Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-160).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on July 27, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

As international student enrollment has increased at US universities since late 1950s and early 1960s (Taylor & Angelis, 2008), international students at the graduate levels have taught an increasing number of undergraduate courses. As Bailey (1983) recognized early on, a "foreign TA problem" has developed due to various misunderstanding in the accent and culture of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). This so called "problem" has led to numerous studies on the subject. The main focus of this study was to investigate undergraduate students' perceptions and attitudes toward the foreign accentedness of ITAs. Different from previous research which largely studied the perspectives from North American undergraduates, this study examines data from two groups of participants: 34 native (18 male; 16 female) and 32 nonnative (18 male; 14 female) English-speaking undergraduates. In order to examine this complex topic fully, three research foci were generated, including undergraduate' overall perceptions and attitudes to ITAs, their evaluations of the comprehensibility and intelligibility of ITAs' foreign accents, and their awareness and appreciation of the value of intercultural communication. The research instrument was a survey questionnaire that inquired into participants' answers to the aforementioned research foci. In addition to the general demographic information, participants had to circle or mark their answers to 20 statements, presented in 5-point Likert scales, and to write down their responses to 2 open-ended questions listed in the end of the questionnaire. This was a study of mixed-design which included quantitative and qualitative data analyses. For the quantitative part, the data gathered from 5-point Likert scales were analyzed through univariate analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and correlation analyses. The data of written responses from 2 open-ended questions were analyzed through content analyses as the qualitative part of this study. The results of this study shed a positive light on the research of ITAs. From the quantitative analyses, neither nationality nor gender showed statistically significant differences, but both groups of participants revealed moderate-high positive attitudes/perceptions to ITAs, evaluated ITAs' foreign accents slightly lower but still positively, and displayed moderate-high positive awareness/appreciation of the value of intercultural communication. Moreover, it was found that participants with higher awareness of intercultural communication showed more positive attitudes and rated ITAs' foreign accents higher. Both consistent and intriguing findings were discovered from analyzing participants written responses. In a similar manner, both groups of participants responded with more positive than negative comments to describe their personal experiences with ITAs. In contrast, more negative reports were written when the participants described their classmates' reactions toward ITAs. This inconsistency might have resulted from the conflict between avowal and ascription of participants; ethnocentrism was also revealed from the comments of some participants. The results of this study provide insights for ITA training programs when evaluating and screening ITAs' competence in spoken English and they also serve as a reference for ITAs in preparation for future teaching assignments at US institutions.

Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) has been used to explain how mechanisms related to socialization, sexual objectification, and psychological variables interact to predict mental health difficulties. Among a sample of 626 undergraduate women (age 18-24), this study empirically tested components of Moradi and Huang’s (2008) model and extended it by including additional socialization experiences (i.e., sexual abuse, societal pressures regarding weight and body size). Structural equation modeling analyses suggested that the model provided a good fit to the data and the model was tested in the confirmatory sample. Across the two samples, high levels of Body Shame and low levels of Internal Bodily Awareness directly led and high levels of Societal Pressures Regarding Weight and Body Size, Internalization of Cultural Standards of Beauty, and Self-objectification indirectly led to increased Bulimic Symptomatology and accounted for 65 to 73% of the variance in Bulimic Symptomatology. A history of sexual abuse and sexual objectification were not consistently supported within the model and do not appear to be as salient as the experience of societal pressures regarding weight and body size in understanding women’s experience of bulimic symptomatology. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

No description available.

While empirical research abounds for ways to develop cultural competence, studies are scarce in how to track its growth in students. This study utilized a non-equivalent control group design to propose tracking growth using cultural competence mini lessons, self-assessment of cultural competency, and the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI; Research Institute for Studies in Education, 2017). Data collected were used to align students along the levels of Cross’s Cultural Competency Continuum (; Cross, 2012). Forty-one (41) students enrolled in a multidisciplinary teaching methods course served as the study participants. Paired samples t-tests were conducted using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS v. 26) to track changes in pre-/post- scores. A significant difference was found for the self-ratings of the treatment group between the pretest (M = 6.75, SD = 2.15) and the posttest (M = 8.00, SD = 1.08, t(19) = -2.52, p = .02). Significant differences were also found for treatment group for the GPI Identity (Ident) scale between the pretest (M = 4.28, SD = .37) and the posttest (M = 4.46, SD = .45 t(19) = -2.22, p = .04), and for the Social Responsibility (SocRes) scale between the pretest (M = 3.44, SD = .35) and the posttest (M = 3.61, SD = .39, t(19) = -2.74, p = .01). Results suggest the use of mini lessons as one way to promote cultural competence development. Utilizing Cross’s to track growth resulted in misalignment between participants’ self-ratings and placement into one of Cross’s levels for both the comparison and treatment groups. Cross-cultural experiences were also examined, with interactions with people from other cultures (29.3%) and traveling abroad (21.9%) as the most reported. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

No description available.

One of the most painful events in life that an adolescent can face is the loss of someone with whom they had a strong emotional attachment (Harvey, 2002). This loss could be a friend, relative, parent, or any person that was strongly attached to the adolescent. In today's literature, there is a lack of attention given to adolescents, college students in particular who experience loss. This retrospective study consisted of 224 university students who had lost someone during adolescence or preadolescence. I examined if the impact of the stress accompanied by the loss and the coping strategies used to deal with loss differed by gender and the time in which students experienced their loss. Results from this study indicate that gender plays a significant role in both coping behaviors and the impact of the loss on the individual. In particular, females were found have more coping behaviors and felt a higher degree of impact of the loss than males. Another variable that played a significant factor in this study was the time of loss, early or later in life. Those students who experienced their loss later in life (between 13-19) were impacted more than those who experienced their loss early in life (between 5-12). However, time of loss did not play a role in the individual coping behaviors exhibited. / Master of Science

The literature available on financial aid addresses how aid promotes access and equal educational opportunity by enabling students to matriculate into college. The literature also discusses how financial aid impacts students' ability to persist to degree completion. However, there seems to be little research on how financial aid affects students' lives while they are in college. The present study attempted to address this gap in the existing literature by examining the differences in quality of life between college students receiving financial aid and those not receiving such aid. For purposes of this study, quality of life was defined by four dimensions culled from the literature: (a) material possessions; (b) housing; (c) use of time; and (d) support mechanisms. Financial aid was defined as any need-based grant, loan, or work-study money awarded to a student. Data were collected using the Quality of Life survey developed specifically for this study. The survey consisted of 59 items that were designed to measure the four dimensions of students' quality of life. The target sample for this study consisted of 600 first year undergraduate students: 300 financial aid recipients and 300 non-aid recipients. The findings revealed significant differences in three of the four areas: material possessions, use of time, and support mechanisms. These findings suggest that those who administer financial aid programs and those responsible for creating financial aid policies may wish to consider the role financial aid plays in the quality of life of students. / Master of Arts

A post-positivistic research paradigm was adopted and a qualitative (less dominant) with quantitative (dominant) method was the research design. Phase I Study was a focus group study aiming at understanding conceptions and beliefs about spousal abuse with five focus groups involving 40 undergraduates. Phase II Study was a questionnaire survey with some of the items in questionnaire derived from the qualitative findings of the focus groups. Based on a stratified sampling strategy, 361 social work undergraduates were randomly selected from all undergraduate social work training institutions to participate in this survey. They completed a 252-item questionnaire which measured their conceptions and beliefs about spousal abuse and the psychosocial correlates within the proposed ecological model. / By applying the ecological model, attitudes toward gender, identification with Chinese traditional and modern culture were significant correlates of the conceptions of spousal abuse; while gender, attitudes toward gender and identification with Chinese traditional culture were the significant correlates of beliefs about spousal abuse. The socialization influences were also significant correlates of the outcome variables in the male sample. These observations provided support for the thesis that there are individual and environmental correlates of conceptions and beliefs about spousal abuse. Coverage on spousal abuse in social work curriculum was found to be inadequate and request for training was high. Meanwhile, undergraduates with adequate training showed broader conceptions of spousal abuse, which indicated that training might help to broaden their conceptions of spousal abuse. / Results showed that social work undergraduates' conceptions of physical abuse were highly consistent with legal and experts' perspectives, while their conceptions of psychological abuse were more from laymen's perspectives, which were relatively unclear and less consistent with legal and experts' perspectives. They also had broader conceptions of wife abuse than husband abuse by identifying more behavioral manifestations as wife abuse. In general, the breadth of their conceptions of spousal abuse depended on their gender (same sex favoritism), victims' gender, and types of abuse (physical vs. psychological). Furthermore, they endorsed more biased beliefs about husband abuse than wife abuse. Male students endorsed more biased beliefs about spousal abuse than their female counterparts. / The lay conceptions and beliefs about spousal abuse among social work undergraduates in Hong Kong were studied and lay conceptions were compared with legal and experts' perspectives. Adopting an ecological model, it was hypothesized that gender, attitudes toward gender, socialization of gender stereotypes and violence approval, and identification with Chinese traditional and modern cultural values were psychosocial correlates of conceptions and beliefs about spousal abuse. / This study has several contributions. First, it enhances our understanding of the conceptions and beliefs about spousal abuse from the lay, legal, and professional perspectives. Second, with reference to our limited understanding on husband abuse, the present findings enhance our understanding on husband abuse. Third, it contributes to the development of theoretical models pertinent to the psychosocial correlates at the individual, interpersonal, and cultural levels. Finally, it facilitates improvement in coverage of spousal abuse in social work education. / Tam, Suet Yan. / Adviser: T. L. Daniel Shek. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-09, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 423-450). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.