Barrett

Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.

Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.

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The Role of Familism and Life Stressors in Latinx Adolescents' Cortisol Response

Description
Family influences are known predictors of adolescent health and well-being trajectories, yet little research has investigated how adolescents’ orientation to family may be associated with their physiological stress responses. Influenced by the strength-based approach to culture, this study evaluated 418 Hispanic adolescents' familism values and perceived life stress in family,…

Family influences are known predictors of adolescent health and well-being trajectories, yet little research has investigated how adolescents’ orientation to family may be associated with their physiological stress responses. Influenced by the strength-based approach to culture, this study evaluated 418 Hispanic adolescents' familism values and perceived life stress in family, school, and peer domains to investigate prospective associations with hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress responses to the Group Public Speaking Task for Adolescents (GPST-A). Prior growth-mixture modeling on this sample revealed a five-class solution of cortisol responding to the GPST-A that was used here as the dependent variable: one class showed a more pronounced pattern of reactivity, potentially indicative of hyper-responsivity to the stress task; two classes showed evidence of a low to moderate cortisol response, potentially indicative of an adaptive physiological response to the challenge; and two classes showed patterns of non-responsivity, potentially indicative of hypo-responsivity. Results demonstrate that the role of familism is nuanced in the context of stressors, potentially offering both promotive and risk-amplifying effects for the physiological stress response system. This study offered several novel findings in the relation between cultural factors, salient stressors of adolescence, and HPA activity.
ContributorsSmola, Xochitl Arlene (Author) / Gonzales, Nancy (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Does Non-Response Bias Compromise the External Validity of a Sample of College Students of Divorce?

Description
It is possible that voluntary studies on the effects of divorce fail to capture the perspectives of offspring who may be deterred from volunteering by their negative experiences of the divorce of their parents. This issue of non-response bias would cause researchers to gather unrepresentative samples that ultimately create an…

It is possible that voluntary studies on the effects of divorce fail to capture the perspectives of offspring who may be deterred from volunteering by their negative experiences of the divorce of their parents. This issue of non-response bias would cause researchers to gather unrepresentative samples that ultimately create an unrepresentative picture on the effects of divorce. The problem of non-response bias may also be a possible explanation for why research shows that small differences in psychological problems exist between children of divorce and children from intact families. This study sought to identify if non-response bias compromises the external validity of a sample of college students of divorce. To answer this question we conducted this study through the use of the introductory psychology pre screening study that is administered every semester to introductory psychology students at Arizona State University. We surveyed undergraduate introductory psychology students, all of whom completed a required prescreen survey for research credit. The students who indicated they were from divorced families, or whose parents were “never married and not still together”, were invited to participate in a follow up study to “to understand young adults’ perspectives on their parents’ divorce”. The students who responded to our invitation were compared to the students who did not volunteer in terms of their prescreen data. Volunteers did not differ from non-volunteers on seven out of the ten dependent measures. Volunteers differed from non-volunteers in terms of their closeness to their fathers, in terms of the parents conflict they experienced during the two years before and the two years after their parents permanently separated. Volunteers were more likely to be closer to their fathers and more likely to have experienced more parent conflict than non-volunteers. We are unaware of any studies on the subject of divorce that have had a similar opportunity to address the issue of non-response bias and its effects on the external validity of a college sample of divorce. This study should be replicated to determine the reliability of the results.
ContributorsRussell, Megan Magdalena (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Pina, Armando (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05