Through ethnographic interviewing and participant observation, this study examines the motivation of sixteen women of different ethnic backgrounds to attend college and to major in a helping profession. The women, aged nineteen to forty-two, come from low-income rural areas of the southeastern United States. The study is set in a two-year unit of a state university system. / The existing literature appears to establish the motivational factors for white, urban, middle-class males. Researchers know less, however, about the factors influencing working-class people, females, or members of minorities. The dominant view associates academic achievement with the Protestant work ethic and success orientation as measured by grades and test scores. Findings incorporate motivations for enrollment, factors affecting persistence, post-enrollment changes in motivation, and the modifications in achievement anticipated after graduation. / The investigation focused on the importance of the participants' concept of education and the resulting effects on motivation for achievement, on the role of children both as motivators and as impediments to scholastic success, on the impact of menial or manual labor, and on the respondents' attitudes toward men, welfare, and dependency. Findings include the following: (1) in contrast to males in other studies, women in this study rank motivating factors in a different order of importance, (2) different considerations shape their primary motivators, and (3) enrollment motivators for women can become barriers to success in higher education. / Among these participants, social forces leading to the desire to matriculate and to the ability to persevere in higher education differ from those found in traditional participants. Whereas "mainstream" studies noted that mate selection was among women's motivators for attending college, this study found that the desire to escape abusive men was a major motivator for returning women. Some motivators also became pressures that impeded success when the women became students (e.g., need for child care, lack of money). In their drive for upward mobility, these women often were caught between family responsibilities and school or between community and classroom. The study integrates critical theory with constructs from developmental psychology and sociology to explain behaviors in this group. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-05, Section: A, page: 1706. / Major Professor: Rodney F. Allen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

The purpose of this study was to expand on the understanding of those college students involved with sexual aggression and victimization. This study determined groups of aggressors, non-aggressors, victims and non-victims for the purpose of establishing contrasts according to certain variables. The independent variables were levels of sexual aggression and victimization. The primary dependent variables were rape supportive beliefs and beliefs in traditional sex roles. The study also examined the factors of age, gender, year in college, religious background, race, and previous consensual sexual activity to determine contrasts between aggressors, non-aggressors, victims and non-victims. / The sample was a random cluster sample consisting of 669 college students (353 males, 316 females) surveyed in their classes. The Sex Role Stereotyping Scale (Burt, 1980) was used to measure belief in traditional sex roles. The Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Burt, 1980) was used to measure rape supportive beliefs. The Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss & Oros, 1982) was used to determine various degrees of sexual aggression and victimization. / No significant differences were found between non-aggressors and aggressors on the dependent variables of rape supportive beliefs, beliefs in traditional sex roles, age or year in college. Aggressors were found to have stronger rape supportive beliefs, stronger beliefs in traditional sex roles, and a higher mean year in college than the victims. Differences between aggressors and victims were explained more so by difference in sex than by difference in involvement with sexual aggression. The non-victims had stronger beliefs in traditional sex roles and were younger than the victims. All males and females involved at some level with sexual aggression or victimization were not significantly different with those not involved at all with sexual aggression or victimization on the dependent variables of religious background and race. However, proportionately more students involved in sexual aggression or victimization reported having had consensual sex experiences than did those students not involved in sexual aggression or victimization. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-06, Section: B, page: 3446. / Major Professor: Barbara A. Mann. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

This research investigated the causes of behavioural difficulties among family businessers in two studies. Study one adapted the evolutionary theory of the firm to the family business context in an empirical study that involved 370 family businessers from 46 families. The study found that: (1) stakeholder cohorts within the family (employed by the business versus not employed by the business; owners of stock versus non stock owners; related to founder versus not related; male versus female) were significantly divided on business direction and planning, the introduction of new routines to the business and various roles, habits, norms and codes that made up the collective knowledge base of the firm; (2) the founding generation reported significantly higher levels of individualism and self-belief than second and third generation family businessers; and (3) the founding generation differed significantly to the third (but not the second) generation on business direction and planning related matters.The second study was a single case design study involving two second-generation family businessers and one third-generation family businesser from three separate family businesses. Using the Skinnerian theory-based technique of functional assessment and the recently formulated Valued Outcomes Analysis (VOA) each individual’s behaviour was analyzed after an initial interview. From this analysis, causes of behaviour were derived and presented to each participant with suggestions for behaviour change. As a result of adopting the suggestions, each individual reported improved functioning at a second interview conducted after a five-week lapse. It was found that individual functioning in family business could be improved by establishing (1) the function of the behaviour, and (2) the valued outcomes that drive the behaviour. The findings of the two studies are linked, limitations of the research are addressed and future projects discussed.

This qualitative study provides an understanding of the role of self-archived disciplinary open access repositories in the cultural configuration of scholarly disciplines. It examines the implications of the technological and organizational layers of access tools and open access repositories and researchers' lived experiences and perceptions layer on researchers' localized knowledge production context and the construction of disciplinary knowledge production contexts. The actor-network theory, which posits that technological and social actors reciprocally affect each other, is applied to compare and contrast the information practices of two groups of researchers: the use of arXiv by astronomers, and the use of PhilSci by philosophers of science. Six astronomers and five philosophers of science were identified through purposeful selection. The interviews with the researchers were conducted over a period of five months, ranging in length between 40-75 minutes. Primary documentary evidence, describing open access repositories and access tools, is also used for the analysis. The findings show that the open access repositories, the access tools, and researchers' individual knowledge production contexts are co-constructed as researchers search, discover and access scholarly artifacts. Open access has impacted researchers' knowledge production by realigning the existing processes and by instigating the emergence of new actors and constructs. Four themes emerge as researchers articulate their perceptions about the value and the role of open access: impact on scholarly process, impact on scholarly output, integration with scholarly context, and democratization of the scholarly discourse. Congruent with the domain-analytic approach, two distinct socio-technological models emerge. Astronomers perceive arXiv as important and critical in their scholarly information practices, with a central role in their discipline. However, Philosophers of science perceive PhilSci as having a limited value in their scholarly information practices and rather minimal role in their discipline. The properties of disciplinary cultures, such as the mutual dependence between researchers and the task uncertainty in a specific discipline, are implicated in the appropriation of the open access repositories and access tools at individual and disciplinary level. The socio-technological co-constructionist approach emerges as a viable theoretical and methodological framework to explicate complex socio-technological contexts.

This dissertation studies computer-mediated communication (CMC), in which interpersonal communication content between library users and reference librarians who engaged in service encounters is evaluated. The computer-mediated form of reference services, called virtual reference (VR), was the context for this research. In the CMC research, the analysis of naturally occurring interactions, analysis of face-work, face threat and friction, and impacts of identity on and in face threatening situations are not well represented. This study applied face-work (Goffman, 1967), Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978; 1987) and social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) (Lea & Spears, 1992) to virtual interactions to analyze transcripts that contained friction. The term friction was used to frame interactions that contain real or inferred elements of discord, incivility, impoliteness, or other factors that may detract from a positive working relationship between VR users and VR librarians. / Findings indicate that in transcripts that contained friction, users and librarians did not exhibit concern for either party's negative or positive face wants. Friction between participants included reprimands, abrupt endings without closing rituals by librarians and users, as well as refusals to attend to face threats issued. When librarians issued refusals to users' initial requests, the frequency of users enacting a second face threat dropped dramatically. Findings also indicate that librarians were more likely to instigate friction in the service encounters than users. Moreover, when instances of friction were present, one instance of friction was likely to spark additional instances of friction. / CMC service encounters, such as VR, in the public and private sectors are proliferating. At one point in time, customer service interactions were a face-to-face modality, then they moved to telephone interactions, but increasingly organizations are providing customer service via CMC, such as online banking and shopping. This dissertation research is significant to any organizations or individuals that utilize CMC as a means of customer interface, such as VR, or any other mediated transaction that bridges communication between organizations and the individuals that are served.

Conservatives and liberals hold distinct beliefs in several domains (e.g., political, economic, social/moral), and in previous studies have been reliably distinguished on measures of personality and cognitive style. Although these differences in cognitive style have been well-studied in secular domains, they have yet to be explored in the religious domain. To date, most studies have assumed all forms of conservatism-liberalism are the same, and either ignore religious conservatism-liberalism or combine it with secular forms. However, religious conservatism-liberalism appears to have some distinct features relative to secular conservatism-liberalism. To test this idea, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the fit of a three-factor model of conservatism-liberalism (personality traits and cognitive style; religious conservatism-liberalism; secular conservatism-liberalism) to data collected from 281 self-identified adult, Christian believers (66% female, 90% Caucasian), who completed online questionnaires of personality traits, cognitive styles, and secular and religious ideological beliefs. A distinctive cognitive and personality style, Need for Closure, predicted both Secular and Religious Conservatism-Liberalism. Three components of Need for Closure, Predictability (p < .05), Discomfort with Ambiguity (p < .01), and Openness to Experience (p < .001), each made significant contributions to both Conservatism-Liberalism factors, while Need for Order and Structure and Closed-mindedness did not. Second, the Secular and Religious Conservatism-Liberalism factors were moderately correlated but not identical (0.71, SE = 0.03), supporting the view that Religious and Secular forms of Conservatism-Liberalism are related but distinct. Third, the latent factor Need for Closure explained significant and unique variance within both Secular and Religious Conservatism-Liberalism. Fourth, linear relations between the Need for Closure factor and both the Secular and Religious conservatism-liberalism factors supported the "rigidity-of-the-right" hypothesis found in the literature. However, an unexpected curvilinear relation between the two Conservatism-Liberalism variables indicated that, although secular conservatives were also highly likely to be religiously conservative, secular liberals were equally likely to be religiously conservative or liberal. Most importantly, these findings suggest that religious conservatism-liberalism is a discrete construct that warrants distinction from its secular counterparts in future studies of conservatism-liberalism. Future research exploring this distinction in populations of varying racial/ethnic and religious backgrounds would be beneficial.

This grounded theory study responds to the 21st Century dilemma medical schools encounter as online social networking sites like Facebook reveal more and more about their students---do professionally incongruous online behaviors indicate a lack of essential traits required to be a physician? By contextually situating the inquiry at one medical school over a period of three years, findings revealed the main concerns students had regarding professionalism as it relates to Facebook and detailed strategies employed to resolve those concerns as a substantive theory of digital identity dissonance. Participants revealed an awareness of desired behaviors espoused by professionalism expectations, but discovery of a looped pattern of telling demonstrated a reactive reasoning process seemingly incompatible with institutional norms but indicative of identity acquisition tension. Theoretical conceptualization of the data expanded Bourdieu's notion of habitus to a novel concept of Facebook Native Habitus (FBNH). Identity guarding emerged in analysis as a basic social process characterized by a reactive reasoning process through which enculturated members of a group negotiate thoughts and feelings perceived to be incongruent with in-group expectations. Identity guarding is a subconscious strategy used in managing presentation of self and is the formal theory developed in this study.

Maryland in the mid-nineteenth century was a state trying to balance its regional ties to both an agrarian culture based on the institution of slavery and an industrializing, urban culture. Caught in between two warring societies, Marylanders themselves were unsure of their identity given the rapid changes of the late antebellum decades. This study argues Maryland's cultural identity shifted from being a "southern" state in 1861 to being a "northern" state by 1865 in the minds of its own citizens as well as in the minds of politicians, soldiers, and civilians from other parts of the nation. This transition was the result of economic, political, and social changes that took place in the state during the late antebellum period, although cultural and ideological recognition of this shift did not occur until the war brought Maryland's dual identities into focus and compelled state citizens to choose a side in the conflict. A minority of citizens contested the state's "northern" identity both during and after the war, but the new cultural identity remained dominant largely because northern industrial, urban, and demographic patterns were already well-established and Union military policies directed most Marylanders' political and economic behavior towards a loyal and northern-looking orientation by the end of the war. Understanding these cultural dynamics in a border state like Maryland helps to clarify our vision of complicated and competing ideologies in mid-nineteenth century America.

The Challenge of System Justification for Acknowledging and Responding to Environmental Dilemmas and Climate Change

What does it mean to be authentic? Is authenticity an attribute of the individual, or do certain environmental factors facilitate or inhibit the enactment of the authentic self? This research proposes that authentic behavior is the subjective perception that one is behaving in a way that is in accordance with his or her core being. As such, sense of authenticity is considered an important component of the self. I present a theoretical model of the relationship between authenticity and the need for social approval. I analyze the reports of 194 survey respondents and interview data from 21 interviews. These quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest that individuals engage in authentic and inauthentic behavior for a variety of reasons. Specifically, three different behavioral motivations have been identified: (1) behavior motivated by pursuit of the greater social good or for purposes of social cohesion, (2) behavior motivated by pursuit of instrumental gains, and (3) behavior motivated by an internal standard of integrity. Demographic variables and psychological variables were also found to be important determinants of authentic behavior. Blacks reported lower need for social approval than whites, and subsequently higher reports of authentic behavior. Self-esteem emerged in the analyses as a powerful predictor of authentic behavior. In tandem, these results suggest that it may not be one's level of social power that determines his or her ability to behave in ways deemed authentic, but rather one's sense of freedom and confidence in oneself. / Dissertation