The purpose of this study was to examine control beliefs and their
role in the different ways victims cope with burglary. Two studies were
conducted. In the first study, participants were college students who
had been burglarized within the previous year. The volunteers were men
and women between the ages of 19 and 37 (N=61). The participants
completed Levenson's (1981) locus of control scale. The following week,
in order to assist recall, the participants viewed a 2-minute video that
depicted a residential burglary in progress. Immediately following the
video, they completed a coping measure, situational appraisals of
control measure, and importance of outcome measure. The second study was
a conceptual replication of the first study and therefore followed the
same procedures. However, in order to assess locus of control prior to
victimization, participants were male and female college students
(N=102) who had never been burglarized (experimentally induced victims).
Zero-order correlations, discriminant analysis, and hierarchical
multiple regression were used to examine the main, mediating, and
moderating effects of locus of control, importance of outcome,
situational appraisals of control, and gender on coping functions.
Because previous research has found gender differences in reaction to
criminal victimization, i t was hypothesized that the influence that
gender has on coping results from an individual's locus of control
orientation. It was also expected that the direction or strength of the
locus of control and coping relation would be influenced by an
individual's gender and by how much importance he or she attached to the
victimization experience. In both the victim group and experimentally
induced victim group, emotion-focused coping was significantly predicted
by gender, locus of control, importance of outcome, and situational
appraisals of control. However, problem-focused coping was significantly
predicted by gender, locus of control, importance of outcome, and
situational appraisals of control for the victim group only. Locus of
control did not influence the gender and coping relation. The results indicated that in both groups men who held strong powerful others locus
of control beliefs used less emotion-focused coping. In contrast, in the
burglary victim group, women who held strong powerful others locus of
control beliefs used more emotion-focused coping. However, there was no
relationship between powerful others locus of control beliefs and
emotion-focused coping for women in the experimentally induced victim
group. For experimentally induced victims, both men and women with high
chance locus of control beliefs used more emotion-focused coping. In
both groups, importance of outcome did not moderate the locus of control
and coping relation. Implications of these results and suggestions for
future research are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/3398 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Mackoff, Randy |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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