™

Correlates Of Course Ratings, Jan Krambule

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which selected variables are related to scores on the Utah State University Faculty Evaluation Questionnaire (USU FEQ). The variables examined were size of class, level of class, college under whose auspices a class is offered and whether the class is required or elective. In addition, the relationship between total mean score and responses to question 23, a percentage ranking of instructors, was assessed.

The fall quarter, 1975, FEQ results were used in this assessment. Employing the same procedures as had been followed in previous quarters, 315 courses were evaluated. …

Development Of Cooperation Between Children In The Minimal Social Situation, Janice V. Siegel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children can learn to cooperate in what has been described as the "minimal social situation." The research also compared the effectiveness of verbal instructions and a training task for teaching subjects the "win-stay, lose-change" rule. This rule has been used to explain the development of cooperation in the minimal social situation.

Subjects were 19 teams of first-, second-, and third-graders. Five teams were composed of two girls; six were girl-boy teams; and eight were boy-boy teams. Ten of the 19 teams learned to cooperate in the minimal social situation without treatment. …

Some Characteristics Of Female College Students Who Select Academic Majors In Fields Of Exact Science And Non-Exact Science: A Longitudinal Follow-Up, Paul David Warner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The present study, conducted in 1974, was a longitudinal follow-up of two groups of female subjects who had participated in an earlier study (Wright and Johnson, 1960) while the subjects were university students. One group of the subjects had majored in fields considered at that time to be traditionally feminine majors, i.e. social sciences, art, music, education, homemaking, etc. The other group had majored in fields of exact sciences, which at the time were considered more traditionally masculine. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether differences noted in the 1960 study will exist between these two groups …

Interpersonal Relations And Drug Use And Abuse, Larry J. Carlson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to make comparisons among regular marijuana users, heroin addicts and nondrug users on interpersonal dimensions of personality. Two interpersonal oriented instruments, the Interpersonal Check List (ICL) and the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B) were used to evaluate differences among these three groups.

The design of this study was a three group comparison. Each of these three groups contained between 28 and 30 subjects with age, education and socioeconomic level being controlled for in selection.

Three hypotheses were made directing investigation of the following three areas: One, discrepancy between the self and the ideal self …

An Analysis Of Oral And Written Quizzes As Teaching Techniques, K. Anthony Edwards

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was conducted to determine whether any differences existed between the effectiveness of oral and written quizzes as teaching techniques. In the first of two experiments, 130 students enrolled in two sections of an introductory psychology class and two sections of a psychology of adjustment class served as subjects. The course was taught using Michael's method of instruction, a contingency managed technique. In the first half of the term, one section from each course was taught by written quizzes while the other section was taught by oral quizzes. Following four weeks, teaching assignments were reversed. The dependent variables were …

Sex Role Preference, Sibling Status, And Bonding Behavior In Children, Mary Kay Biaggio

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The focus of this study was to explores some of the important variables in sex role development in children. The major hypotheses were concerned with differences between the independent variables child's grade level, sex, and sibling status (ordinal position and sex of sibling) on the dependent variables sex role preference and bonding behavior. Bonding, a concept which has not been examined in conjunction with sex role preference, was here defined as (1)the degree to which a child affiliates with members of his own sex and (2)the degree to which a child excludes opposite sex play-mates from his affiliative realm.

Subjects …

The Effects Of Interpersonal Competition On The Performance Of Schizophrenics, Brent L. Andersen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The effects of interpersonal competition on schizophrenics were studied to determine if competition facilitates or impairs task performance of schizophrenics and to further determine if schizophrenics respond to interpersonal competition differently than nonschizophrenics. Forty-one hospitalized patients diagnosed as schizophrenics, 36 hospitalized patients diagnosed as personality disorders, and 36 employees of the Wyoming State Hospital were used as subjects. Each group of subjects was randomly divided into competitive and noncompetitive research groups, thus forming three competitive groups and three noncompetitive groups.

Each of the six groups of subjects was administered two equivalent forms of four standardized tests. Each group was tested …

The Relationship Between Self Concept And Children's Figure Drawings, Marta Lynn Severson Campbell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The present study investigated the relationship between self concept and children's figure drawings. The principle variable under consideration in each child's drawing were (a) size of drawing and (b) number of colors used. The Tennessee Self Concept Scale (Fitts, 1965) was administered to 80 students selected from the seventh grade at Logan Junior High School, Logan, Utah.

The subjects were then instructed to draw a picture of themselves. No further instructions were given regarding specific details of the requested picture. Ten colored pencils along with a regular pencil were made available to each student. No instructions were given as to …

The Development Of An Inexpensive, Anonymous And Portable Classroom Feedback Device With Data Recording Capability, John Peter Dworetzky

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

One way to approach the improvement of teacher behavior is through the application of feedback. An electronic device was developed to provide immediate anonymous feedback from students to teachers in the classroom situation. The newly developed system, unlike other systems available, has the advantages of being portable, inexpensive, easy to use, and able to provide continuous feedback. As the system relies on a sampling procedure, it may be used adequately with any size class. In addition, the system possesses full data recording capability.

Experiments were designed to utilize the device to investigate the effects of immediate anonymous feedback from students …

Error Patterning And Hypothesis Behavior Of Children And Pigeons In Discrimination Learning, William Robert Jenson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Characteristic distributions of errors across fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement were studied for two types of discrimination paradigms. Two experiments studied error patterns as a function of hypothesis behavior in two species of animals, children and pigeons.

Three key zero-delay matching-to-sample and two key simultaneous discrimination were reinforced for both species of animals on fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement. Experiment 1 involved children on matching-to-sample and simultaneous discrimination, and Experiment 2 involved pigeons on matching-to-sample and simultaneous discrimination. Both species of subjects experienced experimental conditions in which shift or stay response hypotheses were selectively reinforced using a high speed digital …

Religious Commitment And Meaning In Life, Merrill L. Barfield

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between meaning or purpose in life as measured by Crumbaugh's Purpose in Life Test, and the degree of religious commitment of college students, with particular interest in the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Religious commitment was measured by Hoge's Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale (IRM).

Two hundred and fifty-five undergraduates, 122 males and 132 females, enrolled in introductory psychology and sociology classes at Utah State University during spring quarter, 1975, served as subjects.

A two-way analysis of variance calculated separately for the LDS and non-LDS …

The Development Of A Composite Criminal Suicide Attempt Scale, Norman Salzberg

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was designed to understand and identify prison male inmates who had attempted suicide in their history prior to their incarceration. The objectives were (1) the comparison of inmates who had indicated that they had attempted suicide in their past, referred to as "suicide attempt inmates," with inmates who had not, referred to as "non-suicide attempt inmates," on 33 behavioral and personal variables; (2) The development of a suicide attempt scale by means of an item analysis on the responses of suicide attempt and non-suicide inmates to the items of the Bipolar Psychological Inventory (BPI). This scale was named …

Parental Relationships, Mate Selection, And Marital Adjustment, Vicki Lee Nelson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate perceived parental relationships and their correlation to mate selection. The secondary purpose was to investigate the agreement (1) between the husband's perception of the wife and her perception of herself and (2) between the wife's perception of the husband and his perception of himself (hereafter, perceptual agreement) in relation to marital adjustment.

Sixty couples with one or both partners attending Utah State University of Logan, Utah, participated in the study. The following instruments were administered to all individuals: A brief biographical questionnaire containing items regarding sex, student-non-student status, occupation, education, number …

A Test Of The Effectiveness Of Two Treatment Modalities For Adolescent Residents Of An Intermediate Care Facility, Paul David Warner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study attempts to test the effectiveness of two treatment modalities for adolescent residents of the Intermediate Care Facility at St. Anthony, Idaho.

The study was conducted at the Intermediate Care Facility (ICF) at St. Anthony, Idaho. The St. Anthony ICF is a separate yet distinct part of the Youth Services Center in the same area.

The participants of this study were 20 emotionally disturbed adolescents who were randomly assigned to two treatment groups (10 participants in each group). The participants of both groups were shown to be homogeneous with regards to severity of emotional disturbance, family background, race, sex, …

Effect Of Feeding Frequency And Caloric Intake On Weight Reduction In Obese Females, Richard Robert Weber

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Forty-five obese female volunteers were randomly assigned to one of six experimental groups required to consume their daily food intake according to the following feeding frequencies: (a) three isocaloric meals, (b) six isocaloric meals, (c) three isocaloric vii meals, (d) three meals in the proportion of 1/4:1/4:2/4, (e) six isocaloric meals, and (f) ad libitum (i.e., eight or more isocaloric meals). Members of the first two groups received dietary, nutritional, and exercise management information, while women in the remaining groups received instruction in behavioral control procedures in addition to the aforementioned educative treatment.

Experimental manipulations failed to produce a statistically …

The Development And Validation Of A Life-Change Checklist For Juvenile Delinquents, Paul G. Kulcsar

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A method generated by psychophysics has been used to develop a Checklist consisting of 58 life-events that require varying degrees of readjustment on the part of adolescents experiencing them.

A very high degree of concordance was found to exist among psychologists, social workers and probation officers with regard to the relative value of life-change required by those events.

Information about the occurrence of the amount of life-change was subsequently gathered from a sample of 334 juvenile delinquents and 104 nondelinquents by administering the Checklist. A measure of the degree of severity of delinquency was also obtained for each delinquent subject. …

Programmed Interpersonal Relations Training For High School Students, Leland J. Winger Jr.

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of the Basic Interpersonal Relations program as a facilitator of interpersonal relations for high school students.

Three intact classes of high school introductory psychology students were used to contrast the effectiveness of the Basic Interpersonal Relations program as shown by the experimental group with a treatment-control group receiving didactic instruction, and with a no-treatment control group. All subjects were pretested with the following instruments: Attitude Toward Others Scale (MMPI), Attitude Toward Self Scale (MMPI), Rotter's Internal- External Control Scale, and an achievement test based on the content of the Basic …

Strengths Enhancement Training: Self-Concept And Self-Actualization, Tony J. Strelich

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The strengths enhancement training program was developed and evaluated in order to determine empirically if a group method designed specifically to assist subjects in the identification of personal strengths, resources, and potentials, would be effective in broadening their perceptions of themselves in a positive direction.

The strengths enhancement training program was based primarily on the work of Herbert A. Otto, using the Multiple Strengths Perception method as the central component of the training program. That method was pilot tested, and program modifications were made on two occasions.

A pretest-posttest control group design was used to assess the 80 Introductory Psychology …

Telephone Crisis Intervention: Empathy And Conceptual Level, Paul J. Seymour

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The telephone crisis intervention service at Utah State University (Help-Line) was evaluated in order to make the training program accountable and to produce recommendations for improvement in volunteer training.

Help-Line training teaches a "non-directive" counseling model and incorporates experiential sensitivity type exercises, didactic discussion, and role playing.

Help-Line volunteers were assessed by two methods. The first was a pretest-posttest control group design. Training was the independent variable and the discrimination of core conditions (as measured by the Crisis Center Discrimination Index) and the communication of empathy (as measured by the Crisis Center Communication Index) were the dependent variables. The Indexes …

Noninformative Conditioned Reinforcers In Observing Response Training, Arnold Wellman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The goal of this research was to ascertain if information per se is a necessary condition to establish a conditioned reinforcer. Five pigeons were given observing response training in a two key Skinner box using free choice and forced trials procedures and a chain VI FI reinforcement schedule. The percentage of free choice noninformative trials was the observing response measure. A time correction procedure equated actual and programmed reinforcement frequencies in informative trials and noninformative trials if a difference occurred. For one bird a discrimination reversal of the informative and noninformative stimulus presentations occurred in the last five sessions.

All …

Religious Affiliation, Authoritarianism, And Dogmatism Of College Students, Heber M. Sharp

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of religious affiliation to the authoritarianism and open-closed mindedness of students at two institutions of higher learning, controlling for sex, reported church attendance, state in which the person reported residence as a child, and city size of reported childhood residency.

The sample for this study was selected from junior and senior students at Utah State University (n=1,409) and Weber State College (n=837). The subjects for whom data were analyzed indicated affiliation with the following religious groups: Agnostic, Baptist, Catholic, Christian, Episcopalian, Jewish, Lutheran, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, …

Description And Research Study Of Four Effective Teaching Methods, Gail Ryan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

During my years in the public school system, I have felt that a basic deterrent to the child's personal and emotional growth has been the inability of educators to effectively communicate with children in the classroom. Gordon (1970, p. 298) states that teachers and other adults "lack the basic attitudes and skills to be effective training agents in an interpersonal relationship with a child or adolescent." Flanders (1971) feels that teachers, while behaviorally influencing children and determining the learning situation, actually have little knowledge about those methods of influence.

I am concerned with the need to train teachers to work …

An Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Parent Training Programs In Changing Parent Behavior, Betty Payne Janiak

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The effectiveness of two types of parent training were evaluated and compared with a control group that received training. A child Management Inventory was constructed for this purpose.

Parent Effectiveness Training was significantly superior to a training program developed by the Utah State Department of Education as measured by pre- and post-test criterion measure. There were no significant differences between the Utah State Department of Education group and the control group. This was determined by applying an analysis of covariance to the pre- and post-test data from all three groups. However, on a follow-up critical incidents test the Utah State …

Assessing The Impact Of The Mobile Assisted Career Exploration Unit 3 Years Later, Gary Lynn De Vries

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The specific objective of this research was to determine if the MACE (Mobile Assisted Career Exploration) Program has had an effect on the realistic occupational decision-making ability of students after a period of 3 years.

Subjects were 12th grade students at Dixie High School. The experimental group was composed of 40 students (15 males and 25 females) who had been involved in project MACE in the ninth grade. The control group was composed of 32 students (15 males and 17 females) who had moved into the boundaries of Dixie High School since the loth grade and who had, therefore, not …

A New Self Report Behavioral Measure For Evaluating Therapeutic Outcomes, Clyde D. Elliott

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Statement of the problem

Psychology is currently unable to demonstrate that psychotherapy is effective because it has no reliable no-inference objective measures of behavior and behavior change. Reliable measures of therapeutic outcomes are currently nonexistent. The problem with which this study was concerned was one of reliably evaluating psychotherapy outcomes and behavioral change.

Objective

The objective of this study was to develop and assess new measures of behavioral change. The assessment was directed toward those distressing behaviors which cause adult clients to seek psychotherapy.

Methods and procedure

Development of a Behavioral Checklist which would assess the distressing behaviors which brought …

The Effects Of Different Time Arrangements On A Segment Of Individual Psychotherapy Sessions, Dan C. Yergensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether different time arrangements for individual psychotherapy vary in effectiveness for the therapeutic process. The following time arrangements were compared against each other: Treatment I, 1/2 hour sessions twice per week; Treatment II, 1 hour sessions once per week; and Treatment III, 2 hour sessions every other week.

Twenty-one subjects and seven therapists were selected from six mental health facilities in Utah and Idaho for this project. All therapists participating had at least 2 years experience as psychotherapists. All subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three treatments. Each therapist received …

The Effects Of Leadership Style On Group Interaction In Differing Socio-Political Subcultures, Kenneth W. Gilstein

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Four encounter groups were run using 41 undergraduates at Utah State University to measure the effects of leadership style, member vii socio-political subculture, and member personality on the quantity and quality of group interaction, and on member satisfaction. Using Kerlinger's Social Attitudes Scale, the subjects were divided into subgroupings of "conservatives" and "liberals." One conservative group and one liberal group were each conducted by a leader acting in a non-directive style, while one conservative and one liberal group were run by a leader acting in a directive style. The California Psychological Inventory was administered to the subjects to gain …

Community Alcohol Education And Prevention Program, John Fredricks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate an alcohol education program for the inhabitants of region seven, state of Idaho. A questionnaire comprised of multiple choice, and true-false questions, plus an attitude scale was developed to measure changes by way of pre and post testings.

The five hypotheses of this study are:

1. That our community and school education program would result in subjects obtaining a higher percentage of correct responses on information items on the post test administration of our questionnaire versus the pre testing.
2. The community and school education program would result in subjects obtaining an …

Utah And School Age Parents, Willa C. Hurd

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Background. As Dean of Women in a small high school for the past three years, I have been frustrated because of the fact that there was no program for married and/or pregnant students that would educationally aid them.

Night high school courses are not, in my opinion, "equal education; " I felt the need for a definite program. The school district is both legally and morally responsible to provide educational opportunities to these students .

Justification. In 1970 an estimated 200,000 American girls under 18 gave birth. Nearly two-thirds of the girls had married by the time of delivery (Pregnant …

Priming And The Post-Prime Pause In Mixed Fixed-Ratio Schedules, Larry Allen Alferink

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of a stimulus change inserted in the large component of a mixed fixed-ratio 10 fixed-ratio 100 schedule. In mixed fixed-ratio schedules, a run of responses which approximates the response requirement of the smaller fixed ratio occurs at the beginning of the larger fixed ratio. This run of responses and the pause it precedes is called a prime. In Experiment I, priming acquisition was compared in a mixed schedule in which a change in key-color followed completion of the first 10 responses of the fixed-ratio 100 component and a mixed schedule with …