Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Youth Adjustment To The Impact Of The Sierra Leone Civil War, Daniel S. Sandy

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Coping in post war settings following exposure to traumatic events often posed numerous challenges for youth health and well-being. This study explored familial and contextual factors associated with adjustment to the impact of the Sierra Leone civil war in a cross-sectional sample of 359 civilians and former recruited youth. Data were collected through a convenience sampling strategy with the use of survey questions administered face-to -face by trained research assistants in Sierra Leone from April through May of 2014. MANOVA test revealed similar adjustment status for civilians and former recruited youth twelve years after the end of the civil war. …

Caregiving, Services, And Advocacy Among Siblings Of Individuals With Disabilities, John Kramer, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

In today’s presentation, we will make a case for how and why a critical disability studies perspective would deepen and strengthen our knowledge about the lifelong experiences of siblinghood. We have a wide range of goals today and will present for you some of our current thinking on this relatively small, but expanding interest in sibling-disability research. First, we highlight how sibling disability research has differed and been narrower in focus than other research about siblings where neither has a disability and trace the reason for this to institutionalisation and deinstitutionalisation. We then identify the impact of the overwhelmingly psychological …

Beliefs About Children Who Have Been Incarcerated: What Do Parents Know?, Aryriana Alexander

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between traditional African-American American parenting and the overrepresentation of African-Americans in America’s jails and prisons. This qualitative study utilized semi-structured interviews of twelve parents who have had a child incarcerated in their adult life to gather data. Study participants were asked their experiences with several traditional happenings, supported by research, in some traditional African-American households. Topics discussed included religion, spanking, and single parenthood. The study found that many of the traditional happenings of African-American parenting occurred within the homes of parents with children who were incarcerated, which supports previous research. …

Grave Matters: A Presentation And Comparative Analysis Of The Late Classic Burials From Guajilar, Chiapas, Mexico, Shelley Lorraine Wells

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to identify the possible origins of the peoples who immigrated into the archaeological sites of Guajilar and Lagartero, located in the upper Grijalva River Basin region in southern Chiapas, Mexico, during the Late Classic period (AD 650-900). First, I present the Late Classic burial data from both sites according to four basic descriptive criteria: burial location, grave type, burial type, and grave goods. Then, I conduct a comparative analysis of the burial practices found at these two sites based on these criteria so that patterns in burial practices can be identified. Following the comparative analysis between Guajilar …

Social Withdrawal And Internalizing Problems In Emerging Adulthood: Does Parenting Matter?, Stephanie Shea Luster

Theses and Dissertations

The first purpose of this study was to investigate the direct effects of three subtypes of social withdrawal (shyness, social avoidance, and unsociability, respectively) on internalizing outcomes (depression, emotional dysregulation, and self-worth, respectively) in emerging adulthood and to examine these effects by gender. A second purpose was to examine if parenting moderates (i.e., exacerbates or buffers) the main effects of social withdrawal on internalizing outcomes. Participants included 790 undergraduate students from four universities in the United States (Mage = 19.61, SD = 1.85, range = 18–29; 243 males, 547 females) and their mothers. Regression analyses established that shyness was associated …

Depression Symptoms And Marital Quality In Vietnam-Era Veterans: Does The Presence Of Higher Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms (Ptss) Matter?, Kevin L. Stott

Theses and Dissertations

Using data from 617 Vietnam-era veterans, this study aimed to better understand the relationships between depression symptoms, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and overall marital quality. Results indicated that depression symptoms and PTSS each had a negative relationship with marital quality when considered individually. The association between depression symptoms and marital quality persisted when PTSS was accounted for. However, the significant association between PTSS and marital quality dropped out. Further, PTSS did not moderate the association between depression symptoms and marital quality. The current study suggests tha tdepression symptoms and PTSS overlap in relation to marital quality among Vietnam-era veterans, with depression …

Review Of Edison Bicudo, Pharmaceutical Research, Democracy And Conspiracy: International Clinical Trials In Local Medical Institutions, Roberto Abadie

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The pharmaceutical industry is—along with the financial and weapons industries—one of the most globalized and profitable business domains. But they wouldn’t make any profits if they weren’t able to recruit research subjects to test an increasing number of drugs. This global trial economy creates its own assemblages of clinical trials, often run by hired contract research organizations (CROs), who fight among each other in a rat-race competition, promising quick and effective trials; at the same time, enterprising countries, hospitals, and doctors jump on the drug trial economy bandwagon by promising quick, endless access to a large pool of research subjects, …

Mother And Child Residential Treatment From An Adult Child Perspective: "The Forgotten Voices", April Eden Wilson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

These days most everyone can say that they know someone who has been impacted by substance abuse and today’s society is very familiar with the fact that it can wreak havoc on families. There has been a significant amount of research devoted to finding not only the best practices to treat families who are impacted by the disease of addiction but there has also been a great deal of attention focused on the adult perspective on these services once they have been received. Where the research is definitely lacking is how the children involved with the services perceive their own …

Does Video Game Content Matter? An Examination Of Two Competing Ideas, Nathan J. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The current paper addresses the associations between video game content (i.e., physically aggressive, relationally aggressive, and prosocial) and physical aggression, relational aggression, and prosocial behavior in two distinct developmental periods. The purpose of the paper is to test whether playing video games with a particular type of content influences behaviors over time, or whether individuals who have higher levels of physical aggression, relational aggression, or prosocial behavior prefer to play games with similar content. Two theories will be simultaneously examined and tested in order to determine the relative merit in using each in research examining the relationships between video game …

Hooking Up, Sexual Attitudes, And Parental Repartnering Choices: Variations At The Intersection Of Race And Gender, Nathaniel Aaron Stoddard

Theses and Dissertations

Using a subsample of emerging adults from the Stepfamily Experiences Project (n = 989), we examine how parents' repartnering choices (nonmarital and premarital cohabitation) influence their emerging adult children's commitment-related relationship attitudes (attitudes about sex in committed relationships) and behaviors (hooking up). We further examine these processes at the intersection of race and gender. In this way, we expand the current emerging adult literature by exploring two understudied populations: emerging adults who grew up in stepfamilies, and emerging adults from diverse racial backgrounds. We divided our sample by race (black, Latino, American Indian, white, and multiracial) and gender, resulting in …

Got Hope? Measuring The Construct Of Relationship Hope With A Nationally Representative Sample Of Married Individuals, Sage Elizabeth Erickson

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores an emerging construct: relationship hope. I define relationship hope as when individuals feel that regardless of the current quality of the relationship, there is significant hope for the relationship in the future if they keep working on it. The Relationship Hope Scale (RHS) is a new five-item scale that measures this construct. I evaluated the psychometric properties of RHS with Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT). I used a nationally representative sample of married individuals, ages 25-50 years old, in the United States. I found that RHS performs well in both CTT and IRT …

Sexual Mixing In Shanghai: Are Heterosexual Contact Patterns Compatible With An Hiv/Aids Epidemic?, M. Giovanna Merli, James Moody, Joshua Mendelsohn, G. Robin Gauthier

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

China’s HIV prevalence is low, mainly concentrated among female sex workers (FSWs), their clients, men who have sex with men, and the stable partners of members of these high-risk groups. We evaluate the contribution to the spread of HIV of China’s regime of heterosexual relations, of the structure of heterosexual networks, and of the attributes of key population groups with simulations driven by data from a cross-sectional survey of egocentric sexual networks of the general population of Shanghai and from a concurrent respondent-driven sample of FSWs. We find that the heterosexual network generated by our empirically calibrated simulations has low …

Erratum To: Sexual Mixing In Shanghai: Are Heterosexual Contact Patterns Compatible With An Hiv/Aids Epidemic?, M. Giovanna Merli, James Moody, Joshua Mendelsohn, G. Robin Gauthier

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

In the middle of the paragraph just above Figure 6, there is the following sentence: “The range of the mean of the distribution of the proportion infected generated by the simulations is narrow, between 0.5 % and 0.2 % of all nodes.” This should read “between 0.05 % and 0.2 % of all nodes.”

The Quality Of Residential Parent-Child Relationships And Its Impact On Stepfamily Experiences, Megan Urick, Gordon E. Limb

Faculty Publications

This study sought to understand the effect that residential biological parent-child relationship has on retrospective accounts of overall stepfamily experiences. Using data from the Stepfamily Experiences Project (STEP), a nationally-based quota sample, retrospective accounts of 1,593 emerging adults’ stepfamily experiences were analyzed. Results indicated that a higher quality residential biological parent-child relationship was positively and significantly correlated with a higher quality stepfamily experience. Clinicians and other social scientists need to be aware of the importance of strengthening the parent-child relationship when providing services and interventions for stepfamilies.

Building Resources At Home And At Work: Day-Level Relationships Between Job Crafting, Recovery Experiences, And Work Engagement, Allison Marie Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

Work engagement is an increasingly popular construct in organizational and occupational health psychology. However, despite substantial advances in our understanding of work engagement at the between-person level, scholars have argued for increased investigation into what drives engagement on a daily level for individual employees. In the current study, a within-person, day-level design was employed to examine the relationships between nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors, and daily work engagement. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (Hobfoll, 1989) theory, nonwork mastery experiences and job crafting were operationalized as employee-driven, resource-building strategies that assist employees in generating important psychological and job resources that …

Population Change And Life Course: Taking Stock And Looking To The Future, Beaujot Roderic, Zenaida R. Ravanera

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Discussion Paper Series/ Un Réseau stratégique de connaissances Changements de population et parcours de vie Document de travail

This paper takes advantage of the insights from the culminating conference of the Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster (PCLC), a collaborative network of academic researchers and policy people, in partnership with a number of Canadian federal agencies. The PCLC focused on strategic issues regarding population change, and on research that takes a life course perspective, with the central objective of sharing the associated knowledge.

We first summarize and note some important observations from the Conference sessions that were dedicated to “taking stock”, specifically on: Aging and paid work; Health over the life course; Immigrants and migrants; Population composition: …

Supporting The Threads Of The Family Tapestry : The Role Of Child Life In Adoption, Rachel N. Werner

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Explores the developmental, cultural and health related impacts of adoption along with effects of early adversity. The goal of this paper is to utilize existing research on adoption to argue the necessity for a child life specialist in the life of an adopted child and their family.

Support For Welfare, Matthew Reminick

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Although there is much debate over the effectiveness of social programs, there has not been much research attempting to discover who exactly supports spending government resources on welfare. Previous research suggests that the American people are divided over creating a welfare state. Many economic data shows that providing assistance is beneficial short-term, but can have varying effects in the future. The research I conducted attempts to define and analyze welfare while surmising which groups of Americans are most likely to back increased federal spending towards welfare. Using the ANES 2012 data, I evaluated voter responses to election surveys, paying close …

The Multiple Victims Of Rape, Maureen Azar

Audre Lorde Prize

No abstract provided.

Life History Theory And School-Age Pregnancy: Review And Application, Anna Rozman

Honors Scholar Theses

The United States currently holds one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the developed world, but many Americans, including policy makers, view adolescent childbearing as a societal problem that stems from negligence, promiscuity, and poor decision making. This project seeks to frame the institution of school-age motherhood through the lens of Life History Theory, which posits that early reproduction is an adaptation in the face of harsh conditions and high extrinsic mortality rates. This assertion is supported by evidence that adolescent childbearing has been the norm for most of human history, and continues to be practiced in natural fertility …

An Exploration Of The Motivations Behind School Shootings And A Discussion On How These Violent Trends Can Be Stopped, Maria Muscoreil

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Autogenic massacre is a term used to describe the indiscriminate killing of multiple individuals in one isolated incident, where the perpetrator is motivated by a combination of personal problems and/or psychopathological issues. In the past two decades in the United States, this phenomenon has been experienced by families who are forced to grieve the loss of their loved ones as a result of these violent actions—specifically, as a result of school shootings. Using information derived from the disciplines of evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and general psychopathology, this paper endeavors to uncover factors that may contribute to the motivations behind, as …

Gender Differentiation In Paid And Unpaid Work During The Transition To Parenthood, Medora W. Barnes

Sociology

The transition to parenthood may be especially difficult because relationships need to be largely reorganized to meet demanding new challenges. For scholars interested in gender inequality, the transition to parenthood is a critical time in which gender differentiation is generated by both economic and cultural forces. Although newly married childless couples tend to share both paid and unpaid labor rather equally, when men and women become parents, their patterns become increasingly differentiated by gender. Cultural beliefs that emphasize mothers as the primary parent and fathers as secondary reinforce unequal patterns in housework and childcare. Time availability models, bargaining perspectives, and …

Meet Me At The Bar? A Comparison Of Gay And Straight Men And Their Utilization Of The Bar Scene, Jasmine M. Routon

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Traditionally, men are expected to arrange their lifestyle in a way that allows them to obtain the “package deal” of a career, becoming a husband, and fatherhood. This study quantitatively studies the effects of partnering on gay and straight men as mediated through the bar scene, aiming to explore how bar participation alters their social networks and their perceptions of social expectations. The ultimate goal is to determine if gay and straight men report differing social expectations such as becoming a husband and father. This investigation explores their beliefs on commitment, monogamy, and parenthood and seeks to determine whether these …

Spoken Language To Be Embraced And Avoided Around Disability: Words That Impact Identity And Sense Of Achievement, Jessica M. Rodrigues

Capstone Collection

The focus of this capstone is verbal language spoken to or about persons with disabilities. Language in this case study is discussed as words and phrases that are supportive and less supportive of how students see themselves, their identity, and sense of achievement. Three focus groups were held with students at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont to collect samples of their experiences and input their voices into this case study, adding value and depth to the existing literature. Disability is looked at through the lens of multiculturalism; as experiences that people with disabilities have with others and their environment are …

“Architects Of Their Own Solutions:” A Comparative Study Of Gender In Environmental Justice Work, Ellen Olack

Honors Theses

Backgrounds, identities and beliefs of the people within a group can dictate the direction a movement takes and whether or not that movement will be able to endure. Using a series of interviews, I aim to determine how gender plays a part in shaping a person’s role within the environmental justice movement by studying if and how gender constructions influence the mindsets of not only the people working to end environmental injustice, but also of the community members living in zones affected by environmental injustice.

Family Resilience And Sojourning Japanese Families In The U.S., Mitsuyo Izumi

Dissertations

This study examined processes of family resilience sojourning Japanese parents reported using while raising children (between the ages of 4 and 8) in the U.S., the relationship between family resilience and child behavior and impact of stressful life events, and predictors of the impact of stressful life events and child behavior. Seventy mothers and 37 fathers from six Japanese educational institutions completed self-report questionnaires. Measures included Japanese translations of the Family Resilience Assessment (Duncan Lane, 2011), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997), the Impact of Stressful Life Events Scale (Hasui et al., 2009), the Kansas Marital Satisfaction (Schumm et al., …

An Exploratory Study Of Spending Patterns, Obstacles And Traditions Among Same-Sex Marriage Vs Heterosexual Marriage: Who's The Bigger Spender?, Lydia Perritt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated if there was a significant difference in the amount of money spent on same-sex weddings versus heterosexual weddings. The results of this study would assist both the wedding and hospitality industry by providing much needed financial and planning information.

A descriptive, four-section survey was distributed online via Qualtrics utilizing snowball sampling. A total of 152 respondents participated in the study; 84 heterosexual and 68 LGBTQ. The respondents completed the questionnaire that measured wedding traditions, wedding spending, obstacles and challenges faced during their wedding and wedding planning, and demographic information.

The results of this study indicated that same-sex …

A Study Of Life Skills From Traditional And Afterschool 4-H Participants, Julia M. Kreikemeier

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

Cooperative Extension has been serving youth and their families for over one hundred years. The total impact of this service has been measured on several occasions by many researchers, most notably in the research of youth development by Richard Learner; however, his research only took into account those who participated in traditional 4-H clubs. The purpose of this quantitative study was designed to examine which life skills youth participants in traditional and afterschool 4-H programs reported. Quantitative methodology was used to collect post-program survey data of youth participants. Qualitative informal interviews were conducted of Extension Educators and afterschool 4-H program …

Engagement And Global Learning Through Philanthropy: A Youth Philanthropy Council For International Baccalaureate Students, Erin Gorman

Capstone Collection

Unprecedented global migration and a flattened global economy have influenced the skills, knowledge, and competencies all high school youth need to be engaged participants and effective workers in the 21^st century global economy (Mansilla & Jackson, 2011). Research indicates that many youth, especially those at risk for dropping out of school or from minority and low-income backgrounds, do not have adequate opportunities to develop the global competence and 21^st century skills needed for engagement and success in the workforce of the 21^st century (Afterschool Alliance, 2010). This paper presents a replicable global learning afterschool program model that …

Who Chooses My Future?The Role Of Personality And Acculturation In First And Later Generation Immigrant College Students’ Career Decision Making, Gema Gutierrez Alcivar

Honors College Theses

Career choice is often reflected by a student’s choice of major. Personality, vocational interests, and cultural influences are also significant factors in the process of choosing a major. For Latino students, maintaining cultural norms is an important part of career choice, although the influence of cultural norms tends to decrease from first to later generations. The current study examined the influences of acculturation and personality (introversion/extraversion) among 57 Latino/Hispanics students: first-generation immigrant students, those who migrated to the US during childhood/adolescence, and later generation students. We hypothesized that later-generation students are more likely to major in business and social sciences, …