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The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine undergraduate military veteran students’ self-determination and academic effort in relation to their nonveteran college peers. A total of 734 undergraduates attending 4-year institutions in Texas completed a survey, including: 76 veterans (63% males, 37% females); and 658 non-veterans (26% males, 74% females). This research created a more holistic survey of self-determination by adding the 8-item New General Self-Efficacy Scale to the 10-item Self-determination Scale. The survey also included 13-items drawn from the National Survey of Student Engagement. A factor analysis with a varimax rotation of the items identified six factors: competence, autonomy, relatedness, reflection, learning strategies, and quantitative reasoning resulting in a significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity (2 (465) = 12324.53, p < .001). The first hierarchical ordinary least squares (HOLS) analysis results showed that undergraduate veteran students have statistically significant higher levels of self-determination than students without military experience with a small effect size (R2 = .022%, p < .001); however, a meta-analysis of self-determination revealed a large effect size of d = 1.33 between veterans (M = .81, SD = .12) and freshmen undergraduates (M = .65, SD = .12). The second HOLS analysis revealed that self-determination is a positively related, statistically significant factor in academic effort potentially adding 6.8% variance explained to the multi-factored general causal model of college impact (GCMCI).

Children are endowed with agency, a fundamental trait of humanity which is accomplished through collective striving. This striving occurs as children meet, and create, their world and its expectations of them. I explore how one particular 2-year-old child, Emily, encounters her world. The study focuses on Emily’s agency and power as she meets an adult society which extends control into her life. Through Emily’s life, I illustrate how this extension of control creates confined spaces of childhood which infantilize and regulate Emily. The socially constructed childhood Emily encounters denies and ignores much of her agency. Yet, Emily powerfully and irreparably alters the world she meets, generating novel landscapes as she pushes back against the world. Emily refuses to concede to the world presented to her; she instead takes the world and changes it. I use ethnographic, idiographic methods to describe the extension of control into children’s lives as adult imperialism and locate Emily’s powerful agency in her transformative dissent and stance of opposition. Field observations occurred over a nine-month period; interviews were conducted with Emily, her parents, and her teachers. The Transformative Activist Stance, a critical expansion of cultural-historical activity theory outlined by Dr. Anna Stetsenko, is used as an orienting framework. All data was audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to offer a convincing argument regarding agency and imperialism in Emily’s life. I argue that Emily’s transformative dissent is the social assertion of her agency and that she, like all children, deserves to be appreciated and celebrated for her capacity to matter in the world-as-it-is-being-made. Social accomplishments are implicated in the research as manifestations of individual agency: Emily matters because of how she engages with others. This research suggests a critical shift away from vertical adult-child relationships, which are presented in the data as defined by regulation and control, and towards horizontal relationships, oriented around recognition and appreciation. A horizontal relationship implies shedding developmental assumptions about children and ceding back to them areas of their own lives.

This is an ethnographic study of a self-regulated Internet site that facilitates illegal female prostitution in South Florida. The purpose is to identify the social and economic characteristics of the site that can contribute to acceptable prostitution reform. The members of the site appear to sustain an orderly and mutually respectful exchange of sexual services for money, suggesting that certain social and economic features of this form of transaction diminish barriers otherwise present in typical forms of contemporary prostitution exchange. The study evaluates the thesis that when commercial sex is conducted in an open atmosphere of respect, trust and mutual understanding, within certain economic parameters, the beliefs and practices that stigmatize prostitutes and prostitution are neutralized. Evidence was generated through extensive observation of an online venue that approximates what prostitution would be like if open market exchange in sexual labor did exist. These data are supplemented by interviews with participants of the online community. Features of mutual respect, trust, and understanding, characteristically absent in traditional prostitution venues, appear to be part of an emerging community phenomenon that facilitates prostitution online. Thus, this study engages with the larger scholarly position that normalization of sex work is necessary for successful prostitution reform. This community utilizes a non-legal enforcement mechanism to facilitate cooperative exchanges based on establishing trust between participants. At the center of the cooperation system is a reputation mechanism that fosters trust between potential partners by encouraging participants to post honest reviews of their encounters with each other. / Understanding the social order as a cooperation game where participants publicly signal each other in an attempt to find the most desirable partners explains the mutual trust and respect that participants have for each other. Because stigma and disrespect are founded on mistrust, this cooperation mechanism is effective in minimizing undesirable attitudes, beliefs, and practices that stigmatize and oppress prostitutes. This study suggests that prostitution reform acceptable to many feminists is possible. But in order for meaningful reform to work in practice, it must be accompanied by regulations carefully designed to protect the sexual autonomy of women without stigmatizing prostitutes. / by Jeffrey R. Young. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Youth in foster care who experience disabilities face many challenges as they transition out of foster care and into adulthood. In order to assist these youth, it is crucial to understand factors that may impact their self-determination, which research links to positive transition outcomes for youth with disabilities (Wehmeyer, Palmer, Agran, Mithaug, & Martin, 2000). While much of the existing research on the correlates and outcomes of self-determination focuses on young people with disabilities overall, and little is known about whether factors such as abuse, family stressors and extended length of time in care, and frequent placement changes influence self-determination. Exploring predictors of self-determination in youth with disabilities in foster care can be beneficial to researchers and child welfare practitioners who seek to identify effective approaches for helping youth accomplish successful transitions into adulthood. This dissertation examined the extent to which physical and sexual abuse and family stressors, such as unemployment, domestic violence, and homelessness prior to entering care; as well as foster care placement instability and total length of time in care, impact a youth's self-determination. In addition, the influence of demographic features such as race and gender on these associations was examined. Increased understanding of factors that contribute to self-determination can facilitate targeted interventions and services that enhance the lives of youth as they exit out of the foster care system and into adulthood. Overall, the findings did not reveal significant associations between self-determination and physical and sexual abuse, family stressors, length of time in foster care or number of placement moves. Post hoc exploratory analysis, however, detected other significant relationships. For example, above and beyond the main effect association of length of time in care, youth who experienced physical abuse and stayed in care for long periods of time demonstrated higher levels of autonomy. Likewise, youth with a greater number of family stressors in their family of origin, and who experienced longer stays in foster care, also demonstrated significantly higher levels of autonomy above and beyond the main effects of family stressors. These relationships speak to the resiliency and the varying nature of self-determination.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the law of criminal complicity in Jordan (a civil law jurisdiction), and in New South Wales (NSW) (a common law jurisdiction). It addresses the basis of criminal culpability of individuals, and explores the extent to which the basis of such culpability rests on the autonomy and autonomous actions (or inactions) of individuals. Ideas of such autonomy have been integral to western ethical, political and legal thinking since the seventeenth century. The analysis in this dissertation raises issues where the criminal law does not adequately take into account the limits on individual autonomy in relation to liberty of action, freedom of choice and effective deliberation. These issues highlight that a more serious and deeper understanding of individual autonomy as a ground of culpability must be taken into account by law-makers, to ensure that the grounds of criminal culpability more adequately reflect the limits on people’s individual autonomy in modern society today. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis examined the utility of Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2002) as a framework for understanding athlete burnout and its hypothesized opposite - athlete engagement. Athlete burnout was defined as "a psychological syndrome of emotional/physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation" (Raedeke, 1997, p.398). Athlete engagement was defined as a persistent, positive, cognitive-affective experience in sport that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and confidence. Based on the predictions of Vallerand�s (1997; Vallerand & Losier, 1999) motivational model, it was hypothesized that elite New Zealand athletes with higher perceptions of competence, autonomy, and relatedness (i.e., basic psychological needs) would also report more self-determined motives to participate in sport and that individuals with higher self-determined motivation would experience lower athlete burnout and higher athlete engagement. Before testing these hypotheses four preliminary studies were necessary. First, because of the nomadic lifestyles of many elite athletes, it was decided that an online survey delivered via the Internet would be the most appropriate and effective method for collecting data to test the central hypotheses. However, a literature search revealed that no studies in sport psychology had compared online and traditional paper and pencil survey methods and therefore a preliminary study was needed to investigate potential survey format effects. Results of measurement invariance and latent mean structures analyses indicated that there were no differences on the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire for randomly assigned online (n=117) and paper and pencil (n=97) groups. Second, recent research (e.g., Martens & Webber, 2002; Riemer, Fink, & Fitzgerald, 2002) has indicated that the only published measure of behavioural regulations (i.e., motives) in sport (Pelletier, Fortier, Vallerand, Tuson, & Blais, 1995) has psychometric problems. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a reliable and valid measure of behavioural regulations in sport. Following rigorous scale development procedures that included expert review and pilot testing, results from two studies (n=382 and n=343) supported the reliability and validity of this new measure - the Behavioural Regulations in Sport Questionnaire. Third, while researchers in organizational and educational psychology have examined engagement experiences, no research has investigated athlete engagement. Results of a qualitative inquiry with elite New Zealand athletes (n=15) indicated that vigour, dedication, and confidence were core athlete engagement dimensions. Fourth, items for a quantitative athlete engagement questionnaire were created using operational definitions from the qualitative study and then reviewed by athlete burnout and positive psychology experts. Analysis of data from two samples (n=382 and n=343) supported the reliability and validity of the Athlete Engagement Questionnaire. Results from the final study (n=343) investigating the relationships amongst basic needs, behavioural regulations, burnout, and engagement generally supported the main hypotheses of the thesis. Indeed, athletes with higher perceptions of autonomy and competence reported more self-determined regulations; however, relatedness was not a significant predictor. Athletes� levels of self-determined motivation accounted for substantial portions of variance in athlete burnout symptoms: emotional/physical exhaustion (R�=.13), sport devaluation (R�=.43) and reduced accomplishment (R�=.42). Behavioural regulations were also strong predictors of athlete engagement, accounting for 49% of the variance in vigour, 42% of the variance in dedication, and 30% of the variance in confidence. Implications of these results for researchers and practitioners are discussed. Directions for research concerning SDT, athlete burnout, and athlete engagement are also highlighted.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-215). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 205-215). Also available on the Internet.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (p.128-139).