abstract: This study presents a structural model of coping with dating violence. The model integrates abuse frequency and solution attribution to determine a college woman's choice of coping strategy. Three hundred, twenty-four undergraduate women reported being targets of some physical abuse from a boyfriend and responded to questions regarding the abuse, their gender role beliefs, their solution attribution and the coping behaviors they executed. Though gender role beliefs and abuse severity were not significant predictors, solution attribution mediated between frequency of the abuse and coping. Abuse frequency had a positive effect on external solution attribution and external solution attribution had a positive effect on the level of use of active coping, utilization of social support, denial and acceptance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Counseling Psychology 2011

abstract: There is a growing trend among community samples of young, adult women to initiate drug use for weight loss (Boys, Marsden, & Strang, 2001; Mendieta-Tan, Hulbert-Williams, & Nicholls, 2013). Research has suggested that consequential weight loss may maintain drug use (Cohen, et al., 2010; Ersche, Stochl, Woodward, & Fletcher, 2013; Sirles, 2002), which is compounded by women's perception that drugs are convenient and guarantee weight loss (Mendieta-Tan, et al., 2013). Stimulants, including cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, are notable drugs of use among college students (Johnston, et al., 2014; Teter, McCabe, LaGrange, Cranford, & Boyd, 2006). With known appetitive and metabolic effects, stimulants may be particularly attractive to college women, who are at elevated risk for increased body dissatisfaction and experimenting with extreme weight loss techniques (Grunewald, 1985; National Eating Disorder Association, 2013). A preliminary epidemiological study of 130 college women between 16- and 24-years old (Mage = 18.76, SDage = 1.09) was conducted to begin to investigate this phenomenon. Results showed women who reported use for weight control (n = 19, 14.6 %) predominantly used stimulants (68.4%), and this subgroup was severely elevated on global and subscales of eating pathology compared with college norms. Moreover, the odds of stimulant use were doubled when women engaged in a compensatory behavior, such as excessive exercise, self-induced vomiting, and laxative use. Although preliminary, these results suggest that a desire for weight control may be associated with stimulant use among college women. Women engaging in more extreme weight loss behaviors are at high risk for initiating and maintaining illicit stimulant use for weight-related reasons. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2016

Women disproportionately account for a majority of all completed and attempted rape victimizations each year in the U.S. relative to men. Female college students, in particular, have been noted as a group with the highest risk for rape. Rape among women not only has a substantial public health impact, but has been linked to a number of individual mental health and substance use problems. Despite the fact that service utilization (formal help-seeking with a counselor, mental health professional, rape crisis center, and police reporting) has been shown to deter negative sequelae of rape, few victims of rape receive assistance from a victim service agency or report the incident to police; and among college student victims, this rate is even lower. Instead, rape victims are more likely to disclose the event and seek help from an informal source, such as a family member, spouse/romantic partner, friend, or acquaintance. Traditionally seen to have a positive impact on victim's mental health, informal social support may play a different role in rape victims with high levels of alcohol involvement or among those who have experienced an alcohol-involved rape. Current measures of social support fail to examine the factors that prompt victims to utilize their social support system and the role that alcohol use may play in victim's disclosure and recovery process. The current study explored the idea that social support may act as a barrier to help-seeking behavior, particularly formal treatment, among victims with alcohol involvement. This study had three primary aims: (a) to identify constructs related to the decision-making process to disclose a rape to an informal social support, (b) to understand victim and victim supporters' perceptions of social support and the impact of these perceptions on rape victims' post-rape mental health, and (c) to determine the role that alcohol plays in the disclosure process. To achieve these aims, the study used a mixed method approach (utilizing data from in-depth, semi-structured (face-to-face) qualitative interviews correlated with quantitative survey data) with a sample of college students (N=46) who were categorized into two groups: female college students who had experienced a rape in their lifetime (Victims; N=16) and college students who had had a rape disclosed to them (Supporters; N=30). The use of thick description provided Victims and Supporters a voice that could not be heard through existing quantitative measures. Qualitative data unveiled the fact that the perceptions surrounding social support during disclosure of a rape are often very different between Supporters and Victims. Victims themselves more often report feeling uncomfortable or guilty because of their own acceptance of rape myths, which appears to hinder them from further help-seeking. However, Victims appear to be prompted to disclose to an informal social support when they feel they are ready to talk and are provided a comfortable environment, but both Victims and Supporters feel that Supporters are unprepared to provide sufficient aid and the support provided during the disclosure may be inadequate. Despite the feelings that professional help would be beneficial, Victims are often stalled by complicating factors during the assault or their individual characteristics, such as alcohol involvement. Recent efforts on educating the general public on rape myths were evident during the interviews, but these beliefs still remain in students' feelings surrounding rape and utilizing mental health services.

The purpose of the present study is to compare the calculated creatinine coefficients of young college women based on lean body mass weight with those based on actual body weight.

Two thousand and twelve marked the fortieth anniversary of Title IX and the first Summer Olympic Games in which all attending nations sent female competitors. Too often, scholars of sport history conservatively frame the experiences of girls and women within a narrative of progress. College women's sport participation in particular is framed as a linear narrative beginning with the "new woman's" foray in college physical training, the non-competitive interwar coed, and the post Title IX female athlete. It is within this narrative that the college play day, a sport practice emerging in California and Washington in 1926 began to gain momentum as an additional form of extramural competition for college women. In this dissertation I interrogate which historical and societal forces contributed to the invention, diffusion, and evolution of the college play day. Though the play day is briefly included in descriptive narratives about women's physical activity and sport during the interwar era, deeper explorations are absent. This study aims to further elucidate the extent and variety of forms that the play day took. I aim to explore its general value within the college setting and its reception among women physical educators, colleagues, and play day participants. An additional research question I pose is what are the roles and contributions of certain individuals, alliances, and organizations involved in the invention, adoption, and evolutions of the college play day? Last, I question whether or not the play day is a site in which gender relations or other intersecting relations of power were reproduced, constructed, or transformed?

Thesis advisor: Jacqueline V. Lerner / Considerable scholarly attention has been dedicated toward the role of peers in adolescents’ romantic lives (Brown, 1999; Collins, 2003; Connolly & McIsaac, 2009, Korobov & Thorne, 2006). However, when it comes to the developmental significance of adults in promoting the healthy romantic functioning of adolescents, there has been comparably little research. For college students in particular, navigating romantic experiences can be a stressful and complex endeavor (Hurst et al., 2013) - one that may be aided by supportive relationships with adults who can listen, ask questions, and offer a distinct perspective. Indeed, recent literature has indicated that late adolescents (18-25 years of age) want more guidance from the adults in their lives about romantic relationships (Weissbourd et al., 2017). The present study introduces the concept and term love mentoring - opportunities to think, learn, and/or talk about romantic experiences with someone who is older or more experienced in this domain. Through the theoretical framework of Relational Cultural Theory, the study investigates the presence, nature, quality, and influence of love mentoring relationships in the lives of college women enrolled in a university-based mentoring program. Through reflexive thematic analysis of survey data and 12 in-depth follow-up interviews, the study’s results are distilled into six integrative findings: love mentoring is prevalent in families and universities, love mentors (LMs) are trustworthy, love mentoring supports self-worth, conversations around sex complicate love mentoring relationships, LMs are distinct from friends, and LMs promote healthy romantic development through conversation and modeling. These foundational findings on the phenomenon of love mentoring provide an important contribution to existing bodies of literature on college students’ romantic relationships and mentoring. Implications for research and practice are discussed in the context of study limitations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

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This dissertation follows career-oriented college women over the course of their education in liberal arts programs and seeks to explain why so many of them, in departure from original plans of combining work and marriage, married and became full-time mothers. Using diaries, personal correspondences, and student publications, in conjunction with works from the social sciences, philosophy, and literature, I argue that these women's experiences need to be understood in the context of cultural conflicts over the definition of class, status, and national identity. Mid twentieth-century college women, I propose, began their education at a moment when the convergence of long-contested developments turned campuses into battlegrounds over the definition of the values of an expanding middle class. Social leadership positions came within reach of new ethnic and religious groups at the same time that changes in the dating behavior of educated youth accelerated. Combined, these trends fed anxieties about a loss of cultural cohesion and national unity. In the interest of social stability, educators and public commentators tried to turn college women into brokers of cultural norms who would, as wives, socialize a heterogeneous population of men to traditional mores and values. This interest of the state to hold educated female youth accountable for the reproduction of a homogenous culture then merged with the desire of gender conservative students to legitimate their own identity in the face of challengers. In encounters with peers, women who aspired to professional careers and academic success learned that their gender performance disqualified them as members of an educated elite. Suffering severe blows to their self-esteem as a result of what I call "sex and gender baiting," they reformulated their goals for their postgraduate futures. Drawing on expressions of shame and fear in diaries and letters, I show through women's own voices the severity of the personal conflicts gender non-conformists experienced, offer insights into the relationship between historical actors and cultural discourses, and illustrate how the personal and the intimate shape the public and the political.

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No description available.