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Description
Over the last three decades there has been a rise in the number of workers employed during nonstandard (evening and overnight) hours; accompanying this trend has been a renewed interest in documenting workers, their families, and outcomes associated with nonstandard-hour employment. However, there are important gaps in the current literature. Few have considered how parents who work nonstandard hours care for their children when parental care is unavailable; little is known about who participates in nonparental child care during nonstandard hours, or the characteristics of those who participate. Most pressingly from a policy perspective, it is unclear how participation in nonparental child care during nonstandard hours influences child well-being. This study aims to fill these gaps. This dissertation paints a descriptive portrait of children and parents who use nonstandard child care, explores the relationship between nonstandard hours of nonparental child care participation and various measures of child well-being, and identifies longitudinal patterns of participation in nonstandard-hour child care. I find that children who participate in nonstandard-hours of nonparental child care look significantly different from those who do not participate. In particular, children are more likely to be older, identify as black or Hispanic, and reside with younger, unmarried parents who have lower levels of education. Estimates also suggest a negative relationship between participation in nonstandard-hour child care and child well-being. Specifically, children who participate in nonstandard-hour care show decreased school engagement and school readiness, increased behavioral problems, decreased social competency, and lower levels of physical health. These findings have serious implications for social and education policy.
ContributorsBoyd-Swan, Casey Helen (Author) / Herbst, Chris M. (Thesis advisor) / Bradley, Robert H (Committee member) / Segal, Elizabeth A. (Committee member) / Lucio, Joanna D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Increasing elementary school attainment globally remains a key focus for improving internationally child development (UNESCO, 2010), and for girls in particular (UNICEF, 2015). This dissertation was designed to test and explore specific areas to target to improve educational attainment for rural indigenous communities using a mixed-methods approach (i.e., quantitative survey of 264 mothers and qualitative interviews with 37 of those mothers 3.5 years later) with a Mayan community in Camanchaj, Guatemala. The first study was designed to examine the educational trajectories available to children in this community (e.g., dropping out, graduating 6th grade) by age, grade, and gender, and identified risks and vulnerabilities for educational attainment. The second study was a logistic regression to examine maternal factors that predict the likelihood of a child graduating from elementary school or dropping out in this community, above and beyond covariates of poverty and health and found that maternal education predicted educational attainment for both boys as girls as well as maternal beliefs about the importance of school for getting a job, which was particularly strong predictor for boys. The third study probed findings from Studies 1 and 2 using Experiential Thematic Analyses and Frequency Analyses to examine processes and cognitions involved in a child’s graduating elementary school, dropping out, and community beliefs and attitudes regarding education and gender equality. Findings highlight the need for interventions that are contextually and culturally appropriate and that consider complex and interacting factors of poverty, health, and gender inequality as well as maternal and community-level attitudes and beliefs to promote elementary school attainment globally.
ContributorsEngland, Dawn Elizabeth (Author) / Martin, Carol L (Thesis advisor) / Cooper, Carey E (Committee member) / Bradley, Robert H (Committee member) / Miller, Cindy F (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Interpersonal strain is linked with depressive symptoms in middle-aged adults. Self-compassion is an emerging resilience construct that may be advantageous in navigating relationship strain by helping individuals respond to emotions in a kind and nonjudgmental way. Although theory and empirical evidence suggests that self-compassion is protective against the impact of stress on mental health outcomes, many studies have not investigated how self-compassion operates in the context of relationship strain. In addition, few studies have examined psychological or physiological mechanisms by which self-compassion protects against mental health outcomes, depression in particular. Thus, this study examined 1) the extent to which trait self-compassion buffers the relation between family strain and depressive symptoms, and 2) whether these buffering effects are mediated by hope and inflammatory processes (IL-6) in a sample of 762 middle-aged, community-dwelling adults. Results from structural equation models indicated that family strain was unrelated to depressive symptoms and the relation was not moderated by self-compassion. Hope, but not IL-6, mediated the relation between family strain and depressive symptoms and the indirect effect was not conditional on levels of self-compassion. Taken together, the findings suggest that family strain may lead individuals to experience less hope and subsequent increases in depressive symptoms, and further, that a self-compassionate attitude does not affect this relation. Implications for future self-compassion interventions are discussed.
ContributorsMistretta, Erin (Author) / Davis, Mary C. (Thesis advisor) / Karoly, Paul (Committee member) / Infurna, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most well researched constructs in developmental science, yet important questions underly how to best model it. That is, are relations with SES always in the same direction or does the direction of association change at different levels of SES? In this dissertation, I conducted a meta-analysis using individual participant data (IPD) to examine two questions: 1) Does a nonmonotonic (quadratic) model of the relations between components of SES (i.e., income, years of education, occupation status/prestige), depressive symptoms, and academic achievement fit better than a monotonic (linear) model? and 2) Is the magnitude of relation moderated by developmental period, gender/sex, or race/ethnicity? I hypothesized that there would be more support for the nonmonotonic model. Moderation analyses were exploratory.
I identified nationally representative IPD from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). I included 59 datasets, which represent 23 studies (e.g., Add Health) and 1,844,577 participants. Higher income (β = -0.11; β = 0.10), years of education (β = -0.09; β = 0.13), and occupational status (β = -0.04; β = 0.04) and prestige (β = -0.03; β = 0.04) were associated with a linear decrease in depressive symptoms and increase in academic achievement, respectively. Higher income (β = 0.05), years of education (β = 0.02), and occupational status/prestige (β = 0.02) were quadratically associated with a decrease in depressive symptoms followed by a slight increase at higher levels of income and a diminishing association towards higher levels of education and occupational status/prestige. Higher income was also quadratically associated with academic achievement (β = -0.03). I found evidence that these associations varied between developmental periods and racial/ethnic samples, but I did not find evidence of variation between females and males.
I integrate these findings with three conclusions: (1) more is not always better and (2) there are unique contexts and resources associated with different levels of SES that (3) operate in a dynamic fashion with other cultural systems (e.g., racism), which affect the integrated actions between the individual and context. I outline several measurement implications and limitations for future research directions.
ContributorsKorous, Kevin M. (Author) / Causadias, José M (Thesis advisor) / Bradley, Robert H (Thesis advisor) / Luthar, Suniya S (Committee member) / Levy, Roy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021