Victims of childhood bullying often use passive coping strategies and experience depression, substance abuse use, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine adults' lived experiences of coping methods they used as victims of bullies during adolescence. Lazarus and Folkman's transactional theory of stress and coping provided the framework for the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 young adults who were bullied as adolescents. Coding analysis indicated 7 emerging themes for coping: confrontation, self-controlling, seeking social support, accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, problem-solving, and positive reappraisal. Participants reported that some coping methods were perceived as effective. The results suggested that self-support and the support of friends and family were key factors in overcoming childhood victimization. Findings may be used by parents, teachers, counselors, and community members to assist bullied or at-risk adolescents in developing coping methods to support their ongoing personal development.

Music is everywhere. From formal occasions to a person’s morning run. Music is available on cell phones, computers, in religious ceremonies, at concerts and venues. Music is seen by society to be important and a person’s choice of music can be used to present an identity. The question considered in this article is how people talk about music and how they present identity through their discussion. The current study examines eight focus groups of three actors instructed to simply talk about music. The discussions were recorded and analyzed in a conversation analytic style to identify the structures of the conversations and how these were used to present and regulate identity. Participants also provided background information about their music preferences and experiences as well as their goals in managing their self-presentation. The results of the study focus on the general question of “What kind of music do you listen to?” and how participants managed their answers. Particular attention is given to actors’ management of opportunities to create an in-group identification and avoid inference rich categorization. This study focuses primarily upon different ways this can be managed. Examples include three part list use, storytelling, subgenre specifications, and the use of phrases like “I listen to all kinds of music.” It is argued that these devices can be used by an actor to present themselves as a member of the current in-group while avoiding being categorized in a possibly negative way based on their music choices.

In-depth interviews were conducted with African-American female college students ranging from freshmen to graduate level. Students were asked about their dating preferences for African-American men. The study investigated how physical appearance, trust, and attitudes about interracial relationships affected their dating selection. Symbolic interactionism and dramatugry were the theories used within this study. This study found evidence that supports existing literature on attitudes of distrust among African-American females toward African-American males, with lying, physical aggression, and cheating as top reasons. Distrust based on the females' viewpoints began with listening to warnings from their mothers about men's behavior. This study, however, found that dating preferences among females interviewed did not recognize physical appearance, such as light or dark skin preference and body-frame preference, as a significant factor for date selection. This finding is in contrast to existing literature. Attitude differences between young African-American female college students and the older African-American female college students were found. Freshmen and sophomores related more of listening to social-group attitudes on dating preferences whereas junior, senior, and graduate- level females relied on individual decision making on dating selection. Supporting the current existing literature on attitudes about interracial relationships, the majority of the women interviewed had negative attitudes toward interracial relationships.

This research was completed to deal with many unanswered questions regarding drug use, specifically drug use in areas of rural poverty. Look at any "Faces of Meth" billboard or listen to any corporate-news program and one might assume there is a drug epidemic in rural areas. Without research, this allows the viewer to assume that poverty is the fault of the drug user who happens to live in rural places. This study sought to take a qualitative and ethnographic methodology to "embed" the researcher in this setting to see for himself whether these views were valid or invalid. The questions of functional drug use were at the forefront of the study, as was the possible relationship between drug use and rural poverty. This study transformed into a serious analysis of a network of drug users in the town of Mulch Valley. While standard sociological (and policy issues) concerns are dealt with, this thesis moves beyond such concerns. Theoretical concerns are brought into questions as new concepts, such as: cultural narrative of addiction, master sociality, slave sociality, and Derridity." "Crushing. Cheating. Changing. Am I deaf or dead? Is this constricting construction or just streets with rusty signs of something violent coming?" (Manson, 2012)

This study examined relationships between facial appearance, gender-linked traits, and feminist stereotypes. Naïve college students rated traits based on facial appearance of female CEO's whose companies appeared in the Forbes 1000 list. The photos of each female CEO (n=35) were randomly combined with two descriptive identifiers; an occupation (n=9) and an interest area (n=9), including 'feminist'. Participants then rated the head shots of the CEO's on a 7 point Likert scale of communal (expected feminine) traits like attractiveness, warmth, compassion and cooperativeness, and on agentic (expected masculine) traits like ambition, leadership ability and intelligence. If college students hold negative stereotypes of feminists, feminist identified women are expected to be rated lower on levels of attractiveness, warmth, compassion and cooperativeness, but higher in leadership ability, ambition, and intelligence. Results demonstrated that participants did not hold negative stereotypes of feminists as they rated them similarly to environmentalists, progressives, and liberals. Results demonstrated that participants held negative stereotypes about conservatives and republicans.

On the night of April 20, 2010, a group of students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Río Piedras campus, met to organize an indefinite strike that quickly broadened into a defense of accessible public higher education of excellence as a fundamental right and not a privilege. Although the history of student activism in the UPR can be traced back to the early 1900s, the 2010-2011 strike will be remembered for the student activists’ use of new media technologies as resources that rapidly prompted and aided the numerous protests. This activist research entailed a critical ethnography and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of traditional and alternative media coverage and treatment during the 2010 -2011 UPR student strike. I examined the use of the 2010-2011 UPR student activists’ resistance performances in constructing local, corporeal, and virtual spaces of resistance and contention during their movement. In particular, I analyzed the different tactics and strategies of resistance or repertoire of collective actions that student activists used (e.g. new media technologies) to frame their collective identities via alternative news media’s (re)presentation of the strike, while juxtaposing the university administration’s counter-resistance performances in counter-framing the student activists’ collective identity via traditional news media representations of the strike. I illustrated how both traditional and alternative media (re)presentations of student activism developed, maintained, and/or modified students activists’ collective identities. As such, the UPR student activism’s success should not be measured by the sum of demands granted, but by the sense of community achieved and the establishment of networks that continue to create resistance and change. These networks add to the debate surrounding Internet activism and its impact on student activism. Ultimately, the results of this study highlight the important role student movements have had in challenging different types of government policies and raising awareness of the importance of an accessible public higher education of excellence.

Professional interactions that are both functional and mutually beneficial are rare. The purpose of this study is to explore an application of a Third Culture Building (TCB) approach, a mutually constructed interpersonal process between two individuals, for Black American professionals (with advanced knowledge acquired from institutions of higher learning), to generate a new space in Predominantly White Institutions (PWis). These institutions include settings where the racial composition is becoming consistently more diverse (through past desegregation efforts). Although the U.S. has moved beyond integration and the monumental Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, racism and intercultural barriers that prevent functional cross-cultural communication still exist in these settings. This research is directed toward answering the question: How might Black American professionals generate a Third Culture space in PWis through cross-cultural social exchange? The research builds on my previous study where the TCB approach was found to be conducive for the intercultural barriers faced by Black Americans in PWis. The research emphasizes the perspective of Black Americans and de-emphasizes the perspective of White Americans, given the body of literature that points to their adaptation and intercultural interactions in the U.S. and in international contexts. A sample of six Black American professionals (ages 30 to 72; 4 men and 4 women) from my baseline study was invited to take part in this study. Respondents were chosen based on their backgrounds and similarity of race, to learn about their perspectives of the intercultural interactions in PWis. Participants live in the Midwest region of the U.S. Using interpretive, critical theory, and other qualitative approaches, the discussions from a focus group and interviews were transcribed and combined with the interviewer's notes. The participants' responses were organized around TCB frameworks and the interview questions, and then reduced to codes. Two evaluators reviewed the interview data, codes, and themes.

An emerging framework, the Identity Pathology (IP) model, partially addresses persistent uncertainties about the primary causes of disparities in cardiovascular health (CVH) between black and white women and men through outlining how identity beliefs associated with social group membership lead to predictable differences in the health-damaging effects of discrimination exposure. Using data from the CARDIA cohort, this doctoral thesis seeks to: 1) propose a novel psychosocial characteristic, identity pathology, that drives the distribution of reported race and gender discrimination in health-relevant ways, 2) assess whether there are group differences in the effects of multiple versus single forms of discrimination on future CVH, and 3) assess variation between these groups in the relationships of reported racial and gender discrimination in a variety of daily life settings with future CVH. The IP framework suggests that beliefs about identity unique to each gendered race group influence the perception of discrimination and whether reported exposure will be associated with CVH. Simultaneous reports of racial and gender discrimination in multiple settings (compared with no discrimination) were negatively associated with future CVH only among white men. Further, the setting in which discrimination was reported appeared to be a significant indicator of whether experiencing multiple forms of discrimination negatively impacted CVH in each group. Our findings contribute to the literature through introducing a novel framework for assessing the effects of interpersonal discrimination. This work also provides preliminary evidence that compounded experiences of interpersonal racial and gender discrimination may not substantially contribute to poorer CVH among black women.

While the connection between major choice and career goals seems logically obvious, research exploring this process is limited, particularly concerning how socio-economic class, based on parents' educational levels, influences the choice process. An important initial step in understanding this larger process is to explore how SES-based differences affect the process of choosing a major, a career goal and the way in which students link their major to a possible career. This study utilizes a comparative interview design to explore the lived experiences regarding major and career aspirations of first generation and traditional college seniors who have transferred from a community college to Portland State University. This study considers a first generation student to be any student that does not have a parent that has graduated from a four-year university in the United States. A traditional student is any student that has one or more parents who have earned at least a four-year degree in the U.S. Using a conceptual framework based on Pierre Bourdieu's work on social reproduction, this qualitative interview study examines how social and cultural capital as well as habitus influences first generation and traditional community college transfer students' choice of career, major and the link these students make between the two. This research found that the majority of students, both first generation and traditional community college transfer students, gained domain specific information that helped them with their major and or career goals from mentors such as, professors and academic advisers. However, Traditional students received "life advice" and encouragement from family members and employers that helped them to stay on track and gain inside information regarding their career choices. Traditional students used their past and current work history to assist them in strengthening their chances at realizing their career goals. Many traditional students planned to use the degrees they earned at college to advance within fields they already were working in. In comparison, it was only after they started college and settled on specific majors that first generation students looked for work experiences to help explore possible occupational outcomes. Another major difference between the two groups of students was that traditional students linked their majors to multiple jobs in an occupational area while first generation students linked their major to specific occupational positions. While there has been a large amount of research in the United States using Bourdieu's theory to examine how micro processes of language and teacher's expectations are utilized to maintain social stratification in K-12 education, there has been little research done on the micro processes that occur in college that lead to the reproduction of social class. This thesis illustrates how family background-based advantages that lead to differences in students' K-12 success actually continue after they enter higher education. By drawing attention to the importance of how family-background impacts major and career choices for community college transfer students after they arrive at the university, this thesis contributes to Bourdieu's explanation of how education at all levels contributes to the reproduction of a socially stratified society.

This Master's thesis examines girls' self-esteem through a qualitative research project held in the summer of 2010 at Portland, Oregon's Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls. I interviewed ten white, middle class girls between the ages of ten and thirteen on various subjects including demographics, self-esteem, music, Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls and finally, experiences and pressures associated with being a girl. One key finding was the unique set of circumstances and experiences present which may foster higher self-esteem: 1) freedom from gender normative behavior; 2) skill mastery associated with learning an instrument; 3) support for a wider range of self-expression; 4) removal of the male gaze and male approval [in a female only space]; and 5) access to female role models. This thesis suggests that through their involvement with the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, these ten girls experience greater self-esteem.