The social structure of high schools is characterized by a hierarchy of various groups to which adolescents can identify. These crowds provide reputation-based identities which are particularly salient among adolescents. Although research has provided information regarding crowd structure, less is known about effects of membership. An adolescent's crowd membership can be an important source of social identity and positive self-esteem. Social identity theory is useful in explaining this process by describing how people's psychological motivations interact with their understanding of a social situation to influence cognition. For members of low-status groups, affiliation does not readily provide a source of positive social identity. Therefore, individuals use identity-maintenance strategies to maintain self-image. In this study, I explore perceptions of ingroup homogeneity as an identity-maintenance strategy within adolescent crowds. I also examine whether membership in the more stable racial and gender categories influence the use of homogeneity perceptions in identity management. My findings indicate that membership in one group influences cognition regarding membership in a group with an entirely different social structure. / Department of Sociology

The general problem was to determine personality differences among a hierarchy of high school female athletes in various socio-economic groups. The specific problems were: (1) To determine if there were any significant personality trait differences among three socio-economic groupings of superior athletes.; (2) To determine if there were any significant personality trait differences among three socio-economic groupings of average athletes.; (3) To determine if there were any significant personality trait differences among three socio-economic groupings of nonathletes.; and (4) To determine if there were any significant personality trait differences among superior, average, and nonathletes.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Photocopy of typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Students pursue different goals in school, which have been shown to influence a variety of educational outcomes. The achievement goal framework which focuses on mastery and performance goals is currently the most dominant paradigm for the examination of students‘ goals in the school setting. Numerous studies have shown the different consequences associated with the pursuit of mastery and performance goals. However, a limitation of achievement goal theory is its neglect of social goals which pertain to social reasons for studying. This is surprising given the importance of interpersonal relationships for adolescent students. Moreover, from a cross-cultural perspective, social goals seem to be even more salient for students from collectivist cultures due to the greater importance of the relational fabric in such societies. Therefore, the general aim of this study was to investigate the types, the structure, and the consequences of social goals in a collectivist cultural context. Five inter-related studies were conducted with Filipino secondary school students. Study 1 was a qualitative study which aimed to assess the different types of goals that students pursued. Results indicated that most of the goals pertained to social goals, and only a minority of these referred to the more commonly-researched achievement goals. Studies 2 and 3 aimed to examine the cross-cultural applicability of the 2 x 2 achievement goal model and the hierarchical and multidimensional model of social goals respectively in the Philippine setting. The 2 x 2 achievement goal model posits a distinction between four types of achievement goals: mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance avoidance, while the hierarchical and multidimensional model of social goals construes social goals as a higher-order construct underpinned by five specific types of social goals: social affiliation, social approval, social concern, social responsibility, and social status. Results of these two studies indicated that these models were both applicable to Filipino students. As such, they were used in the subsequent studies. The aim of Study 4 was to test the relationships among achievement goals, social goals, academic engagement, and achievement. A longitudinal design was adopted and results indicated that social goals were the most salient positive predictors of academic engagement. They were also negative predictors of academic disengagement. Engagement and disengagement, in turn, mediated the impact of goals on subsequent academic achievement. Study 5 examined the relationships among achievement goals, social goals, and well-being. A longitudinal design was adopted, and results showed that mastery-approach and social goals were the most beneficial for well-being. Taken together, these studies showed the importance of investigating social goals alongside the oft-examined achievement goals given their greater salience and their causal dominance over achievement goals in predicting both achievement-related and broader well-being outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for future research are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Early identification of high school students at-risk for antisocial behavior and school failure is critical to reducing the number punitive consequences they may experience, as well as for lowering referral rates to special education. The identification of characteristics that are common to students accumulating disciplinary referrals for chronic or acute behavior problems can be valuable for targeting the needs of these students and developing proactive intervention strategies. Typical approaches employ deficit-based measures which describe behaviors that are regarded as problems to be eliminated or reduced, but which seldom provide guidance to teachers on how to achieve that result. This study used the Behavioral Objective Sequence (BOS) (Braaten, 1998) a strength-based instrument, to examine the attributes of students in an urban high school who had been referred the Character Development Center (CDC), an out-of-classroom disciplinary intervention.The BOS provides a criterion referenced assessment of behavioral competencies which can subsequently be used by educators to develop instructional interventions that are directly related to skill deficiencies. A Likert type rating scale method was used to assess students' demonstration the BOS skills or behavioral/social competencies.Data were collected on 99 students who had been referred to CDC one or more times and 37 randomly selected peers who had never been referred. BOS scores were obtained from the classroom teachers who had made the student referrals to CDC and the nonreferred students. One-way ANOVAs and independent t-tests were computed to test for differences in the mean scores on the six BOS subscales. Students who were referred for disciplinary intervention scored significantly lower on all subscales. ANOVA tests for significant interactions between rater and student demographic attributes were all non significant indicating that the results were not influenced by characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, or social economic status.The results support the findings of previous studies that indicate use of skill-based BOS scores can identify students who are a high risk for disciplinary intervention. This approach offers educators an assessment instrument that can assist with early identification by proactively targeting skills that need to be taught and reinforced rather than reliance on consequences for misconduct. / Department of Special Education

No description available.

The purpose of this research is to discover the extent to which there is a typology of students’ health risk behaviors and to what extent are those typologies associated with academic achievement using the 2019 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) dataset. This is a secondary data analysis study using a national representative sample (n=11,410) of high school students, grades 9 to 12, in the United States. YRBS is a national school-based, paper-based 99-item survey used to assess 121 health-related behaviors among all high school students in the United States and is biennially conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2020). While research efforts on health and academic achievement is vastly growing, there is a limited number of studies that are analyzing multiple health-risk behaviors concurrently as well as exploring their potential impacts on educational outcomes. Furthermore, previous studies have utilized cluster and/ or factor analyses. However, this statistical approach will show how students are clustered into groups and does not provide information such as the probability that a given student is bullied or suicidal. A 3-step Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was conducted to identify and understand the various profiles of students who experienced and/ or were exposed to certain health-risk behaviors. The health-risk behaviors of interest, the latent variables, were school-related violence, physical activity, screen time, and sleep. Using LCA, results show that there are four significantly different typologies, or profiles, of student health-risk behaviors: Level 1 The Most Support Needed (TMSN), Level 2 Suicide Prevention Needed (SPN), Level 3 Coping Mechanism for Bullying Needed (CMBN), Level 4 Least Support Needed (LSN). In tandem, contextual factors such as age, sex, grade level, race and ethnicity were significantly associated with the odds of belonging to some of the groups. This study is connected to longer-term work. Implications of these groupings on school policies, student health outcomes, and building a school-based coordinated health system will be discussed.

No description available.

The study was concerned with the testing of a modified causal model of college anticipation and attendance for a nationwide sample of Puerto-Rican and Mexican-American high-school seniors. The key problem of this study was defined on the basis of two fundamental criteria. The first states that social-structural and social-psychological components of sociological theory can provide basic information needed to comprehend the educational aspirations and achievement behaviors of Hispanic youth in the United States. The second theoretical tenet of this study was that the logic of the modified Wisconsin Model of status attainment can be understood as a common process that applies to all sectors of the American system of stratification and mobility. The data used in this study were extracted from the High School and Beyond: A National Longitudinal Study for the 1980s (HSB) and its First Follow-Up. Path coefficients associated with the direct and indirect effects were used in attempting to explain the variance in postsecondary educational plans and attainments of the subjects. A summary of the most significant findings, using the aforementioned data follows. The analysis of the educational attainments for the two ethnic group subsamples shows no statistically significant difference when the two samples are classified by gender. The recursive causal model used in this analysis is not completely successful in explaining the variance in the dependent variables (postsecondary educational plans and attainments) of both Mexican-American and Puerto-Rican high-school seniors. As a result, only about one-fourth of the degree of change in postsecondary educational plans and less than one-half of the variability in the level of educational attainments are accounted for by the antecedent variables. Present results reduce the impact of some of the social-psychological intervening variables on the level of educational plans of Hispanic adolescents. On the other hand, the role of objective variables (academic achievement and socioeconomic status is magnified. The influence of some of the objective variables on the process of educational attainment is also noticeable.