Psychology Commons^™

Development, Refinement, And Psychometric Properties Of The Attitudes Toward God Scale (Atgs-9), Benjamin T. Wood, Everett L. Worthington, Julie Julia Exline, Ann Marie Yali, Jamie D. Aten, Mark R. Mcminn

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

Perceived relationships with God can be a source of comfort or struggle. To advance the study of spiritual comfort and struggle, we develop the nine-item Attitudes toward God Scale (ATGS-9), and we describe six studies (2,992 total participants) reporting its development and psychometrics. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified two factors: (1) Positive Attitudes toward God and (2) Disappointment and Anger with God. Subscale scores showed good estimated internal consistency, 2-week temporal stability, and evidence for construct and discriminant validity. Positive Attitudes toward God correlated with measures of religiosity and conscientiousness. Disappointment and Anger with God correlated with negative religious …

A Place For The Church Within Professional Psychology, Mark R. Mcminn, Michael J. Vogel, Laura K. Heyne

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

There are various reasons why Christian psychologists may resist fully participating in a church community. Among these are historic tensions between science and religion, the complexity of multiple role relationships, cynicism related to clients' negative experiences in religious communities, and differing perspectives on attributions and human nature. Despite these obstacles, there are compelling reasons for psychologists to remain involved in church. Eight of these reasons are described--clustered into professional, relational, and transformational domains--and implications discussed.

Rural Community Longevity: Capitalizing On Diversity For Immigrant Residential Stability, Rochelle L. Dalla, Tammy R. Stuhmer, Jennifer G. Deleón, Maria Isabel León Carreño

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

The premise of this research is that rural immigrants comprise a significant source of untapped human and social capital necessary for community development. However, to capitalize on the growing ethnic diversity in rural America, immigrant newcomers must want to stay in their new rural communities. This investigation was designed to identify factors necessary to enhance rural Latino immigrants’ long-term residential stability. Thus, we sought to: (1) identify perceptions of rural residence, with particular attention to employment opportunities and challenges; (2) assess formal support availability and community issues of greatest concern to rural Latinas; and (3) identify strategies for creating bi-cultural …

Exiting Prostitution: An Integrated Model, Lynda M. Baker, Rochelle L. Dalla, Celia Williamson

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Exiting street-level prostitution is a complex, convoluted process. Few studies have described this process within any formal conceptual framework. This article reviews two general models and two prostitution-specific models and their applicability to the exiting process. Barriers encountered as women attempt to leave the streets are identified. Based on the four models, the barriers, the prostitution literature, and the authors’ experience with prostituted women, a new integrated six-stage model that is comprehensive in scope and sensitive to women’s attempts to exit prostitution is offered as a foundation for continued research on the process of women leaving the streets.

Dance/Movement Therapy And Autism, Mariah M. Lefeber

Faculty Publications - Graduate School of Counseling

Movement is a language. For children affected by autism, movement may be the only language they can rely on. Children with autism often have limited verbal abilities, making it extremely difficult for them to reach out to others (Hartshorn et al., 2001). When words fail, dance/movement therapy fosters a child's ability to relate, communicate, and connect on a nonverbal level.

Christian Cooperation And Ministry Effectiveness: Insights And Applications From Empirical Research In Group Processes, David R. Dunaetz

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

“Co-operation and the Promotion of Unity” was one the major themes addressed at Edinburgh 1910. The goal was increased cooperation among Christian organizations that would lead to greater ministry effectiveness. Five group processes are presented in light of empirical studies demonstrating their ability to increase group performance: 1) Trust (reciprocal beliefs that the one party will promote the well being of another; 2) Constructive conflict (objective consideration and evaluation of various ways of accomplishing a common goal); 3) Decision commitment (beliefs held by all parties concerning the importance of following through on group decisions); 4) Accountability (the expectation that a …

Slope-Driven Goal Location Behavior In Pigeons, Daniele Nardi, Kristian P. Nitsch, Verner P. Bingman

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

A basic tenet of principles of associative learning applicable to models of spatial learning is that a cue should be assigned greater weight if it is a better predictor of the goal location. Pigeons were trained to locate a goal in an acute corner of an isosceles trapezoid arena, presented on a slanted floor with 3 (Experiment 1) or 2 (Experiment 2) orientations. The goal could be consistently determined by the geometric shape of the arena; however, its position with respect to the slope gradient varied, such that slope position was not a good predictor of the goal. Pigeons learned …

2010-2011, Full Issue

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

Full Issue.

Developmental Assessment And Feedback Relieves Parenting Stress, Marilyn J. Montgomery, Melody A. Whiddon

Faculty Publications - Graduate School of Counseling

Numerous studies have established that role stress experienced by parents has an impact on their perceptions of their child’s behavior, the quality of their parent-child interactions, and their child’s overall adjustment. Significant numbers of parents do experience the parenting role as stressful, often because they have concerns about whether their child’s behavior is within normal limits. Having seen parenting stress frequently while counseling parents and children, we reasoned that providing individualized developmental information to parents could reduce their parenting stress, and in turn result in positive consequences for parents and for children.

This article describes a brief intervention we developed, …

Evaluating An Insurance-Sponsored Weight Management Program With The Re-Aim Model, West Virginia, 2004-2008, Christiaan Abildso, Sam Zizzi, Bill Reger-Nash

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Introduction: Evaluations of weight management programs in real-world settings are lacking. The RE-AIM model (reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, maintenance) was developed to address this deficiency. Our primary objective was to evaluate a 12-week insurance-sponsored weight management intervention by using the RE-AIM model, including short-term and long-term individual outcomes and setting-level implementation factors. Our secondary objective was to critique the RE-AIM model and its revised calculation methods.

Methods: We created operational definitions for components of the 5 RE-AIM indices and used standardized effect size values from various statistical procedures to measure multiple components or outcomes within each index. We used chi(2) …

A Mixed-Method Evaluation Of A College Student Fitness Program Using The Re-Aim Framework, Michelle L. Bartlett, Sam Zizzi

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Background: The consistently rising obesity rate in college student population illustrates the need for organized and effective interventions. The purposes of this study were to evaluate an eight-week fitness program implemented at university student recreation center using mixed-methods along the reach, effectiveness, and implementation dimensions of the RE-AIM framework for evaluating health-promotion programs and to illustrate how qualitative data can be used to enhance the capabilities of the RE-AIM framework to evaluate such programs via providing recommendations to improve the intervention not possible with just a quantitative RE-AIM evaluation. Methods: Quantitative (participation rate, changes in % body fat, and resting …

Intelligent Machine Rights, Bradley Townson

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Implications Of Skinner's Verbal Behavior For Studying Dementia, Jeffrey Buchanan, Daniel Houlihan, Peter J.N. Linnerooth

Psychology Department Publications

Persons with dementia experience continual declines in a number of abilities. Language abilities are particularly hard hit and become increasingly impaired as the underlying disease progresses. These language impairments make verbal communication very challenging for family and professional caregivers. As a result, caregivers may inadvertently punish verbal behavior, thereby exacerbating the deterioration of verbal repertoires. Although the topography of language impairments associated with dementia have been well described, less empirical work has been conducted concerning how to minimize these impairments and their deleterious effects. In 1957 B.F. Skinner outlined his conceptualization of language and cognition in his book Verbal Behavior. …

Family Coping As A Protective Factor For Poor Children, Catherine Decarlo Santiago

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined family influences on coping and adjustment among 90 low-income Latino middle school children (46% Female; Average age = 11.38, SD = .66) and their primary caregivers (93% Female; Average age = 36.12, SD = 6.13). All participants identified as Hispanic/Latino, with 75% of families identifying as Mexican-origin Latino, 77% of parents identifying as immigrants, and 32% of children identifying immigrants. All children participating in the study were receiving free or reduced lunch, a poverty indicator. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that family reframing is related to fewer symptoms of psychopathology and that familism enhances the protective effect …

The Impact Of Adherence To Traditional Masculine Gender Role Norms On Anger And Depression, Matthew Charles Genuchi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large scale studies of the incidence and prevalence of psychological disorders have consistently shown that women meet full DSM-IV criteria for major depressive disorder at twice the rate of men (Kessler et al., 1994; Kessler et al., 2003; NCS-R, 2007; Robins & Reiger, 1991). Some have proposed (Cochran & Rabinowitz, 2000; Kilmartin, 2005; Pollack, 1998) that the current DSM-IV diagnostic criteria do not adequately reflect the depressive symptoms of some men. Men tend to use more externalizing defenses and distracting coping styles to manage negative affect, and anger is hypothesized as an externalizing symptom of a masculine variation of major …

Phonological Memory And Broader Language Development: Longitudinal And Etiologic Relations, Robin Leonhardt Peterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current research investigated the relationship of phonological memory (PM) to vocabulary and syntax learning in school-age children with and without language disorders. Previous research has established that PM and broad oral language skills covary, but disagreement remains about the reason for this association. Opposing theoretical viewpoints emphasize the importance of either bottom-up (PM influences vocabulary and syntax acquisition) or top-down (vocabulary growth influences PM skill) factors. In three longitudinal studies, we tested competing bottom-up and top-down explanations of the PM-broad language link. Study 1 utilized a structural equation modeling approach to understand PM and broad language relations from age …

Effects Of Patient Trauma On Hospital Staff Functioning: An Exploratory Study Of Psychological Distress Resulting From Trauma Exposure, Randy Allen Braley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study attempted to determine the relationship between exposure to traumatic experiences of hospitalized children and adolescents and the development of secondary traumatic stress, also known as compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, or burnout in clinical staff working with such patients. Hierarchical regression was used to test the hypotheses that: clinical treatment staff will experience higher levels of psychological distress following exposure to patient trauma and previous lifetime trauma events; clinical treatment staff will experience quality of patient relationships associated with the degree of exposure to patient trauma, previous lifetime or work-related trauma history, and level of supervisor support; clinical …

A Phenomenological Study Of Racialized Experiences Of Asian Adopt Adoptees, Cindi Kim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the nature and meaning of racial and ethnic identity as described by adult Asian adoptees who were transracially and internationally adopted. Particular focus of the study examined the racialization experiences and the relationships between racial and ethnic identity and socialization, and identified key influences on self-perception. The intent of this study was to gain insight into how this particular social group negotiated racial issues during different stages of development, while maintaining a sense of self. This study's approach took a narrative form, as participants described the essence of their experience contributing to their racial and ethnic identity …

A Grounded Theoretical Approach To Embodiment Among Homeless Youth, Felicia Washington Sy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using grounded theory methodology, this research explored, described and theorized about the ways youth, specifically homeless youth; make sense of their bodies within the context of living environments. It describes the relationship between body, space, and context for homeless youth in order to inform treatment options for this population. The importance of context, setting, and participant frame of reference was stressed, because embodiment is contextually and culturally influenced. The research addressed the questions: What is the process of becoming consciously embodied for homeless youth who have experienced multiple traumas? Do homeless youth who have experienced multiple traumas perceive a role …

Constructing A Neuroscientific Pastoral Theology Of Fear And Hope, Jason C. Whitehead

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary therapeutic circles utilize the concept of anxiety to describe a variety of disorders. Emotional reductionism is a detriment to the therapeutic community and the persons seeking its help. This dissertation proposes that attention to the emotion of fear clarifies our categorization of particular disorders and challenges emotional reductionism. I propose that the emotion of fear, through its theological relationship to hope, is useful in therapeutic practice for persons who experience trauma and PTSD.

I explore the differences between fear and anxiety by deconstructing anxiety. Through this process, I develop four categories which help the emotion of fear stand independent …

Effect Of Positive Ingroup Exemplars On Negative Self-Stereotyping, Sandra Yvette Benitez

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this research is to examine how being exposed to positive in-group exemplars will affect the extent to which participants use negative stereotypes of their group to evaluate themselves, which in this case is referred to as self-stereotyping.

Environmental Enrichment Attenuates Nucleus Basalis Lesion Induced Impairments To Attention, Brandee Leianne Kinney-Hurd

Theses Digitization Project

This experiment examined the effects of environmental enrichment on performance in an attention-dependent learning task in rats with selective lesions of the cholinergic nucleus basalis magnocellularis (NBM). The findings demonstrate that environmental enrichment can enhance attention-dependent learning performance in normal animals as well as attenuating NBM lesion-induced impairments otherwise seen following rearing in standard conditions.

The Effectiveness Of Altering Value Structure To Enhance Creativity, Christa Larai Taylor

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of the current study is to determine if individual creativity may be lastingly enhanced by altering a more stable, enduring factor than those in previous studies, namely values. This study was designed to determine if values related to creativity may be enhanced using an established method of value change, known as Value Self Confrontation (VSC), and if an increase in "creative dimension" values would therefore result in enhanced creative behavior.

An Examination Of Factors Associated With Job Burnout Among Child Welfare Workers, Jennifer Marie Ahmu

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this study is to examine factors related to job burnout among child welfare workers specifically working for Riverside County, Department of Children's Services Division (CSD). Identifying predictors of job burnout can improve working conditions, reduce absenteeism, reduce economic cost, increase employee retention, improve client treatment, and help attract competent individuals to the profession, making job burnout a relevant and necessary area to study in social work.

Employee Resilience Following Reductions In Compensation, Eliana Isabel Ceja

Theses Digitization Project

The United States workforce is currently suffering from the effects of a severe financial crisis. As a result, many organizations have sought to cope by reducing employee compensation. The current study sought to identify the psychological impact these reductions (i.e. pay cuts, mandatory furloughs, etc.) had on employee attitudes and behaviors in the workplace.

The Relationship Between Core Self-Evaluations, Self-Regulation, Need Supply Fit And Job Satisfaction: A Comprehensive Model, Amanda Marie Deane

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project will explain how core self-evaluation is related to job satisfaction both directly and indirectly via the following mechanisms: emotional generalization, perception, and motivation.

Men's Subjective Distress To A Partner's Imagined Indifelity: Testing Evolutionary And Social-Cogntive Hypotheses, Tanner Michael Carollo

Theses Digitization Project

Despite the ability of evolutionary psychology to account of sex differences in infidelity distress, it is challenged to explain the repeated finding that a large number of men do not select sexual infidelity as more distressing than emotional infidelity. The research goal of this thesis was to examine theoretically relevant individual difference variables in men that could possibly account for their reported distress to imagining a romantic partner's sexual and emotional infidelity.

The Efffects Of Ethnic Identity And Perceived Racial Discrimination On Psychological Distress In A Sample Of Latinos, Joseph Anthony Toruno

Theses Digitization Project

The goal of the current study is to examine the role of ethnic identity as a potential moderator in the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological distress in a sample of Latino college students. Previous research has demonstrated a moderating effect of ethnic identity on the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological distress ; however, this study also considers social support and self-esteem as covariates. The study sample consisted of 126 Latino college students. Participants were instructed to complete questionaires at home and researchers collected the surveys one week later.

Koans And Levels Of Consciousness, John Rowan

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This is a theoretical paper devoted to an examination of the phenomenon of the Zen

koan. First, the existing understanding of the koan will be outlined from a number of

sources. This will be followed by an examination of what the koan would look like from

a structural point of view. Ken Wilber’s outlook will then be used to look at the koan in a

fresh way so that one might see it as a kind of test of the level of consciousness exhibited

by each solution. The latter is related to recent thinking on models in general.

Performance Differences In Diverse Contexts: The Role Of Personality, Daniel Karl Cashmore

Theses Digitization Project

This study seeks to explain performance differences in demographically diverse settings by examing introverted and extraverted individuals and using the Inverted-U-Theory developed by Hans J. Eysenck.