ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5
Filtering by
- All Subjects: criminology
Description
Criminological theories have long incorporated personality traits as key explanatory factors and have generally relied on assumptions of trait stability. However, growing evidence from a variety of fields including criminology, psychology, and neurobiology is demonstrating that personality traits are malleable over the life-course, and substantial individual variation exists in the developmental patterns of personality traits over time. This research is forcing criminologists to consider how and why “enduring” individual characteristics may change over the life course in ways that are meaningfully related to offending. Two traits that have been consistently linked to offending and conflated in key criminological theories (i.e. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory), impulsivity and sensation seeking, have recently been shown to be independent personality traits with different normative maturational timetables and biological underpinnings. This dissertation extends this work by examining developmental patterns of impulsivity and sensation seeking and social sources of variation in these traits with the Family and Community Health Survey, a longitudinal data set that consists of approximately 900 African American youth and their families followed from late childhood to their late-twenties. Multiple longitudinal modeling methods are employed (hierarchical linear modeling and group-based trajectory modeling) to address this research agenda. Results from this dissertation lead to four broad conclusions. First, and in support of existing research, there is substantial variability in developmental trajectories of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Average developmental trajectories of these traits greatly mask the degree of individual variability in developmental patterns that exists. Second, social factors are significantly associated with levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Socio-environmental experiences characterized by hostility and unsupportiveness are generally associated with elevated levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking while socio-environmental experiences characterized by warmth and supportiveness are associated with lower levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Third, sex differences in developmental patterns of impulsivity are nonexistent while sex differences in developmental patterns of sensation seeking are significant. Finally, with few exceptions, predictors of trait levels operate in a general fashion such the same factors typically explain both male and female trait levels and produce similar effects on impulsivity and sensation seeking.
ContributorsHannula, Kara Valentina (Author) / Sweeten, Gary (Thesis advisor) / Decker, Scott (Committee member) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Although child welfare services are anticipated, in part, to lessen the negative
influence of maltreatment on childhood and adolescent development, there is evidence
that involvement in the foster care system negatively affects adolescent substance
use. Within the literature, limited empirical research has emerged in regard to this issue.
The present study aims to fill this critical gap in the literature by examining the
association between baseline biological, psychological, and social risk and protective
factors on adolescent involvement in substance use, and frequency of substance use, over
a period of 24 months for foster care involved youth. Furthermore, the present study
compares substance use behaviors between youth with differing experiences of
maltreatment subtypes and severity levels. Data come from VOYAGES, a longitudinal
study of older adolescents in the custody of the Missouri Children’s Division for foster
care services. The current analysis reports on those youth who completed both the
baseline and the final interview (N=323). Key findings include significant associations
between baseline peer substance use, lowered levels of school commitment, mentorship,
and familial support with later adolescent substance use. Overall, the existence of
numerous individual risk factors far outweighs the potential of protective factors
buffering against subsequent substance use in the current study. The foster care system,
although well-intentioned, potentially barricades individuals from successfully navigating
through adolescence and early adulthood without engaging in risky behaviors such as
substance use. Given the high prevalence of substance use among those placed in the
care of the foster care system, prevention efforts for this population requires an improved
understanding of psychosocial risk and protective factors.
influence of maltreatment on childhood and adolescent development, there is evidence
that involvement in the foster care system negatively affects adolescent substance
use. Within the literature, limited empirical research has emerged in regard to this issue.
The present study aims to fill this critical gap in the literature by examining the
association between baseline biological, psychological, and social risk and protective
factors on adolescent involvement in substance use, and frequency of substance use, over
a period of 24 months for foster care involved youth. Furthermore, the present study
compares substance use behaviors between youth with differing experiences of
maltreatment subtypes and severity levels. Data come from VOYAGES, a longitudinal
study of older adolescents in the custody of the Missouri Children’s Division for foster
care services. The current analysis reports on those youth who completed both the
baseline and the final interview (N=323). Key findings include significant associations
between baseline peer substance use, lowered levels of school commitment, mentorship,
and familial support with later adolescent substance use. Overall, the existence of
numerous individual risk factors far outweighs the potential of protective factors
buffering against subsequent substance use in the current study. The foster care system,
although well-intentioned, potentially barricades individuals from successfully navigating
through adolescence and early adulthood without engaging in risky behaviors such as
substance use. Given the high prevalence of substance use among those placed in the
care of the foster care system, prevention efforts for this population requires an improved
understanding of psychosocial risk and protective factors.
ContributorsCraig, Tyleia O (Author) / Roosevelt, Stacia S (Thesis advisor) / Chamberlain, Alyssa W (Committee member) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Academic deviance is a potentially detrimental behavior for students and universities alike in that it causes credit to be given to individuals where it is not due. Furthermore, it is a common occurrence, with around half of college students admitting to engaging in this behavior at least once. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between perfectionism, strain, and academic deviance. In doing this, this study uses data from a primary data collection effort in Arizona State University, with a final sample of 696 students, to answer three research questions: Are there differences in the likelihood of engaging in academic deviance by maladaptive perfectionists, adaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists? Are there differences in the perceptions of the wrongness of academic deviance between maladaptive perfectionists, adaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists? Are there differences in how context dependent maladaptive perfectionists, adaptive perfectionists, and non-perfectionists view academic deviance the wrongness of academic deviance? Ordered logistic regression are used to access these research questions. Results suggest that neither perfectionism nor strain were a significant factor in determining the likelihood that a participant would engage in an academically deviant behavior, or how wrong they believed that behavior to be. However, perfectionism did seem to have a mild impact on how context dependent individuals felt the wrongness of their behaviors, meaning that if the cause of the strain was due to the professor’s actions, students viewed academic deviance as less wrong, and self-control explained at least part of this effect. Strain, on the other hand, did not have a significant effect. Overall, the results suggest some legitimacy to the use of general strain theory to explain the potential relationships, given the relationship between perfectionism and context dependency. Additionally, the results support policy implications designed to reduce maladaptive thoughts and subsequently academic deviance, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Future research should examine the link between perfectionism and other types of academic strain.
ContributorsAllen, Savanna Marie (Author) / Pizarro, Jesenia (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Young, Jacob (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
General theories of crime have frequently been used to explain a variety of offending and victimization experiences for a wide range of samples. However, feminist criminologists question whether the same causal mechanisms exert similar effects for males and females—a criticism that points to the need for sex-specific analyses. Toward that end, this dissertation examines variables derived from several different general theories of crime in three separate studies. Each of the studies uses split-sample analyses to investigate potential sex-based differences. The first study uses three-level meta-analytic methods to determine if predictor variables derived from general theories explain victimization for both adolescent males (n = 138,848) and adolescent females (n = 176,611). Additionally, it examines both within-dataset and between-dataset differences. The second study uses a sample of high school students in Arizona (n = 2,738 males, n = 2,932 females). It examines the role of parental social ties in explaining the overlap of adolescent dating violence (ADV) offending and victimization. The third study uses two waves of a longitudinal dataset of high-risk adolescents (n = 182 males, n = 203 females). It focuses on the relationship between negative emotions and delinquency, and the role of avoidant coping. In each of the studies, both gender-neutral and gender-specific explanations of offending and victimization were found. In the first study, while predictor variables derived from criminological theory explained victimization for both males and females, larger effect sizes were found for risky lifestyle variables. In the second study, an overlap between ADV offending and victimization was found for both males and females, and social ties explained some of the overlap. However, paternal attachment was only significant for females, and involvement was only significant for males. In the third study, avoidant coping was associated with an increase in substance abuse, and anger was associated with an increase in violent behavior for both males and females. Avoidant coping partially mediated the relationship between anger and substance use, but only for males. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
ContributorsPusch, Natasha (Author) / Holtfreter, Kristy (Thesis advisor) / Reisig, Mike (Committee member) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
When questioning children during courtroom testimony, attorneys are instructed to use questions that are short and simple to address children’s cognitive abilities; however, this typically leads to anaphora. Anaphora occurs when a word is substituted for a previously mentioned word, phrase, or concept. For example, the pronoun “he” in “Bill is moving to New York. He is very excited.” indicates an anaphora since the word “he” replaces the name Bill. When asked a question that includes a pronoun-specific anaphora, the respondent must use cognitive skills to refer back to the initial referent. This likely means that as the number of conversational turns between the initial referent and the end of the reference increases, there will be more probable miscommunications between children and attorneys in cases of alleged Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). In this thesis, I analyzed 40 testimonies from cases of alleged child sexual abuse (5-10 years old, 90% female), located attorney use of pronoun anaphora, backward reference distances, and identified probable misunderstandings. I identified 137 probable misunderstandings within 2,940 question-answer pairs that included pronoun anaphora. Attorneys averaged 4.1 questions before clarifying the referent (SD = 10.14), sometimes extending up to 146 lines, leading to considerable backwards referencing. The distance between the anaphora and referent had a significant effect on misunderstandings, where each additional Q-A pair made misunderstandings more likely to occur. To reduce misunderstanding, attorneys should avoid pronoun anaphora of excessive length that require children to backward reference.
ContributorsRuiz-Earle, Ciara Aisling (Author) / Stolzenberg, Stacia (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Adam (Committee member) / Yan, Shi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023