While men do indeed construct self-validating and often peculiar interpretations of the realities of their world the simple fact that these views become consensually shared doctrines of experience does not protect them from the revisionism of historical scrutiny. These perceptions of the world become retrospectively altered as developing bodies of knowledge reject them as being clearly deceptive or anachronistic. The concept of psychopathology, distinguished historically under many rubrics, has not been immune to these same processes of modification, nor has it ever been free of the diverse irrationalities which men of all ages have constructed to explain the etiology and treatment of deviant behavior. Historically, consideration of atypical behavior all reflect attempts to explain dysfunction utilizing existing systems of belief and knowledge. For example, primitive and ancient societies advanced quasi-theoretical frameworks that stressed either external causation (e.g., spirit intervention, sorcery, demonic possession, lunacy, bewitchment) or personal causation (e.g., loss of soul, breach of taboo, object intrusion, brain disease). Of course, retrospective evaluation of these explanatory devices have found them to be woefully impoverished. With the advent of science these archaic beliefs were found to be incompatible with a rational view of the world where all events had logical and determinable causes. Moreover, with the development of the medical model of disease, aberrant behavior, of a functional nature, could be explained and treated in the same systematic manner as that which had an organic basis. While the "new view" still distinguished between external and internal causation of psychopathology, it radically redefined explanatory concepts and apparently located dynamics of the disease process within the individual. The classic psychiatric/psychological approach has (and continues to) stressed the description and classification of pathological signs and symptoms and when etiology was considered, illness was accounted for more often than not by such intra-psychic factors as anxiety, stress, breakdown of defense mechanisms and ego strength. Current theories of psychopathology have not been quite as oblivious to the effects of the individual's environment in the production and maintenance of both functional and organic illness. Nor can they be, for the last two decades have witnessed a growing awareness of the purely sociological aspects of pathological processes--processes which had hitherto been assigned only to individual defects. Research in the social epidemology of mental illness has established the importance of numerous sociological variables including ecological and socioeconomic status factors,personal and social characteristics, and culture-specificfactors. It is now commonly recognized that the environment of the individual plays a crucial role in determining the characteristics and course of pathological processes.

The purpose of this study was to examine reasons for living in people with secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent romantic attachment styles. Romantic attachment style was assessed by use of the Adult Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ). Reasons for living were assessed using the Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL). The independent variables were gender and romantic attachment style. The dependent variable was the RFL score. Participants included 235 male and female students from a southeastern university. A brief demographic questionnaire, the RFL (Linehan,M., Goodstein, J., Neilson, S., & Chiles J., 1983), and the AAQ (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), were administered in electronic format on-line. A 3 (attachment style) X 2 (gender) Analysis of Variance with unequal cell sizes was used to test for main and interaction effects. The significance level was set at .05. Implications of findings and suggestions for future research were discussed.

This research was conducted to investigate the effects of gender, grade level, family relationships, and vicarious victimization on self-esteem and attitudes of bullying. A self-report questionnaire was administered to sixth and seventh graders at a middle school to 436 students of whom 209 were males and 224 were females. Each home base classroom was systematically sampled for a random sample. The survey consisted of several demographic questions as well as questions regarding the previously mentioned variables. The mean age was 11.8 with 80.7% indicating they were white and 19.3% indicating another race. In the overall regression equations, gender and family relationships were significantly related to attitudes of bullying and family relationships was the only variable significant in the self-esteem equation. Several correlations between variables were found to be significant.

Professional associations must have a significant level of membership to be effective. Georgia membership is increasingly low; therefore, ADHA cannot represent dental hygienists’ interests. This study determined factors that caused dental hygienists to continue to forgo membership in the ADHA. Several theoretical views of professional membership were considered. The sample was acquired from an unbiased systematic sampling of 50% (3,270) of registered dental hygienists and a convenience sampling of ADHA nonmembers at 2 continuing education seminars in Georgia. Data collection procedures included an electronic cover letter, consent form, and survey via Survey Monkey or hard copies for seminars. Three hundred sixteen participated yielded a 9.6% return rate. Participants were primarily women, holding associate degrees, and graduates of programs in Georgia. Participants worked full time in private practice, were satisfied with their working hours, and did not join GDHA because membership fee is too high or not sure of benefits offered. Twenty-one percent stated that lowering membership fee would entice them to join, and participants indicated they obtained their continuing education hours at the Hinman (52%) convention and online (27%).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reactions people experienced when engaged in extended eye contact with a stranger. Artist Marina Abramović and an organization entitled The Liberators International have demonstrated a spectrum of reactions, many emotionally-charged, that have occurred from the opportunity to sit across from and gaze into the eyes of a stranger. Current research on eye contact has been predominantly quantitative, with no available research that qualitatively investigates the scenario in focus. The design of this study involved interviewing 35 people who participated in "The World’s Biggest Eye Contact Experiment," where individuals paired with a partner and gazed into each other's eyes for one minute. The data revealed a significant overlap between negative and positive face, where individuals sought out the experience in order to exceed their comfort zones and to foster connections with other people. Participants reported feeling a sense of vulnerability, which was attributed to civil inattention and the simultaneous threat to and expansion of negative face.

<p>Fathers' rights groups have been highly visible in Ontario in trying to maintain fatherhood identity after divorce through the exercise of their lobby for joint custody. . The fathers' right movement is attempting to influence conceptions of fatherhood as they relate to child custody. This dissertation examine the functions of the fathers' rights movement at two levels --the subjective and the social. At the subjective level the movement provides its members with a rhetoric that helps them to maintain or reconstruct their fatherhood identity postdivorce. At the social level, the movement provides both a way to translate personal troubles into a social issues --the biased and gendered nature of child custody and child support laws and practical assistance to men going through the process of divorce. The focus of the these then is on the threats to men's identity as fathers that accompany marital breakdown and divorce, and on the reactions of fathers' rightists to these identity threats. This dissertation based on: eighteen month of participant observation; interviews with twenty-eight fathers, and four women from four fathers' rights groups about their reasons for joining the group, their conceptualization of fatherhood and their opinions on joint custody. The concept of "role fragmentation" was developed to describe this particular type of identity transformation process. What can be drawn from this data is that the fathers' rights members are attempting to maintain their pre-divorce fatherhood identity. In addition, an interesting and important result of this work was the emergent description of fatherhood.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This study examines the long-term effects of adoption reunion. The main focus is on adoptees who have searched, made contact with their birth mothers and encountered a reunion experience. Intensive, open-ended interviews with a randomly-selected sample of sixty adoptees indicate that search and reunion have little connection to the adoptee's dissatisfaction with his/her adoption outcome or his/ her adoptive parent-child bonds. In fact, a large number hide their search and reunion from their adoptive parents because they do not want these significant others to think that they are unhappy with their adoptive status. The desire to reunite is more likely to be precipitated by some life-crisis event that raises the adoptive role-identity to a prominent position in the adoptee's salience hierarchy. Consideration of the meaning of that role-identity leads the adoptee to resolve the ambiguities that he/she encounters because of his/her lack of knowledge about his/her biological origins. Reunion contact resolves this sense of uncertainty because. it provides the missing background information that the adoptee needs for a consistent presentation of self in social interaction. Reunion contact with the birth mother is not a necessity for satisfactory reunion outcome. The adoptee possesses a strong vocabulary of motives that he/she uses to account for his/her reunion outcome and to integrate his/her background information as a part of his/her positive self-concept.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Bullying is a universal problem affecting the emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of school-age children worldwide. Individual level correlates of bullying have been well-documented; however, there is limited research identifying variables at the school level which contribute to bullying involvement, especially among high school students. In this dissertation, school characteristics associated with bullying were investigated using an ecological systems framework. In the first paper, a comprehensive review of the bullying literature was conducted. Research in the following areas were summarized: definitions of bullying, measures of bullying, individual correlates, influences of cognitive development and social context across age groups, contextual variables (family, school, and community), evidence-based interventions, and bullying from a socio-ecological perspective. In the second paper, research findings are presented for an original study investigating school level predictors of bullying involvement across Kentucky high schools. The study used aggregated data from a survey of 9th to 12th grade students in 26 high schools across the state, combined with existing school datasets, in order to examine: (1) the prevalence of bullies, victims, and bully-victims across Kentucky high schools and (2) school characteristics associated with elevated rates of bullying involvement. Results revealed important differences in school bullying incident reports and student reports of bullying experiences, as well as unique differences between school environments with high and low rates of bullying involvement. Overall, academic performance and parent involvement were the strongest predictors of bullying involvement at the school level; however, the relationships between these variables and prevalence rates were not as expected. In several analyses, individual level findings from the bullying research did not translate to the school level as hypothesized. Overall, these findings have important implications for researchers when using multilevel analyses in the school context, when investigating the impact of bullying interventions at the school level, and when investigating how the school environment contributes to bullying. Results also provide important information for schools developing or revising bullying data collection procedures.

American families moving abroad are often informed of the initial difficulties they will encounter as residents in a new culture; however, they may not recognize the possible subsequent effects on their children, when returning home to their native cultures during the repatriation process. The children who experience the effect of living in a new culture and eventually repatriating are known as Third Culture Kids (TCK). As globalization and expatriate populations increase, it is important that society becomes aware of the Third Culture community. This qualitative research study focused on analyzing the repatriation transition process of four Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCK) and explored the relationship between their emotional intelligence and their third culture and repatriating experiences. This dissertation provides a profile for what type of citizen a TCK may become upon repatriation. Framed within a narrative inquiry approach this study utilized the Listening Guide method of analysis in order to capture the participants’ final narrative portraits. Storied themes emerged from the final narratives providing evidence for this research study’s five main conclusions: (a) home is not defined by one physical location, (b) assimilation and repatriation do not equate, (c) emotional intelligence may be a factor in repatriation success, (d) Third Culture experiences influence civic engagement, and (e) there is one incident that is perceived as signifying the completion of repatriation. These findings offer a new perspective of the repatriating experience and provide insight for families entering the expatriate culture and returning home.

Scholars for decades have studied the achievement gap and attempted to explain it in regards to race and class. Throughout the existing literature regarding the achievement gap between black and white students, however, there is a dearth of research exploring why the gap exists for upper-class black students; this population is largely ignored. This research seeks to explain why an achievement gap exists between white and black students who come from households of similar incomes. Ten students (five white and five black gradates) of a private, non-parochial school in Washington DC are interviewed about high school and post-high school experiences. Using cultural capital and labeling theory frameworks, this study follows the work of Billings (2011), Pattillo-McCoy (2000), Lacy (2007), and Khan (2011) in their focus on black students, cultural capital, and embodied privilege, and builds on that of Lensmire (2012), Dixon-Roman 2014, Orr (2003) Adams (2010) and Tyson et al. (2005). Results uncover the uniquely complex configuration of class and race. Latent issues as a result of race can arise, and the research illustrates how they affect the achievement ideology and attainment of both black and white students. This study’s findings suggest that two mechanisms shape the achievement gap: academic support and social interactions and interpretations, with the former rooted largely in class differences and the latter rooted in racial differences. This study aims to improve our understanding of the distinct role race and class play in influencing educational and professional outcomes from upper-class backgrounds.