The purpose of the current study was to examine young women's perceptions of both verbal and nonverbal sexual communication from their mothers during childhood and how these perceptions are related to the female offspring's current sexual experiences and attitudes. More specifically, I hypothesized that perceptions of negative parental sexual communication will be related to relatively low levels of sexual experience, comfort regarding sexual activity, and sexual assertiveness, as well as negative affect and cognition regarding sexuality. I also hypothesized that female offspring will receive significantly more sexual communication from mother than from father. Finally, predicted that the communication received from mother, as opposed to father, will be related to high levels of sexual experience, sexual comfort, sexual assertiveness, and more positive sexual affect and cognition. There were 295 female college students who completed questionnaires regarding sexual experience, comfort with sexual activity, sexual assertiveness, perceptions of parental sexual communication, affective and cognitive properties of sexual attitude, and erotophobia/erotophilia. Perceptions of parental sexual communication were measured with a survey developed specifically for the current study. Two forms of this survey were used; one to measure mother's verbal communication and the other to measure nonverbal communication. Results showed a negative correlation between tone of parental sexual communication and sexual experience, as well as a positive correlation between parental sexual communication and sexual cognition. The results of this study also showed that more sexual communication is perceived from mother than from father, and amount of mother's communication was significantly related to sexual assertiveness and affective properties of sexual attitudes. / Department of Psychological Science

This study is a content analysis of female-oriented magazines aimed at three different age groups: women, teen, and preteen. Magazine content from Girls’ Life, J-14, Seventeen, Cosmo Girl!, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour was examined for themes of sexuality, romance, and the opposite sex. The evidence suggests that topics are presented to women in a progressive manner in which preteen girls are first learning about the opposite sex, teens are learning how to behave in order to attract the opposite sex, and women are being told how to please the opposite sex erotically. While the idea is never overtly stated, it appears that women are still sexual objects for men’s pleasuring. However, they are also in charge of “taming” the man and making him knowledgeable on topics of sexuality and romance. / Department of Sociology

The aim of this research, Reading Selection as Information Seeking Behavior: A Case Study with Adolescent Girls, was to explore how the experience of reading fiction affects adolescent girls aged 13 through 15, and how that experience changes based upon four activities: journaling, blogging, a personal interview, and a focus group session. Each participant reflects upon works of her own choosing that she had recently read. The data is evaluated using content analysis with the goal of developing a relational analysis tool to be used and tested with future research projects. The goal of this research is to use the insights of the field of bibliotherapy together with the insights of the adolescent girls to provide a higher, more robust model of successful information behavior. That is, relevance is a matter of impact on life rather than just a match of subject heading. This work provides a thick description of a set of real world relevancy judgments. This may serve to illuminate theories and practices for bringing each individual seeker together with appropriate documents. This research offers a new model for relevant information seeking behavior associated with selecting works of essential instructional fiction, as well as a new definition for terminology to describe the results of the therapeutic literary experience. The data from this study, as well as from previous research, suggest that literature (specifically young adult literature) brings the reader to a better understanding of herself and the world around her.

Given the paucity of research that has been conducted on aggression in girls (see Keenan, Loeber, & Green, 1999, for a review), it is important to examine different behavioral manifestations of aggression that may be more prevalent among girls than boys, such as relational aggression (see Crick et al., 1999, for a review). Relational aggression consists of behaviors that harm others through damage to their peer relationships or the threat of such damage (e.g., spreading rumors about a peer so that others will reject him/her, social exclusion; Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are a particular subset of youth who are at increased risk for exhibiting aggressive behavior (Henker & Whalen, 1999; Whalen & Henker, 1985). The purpose of the present study was to assess the prevalence of relational aggression among children with attention problems as compared to the general population. Gender differences in relational aggression were also examined. In the current study, participants included 91 3rd-5th grade public school students. Teacher ratings of aggressive behavior and attention problems were obtained. Parents also completed measures to assess attention problems and social-psychological adjustment. Contrary to prediction, results indicated children with attention problems were not more aggressive than children without attention problems, regardless of the type of aggressive behavior assessed (i.e., relational or overt aggression). With respect to gender differences in relational aggression, results indicate the well-known gender effect for relational aggression only applies to Caucasian students in this sample, as a gender effect for relational aggression was not obtained for Hispanic students. Thus, the gender effect for relational aggression should not be considered a robust finding generalizable to all ethnic groups. Finally, relationally aggressive children were reported to be as well-adjusted as their non-relationally aggressive peers, which is not consistent with previous research. Regardless of aggression status, Hispanic children exhibited higher levels of delinquent behavior and anxiety/depression compared to Caucasian children. Findings are discussed in terms of measurement issues and within a cultural context. The limitations of the current study and directions for future research are presented.

No description available.

Black girls continue to suffer from inequitable treatment in schools resulting in disparate academic and social outcomes. While deficit ideologists have continued to attribute outcomes to cultural deficiencies within the Black community, research has found various systemic issues of racism and sexism seriously affecting Black girls in schools. However, the experiences of this population remain under or uninvestigated. When Black girls’ experiences in school are investigated, they are commonly framed as a group in need of saving and their perspectives and voices eliminated from the work. Further, this group is often homogenized and all their experiences limited to those of the inner-city or urban environments. Using a critical raced-gendered epistemology, grounded in critical race theory and Black feminism/womanism, this qualitative interview study explores Black high school girls’ experiences in a predominately White suburban public school in the southeast. Through the method of storytelling that includes constructing counter narratives, five girls (ages 14-16) relay their experiences in this predominately White suburban educational space. Parent reflections as well as document review augment these girls’ stories to further illuminate their experience. A grounded theory analysis of these data uses my own cultural intuition. This analytic approach foregrounds the intersectionality of Black girls’ understanding of their racial and gendered educational experiences in a predominantly White suburban environment, the systemic barriers that serve to inhibit their success, and the methods of resistance girls use to persist in these spaces. This study is significant in both its methodology as well as results, offering critical insight into how to conduct equitable and liberatory research and create education policies to improve outcomes for this underserved group.

In this paper-based thesis, I describe the findings of my ethnographic research conducted among the intimate partners of female sex workers and adolescent boys in Northern Karnataka. By highlighting the contradictory and relational nature of masculinity, my study aims to contribute to the larger scholarship on masculinity in South Asia. In the first manuscript, I examine the intimate partners’ perceptions and practices to shed light on the common occurrence of intimate partner violence and how local ideologies of manhood—and the social and structural conditions that shape these ideologies—perpetuate intimate partner violence. In an attempt to destabilize hierarchical gender orders, the second manuscript builds on Connell’s theory of “hegemonic masculinity” by developing the notion of incipient masculinity. From a public health perspective, the findings of these studies are expected to inform the ongoing structural interventions in Northern Karnataka that aim to prevent violence against female sex workers. / October 2016

For eighty years psychologists have investigated problems touching upon reading ability. It is the purpose of this study to determine if there is any significant difference in the reading ability of boys and girls in the third grade. If such differences are found to exist, an attempt will be made to explain the cause.

The problem of this study was to isolate some of the characteristics of tenth-grade girls which may lead to early marriage. The characteristics studied were: sibling rank, influence of a broken home, parents* education and occupations, mental ability, aptitude, scholastic achievement, study habits and attitudes, and personal problems identified by the subjects. A further problem of the study was the effectiveness of each of the characteristics in predicting the marriage of high school girls.

Using a clinical sample of 63 girls aged 5 - 16 years, the Psychoanalytic Rorschach Profile (PRP; Burke et al., 1988), a measure of drive, ego, and object relations functioning, was examined for differences between sexual abuse (SA) victims and distressed but nonabused (NA) peers. The hypothesis that the SA group would evidence more pathological, less developed levels of drive, ego, and object relations functioning than the NA group was not supported. Limitations of the use of archival data are discussed. The effects of controlling for the number of responses (R) in Rorschach research were examined by comparing entire protocols of a clinical sample of girls from 5 - 16 years of age to shortened versions which included only the first one (N = 89; R = 10) or two (N = 17; R = 20) responses to each blot. Of 12 PRP scales compared, differences between the R = 10 and entire protocols were found on 5 variables, but when R was increased to 20, only 2 differences remained. Support was given for the notion of uniform Rorschach administration in which 2 responses per card are solicited.