Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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This study explores the ways in which LGBTQ young adults describe the aspects of their identities, and how those identities shape their service needs and experiences. A participatory action research component was explored as a research and service approach that is sensitive to LGBTQ young people living at the intersections of multiple identities. Although it is understood that LGBTQ young people come from a variety of backgrounds, research is limited in its understanding and exploration of how aspects of identity, such as race and class, influence the lives and service needs of this population. The data was collected through an initial set of interviews with fifteen LGBTQ-identified young adults ages 18 to 24. The interviewees were recruited from an LGBTQ youth-serving organization using a purposive sampling approach to reflect racial/ethnic and gender identity diversity. Following the interviews, eight of the participants engaged as co-researchers on a participatory action research (PAR) team for sixteen weeks. The process of this team's work was assessed through a reflective analysis to identify factors that impacted the participants' lives. Analysis of the interviews identified key themes related to identity among the LGBTQ young people. The interviewees experienced a multiplicity of identities that were both socially and individually constructed. These identities were impacted by their immediate and social environments. The young people also identified ways that they used their identities to influence their environments and enhance their own resilience. The service experiences and needs of the LGBTQ young people in this study were directly influenced by their multiple identities. Implications for intersectional approaches to serving this population are explored. Analysis of the PAR process identified four areas in which the young people were most impacted through their work and interactions with one another: relationships, communication, participation, and inclusion. Implications for research and service approaches with LGBTQ young people are discussed.
ContributorsWagaman, M. Alex (Author) / Segal, Elizabeth A. (Thesis advisor) / Adelman, Madelaine (Committee member) / Ayón, Cecilia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This study examined four research questions investigating relationships among the experience of trauma, identity development, distress, and positive change. There were 908 participants in the study, ranging in age from 18 to 24 which is known as the period of emerging adulthood. Participants completed an online survey regarding their exposure to trauma and reactions to these experiences. The first research question examined the experience of trauma for the sample. The second question examined group differences among the participant's identity status, gender, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnostic status on the hypothesized variables. In general, comparisons among the four identity status groups found participants who experienced greater identity exploration (diffused and moratorium) experienced more distress, whereas the identity status groups that reported greater identity commitments (foreclosed and achieved) were associated with positive change. Similar findings were found for PTSD diagnostic status indicating more distress and identity exploration for participants with the diagnosis and more positive change and identity commitments for participants without the diagnosis. Female participants were found to experience more PTS symptoms, centrality of the trauma event, and positive growth than males. Examination of the relationships between trauma severity and posttraumatic growth revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship (quadratic) that was a significant improvement from the linear model. An S-shaped relationship (cubic) was found for the relationship between trauma exposure and posttraumatic growth. Regression analyses found the centrality of the trauma event to one's identity predicted identity distress above and beyond the experience of trauma. In addition, identity distress and the centrality of the trauma contributed to the variance for identity exploration, while only identity distress contributed to identity commitments. Finally, identity development significantly predicted positive change above and beyond, identity distress, centrality of the trauma event, and the experience of trauma. Collectively, these results found both distress and growth to be related to the experience of trauma. Distress within one's identity can contribute to difficulties in the psychosocial stage of identity development among emerging adults. However, the resolution of identity exploration towards commitments to goals, roles, and beliefs, can help trauma survivors experience resilience and growth after stressful experiences.
ContributorsWiley, Rachel (Author) / Robinson-Kurpius, Sharon (Thesis advisor) / Stamm, Jill (Committee member) / Kinnier, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In order to adapt to a new culture and new language, children of immigrant families are faced daily with the responsibility of being the intermediaries between the family and the host culture through their language proficiency (Weisskirch & Alva, 2002). This thesis looks into the experiences of English-Spanish bilingual children as they bridge the gap between the family and the non-Spanish speaking community through their interpreting/translating skills. With an emphasis on children of Mexican-origin, the goal is to further understand and illuminate how these children manage this communication in an adult society, their feelings and thoughts about their experiences, and the child's perceptions about the influence that this experience may or may not have on their future. A sample of seventeen children agreed to participate in a semi-structured face-to-face interview to share their experiences. The data from these interviews were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). A priori themes of circumstantial bilingual and adaptive parentification were the initial focus of the research while being open to emerging themes. The children's accounts of their experiences indicated primarily that the Mexican-origin values of familism and respeto (respect) were a significant influence on them when they interpreted/translated for their family. With these traditional cultural values and norms as the groundwork, the sub-themes of normalcy and stress emerged as supportive elements of the circumstantial bilingual experience. Furthermore, the theme of adaptive parentification and the sub-themes of choice, expectation/responsibility to assist, and equality to parents offered further insight on how adaptive parentification can result as the roles of these children change. There was an emergent theme, identity negotiation, which increases our understanding of what the circumstantial bilingual child encounters as the attempt is made to negotiate his identity as an individual who has to mediate language between two opposing cultures. Due to the language brokering responsibility that are bestowed upon these children, it is concluded that communicative support by the parents is a necessary component of the parent-child relationship in order to nurture and develop these children as they negotiate and create their identity to become the successful leaders of tomorrow.
ContributorsCayetano, Catalina (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Waldron, Vincent (Committee member) / Gaffney, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airport security has become an increasingly invasive, cumbersome, and expensive process. Fraught with tension and discomfort, "airport security" is a dirty phrase in the popular imagination, synonymous with long lines, unimpressive employees, and indignity. In fact, the TSA and its employees have featured as topic and punch line of news and popular culture stories. This image complicates the TSA's mission to ensure the nation's air travel safety and the ways that its officers interact with passengers. Every day, nearly two million people fly domestically in the United States. Each passenger must interact with many of the approximately 50,000 agents in airports. How employees and travelers make sense of interactions in airport security contexts can have significant implications for individual wellbeing, personal and professional relationships, and organizational policies and practices. Furthermore, the meaning making of travelers and employees is complexly connected to broad social discourses and issues of identity. In this study, I focus on the communication implications of identity and emotional performances in airport security in light of discourses at macro, meso, and micro levels. Using discourse tracing (LeGreco & Tracy, 2009), I construct the historical and discursive landscape of airport security, and via participant observation and various types of interviews, demonstrate how officers and passengers develop and perform identity, and the resulting interactional consequences. My analysis suggests that passengers and Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) perform three main types of identities in airport security contexts--what I call Stereotypical, Ideal, and Mindful--which reflect different types and levels of discourse. Identity performances are intricately related to emotional processes and occur dynamically, in relation to the identity and emotional performances of others. Theoretical implications direct attention to the ways that identity and emotional performances structure interactions, cause burdensome emotion management, and present organizational actors with tension, contradiction, and paradox to manage. Practical implications suggest consideration of passenger and TSO emotional wellbeing, policy framing, passenger agency, and preferred identities. Methodologically, this dissertation offers insight into discourse tracing and challenges of embodied "undercover" research in public spaces.
ContributorsRedden, Shawna Malvini (Author) / Tracy, Sarah J. (Thesis advisor) / Corley, Kevin (Committee member) / Alberts, Janet (Committee member) / Trethewey, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this study is to investigate the literacy practices of three members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and to explore how they use these practices to support and maintain their recovery in their lives. This study also aims to examine how each participant used specialist language, enacted certain identities and acquired the secondary Discourse in A.A. through literacy use. This dissertation study is the result of in-depth interviewing in which each participant was interviewed three times for 90-minutes. These interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis. Study results are presented in three chapters, each one designated to one of the participants. Within these chapters is a life history (chronology) of the participant leading up to the point in which they got sober. The chapters also include a thematic discourse analysis of the interview transcripts across themes of literacy practice and topics in A.A. A conclusion is then presented to investigate how literacy was used from a sociocultural perspective in the study. Due to the emotionally charged nature of this dissertation, it has been formatted to present the stories of the participants first, leaving the theoretical framework, literature review and research methods to be included as appendices to the main text.
ContributorsClausen, Jennifer Ann (Author) / Marsh, Josephine (Thesis advisor) / Hayes, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Bully victimization has been associated with blunted cardiovascular responses to stress as well as elevated responses to stress. The difference between these altered physiological responses to stress is largely unknown. This study explored several possible moderators to the relationship between chronic stress and future cardiac output (an indicator of increased stress) in response to future stressors. These moderators include the difference between social and physical stressors and individual levels of loneliness. Participants were administered measures of loneliness and victimization history, and led to anticipate either a "social" (recorded speech) or "non-social" (pain tolerance test ) stressor, neither of which occurred. EKG and impedance cardiography were measured throughout the session. When anticipating both stressors, loneliness and victimization were associated with increased CO. A regression revealed a three-way interaction, with change in cardiac output depending on victimization history, loneliness, and condition in the physical stressor condition. Loneliness magnified the CO output levels of non-bullied individuals when facing a physical stressor. These results suggest that non- bullied participants high in loneliness are more stressed out when facing stressors, particularly stressors that are physically threatening in nature.
ContributorsHaneline, Magen (Author) / Newman, Matt (Thesis advisor) / Salerno, Jessica (Committee member) / Miller, Paul (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Purpose: This study examines the role of social support on adjustment to widowhood. Past research has indicated that the role of social support on adjustment to widowhood remains inconclusive, and needs further examination. This study examines the varying coping trajectories of middle-aged and retired bereaved spouses. Additionally, this study examines how bereavement stage may also influence one's adaptation to widowhood. Methods: This study used in-depth and semi-structured interviews as a means of understanding the role of social support on adjustment to widowhood. Participants were recruited through two hospice services available in a major metropolitan area in the United States. Convenient and purposive samplings are used in this study; this study will execute a grounded theory approach in order to determine the inconclusive role of social support on adjustment to widowhood. This study is contrasting between two stages- life course stages (middle aged versus retirement aged people) and bereavement stages (a year or less time following the death of a spouse versus three or more years following the death of a spouse). As a means of reducing bias and subjectivity, all data collected during the interview will be transcribed immediately. Results: Middle-aged bereaved spouses reported higher levels of motivation for adjusting positively and quickly towards widowhood due to their concern for protecting the well-being of their surviving young children compared to retired bereaved spouses. Differences between middle-aged widows and widowers have been found in this study; middle-aged widowers have a higher linkage to negative health behaviors. Retired bereaved spouses may fare better depending upon their housing location. Living in a retirement center may lower negative effects of bereavement on retired spouses' health. Conclusions: Types of social support received and expected varied between middle-aged widows and widowers. Gender norms may influence the type of social support widows and widowers receive. Middle-aged widowers are less likely to receive emotional support which may explain their higher linkage to negative health behaviors. Bereavement stage and housing location may be the key factors that influence widowhood trajectories of retired bereaved spouses. Living in a retirement center may lower the negative effects of bereavement on overall health.
ContributorsRafieei, Noshin (Author) / Kronenfeld, Jennie (Thesis advisor) / Haas, Steven (Committee member) / Damgaard, Anni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Research has demonstrated that temperature and relative humidity substantially influence overall perceptions of indoor air quality (Fang, Clausen, & Fanger, 1998). This finding places temperature quality as a high priority, especially for vulnerable adults over 60. Temperature extremes and fluctuation, as well as the perception of those conditions, affect physical performance, thermal comfort and health of older adults (Chatonnet & Cabanac, 1965, pp. 185-6; Fumiharu, Watanabe, Park, Shephard, & Aoyagi, 2005; Heijs & Stringer, 1988). The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have developed thermal-comfort standards for working-age, healthy individuals. None of these standards address the physiological and psychological needs of older adults (ASHRAE Standard 55, 2010; ISO-7730, 2005). This dissertation investigates the impacts of thermal conditions on self-reported health and perceived comfort for older adults, hypothesizing that warmer and more-table indoor thermal conditions will increase the health and perceived comfort of these adults. To this end, a new set of thermal comfort metrics was designed and tested to address the thermal preferences of older adults. The SENIOR COMFORT Metrics 2013 outlined new thresholds for optimal indoor high and low temperatures and set limits on thermal variability over time based on the ASHRAE-55 2010 model. This study was conducted at Sunnyslope Manor, a multi-unit, public-housing complex in the North Phoenix. Nearly 60% (76 of 118) of the residents (aged 62-82) were interviewed using a 110-question, self-reporting survey in 73 apartment units. A total of 40 questions and 20 sub-questions addressing perceptions of comfort, pain, sleep patterns, injuries, and mood were extracted from this larger health condition survey to assess health and thermal comfort. Indoor environmental thermal measurements included temperature in three locations: kitchen, living area, and bedroom and data were recorded every 15 minutes over 5 full days and 448 points. Study results start to indicate that older adults for Sunnyslope Manor preferred temperatures between 76 and 82.5 degrees Fahrenheit and that lower temperatures as outlined by ASHRAE-55 2010 increases the rate of injuries and mood changes in older adults among other findings.
ContributorsFonseca, Ernesto (Author) / Bryan, Harvey (Thesis advisor) / Ahrentzen, Sherry (Committee member) / Shea, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Holocaust and the effects it has had upon witnesses has been a topic of study for nearly six decades; however, few angles of research have been conducted relating to the long-term effects of the Holocaust upon the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors--the After Generations. The After Generations are considered the proof--the living legacies--that their parents and grandparents survived. Growing up with intimate knowledge of the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, members of the After Generations not only carry with them their family's story, but also their own vicarious experience(s) of trauma. From this legacy comes a burden of responsibility to those who perished, their survivor parents/grandparents, the stories that were shared, as well as to future generations. Using grounded theory method, this study not only explores the long-term effects of the Holocaust upon members of the After Generations, but what it means to responsibly remember the stories from the Holocaust, as well as how individuals might ethically represent such stories/memories. Findings that developed out of an axial analysis of interview transcripts and journal writing, as well as the later development of a performance script, are embodied in a manner that allows the actual language and experiences of the participants to be collectively witnessed both symbolically and visually. Through their desire to remember, members of the After Generations demonstrate how they plan to carry on traditions, live lives that honor those that came before them, and maintain hope for the future. In so doing, the stories shared reveal the centrality of the Holocaust in the lives of members of the After Generations through their everyday choices to responsibly and actively remember through their art, writings, life-work, as well as from within their work in their local communities. Such acts of remembrance are important to the education of others as well as to the construction and maintenance of the After Generations' identities. The representation of these voices acts as a reminder of how hatred and its all-consuming characteristics can affect not only the person targeted, but multiple generations, as well.
ContributorsRath, Sandra (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Underiner, Tamara (Committee member) / Corey, Frederick C. (Committee member) / Eisenberg, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the population of Surprise Arizona exploded, increasing from 31,000 to 100,000 in just eight years. Developers filled acres of former cotton fields and citrus groves with walled neighborhoods of stucco and tile-roofed homes surrounded by palm trees and oleander bushes. Priced for middle-class families and retirees, this planned and standardized landscape stood in stark contrast to that of the town's first decades when dirt roads served migrant farm labor families living in makeshift homes with outdoor privies. This study explores how a community with an identity based on farm labor and networks of kinship and friendship evolved into an icon of the twenty-first century housing boom. This analysis relies on evidence from multiple sources. A community history initiative, the Surprise History Project, produced photographs, documents, and oral histories. City records, newspaper accounts, county documents, and census reports offer further insight into the external and internal factors that shaped and reshaped the meaning of community in Surprise. A socially and politically constructed concept, community identity evolves in response to the intricate interplay of contingencies, external forces, and the actions and decisions of civic leaders and residents. In the case of Surprise, this complex mix of factors also set the foundation for its emergence as a twenty-first century boomburb. The rapid expansion of the Phoenix metropolitan area, the emergence of age-restricted communities, and federal programs reset the social, economic, and political algorithms of the community. Internally, changing demographics, racial and ethnic diversity, and an ever-expanding population produced differing and continuously evolving ideas about community identity, a matter of intense importance to many. For seven decades, Surprise residents with competing ideas about place came into conflict. Concurrently, these individuals participated in official and vernacular events, activities, and celebrations. These gatherings, which evolved as the town grew and changed, also shaped community identity. While attending the Fourth of July festivities or debating city leaders' decisions at town council meetings, Surprise residents defined and redefined their community.
ContributorsPalmer, Carol S (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Gullett, Gayle (Committee member) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012