The vast swathes of public lands in the western U.S. have long been connected with both the culture and daily lives of the people that live near them. The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship that individuals have with public lands and how that relationship relates to their opinions about the federal agencies (specifically the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management) that oversee those public lands. This is done through the use of the effective bond attachment to public lands, which is the degree to which individuals feel connected to public lands through both the opportunities they provide to enjoy their desired lifestyle, functional connections, and the ways in which personal identity is tied to those lands, emotional connections. Assessing this bond is done through analysis and interpretation of selected data from the 2007 Public Lands and Utah Communities survey, which looked at a variety of connections Utah residents have to the state’s many public lands. This study utilizes a novel statistical method known as the “inverted-R analysis,” which groups respondents based on answers to a variety of attitudinal measures, to develop three distinct typologies of attachment to public lands. Analysis of differences between the groups of respondents that expressed different types of attachment revealed no correlation between attachment to public lands and opinions about land managers. All respondents expressed generally negative sentiment towards both Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land managers. However, respondents who expressed a stronger attachment to public lands also demonstrated higher levels of interaction with public lands. Additionally, functional and emotional connections to public lands were shown to operate as two separate parts of attachment to public lands. This reinforces the modeling of the conceptualization attachment to public lands after the related concept, place attachment. This study demonstrated both the strong connections individuals in Utah have with public lands and the strong opinions held about the agencies that manage those lands.

Children enter the Child Welfare System for a variety of complex reasons. These reasons often point towards parents’ inability to provide appropriate protection and safety for their children. After removal, many children are placed in foster homes of relatives, non-related extended family members, group homes, and county or private foster homes. A child who is removed from their original home is likely to experience difficulties in the areas of attachment with caregivers and other adults throughout their development. This study examined the attachment styles of 37 foster and adoptive parents in three separate private Foster Family Agencies in both San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. Foster and adoptive parents were assessed through the Relationship Questionnaire through a tool, which examined each parent’s level of attachment security. The perspectives of foster and adoptive parents on their child’s relational attachments were assessed through The Behavioral Assessment System of Children, Second Edition (BASC-2) across seven subsets (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004).

Social media usage for parents has become ubiquitous, as either a form of entertainment or communication with other individuals. However, excessive use of social media has also shown to have effects on parenting; causing parental distraction, decreasing the level of everyday parental engagement, and making a child more likely to be at risk for injury. Studies have shown that frequent eye contact, one on one time, and undivided attention are necessary in building a secure attachment between a parent and child. The research study in question hoped to understand whether there was a correlation between the amount of hours a parent uses social media and any number of parental qualities. Surveys were distributed to parents in various parenting groups and online chatting boards regarding social media usage, number of hours on their devices, and parenting styles. Other questions asked whether their child has ever been injured as a result of their social media usage, and whether a parent shows a strong general bond to their child. Results from the survey concluded there to be only one statistically significant relationship between any of the social media usage variables and the parenting variables, that is, a positive relationship between hours of social media usage and a high score on authoritarian parenting techniques. Overall however, parents identified more often with a balanced parenting style. Implications of other demographic characteristics are further explored.

This researcher has chosen to conduct research that followed the positivist paradigm with researching effects of attachment and interventions in regards to foster parent and foster child relationships. This researcher has observed issues with attachment relationships in foster children from a foster parent’s perspective. The researcher has observed the methods of interventions used by the foster family agency in order to assist with the foster parent and foster child relationship. This researcher has followed a positivist paradigm and has tested the dependent variables of the foster child’s attachment and the interventions used within the agency to assist the foster parents. The independent variable measured is the foster parent in the foster family agency.

Prescription pain medication abuse is a developing social problem in the United States. This quantitative study, grounded in attachment theory, examined relationships between attachment, perceived social support, and relapse. It was hypothesized that significant relationships existed between (a) attachment dimensions and relapse and (b) perceived social support and relapse. A further hypothesis was that perceived social support was a mediator in the relationship between attachment and relapse. Participants were 69 adult females, each of whom completed a demographic questionnaire; the Advanced Warning of Relapse (AWARE) Questionnaire; the Experiences in Close Relationships, Revised (ECR-R); and the Personal Resource Questionnaire (PRQ). A multiple linear regression was conducted to determine relationships between attachment and perceived social support on relapse. A mediation analysis was conducted to determine whether perceived social support was a mediator between attachment and relapse. Results identified that women with anxious styles of attachment have higher relapse potential and that women with higher levels of perceived social support appeared to have decreased attachment anxiety. Results indicated that women with increased attachment anxiety who also reported higher levels of perceived social support showed a reduced potential to relapse. This research contributes to positive social change by confirming the importance for health professionals to incorporate both attachment theory and the role of social support into treatment modalities to prevent relapse and to increase public awareness about these psychological factors of prescription pain medication addiction.

Bullying is a pervasive problem among children and adolescents worldwide, but relevant research, although growing, lacks coherence. The proposed study is the first to integrate three large bodies of research - on children's attachment, anger, and Social Information Processing (SIP) - in a comprehensive, developmentally informed, multi-method, multi-trait design to elucidate the origins of bullying behavior, victimization, and anti-bullying attitudes and emotions. It was predicted that (1) children's early attachment insecurity would be linked to their maladaptive SIP patterns and to higher anger proneness; (2) higher anger proneness would be associated with maladaptive SIP; (3) anger proneness and maladaptive SIP would both predict greater parent-reported aggression; (4) parent-reported aggression would predict both bullying behavior and victimization; (5) lower anger proneness and more adaptive SIP would be associated with anti-bullying attitudes and sympathy for victims of bullying. A series of path analyses revealed overall well-fitting models; however, the analyses of the specific pathways described in the hypotheses above were less conclusive. Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that attachment security, anger proneness, and social information processing each plays a role in the development of positive or negative peer relations, but how these factors come together needs to be further elucidated.

The process of forming a committed, romantic relationship is described as a developmental phenomenon that cannot be accurately viewed without the context of prior relationship experiences because the social competencies that facilitate successful navigation of the tasks of relationship formation are developed in relationships. Furthermore, a cumulative relationship history that has a negative influence may lead to poor emotional health, further disrupting relationship formation processes through that mechanism. Hypotheses were tested using data from a prospective longitudinal study of participants (218 women, 174 men) who were not in a romantic relationship at initial data collection and reported on their relationship status 4 times over the course of 1 year while completing the READY or RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE). Cumulative relationship history and emotional health prospectively predicted the intercepts in longitudinal growth curve analyses of relationship status, while mediational analyses supported the hypothesis that emotional health partially mediates the influence of cumulative relationship history on relationship status. The findings support the developmental conceptualization that inter- and intrapersonal capacities increase the probability of forming a committed, romantic relationship over time.

The purpose of this research is to explore the nature of adult remembrance of childhood experience of place. The research asks what it is like for adults to recall their childhood experiences of place, and what role childhood place experience plays in shaping adult identity. The study explores the lived experience of seven participants, five men and two women, as they remember the outdoor places of their childhood in semi-structured interviews. It undertakes a phenomenological investigation into the nature of these experiences, consisting of an individual description of each remembrance experience, phenomenological reduction, and identification of the qualities of the experience. The integration of several concepts in the light of participants’ experiences of childhood place remembrance can be considered to be an initial step towards establishing a development theory of place. / Master of Arts (Hons)

The major focus of this study was to investigate the association between adolescent attachment styles and types of parent-adolescent conflict and anger. The study used adolescent respondents (n=214, females=136, males=78), 95% of whom were aged 14 or 15. The methodology was a one-off survey design. An adapted adult attachment scale with two dimensions, anxiety and avoidance, measured attachment. This scale was used to form four adolescent attachment styles, secure, preoccupied, fearful and dismissive. Family conflict was assessed in a range of ways, including general measures of self-reported family conflict and abuse at home. Also measured were general anger-proneness and depression-proneness. As well, adolescents responded to four specific, hypothetical parent-adolescent conflict scenarios. The responses to these vignettes included their reported emotions, conflict resolution strategies, expected endings and post-conflict coping/risk behaviours. Results indicated the presence of one major healthy and functional conflict-anger pattern associated with a secure attachment style, and two major types of harmful and dysfunctional conflict-anger patterns. Healthy conflict and anger involved secure adolescents reporting they would experience negative emotions in conflict but would still expect the conflict to be resolved well for everyone. Secure adolescents were also less anger-prone and depression-prone generally than other adolescents, possibly indicating their ability to regulate their negative emotions. The first harmful conflict pattern, associated with preoccupied and fearful attachment styles, included relatively higher levels of family conflict involving poor conflict endings, and even moderate levels of violence. Preoccupied and fearful adolescents may have poor emotional regulation, as indicated by their higher levels of general anger-proneness and depression-proneness. The second harmful conflict-anger pattern was associated with a dismissive attachment style and involved conflict with emotional distance and coolness in the family, as well as lower levels of reported problem solving strategies and good conflict endings. Results are discussed in terms of adolescent attachment style profiles and the need to distinguish and assess attachment styles in families in order to devise appropriate and effective interventions. Examples of primary, secondary and tertiary preventative interventions are described to assist mildly to severely conflicted, distressed or disengaged families.

<p>This study investigated the extent to which memories of parental rearing were related to the quality of parent and peer attachment, and whether parent and peer attachment were correlated with social anxiety feelings among 510 Chinese high school students. Memories of parental rearing were measured by the My Memories of Upbringing for Children (EMBU-C), The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) was used to assess attachment quality and social anxiety was assessed by Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) with adolescents in two age-groups. Consistent with findings from Western samples, the analyses revealed significant associations between attachment and memories of parental warm emotions as well as with memories of parental rejection. Attachment scores were related to level of social anxiety. Moreover, peer attachment was stronger associated with the adolescent¡¯s social anxiety feelings than parent attachment. However, the age differences were found across each measure scale. Furthermore, fathers showed a moderately more important role in the adolescent¡¯s social development than mothers. The findings indicate that in spite of considerable consistency with findings from Western studies, child-parent attachment in Chinese adolescents is also influenced by culture-specific practices that shape the youth-parent relationships and their meaning to the child.</p>