This capstone project was conducted to evaluate trainer trainee satisfaction and acceptability from social validation questionnaires for SafeCare provider training s conducted by the National SafeCare Training and Research Center. Data were collected from 82 training participants from 2007 to 2009. SafeCare is an evidence-based parenting skills program created for at-risk and maltreating parents. The National SafeCare Training and Research Center utilizes a trainer-training model to teach professionals at the community-level. Trainees are instructed in four SafeCare modules: health, home safety, parent-child and parent-infant interactions. Social validation questionnaires are administered to evaluate process and procedures, outcome measures, staff performance, and training methods. Overall, SafeCare provider training was reported as valuable across all three social validation questionnaires. Trainees also reported a strong agreement for utilizing the skills learned during training in their future field work. Training staff performance received high satisfaction ratings as well.

abstract: This dissertation develops grounded theory on how respect is received and internalized in organizations, and the personal and work-related outcomes of receiving respect. A company that employed inmates at a state prison to perform professional business-to-business marketing services provided a unique context for data collection, as respect is typically problematic in a prison environment but was deliberately instilled by this particular company. Data collection took place in three call centers (minimum, medium, and maximum security levels) and included extensive non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival documents. My sampling strategy focused on the experience of new employees as they went through the training and socialization process, a time when the experience of respect was particularly novel and salient to them. The emergent theoretical model suggests that receiving respect was experienced in two distinct ways, which were labeled generalized and personalized respect. These two types of respect were directly related to outcomes for the receivers' well-being and performance on the job. Receiving respect also changed the way that receivers thought and felt about themselves. The two types of respect (generalized and personalized) exerted different forces on the self-concept such that generalized respect led to social validation and identity security for social identities, and personalized respect led to social validation and identity security for personal identities. The social validation and subsequent identity security ultimately enabled the receiver of respect to integrate their conflicting personal and social identities into a coherent whole, an outcome referred to as identity holism. In addition to the direct effects of receiving generalized and personalized respect on individuals' well-being and performance, identity holism served as a partial mediator between received respect and individual outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as well as future research directions aimed to build momentum for research on respect in organizations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Business Administration 2012

As more schools turn to School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS) for help with academic and problem behaviors in their schools, the need to adequately evaluate these programs on a socially relevant level increases. The present study employs social validation measures to evaluate Utah's Academic, Behavioral & Coaching Initiative (ABC-UBI), a Positive Behavior Support (PBS) initiative, on socially relevant issues. Participants from across the state of Utah who were active consumers of ABC-UBI's program, were polled for their opinion on the acceptability of the treatment goals, procedures and outcomes of the program. The results outlined several areas of much needed improvement including, but not limited to the amount of paperwork required for successful implementation and the usability of program procedures. Social validity continues to be an important construct to consider when evaluating programs for social relevancy.

Perceived organizational support (POS) is an important construct in organizational science that describes employees’ degree of perceived support from their organization. However, in the academic literature, no paper has openly consulted real employees for how they understand and experience organizational support. The goal of the present dissertation was to conduct a qualitative,<br>person-centric study to from the employee’s perspective investigate the meaning of POS. To do this, techniques based on current best-practice recommendations were used, including examining incidents of the phenomenon and collecting lay definitions from key informants. It was found that a wide range of organizational behaviors can count as support; in the data, 25 distinct support forms were identified along with 27 lack of support forms. Through thematic analysis, these forms were aggregated into six themes of organizational support (e.g., “Organization helps the employee perform their job effectively”) and ultimately formed a single higher-order theme that represented<br>the meaning of POS. That ism POS is the holistic perception of whether or not an employee is<br>valued by their organization. This aligns with the classical academic definition of POS (perceptions of how much the organization values one’s well-being and work contributions) but also suggests the construct should be considered more broadly.<br>Because how a construct is conceptualized determines its essential content, the second half of this dissertation performed a systematic content validation of the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS) and its short forms. Little formal content validation had been done<br>for this scale, but it was found that all four aspects of content validity examined (content deficiency, relevance, distinctiveness, and balance) were satisfactory in the SPOS and of its short forms. Thus, researchers using these scales can be confident of content validity, although there is a need to improve content validation processes and reduce the number of SPOS short forms in current use.