published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Workplace aggression has been associated with a number of detrimental employee and organizational outcomes, both at work and away from work. This dissertation includes three studies that expand our knowledge of the implications of workplace aggression in the work and nonwork domains. Further, this research illuminates the processes through which this relationship occurs by utilizing various sources of data from employees in a variety of contexts including universities, long term health care, and the USDA Forest Service. In Study 1, which was published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, multi-source data are utilized to identify the indirect effects of coworker-reported workplace aggression on self and significant-other reported work-family conflict via self-reported psychological detachment from work. Study 2 identifies an indirect effect of workplace aggression on parental warmth via increased perceived stress utilizing longitudinal data from the Work, Family, and Health Network. Finally, Study 3 utilizes data from the USDA Forest Service to examine associations between workplace aggression and safety outcomes. Workplace aggression was found to be associated with increased resource depletion (i.e., rumination, cognitive failure) and decreased workplace safety (i.e., increased workplace accidents, decreased safety compliance). Workplace aggression was indirectly associated with safety participation and workplace injuries via cognitive failure and rumination, respectively. Safety climate, an organizational resource, moderated the relationship between rumination and safety behaviors. Finally, the indirect effect of coworker aggression on safety compliance via rumination was found to be conditional on low levels of safety climate, while the indirect effect of supervisor aggression on safety participation via rumination was also found to be conditional on low levels of safety climate. The current body of work provides implications for developing workplace interventions to reduce negative outcomes of workplace aggression, such as general stress management and recovery from work interventions. Several avenues for future research are suggested as well, including examining objective health outcomes of workplace aggression, utilizing longitudinal designs, and identifying additional moderators of the association between workplace aggression and employee outcomes.

This thesis aims to examine the development of morphosyntax with longitudinal English production from Diany, a Mandarin-speaking child, starting from the second week Diany arrived in the U.S.A. (age 4;9). The study is particularly interested in whether Diany’s acquisition of verbal morphemes and verb movement supports relevant hypotheses in the literature. In generative linguistics, there are two important lines of interests in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) that address the “long-standing debate on the nature of syntactic representation in SLA” (Haznedar & Gavruseva, 2008:5). One line examines the relationship between morphological development and syntactic representations, namely, whether absence of surface morphology entails absence of the syntactic representation. A recently influential proposal is that there is dissociation between overt morphology and abstract syntax, as suggested by the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH) (Lardeire, 1998a, 1998b, 2007; Haznedar & Schwartz, 1997; Prevost & White, 2000). The second important line, more relevant to child L2 research, focuses on the comparison of child L2 (cL2) acquisition with child first language (cL1) and adult L2 (aL2) acquisition in the domains of morphology and syntax. On the observation that attainment in cL2 is superior to aL2, Schwartz (1992, 2003a, 2003b, 2004) proposes the “Domain by Age Model (DAM)” , arguing that in the realm of syntax, cL2 acquisition is (more)like aL2 acquisition, but that in the realm of inflectional morphology, cL2 is (more) like L1 acquisition (2003a, p.47). With regard to the first line of interest, whether there is a relationship between the acquisition of morphology and syntax, the data from our subject show that the development of the two domains is independent of each other. The morphemes and verb raising are acquired at their own paces, supporting the MSIH. The comparison of Diany’s morphosyntactic development with L1 children and adult L2 learners whose native language is Chinese suggests that Diany’s English morphological development is more similar to that of adult SLA holding the same L1, and the verb raising in negative utterances and questions is parallel with both L1 children and L2 adults. This is inconsistent with the DAM which proposes that L2 children assemble L1 children in morpheme acquisition, but are similar to L2 adults in syntactic development. In the thesis, we also argue for the presence of L1 influence and age effect in the Mandarin-speaking child’s L2 English. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of English

abstract: Methods to test hypotheses of mediated effects in the pretest-posttest control group design are understudied in the behavioral sciences (MacKinnon, 2008). Because many studies aim to answer questions about mediating processes in the pretest-posttest control group design, there is a need to determine which model is most appropriate to test hypotheses about mediating processes and what happens to estimates of the mediated effect when model assumptions are violated in this design. The goal of this project was to outline estimator characteristics of four longitudinal mediation models and the cross-sectional mediation model. Models were compared on type 1 error rates, statistical power, accuracy of confidence interval coverage, and bias of parameter estimates. Four traditional longitudinal models and the cross-sectional model were assessed. The four longitudinal models were analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) using pretest scores as a covariate, path analysis, difference scores, and residualized change scores. A Monte Carlo simulation study was conducted to evaluate the different models across a wide range of sample sizes and effect sizes. All models performed well in terms of type 1 error rates and the ANCOVA and path analysis models performed best in terms of bias and empirical power. The difference score, residualized change score, and cross-sectional models all performed well given certain conditions held about the pretest measures. These conditions and future directions are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is often present already at preschool age. Previous research has established the association between temperament and broad categories of behavioral disorders. However, no longitudinal research has studied the potential impact of temperament on changes in ODD symptoms in preschool and early school years. Two birth cohorts of 4-year olds living in the city of Trondheim, Norway, were screened for emotional and behavioral problems and a subsample oversampled for such problems was drawn to take part in the study; 82.1% consented. Parents of 1000 children were interviewed with the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment, and ratings of children's temperament were provided using the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ). Children were reassessed after 2 years (N = 797). The temperamental dimensions Surgency (SU) and Negative Affectivity (NA) were positively correlated with initial level of ODD symptoms, and predicted an increase in symptoms from age 4 to 6. High Effortful Control (EC) was associated with little ODD symptoms at age 4, but did not predict change in such symptoms. However, in interaction with NA, EC was associated with lower initial levels of ODD symptoms and predicted a decrease in symptoms from age 4 to 6. More precisely, the protective effect of EC was very strong for children high on NA but lower for children low to moderate on NA. The findings suggest that NA and SU function as risk factors whereas EC protects against ODD in young children. NA serves as a moderator of EC, in that among children high in NA, EC had a large protective effect, whereas among children with lower levels of NA, EC did protect to a lesser degree against ODD symptoms. Results of this study have theoretical implications linking temperament to ODD in preschoolers, and clinical applications utilizing temperament assessment to identify children at risk, prevent development of ODD and match treatment modalities to the child’s specific temperamental strengths and weaknesses.

Master of Science / Department of Statistics / Haiyan Wang / The purpose of this report is to numerically compare several tests that are applicable to longitudinal data when the experiment contains a large number of treatments or experimental conditions. Such data are increasingly common as technology advances. Of interest is to evaluate if there is any significant main effect of treatment or time, and their interactions. Traditional methods such as linear mixed-effects models (LME), generalized estimating equations (GEE), Wilks' lambda, Hotelling-Lawley, and Pillai's multivariate tests were developed under either parametric distributional assumptions or the assumption of large number of replications. A few recent tests, such as Zhang (2008), Bathke & Harrar (2008), and Bathke & Harrar (2008) were specially developed for the setting of large number of treatments with possibly small replications. In this report, I will present some numerical studies regarding these tests. Performance of these tests will be presented for data generated from several distributions.

Background Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) has a long history in the social sciences, where its theoretical basis is well established. Qualitative longitudinal (QL) methods are gaining popularity in health care research for exploring the dynamic experience of illness. However, methodological development of QLR is limited within the health literature, and there are very few studies examining the experience of people with colorectal cancer (CRC). Moreover, such studies describe the experiences of those surviving CRC and the voices of those with advanced disease who are approaching the end of their lives remain largely unheard. Aim and objective This study explores the potential of QL interviewing to examine the experiences of those with advanced, metastatic, CRC. I investigate how QL interviews can be best utilised to explore the participants’ accounts of their experiences. I specifically examine the added value and costs of a flexible approach with regard to the frequency and timing of longitudinal interviews. Analytical approaches to QL data are examined to determine their overall value. Methods Sixteen patients with metastatic CRC and eight of their family carers participated in narrative interviews at three time points over the course of a year. The study was designed to include two groups of participants. The first, a routine interval group where interviews were carried out at regular intervals of six months; the second, a flexible interval group where there was an interview at baseline followed by monthly phone calls to track changes in the participants’ circumstances, with a view to conducting the interview as change was occurring. The data were analysed at each time point, and longitudinally using narrative and thematic techniques. Findings The QL design enabled a trusting relationship to evolve, such that private accounts of experience were disclosed. Thus, a nuanced and contextualised understanding of the experience of metastatic CRC materialised. Overall the accounts of CRC were characterised by uncertainty, yet at the same time death was a certainty. Over time, this dual narrative led to participants feeling themselves to be in an ambiguous and liminal state. Some participants described a loss of sense of self, yet others maintained their identity. The work that participants carried out to manage their sense of self changed, as they moved from a collective to an individual identity. In the flexible interval group, monthly telephone calls produced an even more profound research relationship and further enriched the accounts. However, early interviews were only conducted on two occasions and more ethical issues arose as a result of the increased contact. Conclusions By exploring the potential of QL methods, this study has developed the methodology for researching the experiences of those with serious illness. QL interviewing elicits a deep understanding of metastatic CRC that appreciates notions of temporality, process and change. Regular contact with participants between interviews can further enrich the accounts, and is a useful strategy for tracking changes given the unpredictable nature of advanced disease. This thesis showcases the cross-sectional and longitudinal opportunities that QL analysis presents; yet also highlights how longitudinal narrative analysis allows a story to unfold over time which reflects the beginning, the middle and for some the end of the illness experience. Although QL analysis is time consuming, and more contact can amplify ethical issues, the benefits outweigh the constraints.

Clinical practice should be based on the best available evidence. Ideally such evidence is obtained through rigorously conducted, purpose-designed clinical studies such as randomised controlled trials and prospective cohort studies. However gathering information in this way requires a massive effort, can be prohibitively expensive, is time consuming, and may not always be ethical or practicable. When answers are needed urgently and purpose-designed prospective studies are not feasible, retrospective healthcare data may offer the best evidence there is. But can we rely on analysis with such data to give us meaningful answers? The current thesis studies this question through analysis with repeated psychological symptom screening data that were routinely collected from over 20,000 outpatients who attended selected oncology clinics in Scotland. Linked to patients’ oncology records these data offer a unique opportunity to study the progress of distress symptoms on an unprecedented scale in this population. However, the limitations to such routinely collected observational healthcare data are many. We approach the analysis within a missing data context and develop a Bayesian model in WinBUGS to estimate the posterior predictive distribution for the incomplete longitudinal response and covariate data under both Missing At Random and Missing Not At Random mechanisms and use this model to generate multiply imputed datasets for further frequentist analysis. Additional to the routinely collected screening data we also present a purpose-designed, prospective cohort study of distress symptoms in the same cancer outpatient population. This study collected distress outcome scores from enrolled patients at regular intervals and with very little missing data. Consequently it contained many of the features that were lacking in the routinely collected screening data and provided a useful contrast, offering an insight into how the screening data might have been were it not for the limitations. We evaluate the extent to which it was possible to reproduce the clinical study results with the analysis of the observational screening data. Lastly, using the modelling strategy previously developed we analyse the abundant screening data to estimate the prevalence of depression in a cancer outpatient population and the associations with demographic and clinical characteristics, thereby addressing important clinical research questions that have not been adequately studied elsewhere. The thesis concludes that analysis with observational healthcare data can potentially be advanced considerably with the use of flexible and innovative modelling techniques now made practicable with modern computing power.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

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