A large portion of the American public is overweight and many are classified as being obese.  Obesity and unhealthy eating behavior are partially related to the increase in our society""s consumption of foods away from home. Accordingly, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suggested new menu labeling regulations to help educate customers on healthy items among menu selections. Few studies have tried to understand customers"" healthy eating behavior in restaurants. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand and to predict customers' healthy eating behavior in casual dining restaurants, using the theory of planned behavior and the health belief model. The results showed that attitude toward healthy eating behavior and subjective norm positively influenced intention to engage in healthy eating behavior in casual dining restaurants while perceived behavioral control did not. For healthy eating behavior in casual dining restaurants, perceived threat, self-efficacy, response to provision of nutrition information (cue to action) were significant predictors. However, perceived benefits and barriers were not statistically significant. Also, the study found that subjective nutrition knowledge influenced customers' response to provision of nutrition information whereas objective nutrition knowledge did not. Customers' healthy eating behavior positively influenced their willingness to patronize a restaurant that offers healthy menu items, which means that those who try to eat healthy menu items in casual dining restaurants are willing to revisit restaurants where healthy menu choices are available and to recommend the restaurants to others. Finally, this study generated socio-demographic profiles related to healthy eating behavior in casual dining restaurants and willingness to patronize a restaurant that provides healthy menu choices. The results revealed that education levels and BMI (Body Mass Index) status influenced customers' healthy eating behavior. Also, customers' willingness to patronize a restaurant that provides healthy menu items differed based on gender, marital status, and education levels. / Ph. D.

This study aims to investigate college students' security awareness of using social media in sharing information. The two theories that have guided this study are the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the technology acceptance model (TAM). Data was collected from both undergraduate and graduate students from the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton. The total responses included 380 students from different majors with 291 valid responses for data analysis; The structural equation model (SEM) Lavaan package was used to find out the best fit of the model. A diagonally weighted least squares (DWLS) was used to model the variables as ordinal in this study's analysis as ordinal data made the model fit substantially. The study found that 6 factors: attitude (AB), subjective norm (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived risks (PR), and security awareness (SA) influenced behavior intention (BI). Also, I found that AB was influenced by PR and SA, as well as SN influenced by SA. Self-efficacy (SE) influenced PBC. On the other hand, the study found that controllability (C) did not influence PBC; perhaps, an individual's skills do not interact with social media security settings. Perceived ease of use (PEOU) did not influence BI; perhaps this occurred because of an individual's inability to prevent his or her information from being disclosed in the future, even if they had taken the right precautions. This study contributed to literature on understanding the nature of information sharing among college students on social media. The results may help college security professionals to evaluate or revise the rules and policies regarding cybersecurity and privacy.

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The internationalization of higher education curriculum, including programs in educational leadership, in the United States is increasing, and with the increase in graduate interest in study abroad, this study predicted graduate students pursuing a graduate degree in higher education administration or student affairs (HESA) at institutions in the southeastern United States intent to study abroad short-term. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used to frame the study, which identified the behavioral beliefs (future job prospects), normative beliefs (family expectations), and control beliefs (administrative support) of graduate students that were related to study abroad. Future job prospects, family expectations, and administrative support formed one variable, willingness to pay, which was hypothesized to influence intent to study abroad. Desire and affordability were also hypothesized to influence intent to study abroad. The Theory of Planned Behavior and each variable were assumed to be important to short-term study abroad intent. However, this was an initial study focused on solely graduate students in an education discipline regarding study abroad intent to use the Theory of Planned Behavior and the chosen variables. A survey was emailed to all graduate students in a HESA program at 15 institutions in the southeastern United States. There were 171 students that fully completed the survey. In this study, I found that future job prospects had a positive relationship with willingness to pay. Thus, hypothesis 2 was supported. However, family expectations and administrative support did not have a positive relationship with willingness to pay indicating that hypotheses 3 and 4 were not supported. Regarding intent to study abroad, both desire and affordability positively influenced intent to study abroad with path coefficients of .62 and .24, respectively, while willingness to pay did not indicating that hypotheses 5 and 6 were supported while hypothesis 1 was not supported. The data were analyzed using a structural equation model (SEM) to create a structural model to understand the strength of the relationship of each variable by the resulting path coefficients and variance. Understanding the beliefs and intentions of such students provided implications to establish or improve existing study abroad programs focusing on graduate students.

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