The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the associations between psychosocial stressors, urine sugar levels, and subsequent birth outcomes, specifically high birth weight babies and Caesarean section births. In a prospective cohort study, 506 Black and White women of childbearing age were followed for the duration of one pregnancy in Tuscaloosa and Mobile counties in Alabama from 1990 to 2001. Participants were interviewed twice throughout pregnancy, during the first and third trimesters, respectively, and birth outcome data were collected via medical chart reviews. Six percent (6.1%) of the women in the sample had a high birth weight baby, and 18.4% received a C-section during childbirth. Adjusted logistic regression results indicate that urine sugar levels are predictive of high-weight births, with women who have higher urine sugar levels were more than three times likely to birth a high weight baby compared with women who have no detectable urine sugar spill (OR 3.25; 95% CI 1.30, 8.10). In addition, the interaction of familial social support throughout pregnancy, physical or verbal abuse during the second and third trimesters, and ethnicity is significantly associated with increased risk of having a high birth weight baby. For C-section, single participants are over two times less likely to receive a C-section during childbirth compared with currently married participants (OR 0.46; 95% CI 0.21-1.00). Examining structural equation modeling results; pathways leading from urine sugar levels, physical or verbal abuse during the latter half of the pregnancy, and a mother's social support among White participants are indicative of high weight births (R² = 0.65). White abused women who receive their mother's social support are more likely to have a high birth weight baby compared with both White and Black women who are not abused and receive the same amount of social support. Recommendations to public health practitioners include primary prevention through promotion of familial support during pregnancy, secondary prevention through urine sugar screening at every prenatal visit, and direct intervention by identifying and inquiring about instances of suspected abuse during pregnancy.

Magistro darbe yra išanalizuotos įvairių Lietuvos ir užsienio autorių paslaugų kokybės definicijos, kriterijai bei modeliai, taip pat studijų administravimo paslaugų kokybės ir streso bei stresorių studijų administravimo kontekste sąsajos, taip pat atlikta anketinė apklausa Šiaulių universiteto trijuose fakultetuose: humanitariniame, socialinių mokslų ir technologijos. Atliktas empirinis tyrimas iš dalies patvirtino, jog studijų administravimo paslaugos teikimo kokybė siejasi su studentų patiriamu stresu ir tinkamai teikiama studijų dalyviams ji gali padėti mažinti studentų patiriamą stresą studijuojant aukštojoje mokykloje. Norint tiksliai išanalizuoti studentų patiriamo streso ypatumus aukštojoje mokykloje ir jo sąsają su studijų administravimo teikiamų paslaugų kokybės dimensijomis, rekomenduotina atlikti kokybinį tyrimą. / In this master degree work there is analyze the definitions of service quality, criteria and models, the theoretical connection between the evaluation of studies administration services and the evaluation of stress and stressors in study context of the administration interface and a questionnaire survey were used for making a research in three Humanities, Social Sciences and Technology faculties of Siauliai university. Data analysis has showed that in this master degree was confirmed partially that the administration of study of service quality relate to students' stress and due to study participants, it can help reduce stress for students‘ studying in higher education. To accurately analyze the students' stress features of higher education and its interface with the administration of study of quality dimensions of services, it is advisable to carry out a qualitative study.

Shallow lakes in Muskoka-Haliburton have been largely ignored in previous limnological and paleolimnological studies, as many are considered to be less desirable for cottage development and other cultural activities. Nonetheless, shallow lakes offer important habitat for many animals. 30 oligo- and mesotrophic, shallow lakes were chosen for a paleolimnological study to assess the impacts of multiple stressors on cladoceran invertebrates. Fossil cladoceran remains preserved in the sediment samples of the study lakes were used to evaluate the nature and magnitude of any changes in assemblages from both modern and pre-industrial times. Relationships between present-day assemblages and key environmental variables were investigated using redundancy analysis, which identified that lake area (p<0.01) and Secchi depth (p<0.05) were significant predictors of assemblage composition in the shallow lakes. Secchi depth was not correlated to water clarity measures, as it usually is, but rather to macrophyte abundance. The modern-day assemblages were compared to the pre-industrial assemblages using the snapshot “top-bottom” paleolimnological approach. The top and bottom assemblages were compared using an ANOSIM which was not significant (p=0.2), confirming that modern assemblages were similar to pre-industrial assemblages in shallow lakes. Full core analysis from three shallow lakes also showed only subtle changes in littoral assemblage composition through time, further supporting results from the top/bottom study. The changes recorded were mainly in the pelagic taxa, with the littoral taxa relatively very stable through time. These small, shallow lakes were then compared and combined with a deep lake set from the same region. The results show some striking differences between shallow and deep lakes. For example, pelagic taxa appear to be driving changes within assemblages across a depth gradient, with most of the changes in the deeper lakes. Water chemistry has an increasingly important role in structuring cladoceran assemblage as lakes become deeper, although lake morphometry does play an important role in defining cladoceran assemblages in all the study lakes. Cladoceran assemblages in shallow lakes appear to be more stable than deeper lakes, despite being exposed to the same regional stressors, such as acidification, calcium decline, and climate change. / Thesis (Master, Biology) -- Queen's University, 2012-12-31 13:41:52.662

This study aimed to investigate whether young children between the ages of 1-3 experience stress as a result of larger class sizes and the manner in which to mitigate this stress. I have also investigated whether educators may induce stress in children and generally whether stress amongst adults is transferrable to children. I propose the following questions: How do educators perceive stress in children's groups? How do children react to stress? How to prevent stress in preschool children? This study is based on a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews and participant observations. My theoretical approach to this study is the sociocultural perspective. The literature points to the fact that various stress-related situations and unstable relationships in preschool can contribute to the stress levels of children. Interviews and observational studies have found that there is a positive relationship between classroom size and stress among children. Classroom sizes lead to stressed teachers, less time devoted to each individual child, loud noises in the children's groups, fewer staff as well as less space for children to play and move around in. These are only some of the burdens of larger classroom sizes. In addition, the investigation showed that for children who do not speak, upon interaction they tended to mimic their educator’s stressful behaviour and thus felt stressed themselves. The educator’s stressful behaviour very strongly influenced the stress levels of all of the children in the group. Teachers had strategies to prevent and manage stress in kindergarten but also suggested organizational changes to divide the children more frequently into small groups, to adapt the physical environment to accommodate for a larger group of children and to give children more time in the dining room.

Some salespeople cope with the chronic stress that accompanies sales jobs better than others. That is, while all salespeople possess some ability for coping with job stress, some coping mechanisms work better than others. Thus, it is critically important to identify the coping mechanismwhich are associated with the most positive organizational outcomes (i.e., higher performance, increased retention). Research on the coping mechanisms of salespeople is in its exploratory stage. Increased knowledge concerning how salespeople cope with chronic job stress would help researchers and managers to clarify why certain job outcomes occur instead of others (i.e., performance, retention, and burnout). This study proposes and tests a set of relationships pertaining to the dimensionality and the outcomes of salespeople's coping styles. The model identifies the antecedents of coping style and proposes three types of coping style salespeople employ to reduce job stress- emotion focused coping (EFC), problemfocused coping (PFC) and action oriented coping (AOC). It also elucidates the outcomes associated with EFC and PFC styles. The empiricalfindingssuggest that among salespeople, those who use PFC possess a more pronounced internal locus of control, perceive higher social support, and project higher continuance commitment, and higher self efficacy than those who use EFC. The findings also suggest that salespeople who use PFC tend to be more satisfied and express greater well being than those who use EFC. Additionally, salespeople who use EFC tend to exhibit greater propensity to burnout and greater tendency to withdraw than those who use PFC. The model holds considerable promise froma managerial standpoint. Because the model partially predicts whether the outcome of a particular coping style will be positive or negative, managers can train their salespeople to cope with job stress more effectively. Additionally, it may be significantly helpful to those who recruit salespeople. Sales recruiters ought to be able to identify applicants with a greater orientation toward an internal locus of control. Internally driven individuals are more likely to use a problem focused coping style. In the context of hiring salespeople, this knowledge can be of crucial importance.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is deliberate behavior by employees that harms the interests of their organization or its members. Previous research suggests that job stress, including a variety of individual job stressors, lead to CWB (e.g., Penney & Spector, 2005; Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001; Spector, Fox, & Domagalski, 2006) and that CWB is an ineffective coping strategy for dealing with job stress (Shoss, Jundt, Kobler, & Reynolds, 2015). Job crafting is a form of individual-level job redesign that has been shown to reduce the negative effects of stress, but less is known about job crafting’s relationship with CWB or whether it could function as a more effective coping mechanism for job stress. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of job crafting as a moderator of the relationship between job stress and CWB. Additionally, this study examined job crafting’s relationship to CWB and to five common job stressors: interpersonal conflict, workload, job insecurity, role ambiguity, and organizational constraints. Three hundred participants completed a two-part online study through Amazon Mechanical Turk, the first of which assessed participants’ experience of the job stressors of interpersonal conflict (Interpersonal Conflict at Work Scale; Spector & Jex, 1998), workload (Quantitative Workload Inventory; Spector, 1998), organizational constraints (Organizational Constraints Scale; Spector & Jex, 1998), job insecurity (Job Insecurity Scale; Mauno, Leskinen, & Kinnunen, 2001), and role ambiguity (Role Ambiguity Scale; Rizzo, House, & Lirtzman, 1970). The first study session also assessed participants’ work locus of control (Work Locus of Control Scale; Spector, 1988) and negative affectivity (Negative Affectivity subscale of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The second study session was conducted five days after the first study session and assessed participants’ frequency of engagement in CWB (CWB-Checklist; Spector et al., 2006) and frequency of job crafting (Job Crafting Scale; Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2010). Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were utilized to test for relationships among these variables and moderation effects. The results showed that composite job stress (the combined, average score across each of the job stressor scales) and each of the five job stressors individually were significantly, positively correlated with CWB. However, within the hierarchical regression analyses, only composite job stress, interpersonal conflict, workload, and role ambiguity were significant predictors of CWB. In addition, job crafting did not predict CWB or moderate the effects of composite job stress or any of the five individual job stressors on CWB. These results suggest that job stress does lead to CWB, but job crafting is likely neither an effective coping mechanism for job stress nor an effective means of reducing CWB in organizations.

This study was designed to describe the experiences of acculturation, acculturative stress, and coping behaviors among Black international students. While research exists on the acculturative and coping experiences of international students in the United States, very few studies have been designed to explicitly examine the experiences of Black international students of sub-Saharan and Caribbean origins. A majority of the existing literature has focused on experiences of Asian and Latin American international students (Malcolm & Mendoza, 2014). This study was intended to provide information about the acculturative experiences of Black international students enrolled at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Interviews were conducted with four focus groups, each comprising three participants. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological approach, and themes were generated from the interviews. The themes that emerged shed light on experiences related to acculturative stress, anti-Black and anti-immigrant discrimination, and adjusting to a new academic environment. Themes also highlighted several ways that Black international students coped with these experiences (e.g., talking to other international students, keeping in contact with family in their home country, and relying on a faith community). Results from this study will inform future research on how Black international students learn race within the U.S context, how geographical location influences the acculturative experiences of Black international students, and the interactions between Black immigrant communities and African American communities. Results of this study could also be used to develop diversity trainings for university staff and community members, and to develop social programs specifically for Black international

This paper attempts to place the role of transformational leadership within the stressor-strain process by investigating the potential indirect effects of the perceptions of transformational leadership on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) through its influence on perceptions of the communication climate and trust. Leaders perceived as being transformational will offer an ameliorating effect on employee appraisals of stressors (i.e., conflict). Non-task organizational conflict is a stressor that captures employees’ perceptions of conflict with co-workers attributable to organizational factors (e.g., unclear or contradictory policies). Previous studies have found this type of stressor to be associated with negative health and workplace outcomes. Counterproductive work behaviors are a form of workplace incivility in which employees engage in minor acts of retribution. Transactional theories of stress place particular importance on appraisal mechanisms to explain the experience of stress and subsequent engagement in CWBs. Volumes of literature in the field of leadership have suggested that transformational leaders have the ability to influence the ways employees make meaning of events at work. However, few studies have investigated the mechanisms by which employees’ appraisals of stressors are influenced. This study investigated the potential role of trust in leadership and communication climate as possible mechanisms. Organizational climate research focuses on how employees, through their social interactions, create and ascribe meaning to work events. Communication climate specifically focuses on the supportive and defensive qualities of an organization’s communicative norms and expectations. Previous research suggests trust to be a key factor in mitigating the experience of stressors and strains. Participants were primarily recruited from positions in higher education administration, using a sample of convenience, snowball sampling. Survey instruments were administered during two waves of data collection, for a full-panel sample of N = 123. Results suggested transformational leadership indirectly effected engagement in CWBs through its influence on the experience of non-task organizational conflict. Trust in leadership was not a significant predictor. Communication climate provided a mixed picture. While perceptions of a more supportive communication climate were associated with less conflict and fewer CWBs, the data did not support the indirect effects of transformational leadership through communication climate.

Exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months and continued breastfeeding for the first year or two is promoted as the preferred method for feeding infants. In the United States, about 79% of infants are ever breastfed and less than 27% are breastfed through the first year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014b). The purpose of this study was to understand the role of breastfeeding experiences and underlying factors that may facilitate the maintenance of breastfeeding one’s first child as well as the re-engagement in breastfeeding with one's second child. This dissertation includes two quantitative studies using secondary data and one qualitative study involving data specifically collected for this study. The quantitative studies used data from the Infant Feeding Practices Study II and the Year 6 Follow Up surveys. Findings indicate barriers in the early breastfeeding experience (pain, trouble with milk supply, and trouble with the baby’s suck or latch) are associated with less time spent in breastfeeding maintenance among first-time mothers and experiencing trouble with the first baby’s suck or latch is associated with non-initiation with one's second child. Conversely, as levels of perceived breastfeeding self-efficacy, opinion about the best way to feed a baby, and belief about breast milk increased, or became more pro-breastfeeding over time, time spent in breastfeeding maintenance among first-time mothers also increased. Those with a high level of response efficacy were also more likely to initiate breastfeeding with a second child. In the qualitative study, 28 first-time mothers who recently stopped breastfeeding and live in Iowa participated in semi-structured interviews. The objectives of this third study were to understand and describe first-time mothers’ experiences of infant feeding throughout the entire breastfeeding maintenance period, and explore how contextual factors may act as facilitators or barriers to breastfeeding maintenance by identifying common turning points. Turning points were defined as events or periods in time perceived as personally significant, that promoted a change, maintenance, or where a new meaning associated with the experience was acquired. Findings include seven turning points (breastfeeding problems, overcoming the unknown, recurring stressors, learning how to live life with the new baby, re-entering social roles, special occasions, and letting go) that were usually associated with stressful situations. The availability of intrapersonal (e.g., individual determination) and interpersonal (e.g., social support from others) coping resources at these turning points facilitated breastfeeding maintenance. The first study is significant in the longitudinal consideration of both experiences and changes in intrapersonal and interpersonal factors and how these changes relate to breastfeeding maintenance. The second study is significant with the focus on multiparous mothers and the effect of previous breastfeeding thoughts and experiences on breastfeeding initiation with a second child. The third study is unique in the identification of breastfeeding turning points that may lead to identifying opportune times and strategies for maintenance interventions. Findings from these studies have implications for intervention planning and future research. The synthesis of findings across the three studies suggests the early breastfeeding period is paramount to breastfeeding maintenance, along with the role of one’s social environment, particularly the perceived availability of social support to meet mothers' needs. Finally, findings from this dissertation can be used to improve social support provision and multi-level interventions targeting mothers’ most salient needs at the most opportune times.

To protect and restore the biological integrity of streams, we need to be able to both detect biological degradation and infer likely causes of impairment. Managers often use biological indices to measure biological condition and detect degradation. However, the ability to detect degradation can be limited by the performance of the indices we develop. Index performance varies widely, but the sources of this variation are often unclear. In addition, although bioassessments are useful tools for detecting biological degradation, they do not identify stressors associated with impairment. My thesis research had two general goals: 1) develop statistically and ecologically robust indices to measure biological condition in Nevada streams and 2) quantify relationships between land uses, stressors, and biological condition to infer likely causes of degradation. I developed two biological indices for Nevada streams, a multimetric index (MMI) and observed to expected (O/E) taxa ratios, and determined if index performance was related to site isolation and sample evenness. The Nevada O/E indices were relatively imprecise compared with those from other regions, which likely results from low assemblage predictability associated with spatial isolation of aquatic habitats in arid regions. In contrast, the Nevada MMI was more precise than most previously developed MMIs, likely the result of using models to reduce natural variation in index scores. Sample evenness was positively associated with both O/E and MMI scores. Adjustments of index scores for sample evenness increased index precision, but also altered relative differences in index values and therefore inferences of biological impairment at specific sites. I also quantified relationships between biological condition, instream stressors, and land uses and used a weight of evidence approach to infer likely causes of degradation. Land uses such as agriculture, urbanization, and mining were associated with the spatial distributions of instream stressors, and these stressors were associated with variation in biological condition. Total dissolved solids and metal contamination were the stressors most strongly associated with biological condition. By detecting biological degradation and identifying important stressors and their potential sources, the tools I developed should help managers target conservation and restoration efforts and improve their ability to protect freshwater resources.