The inextricable ties between work and family have been extensively studied, however, with both societal and organizational change there is a continuing need for organizational research to elucidate the effects work can have on family, individual, and job well-being. Through three studies, this body of work demonstrates the role of supervisors, psychological contextual factors, and workplace work-family resources for improving employee and spouse family well-being and employee psychological and job well-being. This dissertation drew upon data from the Study for Employment Retention of Veterans (SERVe) and the Work-family Health Network (WFHN). Study 1 investigated the link between a supportive supervisor training and employee and spouse ratings of spouse and parent-child relationship quality at 3 and 9 months, while examining the moderating effects of baseline stress. Results revealed that the supportive supervisor training is associated with improved spouse reports of spousal relationship quality 3 months following the training. Additionally, results suggested that the training protects against employee and spouse declines in relationship quality under conditions of higher baseline employee stress. Study 2 examined the daily within and between-person link between work-to-family conflict (WFC) and affective well-being for employees and their spouses, with a focus on how daily family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) can protect against WFC associated declines in mood. Findings from Study 2 revealed that daily WFC is related to declines in both employee and spouse mood at the within and between-person levels, however the associations between WFC and spouse mood are nuanced. Specifically, employee WFC was associated with spouse positive mood at the within-person level, but with spouse negative mood at the between-person level. Furthermore, FSSB protected against daily within-person WFC associated declines in employee positive mood. Study 3 utilized a novel theoretical integration of COR theory and climate framework, multi-level methodology, and a time-lagged design in order to elucidate the relationships between supervisor work-family views, unit-level work-family resources (e.g., FSSB and schedule control), and individual well-being. Results revealed that positive supervisor views about flexible work arrangements (FWA) for employees was associated with higher unit levels of FSSB, and that unit level FSSB and schedule control were both strongly related to subsequent employee burnout. Additionally, supervisor FWA was indirectly associated with job-burnout via FSSB. These three studies drew upon multi-level, multi-time points, and multi-source data to further work-family literature and theory, and demonstrate the importance of work-family resources for protecting employees and their families from stress related resource loss. The unique contributions of this dissertation and future directions are discussed.

First year medical school enrollment is projected to reach 21,349 by the 2018 school year, reflecting a 30 percent increase compared to 2002 enrollment numbers (Erikson, Whatley, & Tilton, 2014). In 2006, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recommended this increase in enrollment in response to concerns about a physician shortage. Unfortunately, the increase in the number of medical students enrolling in medical school may be good for society, but it may not be good for the health of medical students. A commentary in the journal, Academic Medicine, was titled, “Medical Student Distress: A Call to Action” (Dyrbye & Shanafelt, 2011). There is concern that the structure of medical education may contribute to the lack of wellbeing in medical students beginning in their first year of medical school. This is an issue of great importance to society as medical students are experiencing distress at a time when more physicians are needed. Medical schools are working to better understand the process of professional identity formation of medical students. The experiences in medical school contribute, both in positive and negative ways to the socialization and creation of a new identity for medical students. The overall purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the narrative reflections of first year medical students as a rich source of data on the construction of their professional identity formation as a physician. This was a qualitative research study using narrative inquiry. In order to gain a deeper understanding of how first year experiences of medical students influence their professional identity formation, I explored and analyzed 205 reflections of first year medical students from a northeast medical school as a rich source of data on the construction of their professional identity as a physician. Four themes emerged as important to medical students during their first year of medical school from their narrative reflections: balance, mental health, hidden curriculum and professionalism. The four themes reveal that first year medical students experience varying levels of stress during their first year of medical school. This mirrors the results of a study done more than eighty years ago. Now and then, medical students expressed similar concerns. (Strecker, Appel, Palmer, & Braceland, 1937) asked fourth year medical students questions about their wellness, phrased as neurotic or nervous symptoms. Sixty percent of the students believed their symptoms appeared when they started studying medicine. These findings support the concerns of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC). In 2016, AAMC held a Leadership Forum in Washington, DC to address what they called a public health crisis. There was significant concern about the wellbeing of those in academic medicine.

This study investigated the two research questions, 1) what are the relationships among the pretest latent variables mindfulness, stress, and flourishing and the manifest variables GPA and retention in first-year college students in a first-year experience seminar and 2) will there be differences in mindfulness, stress, flourishing, GPA, and retention between groups of students in a first-year experience seminar who received a brief mindfulness intervention and those who did not? To answer these questions, the author analyzed secondary data collected from 373 first-year college students at a large public research university who took Introduction to the University (UNIV 101). The study was a repeated-measures quasi-experimental nonequivalent control groups design. Eighteen instructors across 35 class sections volunteered to provide the intervention in their class, 248 first-year students (66%) made up the mindfulness group, and 125 first-year students (35%) made up the comparison group. Women made up 70% (n = 261) of the sample and males made up 30% (n = 112). Pretests and posttests included demographics, the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Flourishing Scale (FS), and questions asking about prior mindfulness experience (pretest) and current and potential future practices (posttest). Chi-squared tests and t-tests evaluated variances between groups in demographics and outcome variables. Only gender varied significantly. Bivariate Pearson’s correlations of the latent variables showed 1) a significant positive relationship between mindfulness and flourishing and 2) significant negative relationships between stress and both mindfulness and flourishing. Simple regression analyses for the pretest latent variables with GPA showed a significant positive predictive relationship only between pretest flourishing and Spring GPA. The same tests run with the posttest latent variables showed 1) significant positive predictive relationships between GPA and both mindfulness and flourishing and 2) significant negative predictive relationships between stress and GPA. Only posttest flourishing positively predicted retention. For question two, a multilevel model controlling for class sections and gender showed no significant differences in any outcome variable between either group. A post hoc analysis showed that all students had significant decreases in mindfulness and flourishing at the end of the semester and a significant increase in stress.

Healthcare providers may impede the delivery of spiritual and emotional support to patients and their families by healthcare professional chaplains if they misunderstand how to effectively use chaplains, who often prefer to be engaged sooner than they are. This issue prevents highly trained, board-certified professional chaplains from providing services, thereby impacting the quality of patient care. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine, through the lived experiences of professional chaplains, the extent to which chaplains feel that others perceive them as valued members of an interdisciplinary team (IDT), as well as to determine how team inclusion may impact chaplains' physical and emotional well-being. An adaptation of the antecedents and outcomes of inclusion theoretical framework was used. Research questions were developed to elicit to what extent professional chaplains perceived that they were valued members of IDTs and what impact inclusion had on their well-being A semistructured interview protocol with open-ended questions was used with 9 board-certified professional chaplains in the northeastern region of the United States.. Data were analyzed through coding and comparison of significant responses into units of meaning to reflect the phenomenon of participants' experiences. Key findings revealed that inclusion did have an impact on the well-being of chaplains, and its impact was perceived as positive. This study may contribute to positive social change by helping to initiate training and education programs for healthcare organizations that work with and employ professional chaplains to effectively integrate chaplains into IDTs, ensuring more timely evaluation and care planning for patients and their families to achieve greater wholeness and healing.

Thesis (M.A.(Research Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2014 / This study investigated the association between family structure and both academic outcome and psychological well-being among learners (N = 500) from the Nkomazi Municipality, Mpumalanga. The learners were classified into six family structure types, including traditional, two-biological parents, single mother, single father, blended, grandparent-led and sibling-led types. The results regarding the association between family structure and academic outcomes were equivocal; chi-square analysis showed that there was no association between family structure and the overall mid-year examination results (“pass” or “fail”) and the learners qualitative self-rating (ps > 0.05); yet the overall symbol obtained for the mid-year examinations was related to family structure (p < 0.05). Furthermore, an association was found between family structure and both self-esteem and positive affect (ps < 0.05), and the relationship between family structure and psychological distress, life satisfaction and negative affect, all measures of psychological well-being did not achieve statistical significance. Possible reasons for lack of association between family structure and some variables of academic performance and psychological well-being variables used in this study are explored. Keywords: family structure, academic outcome, psychological well-being

Background and aims: Despite living with a gluten-free diet (GFD) Swedish women with coeliac disease (CD) report a lower level of well-being than women without the disease and than men with the disease. The aims of this thesis were to describe the life experience of being a woman living with CD (I) and to assess the effects of patient education (PE) with problem based learning (PBL) on psychological well-being (II) and gastrointestinal symptoms (III). Subjects and methods: In total 106 women, &gt; 20 years, with confirmed CD, who had been treated with a GFD for a minimum of five years were randomized (II&amp;III) to one of two groups: either to the intervention group (n=54) that underwent a ten-session educational program, called ‘Coeliac School’, with PBL, or to a control group (n=52) that received information regarding CD, which was sent to their home on a regular basis. Assessments: Well-being (II &amp; III) (the Psychological General Well-Being index and the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale) was assessed at baseline and after 10 weeks in all patients and after 6 months in the intervention group. Individual interviews (I) were carried out with purposefully selected women (n=15) before the start of the‘Coeliac School’. Result: The qualitative study showed that CD can influence women’s lives in different ways. A desire for a normalised life-world was described. Three conditions necessary to achieve a normalised life-world were described as: being secure, being in control and being seen and included. After ten weeks of education, participants in the “Coeliac school” reported a significant improvement in psychological well-being (p=0.001) and gastrointestinal symptoms (p=0.013). The controls did not improve significantly. However, at baseline the controls, for reasons which were not apparent, and despite randomization, expressed significantly better psychological well-being and fewer gastrointestinal symptoms than women in the intervention group. Six months after completion of the PE program some of its positive effect had decreased. Conclusions: A PE with PBL can help women with CD to benefit from a greater degree of well-being. It is important to offer PE to those women who fail to achieve a normalised lifeworld. However, intervention methods need to be refined in order to provide a more pronounced long-term effect.

In India, ranked 132nd out of 148 countries in the United Nations Gender Inequality Index (2013), females face numerous challenges that pose a threat to their sexual health and psychological well-being. This paper focuses specifically on adolescent unmarried females living in an urban slum, a particularly vulnerable segment of the population that is important to empower in order to effect change. With the ultimate aim to better understand how to design effective and accessible interventions for adolescent females, this paper explores sexual health and its relation to psychological well-being from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders: adolescent girls, mothers of adolescent girls, and service providers who work with adolescent girls. To understand the unique and shared perspectives of the stakeholders regarding the constructs of psychological well-being, gender roles, and sexual health, the author utilized focus group and interview data. Through the use of the deductive-inductive coding process, the author identified overall themes and differences in perspective that elucidated the perspectives of the population. The findings revealed that there is great overlap in the three constructs studied, and each is influenced by and impacts the other. Additionally, the findings showed a trend of girls, mothers, and service providers understanding the importance of girls having access to sexual health information and openness towards mothers potentially sharing this information with daughters. Other implications, future research directions, and limitations are discussed. / acase@tulane.edu

Wellness is defined as an individual's lifestyle, choices, and habits as a way to achieve optimal health and well-being. Professional organizations and literature in the counseling field underscored the importance of enhancing personal wellness of professional counselors and counselors-in-training. The assumption underlying this movement was that counselors' personal wellness would be directly translated into their effectiveness with clients in counseling practice. However, this assumption has received little empirical attention. In addition, the review of counselor wellness literature illustrated the need for addressing potential moderators in the relationship of counselor wellness to counseling effectiveness as an attempt to provide an elaborated knowledge base for wellness interventions in counselor training. Thus, this study investigated the relationship of Korean counselors' personal wellness to their clients' perceptions of counseling effectiveness and the moderating effects of counselor empathy on this relationship. Participants in this study were 133 counselor-client dyads who had engaged in face-to-face individual counseling at university counseling centers or youth counseling institutes located in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Survey measures for counselors were used for the assessment of personal wellness, empathy, and social desirability. Client survey measures were used to assess counseling effectiveness variables: (a) satisfaction with counselors' in-session behavior, (b) evaluation about the session impact, and (c) perception of the working alliance. The results from correlation and multiple regression analyses indicated that Korean counselors' personal wellness scores were not significantly related to their clients' ratings of counseling effectiveness. However, a series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that Korean counselors' cognitive empathy moderated the relationships of their personal wellness to client-perceived counseling effectiveness. Specifically, the findings suggested that, for Korean counselors with lower levels of cognitive empathy, wellness in Essential Self had a positive influence on client-perceived session smoothness, but wellness in Coping Self had a negative effect on client-rated working alliance. Also, wellness in Creative Self was found to have a negative influence on client-perceived session smoothness only among Korean counselors with higher levels of cognitive empathy. These findings call into question the supposition that well counselors are more likely to be effective with their clients, suggesting that a more complicated interplay between counselor wellness and other potential moderators should be considered as a determinant of counseling effectiveness. Future research is warranted to see if this study's findings are replicated with American counselor samples. Limitations are presented with a focus on range restrictions on the counseling effectiveness variables and small effect sizes associated with the interactions. In light of these limitations, future research directions are also discussed.

Because Latinos are the largest, fastest-growing ethnic minority group in the U.S., learning more about their sexual and reproductive experiences and decision-making processes is important. Importantly, although sexuality and abortion are stigmatized in many Latino cultures and conservative religious beliefs specifically oppose abortion, Latinas have the highest birth rates in the U.S. and an estimated one in four pregnancies to Latina women are terminated (Jones, Darroch, &Henshaw, 2002; Jones, Finer, &Singh, 2010). Consequently, nuanced exploration of contradictions in reproductive behaviors and cultural and religious values is critical to supporting women's health and well-being. Seeking to advance the scholarship on the lived experiences of women who undergo elective abortion, this dissertation used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and a cultural and religious lens to explore the decision-making processes and phenomenological experiences of four young Mexican-American women who elected to terminate their first pregnancy. Results indicated that the women in this study believed abortion was unique, and more difficult for Mexican-American (and other Latina) women, given cultural and religious norms that specifically prohibit abortion and simultaneously prioritize sexual purity, responsibility, and motherhood for women. The complexity and difficulty inherent in navigating overlapping and oftentimes contradictory sociocultural and religious values are discussed as they relate to the participants' abortion decision and experience. The manuscript concludes with strengths and limitations of the present study, suggestions for future research, and implications for psychologists. Keywords: Mexican, Latina, Abortion, Reproductive Health

Most sociological analyses of community attachment have focused on the strength of attachment, with little concern for the qualities or attributes of a place to which people become attached. In cases where dimensions of attachment are the focus of analysis, the literature is rather narrowly focused on social dimensions, re ferring most often to connections with family, friends, and other social networks and largely ignoring the realm of natural environment factors. Two primary premises motivated this study. Fi rst, sociological understandi ngs of community attachment wou ld benefit from an expanded analytic framework that incorporates more complex arrays of both social and natural environment dimensions. Second, it is important to understand what variations in attachment may mean for the broader well-being of rural communities. Initial analyses of the data demonstrated four key results. First, factor analysis of fi fleen indicators of attachment produced two distinct dimensions of community attachment, social and natural environment. Second, the nature of the response patterns indicates that strength of natural environment attachment is widely shared amongst a variety of res idents, regardless of length of residence, historical roots to the area, or life cycle. Third, participation in collective action and perceptions of open communication (measures of well-being) within a respondent's community explained only a small portion of the variance in both social and natural environment attachment. Fourth, Structural Equation Modeling demonstrated that there is a causal relationship between attachment and community well-being, though that relationship appeared to be non-recursive. In contrast to much of the previous empirical work on community attachment, this research provides strong evidence of the natural environment dimension and provides justification for further research. This research provides one model to be considered and expanded upon in future research efforts in this area, and supports the need for further attention to the use of multiple dimensions of attachment and their associations with community well-being.