Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / Community violence has been found to have profound negative effects on the lives of those exposed to it daily. The victims often tend to be adolescents, who, while striving for a better future, are often quite vulnerable to its effects. The present study focuses on the perception’s parents hold of their adolescent’s sense of safety and future aspirations in a community with high levels of violence. The data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with participants residing in a community prone to violence. The researcher purposively sampled eight participants and conducted interviews in both English and Afrikaans.

Thesis advisor: Paul Gray / As siblings tend to have the longest lasting and most transformative relationship within family systems, more attention must be given to individuals with siblings with disabilities. Given that young adulthood is a time spent planning for the future, this research investigates the impact of the experience of having a sibling with a disability on the development of future aspirations for young adults. Semi-structured interviews and a qualitative analysis examine the various aspects of the sibling relationship and family systems which affect the future planning of young adults with special needs siblings. The purpose is to understand what personality and identity traits develop from the experience of having a sibling with a disability, and how these characteristics subsequently relate to decisions such as career choice, geographical location, beginning a family, and role accountability towards future caregiving for their special needs sibling. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Sociology.

<p>The ongoing development of the new post-apartheid South Africa is still dealing with its own cruel history. A socio-economic structure based on race has been built up over years of colonialization and apartheid where the black people of South Africa have been excluded from being South African citizens. The first democratic election in 1994 contributed to the “freedom in their life-time” that youth from the uprisings in Soweto urged for. But today, fourteen years after the relaxation of the apartheid the same socio-economic structures based on race are still visible, not as strict as then but still exceptionally obvious. Especially if you compare townships, like Khayelitsha in the outskirts of Cape Town, with it’s metropolitan area. Khayelitsha is predominantly black area and is also one of the poorest communities in Cape Town.</p><p>This thesis looks at one of the first generations in the ambivalence of the new post-apartheid South Africa, twelve years after the fall of apartheid. We have completed 14 qualitative interviews with adolescents in the age between 18-to-21, living in the socio-economic margin, in the township of Khayelitsha. We have examined their relations to the civil society and their participation within it. In addition also their future aspirations and how they will maintain them.</p>

The ongoing development of the new post-apartheid South Africa is still dealing with its own cruel history. A socio-economic structure based on race has been built up over years of colonialization and apartheid where the black people of South Africa have been excluded from being South African citizens. The first democratic election in 1994 contributed to the “freedom in their life-time” that youth from the uprisings in Soweto urged for. But today, fourteen years after the relaxation of the apartheid the same socio-economic structures based on race are still visible, not as strict as then but still exceptionally obvious. Especially if you compare townships, like Khayelitsha in the outskirts of Cape Town, with it’s metropolitan area. Khayelitsha is predominantly black area and is also one of the poorest communities in Cape Town. This thesis looks at one of the first generations in the ambivalence of the new post-apartheid South Africa, twelve years after the fall of apartheid. We have completed 14 qualitative interviews with adolescents in the age between 18-to-21, living in the socio-economic margin, in the township of Khayelitsha. We have examined their relations to the civil society and their participation within it. In addition also their future aspirations and how they will maintain them.

This study represents a shift in focus with regard to studies related to traumatic events such as childhood sexual abuse (CSA). It endeavours to go beyond documenting the prevalence of CSA to understanding the moderating factors that encourage adaptive adjustment to CSA. The rationale of this study was to understand how personal beliefs in a just world, future aspirations and proactive coping in the context of an earlier traumatic event such as CSA, are related. My secondary interest was to understand how the aforementioned constructs feature in the development of resilience. I strove to do this by exploring the relationship between proactive coping, just-world beliefs (with specific reference to personal belief in a just world) and future aspirations of a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I made use of an instrumental case study design. A single participant was purposively selected for this study due to her unique features of being a self-identified resilient survivor of child sexual abuse. Data was collected over a period of three months by means of semi-structured interviews, drawings and theory-based scales. In this study I made use of qualitative data analysis to explore the theoretical relationships amongst the constructs. The results of the study suggest that there is a relationship between personal belief in a just world and religiosity, and that this relationship may mediate the optimistic orientation in the participant of the present study. There also appears to be a relationship between the personal belief in a just world and future aspirations of the participant in this study, suggesting that the role of just world beliefs in terms of the active pursuit and investment in future goals need to be further examined. Finally, the relationship between positive future aspirations and proactive coping was less clear, requiring further investigation to elucidate this relationship. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

In the undergraduate and working environments, some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) areas remain dominated by males. The purpose of this study was to understand the gendered experience of individuals in STEM majors by assessing students’ math self-efficacy, impostorism (a feeling of intellectual phoniness), and future goals. Based on prior research, an overall conceptual model was proposed and analyzed. Several related precursors including gender role orientation, perceived parental influence, math identity, and theories of intelligence were included in the model. Three hundred six undergraduates (64.38% female) in the colleges of natural science, geosciences, and engineering responded to an online survey addressing these constructs. Based on prior research, hypotheses were created proposing that females would report higher impostorism, lower math self-efficacy, and more femininity than males. I expected that masculinity, perceived parental influence, an entity theory of intelligence, and high math identity would predict the impostor phenomenon. Moreover, I hypothesized that the relation of each of these predictors to impostorism would be moderated by sex. For the next two hypotheses, I proposed that the four sources of math self-efficacy would predict math self-efficacy, but this relation would be moderated by impostorism. Finally, I expected that impostorism would lead to reduced future expectations and aspirations, but that this association would be mediated by math self-efficacy. Results indicated partial support of the study hypotheses, and a revised model was created. Both sexes reported similar levels of impostorism, but females had lower math self-efficacy and greater femininity than males. Masculinity negatively predicted the impostor phenomenon, while math identity and an entity theory of intelligence positively related to the dependent variable. Sex moderated the effect of perceived parental influence such that males’ impostorism was more affected by parental influence than females’. Emotional arousal was a strong contributor to math self-efficacy, but this relation was attenuated by impostorism. Coping with emotional arousal was positively associated with math self-efficacy; however, this association was significantly stronger for low impostors than high ones. Finally, impostors were less likely to expect to go to graduate school or work in a STEM-related field. Implications for schools and professors are discussed. / text