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The purpose of this project is to understand how humor works in expert-novice identity construction in podcasts. I employ a Community of Practice (Lave and Wenger, 1989) framework to examine the social hierarchy among the participants of a regular podcast. I am particularly concerned with uncovering how novice members construct themselves and are constructed by expert members through humor, as well as how expert members socialize novice members to participate in the kinds of humor practices that index membership in the Community of Practice (CoP). Rooster Teeth is an internet-based entertainment production company. They produce a weekly podcast which they make available for free on the internet. The podcast participants represent a small CoP with expert/novice differentiation. Combining a corpus linguistic approach with an ethnographic approach, I collected, transcribed, and studied several podcasts that were recorded over a two-year period, beginning with the first few podcasts where founding members established the practices and their roles as experts. Then, I examine the performances of three novices over time. Two of them follow a periphery to core trajectory and become regular members of the podcast while one remained on the periphery. I discovered that teasing and modeling are the primary tools that the experts use to socialize novices and that within Rooster Teeth, novices have the power to negotiate practice from the periphery of the community. This study demonstrates the power that novices may wield within CoPs, and reveals how powerful a socializing tool humor can be.

Students who experience bullying have been shown to be at greater risk for forms of maladjustment including depression and loneliness (Hawker & Boulton, 2000), and social withdrawal (Olweus, 1993). Research indicates that bullying is especially severe in middle schools (Boulton & Underwood, 1992; NCES, 2002; Olweus 1993). Students with learning disabilities (LD) are considered to be particularly at risk due to the frequent co-occurrence of poor social skills with learning disabilities (Fox & Boulton, 2005). This study examined the percentage of victims, bullies, bully-victims and non-participants in bullying as reported by a sample of 255 students (144 with LD) attending public middle school in a large, urban Southeastern school district. Classification of students into the four bullying groups was based on students' responses on the Revised Bullying Victim Questionnaire (RBVQ; Olweus, 1996). Chi-square analysis indicated that students with LD were not more frequently classified as victims of bullying than their peers without LD. Students' social skills were measured by means of the Social Skills Rating Scale- Teacher Form (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990). Results of a discriminant function analysis using scores on the three subscales of the SSRS-T as predictors indicated that students' social skills were not significantly associated with victim/non-victim status.

This dissertation examines body image ideology within the larger context of adolescent social networks and the physical environment of a high school, specifically focusing on factors that may be contributing to the current overweight/obesity epidemic among youth. I explore the ways in which adolescents construct gendered identities through talk about body image as well as adolescent practices and discourses regarding exercise and food consumption, including how their perceptions of what it means to be athletic and healthy intersect with their perceptions about body image ideals and norms. I further discuss ways in which adolescents construct moral identities through 'othering' discourses about overweight and obese people, including teasing practices. A primary goal of this ethnographic research project is to integrate the study of body image, food consumption, exercise, and teasing practices among youth in order to contribute a contextualized understanding of how youth perceive and enact these behaviors in their daily lives.

Background: There is an established need to manage teasing and bullying of children who stutter (CWS) through changing the attitudes of their peers. The intervention, the Classroom Communication Resource (CCR), was implemented by teachers in classrooms. The primary objective of the main study was to determine the effectiveness of the CCR through a cluster Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). The secondary objective of this study was to determine the treatment effect of the Stuttering Resource Outcomes Measure (SROM) within the subscales of Positive Social Distance (PSD), Social Pressure (SP) and Verbal Interaction (VI). The subgroup objective was to determine the primary objective between and across lower and higher school quintile clusters. Method: A cluster RCT was conducted. Participants in grade 7, aged 11 years and older, were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups using school and subgroup (quintile) clusters classifications. Following randomisation, stratification took place using a 1:1 allocation ratio. Participants viewed a video of a child who stuttered at baseline. Teachers administered the CCR (social story, role-play, discussion) in intervention groups only over a 60-90 minute session after they received an hour of training. Peer attitudes were measured at baseline and at 6 months post-intervention using the SROM in intervention and control groups. Results: A total of 10 schools were included whereby they were randomly allocated to control (k=5) and intervention groups (k=5). Within the schools, 454 participants were included with n =223 participants in the intervention and n= 231 in the control group. The study showed no statistically significant difference on the global SROM score (mean difference: -0.11 [95% confidence interval: -1.56, 1.34]; p = 0.88). Similarly, no significant differences were noted on SROM subscales: PSD (1.04 [-1.02,311]; p =0.32), SP (-0.45 [-1.22, 0.26]; p=0.21) and VI (0.05 [-1.01, 1.11]; 0.93), the secondary objective of this study. No significant subgroup effect on the global SROM score (lower vs higher quintile subgroups) [interaction p-value = 0.52] was observed during subgroup analysis. Results were however consistent with the hypothesis and quintile subgroups behaved similarly. Results were found clinically important when considering confidence intervals as well as the magnitude and direction of treatment effect. Conclusion: While the treatment effect showed no statistically significant differences on the global SROM and within the constructs of PSD, SP and VI, a clinically important result was noted when evaluating the meaningfulness of this study as well as its implications. Subgroup analysis showed that the quintiles behaved similarly, showing that the CCR was appropriate for schools within the lower and higher quintiles.

This study assessed the relation between weight and weight-related factors (i.e., body dissatisfaction, body esteem, teasing frequency, and the effects of teasing) in a community sample of prepubescent African American girls. African American girls (N = 97) in Grades 3 to 5 completed the McKnight Risk Factor Survey-Third Edition and had their heights and weights taken to calculate body mass index (BMI). Participants were from two public elementary schools with a predominantly African American student population in a Southern metropolitan city of the United States. Increased weight was associated with higher levels of body dissatisfaction and a greater frequency of weight teasing by peers. Weight was not associated with body esteem. These relationships between weight and related factors may be important for understanding how weight affects psychosocial functioning in a community sample of African American girls.

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The primary purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationships among peer victimization, global self-worth, social support, and internalizing behaviors (e.g., anxiety, social anxiety, and depression). Of particular interest were the potential mediating and moderating roles of global self-worth and social support in the anticipated relationships between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms. All sixth grade children from a public middle school completed self-report measures representing the constructs previously described. Reported levels of peer victimization were found to be similar to those reported in previous studies. In addition, significant associations were found among all variables of interest, with the exception of social support and total anxiety. Global self-worth was found to partially mediate the peer victimization-social anxiety and peer victimization-depression relationships. These findings suggest that victimization experiences may negatively influence children's views of themselves and help explain the elevated levels of depression and social anxiety also reported by them. Furthermore, global self-worth moderated the peer victimization-total anxiety relationship, such that children with higher global self-worth reported fewer total anxiety symptoms than children with lower global self-worth. However, analyses failed to support the role of social support as either a mediator or moderator in the relationships examined. Findings are integrated into the literature regarding peer victimization and internalizing symptomology. / Master of Science

The goal of this paper is to examine the efficiency of the cyber bullying provisions of Florida's Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up For All Students Act in deterring cyber bullying behavior. The study includes several subordinate goals to answer this question. The first is measuring the awareness of students about this law (whose behavior is the focus of the law), measuring the awareness of teachers and school officials of this law (who are to enforce this law), and measuring the awareness of legal professionals about the law (who will pursue the law in court). The study also seeks to determine the perceptions of cyber bullying and the laws governing the behavior in each of these groups. The research includes a study of neutralization of cyber bullying behavior and deterrence of the law. To do this, the study uses a mixed method approach to collect quantitative, qualitative, and legal data to answer these questions. Current research studies, survey data, and interviews are utilized in conjunction with an investigation of legislation and case law. Florida's statute is compared to three other anti-bullying state statutes (Arizona, Missouri, and Vermont) created to combat bullying and cyber bullying within their states. Case law is examined on a national basis to determine trends in cyber bullying litigation. Following analysis of the data, conclusions are drawn on the efficiency of the law and suggestions are made to improve the law's performance. Suggestions for future research are also made.