Psychology Commons^™

The Cultural Construct Of Stress In Luganda-Speaking Women In Uganda, Courtney Skiera

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Luganda, the primary language spoken in Uganda has no word for stress, but this does not necessarily preclude the Luganda-speaking population from experiencing stress. There is currently no research that reveals the stress phenomenon from a Ugandan’s perspective. The purpose of this study was to examine how Luganda-speaking Ugandans conceptualize stress. Two theoretical foundations formed the basis of this study: the cognitive appraisal of stress theory and the coordinated management of meaning. Using a qualitative interpretive design, this study examined the conceptualization of stress by Luganda-speaking women in terms of understanding, experiencing, and communicating the stress phenomenon. Participants were 7 …

Afriican American Students' Experiences Of Stress From Discrimination In Online Doctoral Education, Senovia Wyche

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Abstract

There is a lack of current research about the experiences of stress related to discrimination encountered by African American students in online doctoral programs. Such discrimination can negatively impact the academics, educational experiences, and overall health of this student population. In this generic qualitative study, how African American students in online doctoral programs interpreted, perceived, and responded to their experiences of stress regarding discrimination was explored. Using the conceptual framework of Lazarus and Folkman’s cognitive appraisal theory, the research questions addressed stress related to discrimination encountered in online educational institutions, discriminatory factors perceived as inhibitors towards earning a doctoral …

Depression In Adolescence: Risk Factors, Prevention, And Intervention - An Argument For Trauma-Informed Care In The Community, Beauty Davis

Capstone Showcase

BEAUTY DAVIS

Depression in Adolescence: Risk Factors, Prevention, and Intervention - An argument for trauma-informed care in the community

Depression is an unfortunately common mental illness that can lead to negative life outcomes such as substance abuse, suicide, lower quality of life, and anxiety. The stage of adolescence is known as a pivotal, transitional time of life as there are many changes in an individual’s physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. The research reviewed throughout this paper discusses risk factors that contribute to the development of depressive symptoms in adolescence. Observing how genetic, physiological, environmental, and social components contribute to …

What Happens When Youth Talk About Their Problems? Co-Rumination As A Mechanism Of Stress Generation, Jaclyn T. Aldrich

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

During adolescence, rates of depression increase significantly, necessitating understanding of interpersonal and intrapersonal factors that contribute to the occurrence of depressive symptoms. Prominent theories of depression, such as stress generation theory, suggest that depressed individuals experience more interpersonal stress that is dependent on their own actions or behavior. The current study sought to examine the role of co-rumination in the generation of stress and development of depression over the course of a year. Participants were 150 adolescents (48.7% female, 77.5% Caucasian) ages 11 to 14 years old (M = 13.03, SD = 0.93). Three models assessed the directional relationship …

Does Overweight/Obesity Moderate The Association Between Adhd And Internalizing Difficulties In Young Adults?, Breanna Badripersaud

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s objective was to investigate if ADHD symptoms and BMI are associated with internalizing impairments of depression, anxiety, stress and lower self-esteem in college students. It was predicted that higher ADHD symptoms would be associated with elevated depression, anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem, especially if BMI fell in the overweight/obese range. Undergraduate students [N= 580; Mean (SD) age= 20.7 (3.10)] from an urban campus completed an online survey comprising self-report measures of demographics, height/weight, attention and hyperactivity/impulsivity (Barkley Deficits Executive Functioning Scale ADHD- Executive Function Index), depression, anxiety, stress (all using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale) and self- …

Free-To-Play? An Examination Of Intrinsic Motivation And Gaming Behaviors In U.S. Female Mobile Gamers, Margot Goldblum

Dissertations and Theses

The prevalence of U.S. female gamers has skyrocketed in recent years, largely due to the popularity of mobile games; however, this population is underrepresented in academic research. The present study aimed to close this gap in the literature by focusing on the motivations and behaviors of adult female mobile gamers in the U.S. It also aimed to capture changes in gaming motivation and behavior resulting from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. An online sample of 354 American women 18 to 77 years of age (M = 36.79, SD = 12.38) were surveyed about their motivations for mobile gaming, …

Sources Of Social Support And Their Relation To Stress And Engagement Among College Students, Jonathan D. Emmons

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Previous research has explored the impact of stress on students’ well-being, including academic outcomes such as grades and student engagement. Research has also noted the positive and protective impact of social support from family, friends, classmates, teachers, etc., on academic outcomes. The current study sought to extend the existing base of literature by exploring the relation between stress, social support, and engagement among college students. In the current sample, stress was found to be a significant, positive predictor of social engagement with peers. Regression results also revealed significant and positive associations between social support from family and academic engagement. Additionally, …

Culture Moderates The Link Between Perceived Obligation And Biological Health Risk: Evidence For Culturally Distinct Pathways To Achieving Positive Health Outcomes, Andree Hartanto, Yee-Man Ivy Lau, Jose C. Yong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Rationale: Although perceived obligations to meet the expectations of family, friends, and society can be detrimental to physical health, much research in this area has thus far been conducted exclusively on Western samples. Cross-cultural research importantly suggests that positive health can be dependent on whether one engages in modes of being that are sanctioned by one's culture. Specifically, studies show that better health is predicted when people from cultures that value independence are able to exercise their personal autonomy and when people from cultures that value interdependence are able to maintain relational harmony (Kitayama et al., 2010). Objective: Based on …

The Process Of Therapeutic Change In The Attention Training Technique, Benjamin J. Laman-Maharg

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Background: An unacceptably large proportion of individuals remain symptomatic after receiving first-line interventions. The attention training technique (ATT) is a potentially effective treatment augmentation and standalone treatment that may help improve the treatment of psychological disorders. The machanisms of therapuetic change of ATT remain understudied. This study is a randomized controlled trial of ATT compared to progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) that examined mindfulness and attentional control as potential mechisms of therapeutic change.

Method: A convenience sample of 64 participants (Mage = 20.13, SD = 3.65; 42.2% Male; 64.1% non-Hispanic White; 23.4% Black; 9.4% Hispanic/Latino; 3.1% Other) were randomly assigned to …

Ethnic Identity And Stress Appraisal As Acculturative Stress Processes Among Armenian Americans, Tsolak Michael Kirakosyan

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The current study examined the role of ethnic identity and stress appraisal as buffers of the relationship between acculturative stress and wellbeing in a national sample of Armenian American adults between eighteen and thirty-nine years old (N = 159; 62.89% women, 32.08% men; mean age = 25.59, SD = 5.30). Acculturative stress positively correlated with depressive symptoms, and negatively with self-esteem and positive stress appraisal. Stronger ethnic identity affirmation and belonging was related to less depressive symptoms, more positive stress appraisal, and greater self-esteem and life satisfaction. In hierarchical linear regression analyses, acculturative stress significantly predicted more depressive symptoms, …

Law Enforcement Stress, Gender, And Work Performance, Angelia L. Harger

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Police officers experience continuous periods of work-related stressors throughout their

careers, affecting job performance, sleep, and family life. However, there is limited qualitative research in the area of police officer gender and stress, in law enforcement. Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study, guided by resilience theory, was to examine how gender and stress influence work performance, sleep, and family life in police officers. Six male and 4 female patrol officers were individually interviewed to gather information related to (a) their experiences regarding stress, (b) signs and symptoms of stress, (c) how gender affects stress, and (d) their coping …

Laughter Therapy And Coping Strategies For Dementia Patient Caregivers, Edith Ugwu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this research was to address a gap in the literature concerning the experiences of dementia caregivers who use laughter therapy as a coping strategy to manage their caregiving stress. Dementia caregiving involves high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety, which can cause both psychological and physical health problems for caregivers. It is, therefore, critical to identify effective coping strategies to mitigate caregiving stress. Laughter therapy is an inexpensive and readily available coping strategy that can help manage this stress. The current study used a phenomenological qualitative approach to address the research question. The transactional model of stress …

Managing Energy As Experienced By Female Federal Senior Managers, Gwendolyn Jones Crimiel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Senior managers experience a drain on personal energy while trying to meet the demands of work. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore how female senior managers describe lived experiences of managing and renewing personal energy while at work. The theoretical framework included conservation of resources theory and effort recovery theory. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 14 female senior managers who experienced managing and renewing their personal energy at work. Data analysis involved coding to capture the essence of the experiences and to identify common themes. Findings indicated that insufficient energy affected participants’ mental and …

Self-Care Practices, Work Experience, Educational Setting, And Burnout Among School Counselors, Paul Sylvester-Nwosu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractSchool counselors should be well-adjusted in their personal and professional lives and possess a keen, accurate perception of their self-care practices. However, people drawn to careers in school counseling are often at risk of developing burnout due to high professional demands and limited resources supporting their self-care and well-being. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to investigate the relationship between the independent variables of self-care practices, years of work experience, and educational settings and the dependent variable of levels of burnout among practicing school counselors in K-12 suburban educational settings in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. …

Domain-Specific Self-Compassion In Individuals High Versus Low In Social Anxiety, Leah Brassard

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Self-compassion involves showing kindness and understanding to the self during times of hardship. Individuals with social anxiety have been shown to exhibit lower levels of self-compassion than the general population. The present set of studies seeks to build support for a domain-specific conceptualization of self-compassion, as it relates to social anxiety. Study One (N=160) explored self-compassionate responding in three domains of stress from self-generated recollections in an online format. It was predicted that individuals high in levels of social anxiety would be more self-compassionate in scenarios involving non-social situations (i.e., burnout, physical illness) than in a socially evaluative …

Fall Reading Week: Exploring The Effects On Student Well-Being, Roobina Medhizadah

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Mental health is a concerning issue in post-secondary institutions across Ontario. Post-secondary students are challenged with many stressors such as time management and living independently for the first time (Wagner & Rhee, 2013). In an attempt to help students, maintain or improve their mental health, universities across Ontario have implemented fall reading week, a mid-semester break (Poole et al., 2017). Previous studies (Cramer & Pschibul, 2017; Poole et al., 2017) provided mixed results in whether fall reading week positively influences student mental health and well-being. To date, few studies have explored the influence of fall reading week on student health …

A Brighter Future: The Effect Of Social Class On Responses To Future Debt, Harrison J. Schmitt, Lucas A. Keefer, Daniel Sullivan, Sheridan Stewart, Isaac F. Young

Faculty Publications

© 2020, PsychOpen. All rights reserved. The present study serves as an exploratory investigation of the role of social class in responses to the threat of future debt. Previous work has shown that individuals of high and low subjective social class differ in the ways that they respond to a broad range of threats and uncertainties about the future. Across three studies, we found that lower social class individuals expect more future debt and suffer greater attendant stress than higher class individuals (Study 1). We found that experimental manipulations of debt salience increased stress for lower class and not for …

Undergraduates And Stress, Mahra Crone

Honors Projects

America is facing a serious mental health crisis, which may be an effect of increased chronic stress. Students, in particular, are vulnerable to this hazard as most face a moderate to extreme amount of stress. The programs which colleges and universities have put into place are outdated. Ineffective treatment of mental health crises leads to disastrous consequences. The present study analyzed the effects of major and grade level on stress level and sources of stress for undergraduate universities at both a large, public university and a small, private college. The author found that a student’s grade level and choice of …

Human Adaptability For Deep Space Missions: An Exploratory Study, Paul T. Bartone, Robert R. Roland, Jocelyn V. Bartone, Gerald P. Krueger, Albert A. Sciarretta, Bjorn Helge Johnsen

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

The present qualitative study conducts in-depth interviews with astronauts and other subject matter experts in order to shed light on human adaptability in extreme environments. Deep space travel will entail a range of highly stressful conditions to which astronauts must adapt. Feelings of isolation will be increased, as the space traveler is farther from Earth for longer periods of time. Daily life will take place in small and confined areas, for durations extending into years. The dangers of the extreme environment of space are ever-present, and failure of critical equipment or components can lead to death. Astronauts will need to …

Components Of Mindfulness Training: Impacts On Attention And Affect, Maximilian Fey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The literature on mindfulness supports a distinction between two components of non-judgmental acceptance and directed attention. The present research analyzed whether there are distinct differences in attentional capabilities or affect between mindfulness inductions which differed in either including only directed attention or directed attention and non-judgmental acceptance. I hypothesized that the acceptance component of mindfulness would increase participants sustained attentional capabilities relative to a control condition; furthermore, I hypothesized that the non-judgmental acceptance component of mindfulness would lead to significant increases in positive affect and decreases in negative affect relative to control. Lastly, I hypothesized that an individual difference measure …

Nursing Campus Therapy Dog, Deborah A. Hall

Nursing Theses and Dissertations

An acknowledged bond has existed between humans and animals throughout history. Therapeutic physical and psycho-social effects of these bonding relationships have been noted in health care settings. Professional nursing education is known to be one of the most demanding and stressful fields of study. Students begin to experience extreme stress early in their nursing education. An animal-assisted intervention with a therapy dog is an innovative and inexpensive action that can help decrease the stress, anxiety, and depression students experience in higher education.

The focus of this dissertation portfolio was an animal-assisted intervention with a nursing campus therapy dog. The initial …

Personality And Coping, Alyssa Seely

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

No abstract provided.

The Protective Influence Of Self-Compassion Against Internalized Racism Among African Americans, Alexandra Emery

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

Racist experiences and internalized racism may lead to poorer mental health outcomes for African Americans born and socialized in the United States (Graham, West, Martinez & Roemer, 2016; Mouzon & McLean, 2017). Self-compassion has been shown to protect against poor mental health outcomes, but limited research exists with respect to African Americans specifically (Lockard, Hayes, Neff and Locke, 2014). The present study explored whether self-compassion could serve as a protective factor between the relations of internalized racism and racist experiences, and the negative mental health outcomes of anxiety, depression, and stress among (N = 230) African American adults. To …

The Influence Of Wearing A Fitbit On Eating Behaviors While Stressed, Maria C.M. Sparacino

Honors Theses

Research has demonstrated stress leads to consuming foods of lower nutritional quality as well as a greater quantity of foods. Visual primes have been shown to reduce these detrimental eating behaviors. The present study sought to determine if a fitbit would prime healthy eating behaviors in stressful situations. Participants (N = 41) were randomly assigned to a high or low stress condition, manipulated through the Stroop Test, and were either given a fitbit prime or not. Participant’s food preferences were assessed with the Macronutrient Preference Checklist- Modified for use in North America following the stress manipulation. The results generally …

The Relations Between Adherence To Behavioral Treatments And Parent Stress In Families Of Children With Asd, Aimee Rovane

Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies suggest that parent involvement with behavior treatment for associated challenging behaviors (ACBs) may reduce parent stress in families with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it is not known whether high treatment adherence to protocols is associated with reduced parent stress, or which factors that may moderate this relation. The current study examined the relation between parents’ adherence to behavioral treatments and parent stress, and whether parents’ perceptions toward treatment moderate this association. Participants were 190 mothers, fathers, or caregivers of a child with ASD. A bivariate correlation matrix examined associations between each variable, and 3 separate linear regression …

Coping With Emotional Labor: An Intervention Study, Adam D. Weaver, Joseph A. Allen, Rebekka Erks Byrne

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose

Emotional labor is generally seen as a response to organizational display rules, which seek to guide the employee’s emotional expressions in such a way as to benefit the organization – generally by increasing customer satisfaction and fostering a positive regard for the organization itself. This study aims to investigate the degree to which a workshop intervention providing information about emotional labor and targeting effective coping strategies could have an effect on teachers’ burnout.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a sample of educators in primary and secondary schools, participants completed a pre-intervention survey, the training intervention and a post-intervention survey six months after …

Coming Out Experiences Of Lgb Latinos/As, Camilo Posada Rodriguez

Scholarly Undergraduate Research Journal at Clark (SURJ)

The coming out process is a fundamental part in the lives of LGB individuals. Research suggests that there are factors that might make coming out detrimental to the mental health of an individual. This study aims to better understand the coming out experiences of LGB Latinos/as and the possible relations to cultural values such as religion, familismo, and conservative points of view. Participants were 9 self-identified Latino/a lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults currently living in the U.S. recruited through public and online advertisements. The author engaged in thematic analysis to identify relevant patterns about the participants’ coming out experiences. …

Behavioral Hypervigilance In A Normative Population, Karly Weinreb

Theses and Dissertations

Hypervigilance is conceptualized as a symptom of trauma-related disorders, however it can also occur in a normative population. To distinguish normative hypervigilance from trauma-related hypervigilance, 372 participants (123 trauma-exposed and 249 non-trauma-exposed) completed a questionnaire assessing hypervigilance in contexts. Trauma-exposed participants reported greater levels of hypervigilance in 3 contexts.

Decreasing Stress Through An Emotion Regulation And Non-Judging Based Intervention With Trauma-Exposed College Students, Megan Cherry

Doctoral Dissertations

Among college students, trauma and PTSD symptomatology are associated with negative consequences (e.g., poor academic performance, stress sensitivity, and negative coping). College is often a stressful time, and those who have experienced trauma, particularly those experiencing PTSD symptoms, are vulnerable to heightened stress sensitivity and negative outcomes. It is imperative to identify interventions that decrease stress for trauma-exposed college students to reduce the deleterious effects of related outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine whether emotion regulation and non-judgment could be enhanced in trauma-exposed college students through a short, mindfulnessbased intervention, and whether the intervention would lead to …

Yoga To Decrease The Stress Response: Gentle Yoga Encourages Faster Decline In Salivary Cortisol Concentrations Following Participation In Tsst, Tabetha Gaile Hopke

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Short-term, activation of the human stress response system is beneficial as it prepares the body to deal with stressors at hand (McEwen & Stellar, 1993). If this system is overactive or chronically active however, it can negatively impact health and longevity (Cohen, Janicki-Deverts, & Miller, 2007). According to a review conducted by Ross & Thomas (2010) implementation of a yoga practice has been shown to down-regulate the stress response system. The present study aimed to expand on current research involving yoga for stress reduction by exploring whether participation in gentle yoga could decrease the stress response more quickly than naturally …