Purpose: This study was conducted to: 1)determine the factor structure of different morphological awareness tasks of college students with no known language, hearing, vision or academic difficulties, and 2)create and examine the direct and indirect effects of a reliable and validated morphological awareness factor structure on spelling, word-level reading, and sentence comprehension abilities in this population. Method:Three morphological awareness tasks, spelling to dictation, word reading, and sentence comprehension tasks, were administered to 214 undergraduate college students. Factor analyses were conducted to determine the factor structure of the morphological awareness tasks. A validated exogenous morphological awareness measure was generated and path analysis was run to examine direct and indirect effects of morphological awareness on college students' literacy abilities. Results: Exploratory factor analyses revealed that the morphological awareness factor structure was unidimensional. Analyses using Item Response Theory generated a 24-item, validated, exogenous measure. Path analysis revealed that the standardized path coefficients in the direct model were .77 for spelling, .62 for word reading, and .58 for sentence comprehension. Path analysis for the indirect model indicated that the standardized indirect effect of morphological awareness on sentence comprehension was. 38 through spelling and .13 through word reading. Conclusion: College students' morphological awareness can be assessed using a validated measure that reflects a uni dimensional factor structure. Morphological awareness is a stronger predictor for spelling than for word reading and sentence comprehension. Both spelling and word reading mediated the effects of morphological awareness on sentence comprehension. However, spelling was a stronger mediator than word reading; this may have been due to differences in the task demands of spelling and word reading. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Communication and Information in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011. / Date of Defense: January 21, 2011. / Lexical Quality Hypothesis, No-Shift, One-Shift, Two-Shift, Average Family Frequency, Transparency, Discrimination Parameter, Linguistic Process, Test Information Function / Includes bibliographical references. / Kenn Apel, Professor Directing Dissertation; Barbara Foorman, University Representative; Stephanie Dent Al Otaiba, Committee Member; Shurita Thomas-Tate, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study is to further explore the relationship of media exposure to body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance by examining the mediating effects of pressures and internalization as well as the moderating effects of ethnicity and weight. In the current study, the effects of television and magazine exposure were separated. Pressure was operationalized as influences perceived to be exerted by the media. Internalization was operationalized as the incorporation of specific values (conveyed by the media) to the point they become guiding principles. The results regarding media use reveal that women read an average of three magazines and watch four television programs on a regular basis. They spend an average of two hours reading magazines and 12.3 hours watching television programs weekly. The results further reveal that while non-White women weigh more than White women, White women exhibit greater body dissatisfaction, feel more pressure to conform to thin images in media and display greater risk of eating disorder. Thus, ethnicity was found to moderate the effects of internalization, body dissatisfaction, and pressure in relation to magazine exposure. Because Body Mass Index (BMI) was not related to the sociocultural variables, it was not found to moderate the effects of internalization. The relationships to television exposure are negative or non-significant; therefore, magazine exposure is a more pertinent predictor of body dissatisfaction, eating disorder, pressure and indirectly internalization. Likewise, pressure is more salient than internalization revealing, that internalization is not a necessary precursor to women experiencing increased levels of body dissatisfaction and eating disorder. This study adds to our understanding of the relationship of media exposure to body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance by examining the mediating roles of pressures and internalization as well as the moderating roles of ethnicity and weight, as measured by the BMI. The results of this study reveal that body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance must be examined in light of exposure to magazines and the pressure women feel to conform to thin images portrayed in the media. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2007. / Date of Defense: November 2, 2007. / Body Dissatisfaction, Body Image, Eating Disorder, Magazine Exposure, Television Exposure, Mass Media / Includes bibliographical references. / Barry Sapolsky, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joyce Carbonell, Outside Committee Member; Felecia F. Jordan-Jackson, Committee Member; Jay Rayburn, Committee Member; Steve McDowell, Committee Member.

It is a well-documented fact that the rate of falls increases with advanced age. In an attempt to discern factors that contribute to the high fall rate in aging populations; investigators have looked to a task that is often executed while walking – talking. Although the effects of varying cognitive-linguistic load across a variety of dual-tasks have been heavily researched, few studies have systematically examined the contribution of increasingly complex cognitive-linguistic load on the gait parameters of healthy aging adults. Moreover, few researchers have utilized ecologically valid stimuli as a part of their investigation. The broad goal of this research was to examine the nature of the impact of manipulating cognitive-linguistic load hierarchy on gait in healthy aging. Discourse tasks of varying complexity were presented while participants walked a 44-foot walkway. The progression of discourse was from low load (explaining how to perform a task) to high load (completing a story initiated by the investigator). The dependent measures collected included measures of linguistic complexity, fluency, and gait. Results showed a significant effect of cognitive-linguistic load linguistic complexity on measures of discourse. Comparison of fluency measures across conditions revealed that cognitive-linguistic load did not have a significant impact on fluency. However, like measures of discourse, gait parameters were significantly affected by the addition of a secondary cognitive-linguistic task. Theoretically, these results could imply that a change in cognitive-linguistic and gait measures is linked to a sharing of resources involved in the execution of both tasks. In addition, these results also provide insight into dual-task performance and the potential contribution of cognitive-linguistic load on fall rates in healthy and neurologically compromised populations. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2008. / Date of Defense: March 3, 2008. / Aging, Cognitive-Linguistic Load, Gait, Speech / Includes bibliographical references. / Julie A.G. Stierwalt, Professor Directing Dissertation; Rolf A. Zwaan, Outside Committee Member; Leonard L. LaPointe, Committee Member; Joanne Lasker, Committee Member; Lisa Scott, Committee Member.

This dissertation sought to explore public figures’ crises and crisis response messages through the lens of the situational crisis communication theory. The categories of public figures in this study are athletes, celebrities, and politicians. This research project focused on public figures’ apology messages for transgression crises, which are classified in the situational crisis communication theory as organizational misdeeds with injuries and organizational misdeeds without injuries. This project used a content analysis of YouTube videos to determine the type of crisis a public figure experienced and the type of response they used to address their crisis. There were 47 public figures with 51 crisis response videos in the content analysis. Of the public figures in this research 25 employed an apology strategy in their crisis response video. The second part of this study was three focus group discussions that used one crisis response video that featured an apology message for each of the three categories of public figures. Alex Rodriguez was chosen as the athlete, OJ Simpson was chosen as the celebrity, and Anthony Weiner was chosen as the politician. Focus group participants discussed what they felt the public figure did well, did not do well, and could have done better during their crisis response message. Participants had many responses to these research questions, but a main theme for each topic was they felt the public figures’ use of emotion was good, they felt the public figures did not apologize well, and they felt the public figures could have done a better job sharing how they plan to prevent a similar situation from happening again. The implication of this research is the possibility of using the situational crisis communication theory as a way to help individuals like public figures respond to a crisis in addition to the organizational crises the theory has typically been used for previously. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 10, 2018. / Content Analysis, Crisis Communication, Focus Group, Public Figures, Public Relations, Situational Crisis Communication Theory / Includes bibliographical references. / Stephen McDowell, Professor Directing Dissertation; Vanessa Dennen, University Representative; Jay Rayburn, Committee Member; Jaejin Lee, Committee Member.

With an estimated cost of $175 million for 11 kilometers of rail (DNP, 2014), Transcaribe, a bus rapid transit system (BRT) was designed to facilitate mobility and sustainability throughout the city of Cartagena, Colombia, while stabilizing usage costs and fees and reducing emission rates linked to carcinogenic pollutants. It is expected that under optimal conditions the system would mobilize 39% (15.7 million) of the more than 40 million passengers transported via the corridor (Canabal, 2015); however, as of January 2017 adoption rates are calculated to have reached a mere 1.2 million (Boyano, Romero, & Ramos, 2016). As such, it has become imperative to understand what factors might be contributing to lowers than expected usage rates. Understanding how the media portrays Transcaribe-related news items is an important first step. Therefore, the study consisted of a deductive examination of Transcaribe-related stories in the Cartagena, Colombia regional’s newspaper El Universal. Through applying a media framing scale (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000; Wendorf Muhamad & Yang, 2017) news items were examined for the presence or absence of five new frames: (1) attribution of responsibility (AR); (2) conflict frame (CF); (3) morality frame (MF); (4) human interest (HI); and (5) economic consequences (EC). Differences in absence or presence of frames between low and high socioeconomic neighborhoods were noted. Results indicate attribution of responsibility frame (n = 287) was the most frequently employed frame, followed by human interest frame (n = 165), conflict frame (n = 193), economic consequences frame (n = 104), and morality frame (n = 20). Attribution of responsibility is the most frequently used frame, present in low socioeconomic level (n = 173) and high socioeconomic level (n = 177). There were two hypotheses (HI, EC) supported and three (AR, CF, and MF) hypotheses rejected. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 2, 2018. / bus rapid transit (BRT), Cartagena, framing theory, integrated mass transportation systems, social bias, socioeconomic status / Includes bibliographical references. / Jessica Wendorf Muhamad, Professor Directing Thesis; Juliann Cortese, Committee Member; Stephen McDowell, Committee Member.

Counterfactual thinking is a psychological concept used to explain the phenomenon that individuals reflectively imagine different outcomes for events that have already happened. This dissertation examined the application of counterfactual thinking in the field of media psychology. Specifically, it discussed the question of whether readers can generate counterfactuals from fictional contexts. This dissertation also examined the influential factors of counterfactuals, including the influence of story plot, involvement (identification and transportation), and individual characteristics, and the functional roles of generating counterfactuals. By analyzing the results of two experiments, the author found that participants who were more highly transported into the narrative world were more likely to generate counterfactuals. Meanwhile, the study results indicated that counterfactual thinking might be a factor of generating counterfactual thinking. However, the study did not find a relationship between counterfactual thinking and agreement with story-consistent beliefs. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 11, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Arthur A. Raney, Professor Directing Dissertation; Vanessa Dennen, University Representative; Laura Arpan, Committee Member; Steve McDowell, Committee Member.

"Ruthless, vindictive, venal, sneaky, ideological, intolerant, liar," are just some of the adjectives used to describe then-presidential hopeful, Senator Hillary Clinton, in the 2008 documentary, Hillary: The Movie. Cast members involved with the conservative non-profit organization, Citizens United, and in the film's production included Fox News contributor and conservative author Ann Coulter, syndicated columnist and host of The Kudlow Report on CNBC Lawrence Kudlow, and writer and conservative political commentator Robert Novak. Under the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), films such as Hillary: The Movie, were outlawed the month before a primary election and two months before a general election. The BCRA was passed in hopes of decreasing the influence of special interests in elections. As such, Citizens United was prohibited from distributing the film in theaters and on pay-per-view by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). By November 2008, Citizens United filed a lawsuit against the FEC and lost in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia. It was ruled that the film was in violation of the BCRA because it was "susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her" (Rucker, 2010, ¶8). By January 21, 2010, the case had reached the Supreme Court, and Citizens United had won. As a result, corporations and unions were granted free reign to spend as much money as they wish to campaign for or against candidates at any point in an election. It is important to recognize that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was not the first challenge to the 2002 BCRA. Immediately following the bill's passage, Senator Mitch McConnell along with 80 other groups and individuals filed suit against the Federal Election Commission in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. The Supreme Court voted in favor of the Federal Election Commission and the issue of electioneering communication was not brought to the Court again until the Citizens case. The change in policy is important to study as is the way the broadcast media covered it because broadcasters stand to make massive amounts of money by selling ads to corporations and unions that were previously outlawed from buying air time to influence elections (Mann, 2010). The now legal ads may have the ability to change the way citizens vote and the way elections turn out. This thesis uses a political economic approach to analyze network news and public broadcasting discourse surrounding the Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 and compares them with how the broadcast media covered McConnell v. Federal Election Commission in 2002, in order to find out how, or if, coverage differed. In McConnell, the BCRA was upheld, but in the Citizens United case, key parts of the BCRA were overturned. This thesis also explores the history of campaign finance law and what the current ruling might mean for the future of democratic elections. The ruling and the media coverage are evaluated by how they may be problematic in terms of theories regarding the public sphere, the normative role of the news media in a democracy, freedom of speech and campaign finance concerns. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2011. / Date of Defense: April 22, 2011. / Campaign finance Federal election commission Political economy Broadcast coverage / Includes bibliographical references. / Jennifer Proffitt, Professor Directing Thesis; Laura Arpan, Committee Member; Jeanette Castillo, Committee Member.

This study is an examination of Black and Hispanic college-age women's self-reports of their perception of the communication with their mothers and how this communication influenced them. Most of the literature reported in the review analyzes the influence that parents have on their children based on the way they convey messages and interact with them. The method used to collect the data for this study was focus group interviews. Results indicated that mothers clearly had topics that they emphasized (i.e. discussed with their daughters) and those that they did not discuss for various reasons. Topics such as academics and work ethic were frequently discussed, while sports and sex were not. Both sets of topics, those discussed the most and least appeared to have influenced the daughters. A self-disclosure scale revealed that most daughters reported medium to high self-disclosure, and being influenced in some way by their mothers. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: June 29, 2005. / Influence, mothers, interpersonal, commuication, family, hispanic, Black, daughters, self disclosure / Includes bibliographical references. / Felecia Jordan-Jackson, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Marilyn J. Young, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Davis W. Houck, Committee Member.

This study examined the existence and the relevance of political concepts in the Kuwaiti political scene. Many indications suggest the relevance and applicability of commercial marketing concepts and tools in the political context. Yet, by examining the literature, one can find a shortage of academic work that sheds light on the study of branding concepts in the political context. This study found that brands structural knowledge does exist in the minds of Kuwaiti voters, using a five-aspects brands model and discusses the implications of that for the practice of future research. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2008. / Date of Defense: April 9, 2008. / Brands, Political Brands, Kuwait / Includes bibliographical references. / Steven McClung, Professor Directing Thesis; Stephen McDowell, Committee Member; Jennifer Jerit, Committee Member.

Encouraging help-seeking behavior for Combat Operational Stress Reaction (COSR) among military service members is an important factor in maintaining military readiness and military family quality of life. This research explores the role that military spouses play in encouraging help-seeking behavior among service members using a hybrid model that merged the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with elements of Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) to understand spouses' behavior intention. Six predictor variables were explored during focus group meetings and ultimately incorporated into questions in an online survey completed by 306 military spouses of service members from all branches of service. The six predictor variables were analyzed using multiple regression and simple regression to determine their significance in predicting spouse behavior intention for service members to seek help at military and nonmilitary treatment facilities. The research focused on five hypotheses and seven research questions. The hypotheses focused on information sources and usefulness about COSR, the amount of direct experience with COSR, the degree of favorable outcomes of COSR medical treatment, the perceived stigma associated with combat stress, the perceived vulnerabilities which included risk and severity, normative beliefs about help-seeking and the perceived military spouse efficacy to encourage help-seeking behavior at both military and nonmilitary treatment faculties. The research questions provided a range of generalized information about the variables. Statistical analyses indicated that spouses who report that they have more military sources that provide useful information, about combat stress, are also more likely to (1) report more favorable beliefs about military care outcomes, (2) recognize the risks and severity of combat stress, and (3) feel that they are capable of effectively making recommendations that service members seek care at a military facility. Spouses with more direct experience with combat stress also are more likely to report favorable beliefs about outcomes resulting from military health care. Spouses who have more favorable outcome beliefs, higher perceptions of risk and severity (vulnerability), plus greater general and personal efficacy are more likely to encourage their service members to seek help at a military care facility. A positive relationship was found between useful nonmilitary information sources about combat stress and behavioral intentions to recommend care at a nonmilitary care facility. In addition, spouses who have more useful nonmilitary information report higher levels of perceived stigma associated with combat stress. Direct behavioral nonmilitary care experiences are positively related to beliefs about favorable outcomes resulting from care at nonmilitary facilities. Three variables were found to be predictors of behavior intentions. The spouses who have (1) favorable outcome beliefs, (2) who experience normative expectations and are motivated to comply with these norms, and (3) who feel greater efficacy are more likely to encourage service members to seek help at a nonmilitary care facility. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: December 15, 2006. / Help-seeking, Military Spouse, Theory of Planned Behavior, Combat Stress / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary Heald, Professor Directing Thesis; Charles Figley, Outside Committee Member; Vicki Eveland, Committee Member.