Master of Science / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Joyce Baptist / There is a need for culturally sensitive clinical interventions for substance use disorders. Parental modeling, peer alcohol use, and depression are related to alcohol use, but have not been specifically examined among Latin American adolescents and young adults in the U.S. The purpose of this study is to examine contributing factors to alcohol use in Latin American adolescents and young adults in the U.S. Participants included 400 Hispanic and Latino adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Results from a path analysis suggested that parent and peer alcohol use are associated with adolescent alcohol use and that adolescent alcohol use mediates the relationship between peer alcohol use and young adult alcohol use. Clinical and research implications are described.

With the increased use of performance funding in Tennessee and many other states, it is imperative that administrators strategically budget to meet performance outcome goals. The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between the budget function allocations of Instruction, Academic Support, and Student Services and performance outcome measures involving student success factors defined as completion of credit hours, awards of technical certificates, and awards of undergraduate degrees through the academic years of 2006-07 and 2013-14. The population included the 13 public community colleges and 9 public universities in Tennessee within the Tennessee Board of Regents and the University of Tennessee systems. Statistical procedures included bivariate correlations and multiple regressions of the predictor variables of budget function allocations and the criterion variables of performance outcomes. Descriptive data indicated an increase in the majority of the budget function area means and decreases in the majority of performance outcomes over the timeframe of the study. Correlation analysis of community college predictor and criterion variables revealed significant positive relationships existed between the following: (a) salary allocations for Student Services and awards of technical certificates; and (b) allocations for salaries for Instruction and completion of credit hours and number of associate degrees awarded. Multiple regression analysis of community college variables indicated salaries of Instruction were the most useful predictor of performance outcomes. Correlation analysis of university predictor and criterion variables revealed significant negative relationships existed between the following: (a) operations for Student Services and completion of 24, 48, and 72 credit hours; (b) salaries for Student Services and completion of 24, 48, and 72 credit hours and number of bachelor degrees awarded; (c) salaries of Academic Support and completion of 24 and 48 credit hours; (d) operations budgets for Instruction and completion of 24, 48, and 72 credit hours; (e) budget allocations for salaries for Instruction and completion of 24 credit hours; and (f) combined budget allocations and completion of 24 and 48 credit hours. Correlation analysis of university predictor and criterion variables revealed significant positive relationships existed between operations budgets for Academic Support and completion of 72 credit hours and number of bachelor degrees awarded

American schools have been struggling with improving achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for decades. For the last four decades, the overall mathematics performance of 17 year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress has not shown any significant improvement. Mathematics teachers can use metacognitive techniques to make immediate adjustments in instruction that may assist students in becoming more skillful problem solvers. The purpose of this study was to provide new knowledge about the potential predictors of mathematics teachers' use of the six subfactors of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory for Teachers. The inventory was administered to 120 K-12 grade teachers from the membership list of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics via an online survey. Multiple regression analysis indicates that there are significant differences among the participants in the influence of potential predictor variables for declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning awareness, and monitoring awareness. The positive β coefficient indicates that the number of years of teaching experience plays a role in increasing the mathematics teachers' awareness of metacognition, β=.207, p

Latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI), a product of exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), can lead to tuberculosis (TB) and further cause death if untreated. Fortunately, TB can be prevented with LTBI treatment. Targeting newly arrived visa holders for LTBI screening and treatment is an effective strategy for decreasing future TB burden. However, LTBI treatment completion rates are low, and researches had primarily focused on the nonrural U.S. setting. This study, using a retrospective cohort design under the epidemiological disease triangle framework evaluated (a) the treatment completion rates for 2 cohorts of visa holders (i.e., immigrants, N = 31 and refugees, N = 109) with LTBI residing in the rural setting using Pearson's chi-square analysis, (b) mean times on LTBI treatment using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, and (c) predictors of time on treatment using Cox proportional hazard regression. Study findings revealed immigrants had higher treatment noncompletion rates over refugees (25.6% and 19.3%). The potential risk factors for noncompletion were being older than 24 years of age (HR = 0.18, p = 0.01). There were also significant interactions for the time on treatment between (a) being < 25 years old and visa type (HR = 0.23, p = 0.04), (b) being < 25 years and traveling longer (miles) to treatment facility (HR = 0.25, p = 0.03), or (c) being < 25 years and Mtb blood-test positive (HR = 0.35, p = 0.05). These findings suggest interventions targeting visa holders older than 24 years may increase the rate of treatment completion and decrease the future TB cases. Therefore, the study promotes social change by providing actionable, rural-population-specific information for the prioritization of visa holders at increased risk of experiencing LTBI treatment noncompletion.

Unintended pregnancy is a global public health threat that affects the lives of women, families, communities, and society. In 2008, the rate of unintended pregnancy in Ethiopia was 101 per 1,000 women aged 14 to 44 years. Although Ethiopia has experienced a steady increase in modern contraceptive use since 2004, this increase did not result in a proportional decline in unintended pregnancy, total fertility rates, or rapid population growth. In this cross-sectional study, associations between individual, interpersonal, community, and societal factors and contraceptive uptake were tested using a sample of 3,863 women aged 15 to 49 years who participated in the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys. Statistically significant predictors of contraceptive use were included in the logistic regression model. Findings showed that age, education, marital status, type of residence, and wealth index reliably predicted contraceptive use. Increase in age, highest level of education, and wealth index were associated with 13%, 15%, and 65% increase in the odds of contraceptive use, respectively. Being married was associated with 85% decrease in the odds of contraceptive use and being from an urban residence was associated with 56% increase in the odds of contraceptive use. Results of the study can be used to develop targeted family planning interventions to increase contraceptive use and reduce unintended pregnancy, child and maternal mortality, total fertility rates, and rapid population growth in Ethiopia.

In 2009, a local physician assistant (PA) program lost accreditation due to decreased success in licensure pass rates on the Physician Assistant National Certification Examination (PANCE). In response, the program's admissions committee required additional metrics for accepting quality candidates more likely to pass the licensure examination on the first attempt. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of these metrics, specifically the relationship between demographics, prerequisite admission requirements, and PANCE success. The theoretical framework and conceptual model shaping this study was Bordage's illumination and magnify framework and Swail's geometric model of student persistence and achievement. The purpose of this nonexperimental quantiative study was to investigate the relationhip between the demographic variables, preadmission requirements, and their relationship to predict first-time PANCE success. Using archival data, total sampling (N = 107) included all students who took the PANCE from 2012 to 2016. Binary logistic regression results showed that The Graduate Record Examination quantitative reasoning score was statistically significant (p < .01), and a poor predictor of success, secondary to not having a significant effect on the odds of observing PANCE success. The overall results did not provide admission predictors of student success on the first-time attempt to pass PANCE. The study has significance for social change in the area of admissions policy development that supports a nonbiased process for the identification and selection of quality PA candidates.

This research explored the association between positive employment outcome (getting a job above poverty wage) and several intake variables for women in transition. The variables (self-esteem, anxiety and/or depression, pretreatment change, family functioning, community/social support, and counseling and assertiveness classes) were identified from the literature for their probable association with positive employment outcome. The intervention of taking an assertiveness class was statistically associated with positive employment outcome. The other variables appear to be linked to positive employment outcome in the direction hypothesized, although none of them reached statistical significance. The demographic variables of family size and employment status at intake were significantly associated with positive employment outcome. A discriminant analysis indicated that women with larger family size and greater self-esteem who are unemployed and take an assertiveness class were more likely to experience positive employment outcome.

The basic behavioral process of operant conditioning contributes to problem behaviors in psychological disorders. Escape from aversive situations in depression, the rewarding effects of drugs in substance abuse, and the receipt of caregiver attention for disruptive behavior in intellectual or developmental disabilities are just a few examples of operant reinforcement contingencies that perpetuate undesirable behavior. Behavioral treatment strategies often introduce alternative sources of reinforcement for a desirable alternative behavior. Although treatments can be effective, alternative reinforcement removal can trigger relapse of the problem behavior, called resurgence. Persistence in alternative reinforcement treatments and resurgence can be understood from the prospective of behavioral momentum theory, which predicts greater operant persistence and resurgence when there is a greater history of reinforcement associated with the context in which an operant response occurs. Shahan and Sweeney incorporated resurgence into the framework of behavioral momentum theory, and the proposed model makes explicit qualitative and quantitative predictions that are tested in this dissertation. Chapter 1 provides the background and significance of resurgence of operant behavior, and gives an introduction to behavioral momentum theory and the quantitative model of resurgence. Chapter 2 reports two recently published experiments that show increased time with alternative reinforcement treatment reduces subsequent resurgence in an animal model with pigeon subjects. The study presented in Chapter 3 examined how persistence and resurgence may be affected when alternative reinforcement is delivered in a novel context. This experiment, which used rat subjects, integrated and compared the animal model of resurgence with another operant relapse phenomenon, renewal, in which context change alone is known to induce relapse of a previously reduced response. Chapter 4 describes a study with college undergraduates as participants that tested the feasibility of a brief, three-alternative, forced-choice procedure as a human operant model of resurgence. Despite procedural manipulations of the length of training and probability of reward for choice of the target stimulus, resurgence was never consistently observed. Chapter 5 provides an integrative discussion of these research topics.

<p>Empirical evidence suggests work engagement to be of crucial importance for business critical aspects such as work performance and employee retention. When building a strategy for enhancing engagement in the workplace, identifying its predictors becomes important. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify predictors related to work engagement. The study was conducted in a management consultancy company, through analyzing their employee survey. Results indicated satisfaction with leadership to be of vital importance for work engagement. Other work-related attitudes identified that seemed to be reliable predictors of work engagement were employee development, communication and innovation. In addition, the demographic variables of age and status pointed towards a correlation with work engagement, however the gender variable did not show significance.</p>

<p>Between 65 – 91 % of elite soccer players have at least one injury / year (Hägglund, 2007). Several researches have established models that specify psychological factors that could predict sport injuries. Two examples are Rogers and Landers (2005) stress – coping model and Williams and Andersen´s (1998) stress – injury model. The main purpose of the study was to single out significant psychological factors that could lead to an increased injury risk among soccer players. The participants were 152 male and female soccer players (m = 17, 6) studying at soccer high schools in southwest Sweden. Five questionnaires were used STAI, SAS, LESCA, ACSI – 28 and SSP. Continuously injury record was collected by athletic trainers at the school, during a period of six months. The result suggested that there are four significant predictors that in all could explain 23 % of the injuries. The main factors are life event stress, somatic trait anxiety, mistrust and negative coping. These findings are in unison with for example Williams and Andersen´s (1998) stress – injury model and should be considered by coaches when it comes to preventing sport injuries among their athletes.</p>