Social Psychology and Interaction Commons^™

Patterns Of Substance Use Initiation Among Indigenous Adolescents, Les B. Whitbeck, Brian E. Armenta

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Background—The data for this study come from an eight-wave panel study of Indigenous (Canadian First Nations and American Indian) adolescents from three U.S. reservations and four Canadian reserves.

Objectives—Our objective was to investigate variations in patterns of substance use initiation from early adolescence through early adulthood using data collected annually for 8 years.

Method—At baseline the sample included 675 Indigenous adolescents (M age = 11.10, SD = .83; 50.3% girls). First, we calculated cumulative rates of substance use initiation by age. We then examined whether the cumulative initiation rates were moderated by gender using logistic regression …

Political Intolerance In The 21st Century: The Role Of Ideology And Emotion In Determining Intolerant Judgments, Matthew Cain

Masters Theses

Decades of research in Social Psychology have demonstrated that political intolerance is not displayed equally with respect to ideology. In particular, conservatives and those with right-wing beliefs are much more likely to display intolerant judgments than those with liberal or left-wing beliefs. This "prejudice gap" has been found to be so ubiquitous that it is now the conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between ideology and intolerance. However, a small, but growing literature challenges this presumed ideological asymmetry and has instead found that liberals and conservatives display intolerance under certain circumstances. Synthesizing the recent research showing ideological symmetry in intolerance judgments, …

2015, Camp Research Forum Book Of Abstracts, American Camp Association

ACA National Camp Research Forum Abstracts

This book includes 16 abstracts that will be presented at the 2015 American Camp Association (ACA) Research Forum to be held during the ACA annual conference in New Orleans, LA from February 3-6. Twelve of these abstracts have been grouped into logical areas and will be verbally presented in four sessions.

Is The Truth In The Comments? Anti-Feminism And Anti-Immigration In Norwegian Online Newspaper Comment Threads, Iselin Maria Ihrstad

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Norway has implemented many progressive social policies focused on the equality and inclusion of women, as well as immigrant and non-ethnic Norwegian individuals due to a commitment to state feminism. Yet recently it seems to be a number of anti-feminist and some anti-immigration stances expressed through online discussion threads. In order to highlight and explore the presence of a backlash against feminism and immigration in Norway, this study conducts a feminist textual analysis of online comment threads that follows pro-feminist online opinion pieces published in the two largest newspapers in Norway, Dagbladet and Verdens Gang (VG) published between July 2014 …

Does Service Employees' Appearance Affect The Healthiness Of Food Choice?, Tabea: Benoit Huneke, Sabine Benoit, Anders Gustafsson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Derived from previous research on social influence on food consumption and social comparison theory, this article examines the effect of service employees’ appearance on consumers’ food choice using an experimental study, involving a video manipulation and eye-tracking technique. The video shows a menu being proffered by a waitress whose degree of apparent healthiness varies (healthy, overweight, unhealthy lifestyle). The menu contains both healthy and unhealthy meal alternatives. The analysis of participants’ eye movements demonstrated that exposure to the overweight employee did not stimulate greater (i.e., earlier or longer) attention to unhealthy meal alternatives, whereas exposure to the employee who displayed …

Compassion Fatigue And Coping In Mental Health Professionals Working In Residential Treatment With Traumatized Youth, Michael J. Baniewicz

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This study utilized a prospective cross-sectional design to examine if a coping profile can be identified, indicating whether or not a professional is able to cope effectively with exposure to trauma symptoms while working in a residential treatment setting. The participants in this study were employees at a residential treatment facility in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area. Results indicated that individuals who utilized an emotion-focused or problem-focused coping style were less likely to experience symptoms of burnout. Participants who worked directly with those individuals who had experienced trauma experienced levels of burnout similar to those who had not, …

Institutional Aggression: Psychometric Development Of A Predictive Risk Assessment Screening Tool, Lauren Spotts M.S.

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Aggression among those with mental illnesses has been extensively reviewed. Research has shown that aggression within an institutional or hospital setting, that is presently termed “Institutional Aggression,” threatens the ability to provide a safe and therapeutic environment for both patients and staff. Although earlier measures have been designed to address this construct, the present study examines Institutional Aggression based on the parameters of the Overt Aggression Scale (OAS; Yudofsky, Silver, Jackson, Endicott, & Williams, 1986). The purpose of the current study was to determine the predictive relationship between clinical and sociodemographic factors and the rate of Institutional Aggression with the …

Conduct In Narrativized Trust Games, Jan Osborn, Bart J. Wilson, Bradley R. Sherwood

English Faculty Articles and Research

We “narrativize” a basic extensive form trust game by placing participants in a story that contextualizes the interaction with an unforeseeable future. In our narrative experiment, participants consider each decision as a character, advancing the story with their choices for salient payoffs. Our interest is in understanding how participants apply Adam Smith's rules of beneficent and just conduct in our narrativized games with epistemic conditions of an unknown future, conditions which aren't possible in extensive form. We invite our readers to participate in the story of the results, making meaning as participants in a narrative that unfolds with their choices.

Alcohol Expectancy, Drinking Behavior, And Sexual Victimization Among Female And Male College Students, Kimberly A. Tyler, Rachel M. Schmitz, Scott A. Adams

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

College students have high rates of heavy drinking, and this dangerous behavior is strongly linked to sexual victimization. Although research has examined risk factors for sexual assault, few studies have simultaneously studied the various pathways through which risks may affect sexual assault and how these pathways may be uniquely different among females and males. As such, the current study uses path analyses to examine whether alcohol expectancies mediate the relationship between social factors (e.g., hooking up, amount friends drink) and drinking behavior and experiencing sexual victimization, and whether drinking behavior mediates the relationship between alcohol expectancies and sexual victimization among …

A Feasibility Test Of Using Smartphones To Collect Gps Information In Face-To-Face Surveys, Kristen Olson, James Wagner

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Survey organizations rely on interviewers to make informed and efficient decisions about their efforts in the field, including which housing units they approach to knock on doors, seeking to make appointments, and obtain interviews. This paper presents initial findings from a feasibility test on a face-to-face survey, the US National Survey of Family Growth, in which the interviewers were equipped with GPS-enabled smartphones. This test included an experiment to determine if the use of the GPS-enabled smartphone altered interviewer behavior. We evaluate interviewer compliance with the GPS request, the effects of using the GPS device on interviewer behavior, and the …

Health-Related Strains And Subsequent Delinquency And Marijuana Use, Lisa Kort-Butler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

General strain theory provides one framework for explaining the relationship between physical health and delinquency, pointing to mechanisms such as negative emotions, social bonds, and stress proliferation. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to examine these hypothetical mediators. Controlling for demographic factors, prior illicit behavior, and other strains, results from a series of regressions indicated that health-related strain (HRS) was positively associated with subsequent delinquency and marijuana use. Stressors at school were the primary mediators of these effects. Absences from school and social life due to health problems exerted an independent effect. The results lend …

Maternal Depressive Symptoms And Adolescent Alcohol Use: The Mediating Role Of Youth Depressive Symptoms, Mindy Herman-Stahl, Lissette M. Saavedra, Antoio A. Morgan-Lopez, Scott P. Novak, Tara D. Warner, Diana H. Fishbein

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of maternal depressive symptoms on adolescent alcohol use among a sample of Latino/Latina youth aged 10 to 16 years from a high-risk community. Direct and mediating effects of youth depressive symptoms, controlling for levels of concurrent emotion dysregulation, on alcohol use were examined. Participants consisted of 525 children and their mothers randomly sampled from low-income schools with high rates of substance use. The panel design included four waves, and we used structural equation modeling with a longitudinal mediational framework. Results indicated that the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and adolescent …

Hard Times And Heart Break: Linking Economic Hardship And Relationship Distress, Deadric T. Williams, Jacob Cheadle, Bridget J. Goosby

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We used the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study to examine an integrated mediational model linking economic hardship to relationship distress. Depressive symptoms, partner’s discord, parenting stress, and coparenting are combined into a joint model linking economic hardship to relationship distress among mothers and fathers in intimate relationships. Although economic hardship is significantly associated with each mediating factor, only discord is associated with both relationship distress and dissolution in the full model. Moreover, comparisons using multigroup structural equation modeling indicate that while economic hardship is associated with higher discord among both mothers and fathers, the influence is substantially larger among …

Longitudinal Predictors Of Homelessness: Findings From The National Longitudinal Survey Of Youth-97, Brittany Sznajder-Murray

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Homeless youth represent a vulnerable and understudied population. Little research has prospectively identified factors that may place youth at risk for experiencing homelessness. The current study utilizes data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-97 (NLSY-97) to examine predictors of experiencing homelessness as a young adult (before age 25). The NLSY-97 includes a nationally representative sample of 8,984 youth. Data were first collected from these youth when they were between the ages of 12 to 18 years. The current study examined whether individual and family risk factors reported during adolescence predict homelessness by the age of 25. The findings showed …

Estimating Vertex Measures In Social Networks By Sampling Completions Of Rds Trees, Bilal Khan, Kirk Dombrowski, Ric Curtis, Travis Wendel

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper presents a new method for obtaining network properties from incomplete data sets. Problems associated with missing data represent well-known stumbling blocks in Social Network Analysis. The method of “estimating connectivity from spanning tree completions” (ECSTC) is specifically designed to address situations where only spanning tree(s) of a network are known, such as those obtained through respondent driven sampling (RDS). Using repeated random completions derived from degree information, this method forgoes the usual step of trying to obtain final edge or vertex rosters, and instead aims to estimate network-centric properties of vertices probabilistically from the spanning trees themselves. In …

Museum Monsters And Victorious Viruses: Improving Public Understanding Of Emerging Biomedical Research, Judy Diamond, Benjamin Jee, Camilla Matuk, Julia Mcquillan, Amy N. Spiegel, David Uttal

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although microbes directly impact everyone's health, most people have limited knowledge about them. In this article, we describe a museum and media public education campaign aimed at helping diverse audiences better understand emerging knowledge about microbes and infectious disease. Funded primarily by the Science Education Partnership (SEPA) program of the National Institutes of Health, this campaign involved crosscutting programs designed to extend impacts throughout a broad public audience.

Community-Level Barriers To Recovery For Substance-Dependent Rural Residents, Lance Brendan Young, Kathleen M. Grant, Kimberly A. Tyler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This article identifies potential barriers to substance use recovery associated with rural residence. The evidence is discussed and illustrated with examples. Fourteen specific barriers to substance abuse recovery are identified within 4 broad categories: access to treatment services, access to other professionals, access to peer support groups, and barriers to confidentiality. Although telehealth, expansion of mental health care, intensive referral, and other efforts might enhance access to care, the evidence suggests practitioners and researchers should remain aware of community-level barriers to recovery from substance use disorder and work with clients to overcome them.

Variation In Pregnancy Intendedness Across U.S. Women’S Pregnancies, Karina M. Shreffler, Arthur L. Greil, Katherine Stamps Mitchell, Julia Mcquillan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

How stable are women’s pregnancy intentions across their reproductive lifespans? Are there demographic, social, or attitudinal characteristics that are associated with differing pregnancy intentions patterns? Patterns of intendedness across pregnancies were examined using a sample of 3,110 women ages 25–45 who have been pregnant at least twice from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. Multinomial logistic regression analyses assessed associations between patterns of intentions and respondents’ economic/social status, values and ideologies to determine if intentions are a stable characteristic or pregnancy- specific. The majority of women (60%) reported varying intendedness across individual pregnancies, indicating that intendedness tends to be pregnancy-specific. …

Homeless Young People’S Experiences Of Caregiver Rejection, Rachel M. Schmitz, Kimberly A. Tyler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This paper explores the dynamics of caregiver rejection experienced by 40 homeless young adults 19–21 years of age. Using qualitative interviews, our findings reveal that nearly all of the youth reported at least one type of familial rejection that was intertwined with wider household conflict, and several youth experienced multiple types of rejection. Many young people reported “feeling like an outsider,” as they felt marginalized by family members and perceived a sense of outsiderness within their family networks. Some youth cited rejection when they were “betrayed by a primary caregiver for a significant other.” These intimate partners, such as a …

The Utility Of The Prototype/Willingness Model In Predicting Alcohol Use Among North American Indigenous Adolescents, Brian E. Armenta, Dane S. Hautala, Les B. Whitbeck

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

In the present study, we considered the utility of the prototype/willingness model in predicting alcohol use among North-American Indigenous adolescents. Specifically, using longitudinal data, we examined the associations among subjective drinking norms, positive drinker prototypes, drinking expectations (as a proxy of drinking willingness), and drinking behavior among a sample of Indigenous adolescents from ages 12 to 14 years. Using an autoregressive cross-lagged analysis, our results showed that subjective drinking norms and positive drinker prototypes at 12 years of age were associated with increased drinking expectations at 13 years of age, and that greater drinking expectations at 13 years of age …