The specific purpose of this study was to try and understand why unique experiences of living with an alcoholic parent could create developmental deficits which emotionally challenge COAs' when faced with the life lessons a college environment offers. This study offered four possible explanations for experiencing challenges in its theoretical background: (1) psychosocial development, (2) the epistemology of alcoholism and its effects on the family, (3) personality development and the concurrence of building resilience, and (4) the college environment itself, with the phenomenon of binge drinking--forcing COAs to confront family alcoholism. A total of 7 participated in this study--4 men and 3 women. Despite the dynamic differences in the answers overall, all 7 participants acknowledged one important concept. When the participants were asked about their own drinking habits, each participant said, though in different ways, they had to be careful with their drinking habits. Participants seemed to be aware that whether alcoholism is genetic or a learned addiction, they were at risk of becoming alcoholics themselves. This study found overall, as previous literature suggests, no matter how COAs are studied, they are found to be a heterogeneous population. Specifically, this study's results points out that they are indeed heterogeneous, yet similar in that all participants in this study, it could be argued, exhibit some vulnerability in regard to parental alcoholism.

There is a lack of clarity in the current literature in how potential etiological factors interact and result in disordered eating. The purpose of this study was to examine an expanded model of Personality, Social Support, Appraisal/Coping Processes, Abuse History, Internalization of Sociocultural Standards, Psychological Disturbances, and Body Disparagement in the development of disordered eating. The current model was evaluated using 276 women in their transition to college, a time period highly associated with symptoms believed to increase a woman's risk for the development of disordered eating including perceived difficulty coping, weight gain, and negative affect. Structural equation modeling was used to allow simultaneous examination of the causal relationships between the factors. Structural analyses confirmed that college women with previous stressful experiences appraised the adjustment to college as more stressful and reported feeling less able to cope with the transition. Those women who identified the transition as overwhelming were also aware of increased negative mood and psychological states since beginning the school semester. Further, women with previous traumatic sexual experiences appeared to be at additional risk for increased negative affective symptoms. The resulting model confirmed that those women who experience negative mood states and those that endorse strong internalization of cultural values regarding attractiveness encountered increased dissatisfaction and disapproval of their bodies. Finally, women with higher levels of body concern engaged in more eating behaviors associated with disordered eating. The roles of personality functioning and perceived social support could not be identified in the developmental model. The predictive links between constructs in the resulting model provide meaningful information regarding the transition to college and associated risks for development of disordered eating. Validation of the model in an independent sample would provide confirmation of these relationships and longitudinal research examining females' attitudes across crucial developmental periods might provide important information regarding which individuals are most at risk for development of disordered eating.

Psychological and behavioral characteristics of female undergraduates with varying levels of disordered eating, as measured by the Questionnaire for Eating Disorder Diagnoses (Q-EDD; Mintz, O'Halloran, Mulholland, & Schneider, 1997), were investigated. Results suggest that the Q-EDD is an appropriate instrument for measuring eating disorder symptomatology. Greater disordered eating was associated with more bulimic, dieting, and weight fluctuation symptoms, higher impression management and approval-seeking needs, more dichotomous thinking, self control, and rigid weight regulation, and increased concern with body shape and dissatisfaction with facial features. Eating-disordered and symptomatic women evidenced more severe eating disorder behaviors and psychological distress than asymptomatic women. Findings are congruent with a redefined discontinuity perspective of eating disorder symptomatology. Treatment implications and campus-wide preventions are suggested.

Traditionally, nurse anesthesia educators have utilized prior academic achievement to predict student success. However, research has indicated that prior academic achievement offers an inadequate assessment of student success in graduate healthcare programs with extensive clinical residencies. The educational literature has identified many non-cognitive factors, such as self-efficacy and locus of control, that may provide a more holistic prediction model of student success. An experimental study with pretest-posttest design and stratified random assignment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention to promote self-management, professional socialization, and academic achievement among first semester graduate nurse anesthesia students. Participants (N = 66) were demographically similar to the national graduate nurse anesthesia student body, though Hispanics and younger students were a little over-represented in the sample (56% female, 75.8% White, 15.2% Hispanic, 6% Other, 59% ≤ 30-years-old, 67% ≤ 3 years of ICU). The results showed that most graduate anesthesia students had strong self-management and professional socialization characteristics on admission. The results did not support the effectiveness of this educational intervention. Thus, ceiling effect may have accounted in part for statistically non-significant results regarding self-efficacy (p = .190, ω2 = .03), locus of control (p = .137, ω2 = .04), professional socialization (p = .819, ω2 = .001), and academic achievement (p = .689, ω2 = .003). Future researchers may need to expand the scope of the intervention, use a more powerful and sensitive instrument, and utilize a larger sample.

Mini-dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements of the Master's Degree in Technology: Chiropractic, Durban Institute of Technology, 2006. / Learner progression is a key marker in charting the success of learners within an educational institution. This marker is however limited in that it is not able to identify the factors related to the learner, which are categorised into issues of identity, economics, politics and educational paradigms within which the learner develops and the learners supporting psychosocial paradigm is moulded. Thus for the purposes of this research the focus was on the psychosocial paradigm, as the associated factors are informally structured and therefore presented the most variance in their influence on the learner in their progression through higher education. In addition the psychosocial paradigm is discussed as being intrinsically or extrinsically related to the individual learner. Furthermore within the context of the psychosocial paradigm there are factors relating to identity (encompassing both academic and social literacy) which were discussed. Thus the aim of this research was to investigate the impact or role of psychosocial factors in the academic progression of M.Tech chiropractic learner’s at DUT. / M

Working with students in social fundamentals classes in which social comprehension has been found to influence the development of these traits, this study attempts to determine whether sex, college classification and subject-matter are factors in the development of objectivity, agreeableness, and cooperativeness.

The purpose of this investigation is to extend the study of the influence of social comprehension on the adjustment of college students by (1) determining the adjustment progress of students in the social fundamentals classes, and (2) comparing the adjustment progress of men and women in these home economics classes with the progress of men and women in other subject-matter fields.

The purpose of the present study is to determine whether subject matter and the class section are factors in the development of certain personality traits in college students of social fundamentals. Specifically, the purposes are: (1) to determine whether subject matter field and class section are factors in the development of personality traits referred to as objectivity, agreeableness, and co-operativeness; and (2) to determine which subject matter fields and class sections are responsible for group differences.

The purposes of the present investigation were (1) to determine whether systematic desensitization could be administered in a group setting, (2) to evaluate the stability of any reductions in test-anxiety which resulted from group desensitization, and (3) to make recommendations for counseling research and practice which were warranted by the results of the investigation.

The problem of this study was to measure the effect of group counseling on visual imagery and selected personality factors of junior and senior level secondary school students. The purpose of this study was to determine if perception of visual images changed after group counseling. Also investigated was whether a concomital relationship existed among the perception of visual images and the self-concept, ascendance, and sociability.