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.
Social learning theory has enjoyed decades of supportive research and has been applied to a wide range of criminal and deviant behavior. Still eluding criminological theorists, however, is a meaningful understanding of the causal processes underlying social learning. This lack of knowledge is due in part to a relative reluctance…
Social learning theory has enjoyed decades of supportive research and has been applied to a wide range of criminal and deviant behavior. Still eluding criminological theorists, however, is a meaningful understanding of the causal processes underlying social learning. This lack of knowledge is due in part to a relative reluctance to examine value transmission as a process in the contexts of mentorship, role modeling, and social learning. With this empirical gap in mind, the present study seeks to isolate and classify meaningful themes in mentorship through loosely structured interviews with young men on the periphery of the criminal processing system. The purposive sample is drawn from youth in a Southwestern state, living in a state-funded, privately run group home for children of unfit, incarcerated, or deported/undocumented parents. The youth included in the study have recently passed the age of eighteen, and have elected to stay in the group home on a voluntary basis pending the completion of a High School diploma. Further, both the subjects and the researcher participate in a program which imparts mentorship through art projects, free expression, and ongoing, semi-structured exposure to prosocial adults. This study therefore provides a unique opportunity to explore qualitatively social learning concepts through the eyes of troubled youth, and to generate new lines of theory to facilitate the empirical testing of social learning as a process. Implications for future research are discussed.
Legal cynicism, a concept that reflects how individuals feel about the law, can be linked to different theoretical traditions. However, inconsistencies in the way legal cynicism is operationalized abound. This study aimed to develop a more complete and psychometrically-sound measure of legal cynicism. Factor-analytic procedures were used on a sample…
Legal cynicism, a concept that reflects how individuals feel about the law, can be linked to different theoretical traditions. However, inconsistencies in the way legal cynicism is operationalized abound. This study aimed to develop a more complete and psychometrically-sound measure of legal cynicism. Factor-analytic procedures were used on a sample of 502 undergraduate university students to create the scale and to test its directional accuracy. Using promax-rotated principal-axis factor analysis, a 4 dimensional factor structure emerged—legal apathy, legal corruption, legal discrimination, and low legal legitimacy. The 21-item scale has a high level of internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .85; mean inter-item r = .58). Results from ordinary least squares regression models confirmed that the multidimensional legal cynicism scale is significantly correlated with criminal offending (β = .34, p < .001), net of low self-control and demographic characteristics.
