Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

The Role Of Drinking In New And Existing Friendships Across High School Settings*, Jacob E. Cheadle, Deadric T. Williams

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We use 9 Add Health high schools with longitudinal network data to assess whether adolescent drinkers choose friends who drink, prefer friends whose friends drink, if selection differs between new and existing friendships, and between schools. Utilizing dynamic social network models that control for friend influences on individual alcohol use, the results show that drinkers do not strongly prefer friends who drink. Instead, they favor close friends whose friends’ drink, suggesting that alcohol matters for selection on the social groups and environments that friends connect each other to. The role of alcohol use differs by whether friendships are new or …

Volunteering Among Surviving Spouses: The Impact Of Volunteer Activity On The Health Of The Recently Widowed, Kimberly J. Johnson

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Numerous studies link volunteering to positive mental and physical health for older adults, and recent studies have suggested that volunteering may be particularly beneficial for those who are widowed. This research examines the potential of volunteering to buffer participants from stress-related health declines associated with the death of a spouse.

Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), this research investigates the moderating role of volunteering on the self-rated health and depressive symptoms of recently widowed older adults. Consecutive waves of the HRS are used to identify respondents who experience the death of a spouse or who remain married, and those …

Academic And Career Trajectories Of African American Males In San Bernardino, Lolita Laree Lyles

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

A qualitative grounded theory approach is utilized to study the academic and career trajectories of twenty African American male collegiate students living in San Bernardino, California. There is limited research that explores the positive educational experiences of young adult African American males. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to fill a much needed gap in the literature by providing research on a population of students who are rarely examined from a strengths based approach. Prosocial Development and Achievement Theory explains the major social processes of members of the present study as it relates to their academic and career …

Comprehensive Behavioral Characterization Of An App/Ps-1 Double Knock-In Mouse Model Of Alzheimer's Disease, Scott J. Webster, Adam D. Bachstetter, Linda J. Van Eldik

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION: Despite the extensive mechanistic and pathological characterization of the amyloid precursor protein (APP)/presenilin-1 (PS-1) knock-in mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD), very little is known about the AD-relevant behavioral deficits in this model. Characterization of the baseline behavioral performance in a variety of functional tasks and identification of the temporal onset of behavioral impairments are important to provide a foundation for future preclinical testing of AD therapeutics. Here we perform a comprehensive behavioral characterization of this model, discuss how the observed behavior correlates with the mechanistic and pathological observations of others, and compare this model with other commonly used …

An Ode To Florida’S Summer – And A Time To Remember, Carla Poindexter

UCF Forum

It is summer in Florida again, when I always think back to my first summers here and why I still love this time of year.

Child Care Subsidies Critical For Low-Income Families Amid Rising Child Care Expenses, Kristin Smith, Nicholas Adams

Carsey Publications

The high cost of child care is a barrier to employment among low-income families with young children. Child care subsidies are designed to support both parental employment and child development by lowering the cost of child care and making high-quality child care affordable to low-income families. This policy brief compares the shares of income spent on child care in 2005 and 2011 using data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Authors Kristin Smith and Nicholas Adams report that child care expenditures were higher on average in 2011 than in 2005 (in constant 2011 dollars) and that employed, poor mothers with …

Research Brief: "Evaluation Of A Family-Centered Prevention Intervention For Military Children And Families Facing Wartime Deployment", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

The purpose of this study was to explore the benefits of the Families Over Coming Under Stress (FOCUS) project for families experiencing deployment. These benefits included education and skills training, with an emphasis on minimizing psychological and emotional distress for the service-people, their spouses, and their children. While this study analyzed families who were a part of the FOCUS group, future research would best serve to include an additional control group, which would allow for comparison between families in FOCUS and families not currently enrolled.

The Fragility Of Consensus: Public Reason, Diversity And Stability, John Thrasher, Kevin Vallier

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

John Rawls's transition from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism was driven by his rejection of Theory's account of stability. The key to his later account of stability is the idea of public reason. We see Rawls's account of stability as an attempt to solve a mutual assurance problem. We maintain that Rawls's solution fails because his primary assurance mechanism, in the form of public reason, is fragile. His conception of public reason relies on a condition of consensus that we argue is unrealistic in modern, pluralistic democracies. After rejecting Rawls's conception of public reason, we offer an ‘indirect …

Not Quite Out On The Streets: Examining Protective And Risk Factors For Housing Insecurity Among Low-Income Urban Fathers, Colleen E. Wynn

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

It has long been acknowledged that housing is essential for access to employment, social services, healthcare, and other forms of assistance that help move people out of poverty. Through identifying dimensions of housing insecurity, policymakers, as well as researchers, will have a better understanding of the protective factors that make families more secure and the risk factors that raise their level of insecurity. These analyses use resident and non-resident, low-income, urban fathers’ responses to the five publicly available waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (n = 4378) dataset to examine the relationship between protective and risk factors and …

Parent Aggression And Youth Externalizing And Internalizing Behaviors: Stability And Mutual Influence, Ann L. Sheedy

Child and Family Studies - Dissertations

Parent aggression exists on a continuum with corporal punishment at one end and abuse at the other. There is still controversy as to whether any kind of parent aggression toward an adolescent contributes to externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Relative to what is known about parent aggression during childhood, much less is known about parent aggression toward adolescents from a systemic and developmental perspective. This study explored the stability and mutual influence of parent aggression and adolescent externalizing and internalizing behaviors. The study found that the constructs were stable over time, and that with this sample population, parental physical and emotional …

Adolescent Personality, Confucian Values, Parenting Typologies And Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes: A Study In South Korea, Yo Ok Chang

Child and Family Studies - Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations among adolescent personality traits, Confucian values, parenting styles (and psychological control), and aggressive behaviors in South Korean families. Although the use of aggression by Korean adolescents has increased in contemporary Korean society, there is a lack of research on how adolescent personality traits and cultural values impact adolescent behavioral outcomes through parenting styles and psychological control. The sample included 361 parents (mothers and fathers) and their adolescents (7th and 8th grade) and the teachers of participating adolescents. Results indicated that adolescents' agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism were associated with adolescent overt, …

Socio-Cultural Influences On Adolescent Smoking In Mainland China: The Mediating Role Of Smoking-Related Cognitions, Yan Wang

Child and Family Studies - Dissertations

The etiology of smoking behaviors involves the interplay among multiple systems at the cultural, familial, and personal levels, but few investigations have explored the effects of multiple environments on adolescent smoking behaviors. Survey data were collected from 658 parent-child dyads of Chinese adolescents aged between 14 and 17 years from Jiande, Zhejiang province in mainland China. Using data from multiple informants, the direct and indirect roles of socio-cultural influences, parenting strategies, smoking-specific parenting behaviors, and smoking-related cognitions on adolescent smoking behaviors were examined. Results indicated that smoking-related cultural values, extended family members smoking, and parental psychological control had direct effects …

Risk Factors And Impacts Of Female Genital Mutilation Practice In Senegal, Mame Kani Diop

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

INTRODUCTION: Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has significant negative physical complications on girls and women and its persistence is linked to lack of education, poverty and other socio-demographic characteristics such as region, type of place of residence, religion, and ethnicity. FGM is extremely dangerous. Even though FGM carries cultural marks, its primary objectives are social, sexual, and economic control of female sexuality. Despite the global effort to eradicate the practice and the evidence of its detrimental health consequences, FGM is still prevalent in Senegalese practicing communities.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate the risk factors associated with the …

Siblings And Discrimination : A Qualitative Exploration, Jessica L. Szweada

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Research has found that experiencing discrimination is linked to a plethora of mostly negative individual and relational consequences. While a few studies have focused on its impact on interpersonal relationships including marital and parent-child relationships, none have explored its impact on sibling relationships. Siblings play a major role in individual development (Dunn & Plomin, 1991; Sulloway, 1996; Whiteman, Bernard & Jensen, 2011) and positive sibling relationships have been found to act as a buffer to environmental stressors (Gass, Jenkins & Dunn, 2007; Jacobs & Sillars, 2012). The aim of this study was to examine how siblings manage, utilize and are …

Resources And Relationships: Food Insecurity And Social Capital Among Middle School Students, Don Edward Willis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between food insecurity and Social capital among 5th-7th graders attending an intermediate school in Northwest Arkansas where nearly 70 percent of students participate in the free or reduced lunch program. The central research questions are: Does Social capital have a direct impact on children's food insecurity? And, does Social capital mediate the influence of negative circumstances on children's food insecurity? This study finds that Social capital does have a significant association with food insecurity, even when controlling for multiple demographic and circumstantial factors. However, there appears to be no mediation of circumstance by Social capital. …

Seeing Adoption With Eyes Wide Open, Cheryl Millman

Instructional Design Capstones Collection

Families who choose to adopt may do so for a variety of reasons. Some may choose to adopt due to infertility or medical issues with one or both of the parents, so they may choose to adopt to avoid the risk of passing on a genetic or medical condition. Some may believe they are saving a child who otherwise would not grow up with the benefits of a loving and supportive family, and some choose to adopt because they lack an appropriate partner with whom to have a biological child. Regardless of the reason, parents believe that with love and …

A Qualitative Analysis Of 4-H Program Logic Models, Stephanie Phelan

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study explores program logic in 4-H’s positive youth development (PYD) programs. The sample was drawn from programs that have engaged in planning at both county and state levels. Using a systems perspective as a guide, this study considers the bidirectional interrelationships among multiple levels of a 4-H system. Bidirectional relationships make alignment between “local” (county) and “global” (state) levels of the 4-H system important. This study utilizes content analysis to explore activities and outcomes in 12 county-level, “local,” 4-H logic models and 1 statewide, “global” 4-H logic model. Logic models were compared within “local-local” models and between “local-global” models. …

Cooking Up A Course: Food Education At Pomona College, Christina A. Cyr

Pomona Senior Theses

Cooking skills are important but declining, with significant health, social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental implications. Food and cooking education can begin to address some of the negative effects of the cooking skills decline. This thesis makes the case for cooking classes in the education system, especially in higher education. The paper begins with a history of cooking education and skills, outlines the implications of the decline in skills, and discusses the potential for cooking education in higher education. The second part consists of a course syllabus, designed for Pomona College. The third section includes a discussion of the implementation …

Volunteer Programming Impact On Long-Term Care Facilities, Paul P. Falkowski

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

The purpose of this present study was to examine the direct and indirect effects between the organizational structure of a long-term care facility, the amount of volunteers at the facility, the activities in which volunteers engage while at the facility and daily average number of hours care staff spend with nursing home residents. The time care staff spends with residents has been directly linked to the quality of care provided by the facility. This time is measured by calculating nursing hours per patient and it includes only nursing staff hours.The data for this study come from the National Nursing Home …

Adolescent Depressive Symptoms And Substance Use: The Mediating Influence Of Health Service Utilization, Sarah E. Malone

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A large number of American adolescents suffer from depression and the consequences have been shown to be detrimental to their well-being. Adolescent substance use is also an increasing social problem due to the high usage rates and negative lifelong consequences for users. This paper explores the relationships between victimization, substance use, psychological health service utilization, and depressive symptoms in a sample of 4,757 adolescents. Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the results revealed a positive relationship between victimization and adolescent depressive symptoms, even after controlling for several demographic variables and previous …