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Despite widespread agreement about the importance of stress for health and well-being, scholars disagree about the types of variables that matter most. On one side, some argue that stress reactivity depends mostly on person-level variables, such as personality, while others contend that stress reactivity depends mostly on situation-level variables, for example chronicity. Researchers from a more integrative perspective assert that stress reactivity depends on an idiosyncratic interaction between person-level and stressor-level variables, for example the finding that lonely people are especially reactive to interpersonal tension. My dissertation reconciles these perspectives by leveraging crossed random effect modeling to determine the percent of stress reactivity attributable to each of these types of variables; the person, the situation, and the person-by-situation interaction. In Study 1, 368 undergraduate college students reacted to 60 unique situations in the context of normal daily life on two separate occasions. In Study 2, 955 adults from the Midlife in the U.S. study self-reported their reactivity to stressful situations encountered on each of eight days. Results from both studies suggest that these three types of variables account for the bulk, at least 70%, of stress reactivity in daily life. Moreover, all three types of variables emerged as important, as each factor contributed at least 20% of the overall variability in stress reactivity. Interestingly, both studies also found that situation-level variables mattered relatively more than the other two types of variables. I discuss these findings in relation to stress theory, stress-reduction interventions, and methodological innovations.

Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / Maximizing college summer breaks for career preparation and prestige accumulation is an established routine for elite undergraduates in the United States. Social reproduction, meritocracy, and changes to the world of work increasingly complicate this issue. Yet despite this additional burden, there is little research into the costs and benefits of participation and limited comprehension of how and why elite undergraduates internalize norms around summer breaks. This study fills that gap by introducing the High Prestige Summer Experience Model, a framework for understanding this decision-making process. Using interviews with 13 undergraduates and recent alumni from an Ivy League university, this grounded theory study presents the five phases of summer planning and participation. Students refine decisions at each stage by measuring possible opportunities against three mental measurements (Threshold of Acceptability, Narrative Currency Value, and Summer Prestige Ranking). The norms and beliefs inculcated through peer culture influence this paradigm through which they view their college summers. Underlying this process are the mediating factors that nudge and shape each particular student’s decisions: personal context; campus context; and societal context. Participants reported that summer experiences play an important role in peer positioning. They carry a narrative currency on campus and the ability to frame their experiences buys social acceptance for undergraduates. Summer experiences allow students to explore jobs in ways not normally available during term-time study, provide opportunities for personal development and growth, and equip them for their post-graduate elite status through capital accumulation. Participants noted that significant emotional and social consequences flow from actions in the summer experience process while simultaneously questioning its value to them in the long term. The findings of an additional comparison group of participants at a different selective campus indicate that this trend toward high prestige summer experiences is being normalized at lower rungs on the institutional prestige ladder as well. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

To this day, Columbia College maintains one of the most robust liberal arts curriculaa mong the tertiary education landscape, an institutional decision that has been both lauded and denounced by students, professors, and cultural critics alike. As this dissertation examines, high tensions from all angles largely stem from the Core Curriculum’s dual commitment to two seemingly oppositional values: its original mission and its ongoing evolution. My interpretive study of this unique undergraduate program begins with an examination of the cultural tradition from which Core derives—the West—considering how the notion of the liberal arts has evolved from antiquity to present day by pinpointing artifacts that demonstrate each era’s practices and priorities. Atop this foundational context, whose relevance persists in its establishment of citizenship, reciprocity, self-determination, and amateurism as underlying values of the liberal arts, I then examine university archival records dating back to the Core’s inception in 1919 and engage with personal stories, collected through interviews with alumni and former instructors of the program. These retrospective and interpersonal examinations are further complemented by the weaving in of my own experiences from my time as a student in the program, adding an introspective angle. In service of determining what is, was, and should be at the core of this curricular phenomenon, I neither defend nor rebuke the Core’s existence, but rather wonder and imagine its universal potential, ending with a call for more finite iterations of the program’s long-lasting values.

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Coincidental increases in online instruction at institutions of higher education and in online social networking generally in the U.S. have created opportunities for research into how digital interpersonal connectivity affects online learning. This study examined interactive webcasts, or webcasts plus chat, that were part of an online undergraduate course covering Internet knowledge and skills at a large public university. Symbolic interactionism served as the theoretical framework for explicating interactive webcasts as useful online learning environments by exploring the complex processes that instructional staff employed to manage their actions and interactions as moderators in the webcasts and chats. A constructivist grounded theory approach guided the collection and analysis of empirical data in the form of webcast media and transcripts, chat logs, students‘ reflective writing, and semi-structured, intensive interviews with instructional staff. From the study emerged theoretical categories in three tiers related to a generalized moderator process called minding the verge: moderators minded the verge in three conditions of interaction– converging, attending, and diverging; in three loci of interaction – webcasts, chats, and webcasts+chat; and through six actions of moderating – bonding, orientating, guiding, tending, validating, and branching. The results of this study provide moderators for the course with insights into their actions in the interactive webcasts and with concepts moderators can use to explore how to manage interactive webcasts more effectively. Beyond effecting substantive changes to interactive webcasts for the course, the study may guide others who wish to pursue further studies of webcasts+chat as they occur in the course or elsewhere, or of other mixed-media environments, or who wish to adopt mixed-media environments for instruction. Other potential areas for research that emerged from this study include the affective states of participants in the webcasts+chat and the use of affective devices, such as emoticons and abbreviations, for showing affective states; the effect that format has on the efficacy of webcasts+chat used for computer-mediated instruction; and the processes students employ to manage actions and interactions in the webcasts and chats. / text

"The purpose of this study is to gather information concerning some factors which may have operated to influence science majors in North Texas State College toward science careers."--4.

Submitted by Divanete Paiva (divanete.paiva@utp.br) on 2018-06-04T14:12:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 COACHING DE CARREIRA.pdf: 839626 bytes, checksum: 1e42f976cfa8489548ec4a4aaeea63c2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-04T14:12:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 COACHING DE CARREIRA.pdf: 839626 bytes, checksum: 1e42f976cfa8489548ec4a4aaeea63c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-09 / This article presents the analysis of the initial interviews with a group of students of a private higher education institution, located in Curitiba / PR . The analysis focused on the issues of perspective that students have regarding their employability and professional career. These interviews prior an intervention group in which some of the students who participated answered interviews. The intervention occurred through the use of coaching methodology and epistemology of community social psychology . Twelve students participated in the interviews, the courses of administration, accounting, psychology and physiotherapy from different periods and ages, who volunteered to participate on. The interviews were conducted, consisting of 19 questions. The responses from the interviews were transcribed and linked to the categories: (a) vocational choice, (b) perceptions of the labor market, (c) employability, (d) life project , and (e) preparation for the job market. Content analysis was used as a form of assessment. It was observed that students know 9 little about the subject employability and seek to develop their career through studies, contact with other people, languages and professional courses, practical experiences, such as internships, and seek to improve their personal skills and competencies. Thinking about career and professional future generates contradictions in students. Some feel anxiety and anguish and others have feelings of happiness and achievement. The professional future is now thought, however inarticulate with reality and concrete plans. / Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar uma intervenção de coaching de carreira em um grupo de alunos de cursos de graduação de uma faculdade particular, na cidade de Curitiba/PR. Buscou-se averiguar uma diferente forma de trabalho voltado para conscientização, o planejamento de carreira e a empregabilidade dos participantes, utilizando-se das ferramentas do coaching. Teve como abordagem epistemológica a psicologia social comunitária, que compreende o homem em suas relações, com o intuito de conscientizar e facilitar a relação das pessoas em um contexto grupal. Para buscar compreender e analisar a intervenção do coaching de carreira em grupo, foram realizadas oito sessões de coaching de carreira com os alunos e entrevistas individuais antes e depois da intervenção, assim como a observação da mesma, caracterizando esta pesquisa como qualitativa. Participaram desta pesquisa-ação 12 alunos nas entrevistas iniciais e 6 nas sessões de coaching e entrevistas finais, sendo que estes são dos cursos de administração, ciências contábeis, psicologia e fisioterapia de diferentes períodos e idades, de ambos os sexos e que se dispuserem voluntariamente a participar da pesquisa. Os dados dos relatos dos participantes e das observações cursivas foram tratados por meio da análise de conteúdo. Com este estudo, buscou-se contribuir para o incentivo de uma nova metodologia, que se utiliza de ferramentas de coaching e pode contribuir para uma maior conscientização e aperfeiçoamento da empregabilidade dos participantes. Serão apresentados nesta dissertação de mestrado dois artigos, com os títulos Empregabilidade e Planejamento de Carreira: uma Análise da Perspectiva de Alunos de Graduação e Coaching de Carreira: Desenvolvimento e Análise de uma Intervenção em um Grupo de Alunos de Graduação. O primeiro artigo foca nas perspectivas que os alunos têm a respeito da sua empregabilidade e de sua carreira, a partir da análise da primeira entrevista individual realizada com eles. Já o segundo artigo aborda o processo e os resultados do coaching de carreira realizado com os alunos participantes desta pesquisa.

Thesis (M.A. (Information Studies)) --University of Limpopo, 2018 / A large number of first year entering undergraduate students at tertiary institutions at Tshwane University of Technology lack skills and competencies for accessing relevant academic information for their assignments and other academic projects they are engaged in. To overcome this problem academic libraries at this institution organise Information Literacy Training Programme (ILTP) to equip students with such skills and competencies. This research investigated if there is any impact that ILTP has among first year entering undergraduate students attached to the Faculties of Humanities and Management Science, who have attended this programme at Tshwane University of Technology, at Polokwane campus. The study adopted both quantitative and qualitative research approaches through a questionnaire and focus group interview respectively to measure the information literacy skills and competencies of first year entering students before and after t attending ILITP.The study sought to measure (a) Students’ perception of information literacy; (b) Students’ ability to use library resources; (c) Students familiarity with different library resources before and after attendance of the programme. The study found that most of the first entering students had a different perception of information literacy. Furthermore, the student’s abilities to use library resources and their familiarity with library resources were very little before they attended the programme. It was only after they attended the programme that they were familiar with some of the library resources and their abilities to use those resources improved. Therefore this study discovered that ILTP has a positive impact of the academic success and performance of first entering students, even though it is minimal.The study recommends that information literacy education for students should be continuous so that students should not lose focus of what they have learnt in the formal Information Literacy Training Programmes. Furthermore, teaching of information literacy should be compulsory to all first year entering students across all faculties offered at Tshwane University of Technology and this will attach some form of accreditation to them to encourage participation.

The Study Anxiety Inventory (SAI), consisting of the factors of worry and emotionality, was developed to measure college students' self-reported levels of anxiety while studying for an exam. Data from 2002 undergraduate students from four colleges (Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Business, and Education) at a southeastern state university were used to evaluate the validity of the scores from the 16-item Study Anxiety Inventory. Results of confirmatory factor analyses for the two factor model, conducted separately for each college, indicated marginally acceptable fit for the data (median fit measures across the four colleges: CFI =.915, SRMR=.049, RMSEA=.098), a pattern that was repeated for both males and females. Multigroup CFA was used to evaluate the factorial invariance of the SAI across gender within each college. Factor loadings (i.e., pattern coefficients) for the SAI items were not found to be significantly different between males and females (p > .05). Error variances for four items were found to be significantly different between males and females, indicating that there may be some difference in scale reliability by gender. Factor covariances were invariant for all four colleges (p > .05) and factor variances were invariant for all but the worry component for the College of Arts and Sciences where females had significantly greater variability on the worry factor. As was hypothesized, the SAI scores were positively correlated with scores on measures of test anxiety (median r=.74), trait anxiety (median r=.46), active procrastination (median r=.23), and passive procrastination (median r=.29), but negatively correlated with trait curiosity (median r=-.19). Contrary to what was hypothesized, no relationship was demonstrated between study anxiety and study skills and habits (median r=-.03). The nomological network was extended in this study by examining relationships between scores obtained from students on the SAI and measures of active and passive procrastination. This is the first study that systematically examines the factorial invariance of the SAI by gender, which is important because previous research using the SAI has shown men's scores to be consistently lower than women's scores. The results obtained in the current study provide support for gender invariance in a nonclinical population in the situation specific level of anxiety while studying. There is sufficient evidence of validity and reliability (median Cronbach alphas for males and females for the total score were .978 and .980, for worry were .968 and .973, and for emotionality were .947 and .951, respectively) that a researcher should feel confident that the SAI is a psychometrically sound research tool that holds up fairly well across a number of different types of students and that making mean comparisons on the SAI by gender is acceptable.