Magister Artium - MA (Psychology) / Psychological distress during pregnancy has been a fairly neglected phenomenon and has only recently started emerging as an area of research interest. The existing body of scholarship on distress during pregnancy has largely been conducted from a positivist paradigm, emphasising the identification, incidences and risks. There is thus a dearth of qualitative inquiry into pregnant women's experiences and accounts of distress. In an attempt to address these gaps within the literature, my study explored psychological distress among a group of pregnant women from socio-economically disadvantaged contexts. The specific objectives of my study was to explore how pregnant women conceptualised psychological distress within the context of pregnancy; the feelings or symptoms of psychological distress; what pregnant women perceived as its causes; and the psychosocial needs of pregnant women in relation to antenatal distress. This study was guided by a feminist approach and a feminist standpoint epistemology in particular. This lent itself to exploring the phenomenon while departing from a clinical, decontextualised position which translated into an investigation with pregnant women who subjectively perceived themselves to be distressed.

The use of high technology in common daily tasks is boarding all areas of civil engineering; pavement evaluation is not the exception. Accordingly, current pavement imaging systems have been able to collect images at highway speeds and with the use of proper software, this digital information can be translated into pavement distress reports in which all distresses are classified and presented by their type, extent, severity, and location. However, a number of issues regarding the quality of pavement images and the appropriate conditions to acquire them, remain to be addressed. These issues surfaced during the development of a pavement evaluation vehicle for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). The work involved in this thesis proposes basic criteria to evaluate the performance of pavement imaging systems. Mainly four parameters (1) spatial resolution, (2) brightness resolution, (3) optical distortion, and (4) signal to noise ratio, have been identified to assess the quality of a pavement imaging system. First, each of the four parameters is studied in detail in USF's Visual Imaging Laboratory to formulate relevant criteria that can be used to evaluate imaging systems. Then, the developed criteria are used to evaluate the FDOT Survey Vehicle's pavement imaging system. The evaluation speed does not seem to have any significant influence on the spatial resolution, brightness resolution and signal to noise ratio. Little or no optical distortion was observed on the images on wheel paths. Limitations of the imaging system were also determined in terms of the brightness resolution and noise. The conclusions drawn from this study can be used to (1) enhance pavement imaging systems and (2) setup appropriate guidelines to perform automated distress surveys, under varying lighting conditions and speeds to obtain good quality images.

Published Article / The pre-1994 education system created huge imbalances among public schools in South Africa, in terms of resource allocation. Surprisingly, the pronouncement by the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, to declare some schools "no-fee schools", generated a mixed-bag of reactions within the entire education fraternity, "No-fee schools spark row" (Govender, 2006:6). Some sections are giving this decision their full support, while others are arguing that "new regulations will lead to standards dropping" (Govender & Makwabe 2007:4). Notwithstanding these contrasting views, an overwhelming majority (78%) of the school principals expressed satisfaction with this decision. This article, therefore, intends to explore the possible impact of this decision on the school's overall performance as perceived by principals of South African public schools.

In this dissertation, I use separation and divorce as the lens through which I examine the impact of modernization and globalization on the intimate lives and the health and well-being of low income women of African descent in rural Northeast Brazil. I argue that trends such as shifts in the gendered division of labor in a growing eco-tourism economy, and the spread of the modern notion of romantic love and companionate marriage through popular telenovelas, are directly related to dramatic increases in separation and divorce in Brazil. I further argue that social inequality affects individual perceptions and experiences of divorce, and the embodied distress low-income Afro Brazilian women endure with marital failure is also an expression of social suffering.

There are substantial data exploring the link between religiosity and health, yet there is no consensus regarding the appropriate measurement tool for assessing religiosity in health psychology settings. The purpose of this study was to identify a set of items that could serve as a reliable and valid proxy measure of religiosity. Participants included 251 (M=19.02; range = 17-25) young adults who completed self-report measures of religiosity (Intrinsic-Extrinsic/Revised, Quest Scale, Faith Maturity Scale), psychological distress (SCL-90-R), and personality (NEOPI-R). Individual item pools for religiosity were developed by identifying significant correlations between each of the religiosity measures and the SCL-90-R items. Exploratory factor analyses and item-level analyses were conducted and convergent and discriminant validity were examined for each proposed measure. A group of items were identified that were associated with previously validated measures of religiosity. These religiosity measures were also associated with the personality domains of Openness to Experience and Agreeableness but were not associated with Neuroticism. There was insufficient evidence, however, to conclude that the proposed measures could serve as true proxy measures of religiosity as they were more strongly associated with Neuroticism than the religiosity measures from which they were derived. The results of this study underscore the importance of the religiosity construct to health-related outcomes, yet much work remains to delineate the optimal means of measuring the construct and the specific pathways by which religiosity may exert its influence on both mental and physical health.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Most acculturation research has been focused on the direct relationship between acculturation and mental health (Yoon, Langrehr, & Ong, 2011; Salanta & Lauderdaleb, 2003; Koneru, Weisman de Mamania, Flynn, & Betancourt, 2007). However, less is known about the mechanisms for this relationship. Social-cultural resources such as friend and neighbor support may have a beneficial impact on mental health, and acculturative stress such as the level of family conflict and perceived racial discrimination would be expected to be risk factors (Kawachi & Berkman, 2001; Wolff & Agree, 2004; Gong et al., 2003; Kerr-Correa, Igami, Hiroce, & Tucchi, 2007). The present study investigated the mediating roles of acculturative stress and social-psychological resources in the relationship between acculturation and psychological distress among first generation Asian Americans. Data were from 1528 Asian Americans who participated in the National Latino and Asian Americans Study (NLAAS), a nationally representative study of the Asian immigrant population in the U.S. Using structural equation modeling with latent variables, direct and indirect influences on Asian immigrant psychological distress were examined. The findings indicate that higher acculturation was not directly associated with psychological distress for Asian immigrants, but there was an indirect pathway from higher acculturation to poorer mental health through acculturative stress. Asian immigrants with higher levels of acculturation experienced more acculturative stress, which contributed to more psychological distress symptoms. However, this finding was moderated by gender, holding only for women. On the other hand, while a higher level of acculturation was also associated with more perceived social resources, the expected protective effect of these resources was not present. The findings show the complex relationship between acculturation and psychological distress during the acculturative process of Asian immigrants. / text

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