<p> This case study examines the home language and literacy events and practices of two families with children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder. These families are immigrants from Peru and Pakistan, they are multilingual and from working class backgrounds. Specifically, this study explores how these families create meaningful opportunities to provide language and literacy development for their children. In families who have children with ASD, there are few studies addressing language and literacy practices through a sociolinguistic and sociocultural lens. This study focuses on how parents in diverse families support language and literacy. The study contributes to the development of partnerships between home and school settings or between families and the school environment. </p><p> Through interviews and observations, the parents in this study share rich and detailed narratives of their parenting experiences, thus detailing how their families use their home environment and their cultural backgrounds to find meaningful ways to provide opportunities of language and literacy development. These include the rituals of religious practices such as Ramadan, and the activity of preparing and serving cultural specific meals. The emerging data from their stories resulted in the creation of such various cross themes as: language and literacy learning (families create unique and structured spaces in their homes that provide meaningful and purposeful demonstrations of language and literacy); authentic home and public experiences (families use ongoing and designed family activities to provide opportunities for children to engage in and observe natural language interactions); and cultural values (families modify and adapt their social and cultural events to include their children in their family literacy practices, which supports learning, language and literacy development. This research aspires to add to the current literature supporting the learning of children with autism, as well as on studies that investigate families from diverse backgrounds who have a child with special needs. The findings bring forward implications for including family literacy histories and cultural practices into the teaching and treating of this population; the importance of teachers and other practitioners to conduct home visits to understand families&rsquo; experiences, strengths and values; and the need for closer partnership relationships between families and professionals.</p><p>

<p> Background: Youth relocation is a common phenomenon, with most children and adolescents moving 2.6 times by age 18. While multiple studies have been conducted on the consequences of youth relocation, most have focused on already vulnerable populations, potentially leading to overestimation of the psychosocial effects of relocation on youth. Adolescents often experience negative psychosocial outcomes following residential relocation. Current theories have focused on how adolescent psychosocial functioning is impaired due to disruptions in social networks. Though this has been a focus of research, few studies have investigated potential protective social relationships within the family, or how relocation may impact intimate relationships into adulthood. </p><p> Methods: Secondary data sources were utilized to allow for large samples, and consisted of both yearly data, and longitudinal data. For the first paper, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) involving 178,022 youth aged 12-17 was used, covering the years of 2005 to 2015. Participants were grouped into three categories: non-movers, single moves, and two or more moves reported within the last 12 months. Ordinal logistic regression was used to estimate individual, family, and school-related factors, as well as behavioral correlates of relocation in the past 12 months. For papers two and three, the National Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) dataset was used. Those reporting relocating at least once prior to Wave I were designated as &ldquo;movers&rdquo;. Propensity score matching was conducted using a .25 caliper with 1:1 matching. Matched groups of movers and non-movers were assessed longitudinally in order to investigate how youth adapted into adulthood. </p><p> Results: For paper one, 22.9% of youth reported at least one household relocation within the past year. Movers were more likely to identify as racial minorities and report lower household income. Those reporting at least one household move were also significantly more likely to report a past-year depressive episode and increased interest in high-risk activities. They were also more likely to report decreased parental engagement and decreased academic engagement. Both substance use and delinquent or criminal behaviors were significantly increased with those reporting relocation, with each relocation predicting a 97.5% increased likelihood of a past year arrest or booking. Paper two showed that prior to matching, those reporting relocation prior to Wave I were significantly more likely to be non-White, receive household assistance, and were more likely to report engagement in substance use and delinquent activities at Wave I. Regression analysis showed that those youth with siblings were more likely to report improved adaptation at Wave II. Significant effects were found for those with siblings close in age, and for those with same-gendered siblings. Lastly, paper three suggested that youth who have experienced household relocation were significantly more likely to report younger ages of sexual debut, decreased contraceptive use, and an increased number of partners. Mobile youth were also more likely to report at least one marriage by Wave III. </p><p> Conclusions: Household relocation exposes adolescents to a bevy of psychosocial risks and predicts a steep increase in risky behaviors. While not typically identified as a high-risk group, additional attention needs to be paid to this population. They experience numerous risks, primarily in interpersonal relationships.</p><p>

Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Karen Myers-Bowman / Sibling relationships have often been studied with the goal of understanding the sibling influence on development of an individual. With the focus on development, research has often been limited to the time of life between the ages of birth to 18. Sibling research in adulthood has often been limited to examining siblings’ interactions in a particular context. Most of the research has examined siblings dealing with caregiving, family businesses, finances, or parental treatment. How siblings feel about their relationship, how the relationship has enhanced their lives, and what meaning individuals ascribe to that relationship through their lifetime has been understudied. This study focused on the meaning ascribed to a relationship between sisters by those in the relationship as well as the importance of sisterhood to the individual’s identity or perception of who they are because of the relationship. Participants responded to questions designed to gather information about what it means to them to be a sister in middle adulthood. The sisters indicated that the relationship held meaning for them though out their adult life. Parents were found to have influenced the relationship. In addition the sister relationship impacted the development of a sisters identity in multiple ways. For most sisters, they could not imagine who they would have become without the influence of their sisters.

Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Karen Myers-Bowman / The overarching research question addressed by this qualitative dissertation is “What are the meanings, structures, and essences of the lived experiences of the coming out process for professional women who are African American lesbians (PAALs)?” The study was designed to 1) fill an existing gap in the literature by examining the coming out processes of PAALs, 2) gain an understanding of the challenges and stressors associated with the intersection of gender, race, and sexual orientation, and 3) explore the diversity of experiences that PAALs may have when coming out to family, friends, and colleagues. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit 10 women between the ages of 25 and 65. Each participant completed a face-to-face interview. Data analysis yielded 21 codes that were then aggregated into five themes and several subthemes that serve as the basis of a 5-level model for describing their coming out process: Confusion, Suppression, The Turning Point, Disclosure, and Proving Self. These levels are progressive but may overlap depending on where the individual is in the coming out process. The findings show that the experiences of PAALs demonstrated the influences of culture, race, and gender in the personal and professional lives of lesbians who have come out, or who are in the process of disclosing their sexual orientation. Additionally, some PAALs are motivated to disclose their sexual identity in order to inspire other young lesbians to come out and express their true sexual orientation.

abstract: This study applies Relational Dialectic Theory to analyze the stepparent and stepchild relationship of one family. The data is documented in an autoethnography. Autoethnography is an approach to data collection in which the researcher’s own experience is the source of data, and the experience is studied to deepen understandings of social reality. This study highlights the complexity of the stepparent-stepchild relationship, the uncertainty surrounding the stepparent role, and identifies the dialectic tensions that exist within the stepparent-stepchild relationship. The dialectics identified by this study include: emotional-closeness-distance, past-present, autonomy connection, and parent-friend. The findings related to how these dialectic tensions emerge and are managed within stepparent-stepchild relationships have implications for stepparents and spouses of stepparents and for new parents and parents in traditional family structures. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication Studies 2015

abstract: Romantic relationships are an important aspect of anyone's life. For individuals with an autism spectrum disorder, this is true as well. However, these people may experience relational dynamics and trajectories that are in some aspects either similar to or markedly different from those who are not on the spectrum. There are very few studies analyzing and understanding how adults with an ASD navigate romantic relationships. This particular study examined how turning points pertaining to relational escalation or de-escalation were recognized and understood by eight individuals (four men and four women) possessing an ASD. The Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT) was implemented in order to accrue data from participants. Each participant completed a RIT graph mapping out a romantic relationship of their choice by understanding when a turning point was identified and placing a mark next to the corresponding level of relational closeness or attachment. Once all turning points were mapped out, they were connected with lines so that a visual representation of the entire relationship may be viewed. Participants were then queried about how they knew that particular event (or mark) to be a turning point, how it impacted the relationship, and how they were, personally, influenced by it (how they responded to the event). Interviews were transcribed and explored through a grounded theory approach. Specifically, Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis method was applied to articulate interview data. The research revealed four main themes (Relational Genesis, Relational Escalation, Relational De-escalation and Conflict Management) as well as seventeen sub themes. Limitations for this study, information relating to discourses surrounding autism spectrum disorders and romantically intimate relationships, as well as, areas for future study are also discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Communication Studies 2016

abstract: Adolescent substance use carries a considerable public health burden, and early initiation into use is especially problematic. Research has shown that sensation seeking traits increase risk for substance use experimentation, but less is known about individual and contextual factors that can potentially protect against this risk. This study utilized a longitudinal sub sample of youth (N=567) from a larger study of familial alcoholism to examine sensation seeking in early adolescence (ages 10-15) and its relations to later substance use experimentation. Hypotheses tested whether individual executive control, parenting consistency, neighborhood disadvantage, and neighborhood ethnic concentration moderated sensation seeking’s effects on substance use experimentation using multilevel zero-inflated Poisson modeling. Across models, higher levels of sensation seeking were predictive of a higher likelihood of having initiated substance use, but sensation seeking was not significantly related to the number of different substance use classes tried. Only neighborhood disadvantage emerged as a significant moderator of the path from sensation seeking to substance use initiation. The strength of sensation seeking effects on substance use initiation increased as neighborhood disadvantage decreased below average levels, with the most advantaged neighborhoods exhibiting the strongest link between sensation seeking and substance use. There was also a trend towards the most disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibiting increased sensation seeking effects on substance use initiation. These results highlight the importance of focusing on relatively more advantaged areas as potentially risky environments for the externalizing pathway to substance use. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2016

abstract: Increasing elementary school attainment globally remains a key focus for improving internationally child development (UNESCO, 2010), and for girls in particular (UNICEF, 2015). This dissertation was designed to test and explore specific areas to target to improve educational attainment for rural indigenous communities using a mixed-methods approach (i.e., quantitative survey of 264 mothers and qualitative interviews with 37 of those mothers 3.5 years later) with a Mayan community in Camanchaj, Guatemala. The first study was designed to examine the educational trajectories available to children in this community (e.g., dropping out, graduating 6th grade) by age, grade, and gender, and identified risks and vulnerabilities for educational attainment. The second study was a logistic regression to examine maternal factors that predict the likelihood of a child graduating from elementary school or dropping out in this community, above and beyond covariates of poverty and health and found that maternal education predicted educational attainment for both boys as girls as well as maternal beliefs about the importance of school for getting a job, which was particularly strong predictor for boys. The third study probed findings from Studies 1 and 2 using Experiential Thematic Analyses and Frequency Analyses to examine processes and cognitions involved in a child’s graduating elementary school, dropping out, and community beliefs and attitudes regarding education and gender equality. Findings highlight the need for interventions that are contextually and culturally appropriate and that consider complex and interacting factors of poverty, health, and gender inequality as well as maternal and community-level attitudes and beliefs to promote elementary school attainment globally. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Family and Human Development 2016

abstract: To explore subtypes of social withdrawal in different sociocultural contexts, concurrent social, school, and academic correlates of shyness and unsociability were examined in 93 urban (Mage = 14.05, SD = 0.86 years) and 136 rural (Mage = 14.39, SD = 0.69 years) seventh and eighth graders from Liaoning, China. Adolescents' shyness and unsociability were assessed with self-, peers’, and teachers’ reports. Peer-group relationships (acceptance, rejection, and exclusion) were obtained from peer nominations. Adolescents reported perceived friendship quality (positive friendship quality, conflict and betrayal) and school attitudes (school liking and avoidance). Teachers rated students' academic engagement and performance. Academic achievement (exam grades) also was obtained from school records. According to factor and correlational analyses, shyness and unsociability emerged as distinct, but positively related, constructs, within each informant. Cross-informant agreements on shyness and unsociability were low to moderate, especially between teachers' and self- or peers' reports. Urban-rural differences were expected in the associations of shyness, but not of unsociability, with the correlates, but the hypotheses were not supported with multiple-group (urban vs. rural) path models. In the combined (urban and rural) sample, shyness was associated with negative peer relationships, low friendship quality, and negative school attitudes (for self- but not peer-reported shyness), but was unrelated to academic correlates. Self-reported unsociability related negatively to positive friendship quality and positively to academic achievement, but was unrelated to other adjustment correlates. Peer-reported unsociability, however, was associated with negative peer relationships, less positive friendship quality, low school liking, low academic performance, and low academic achievement. The study was an initial step towards understanding subtypes of social withdrawal and adjustment correlates in various domains among Chinese adolescents living in different social contexts. The lack of urban-rural differences was not consistent with the contextual-development theory. Like their Western peers, shy Chinese adolescents were at risk for relational and school adjustment problems, but they did not have academic difficulties. Unsociable Chinese adolescents also tended to have poor adjustment at school, including relational problems with peers and friends, negative school attitudes, and academic difficulties, but only when they were perceived as unsociable by peers, rather than themselves. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Family and Human Development 2016

abstract: The beginning of the large Baby Boomer cohort's retirement, coupled with the increased divorce rate among older adults, means that there will be more single older adults than ever before beginning to consider living arrangements and long-term care needs as they age. Using a cumulative (dis)advantage framework and logistic regression, this research examines whether marital disruption and social support at Wave 1 increase the odds of having a specific chronic disease at Wave 2, diabetes, heart failure, and hypertension. The sample consists of 2,261 adults age 57-85 who participated in the first two waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). Being female and having more positive social support reduced the odds of having diabetes at Wave 2. Being older at Wave 1 increased the odds of having congestive heart failure at Wave 2. Being black and having a happy family life in childhood increased the odds of having hypertension at Wave 2. Suggestions for increasing positive social support are discussed, along with implications for long-term care and health education. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sociology 2016