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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Arizona State University
- Resource Type: Text
Description
This study examines the possibility of using social and historical contexts, image analysis, and personal themes to engage adolescent photography students in the craft of photography. This new curriculum was designed around large themes that correspond to the developmental stage of adolescence. Issues such as self-identity, teenage stereotypes, school, family, and community were explored through examining historical documents and photographs, comparing popular culture perspectives, and learning basic semiotics. The students then worked within these ideas by creating their own photographs and reflecting upon their art making choices. The new approach was implemented in an analog film class in which basic 35mm camera and film techniques are taught. It is argued that meaning making motivates the adolescent photographer rather than the achievement of strong technical skills. This qualitative study was conducted using an action research approach, in which the author was both the classroom teacher and the researcher. The study incorporates data collected from student-created photographs, student written responses, interviews of students, interviews of photography teachers, and the researcher's field notes. Major themes were discovered over time by applying a grounded theory approach to understanding the data. The curriculum brought a new level of student engagement, both in participation in the course and in the complexity of their image making. By incorporating the chosen topics, students' images were rich with personal meaning. Students retained concepts of historical and social uses for photography and demonstrated a base understanding of semiotic theory. Furthermore, the data points to a stronger sense of community and teacher-student relationships within the classroom. The researcher argues that this deeper rapport is due to the concentration on personal themes within the practice of photography. Setbacks within the study included censorship by the school of mature subjects, a limited amount of equipment, and a limited amount of time with the students. This study demonstrates the need for art curriculum to provide connections between visual art, interdisciplinary associations, students' level of development, and students' personal interests. The research provides a possible approach to redesigning curriculum for photography courses for the twenty-first century student.
ContributorsOverby, Alexandra (Author) / Young, Bernard (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Committee member) / Erickson, Mary (Committee member) / Stokrocki, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Communication skills within dating contexts are developed during the adolescent years, and are associated with a lifelong ability to have satisfying, enduring, and non-violent partnerships. As such, they are currently and increasingly implemented into both more general forms of healthy relationship education, as well as that targeting the prevention of teen dating violence specifically. Reaching Mexican American youth with culturally and developmentally appropriate relationship education, including communication skills, may be particularly important given their earlier transitions to marital and parenting relationships, acculturative stressors that present them with unique coupling challenges, and their higher rates of teen dating violence as compared to European American youth. We know very little about how Mexican American dating couples communicate about areas of conflict. This dissertation research utilizes Bell and Naugle's (2008) framework of interpersonal violence to explore how cultural and developmental considerations may be integrated in order to better understand how communication behaviors contribute to Mexican American middle adolescents' experiences with dating conflict. I use an observational study design in order to 1.) Qualitatively explore the communication strategies used by a sample of committed couples, including integration of culturally- and developmentally-relevant contexts, 2.) Quantitatively examine whether couple-level discrepancies in acculturation are associated with observed negativity, including whether this relationship may be mediated by dissimilar gender-related beliefs, and to 3.) Review empirical findings pertaining to the communication behaviors of Mexican American adolescents and to integrate ecodevelopmental theory in said framework as informed by Papers 1, 2, and literature specific to this topic area. The ultimate aim of this dissertation research is to generate findings that may improve the dating health of Mexican American adolescents living in the United States.
ContributorsAdams, Heidi (Author) / Rankin Williams, Lela (Thesis advisor) / Marsiglia, Flavio (Committee member) / Anthony, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Accumulating evidence implicates exposure to adverse childhood experiences in the development of hypocortisolism in the long-term, and researchers are increasingly examining individual-level mechanisms that may underlie, exacerbate or attenuate this relation among at-risk populations. The current study takes a developmentally and theoretically informed approach to examining episodic childhood stressors, inherent and voluntary self-regulation, and physiological reactivity among a longitudinal sample of youth who experienced parental divorce. Participants were drawn from a larger randomized controlled trial of a preventive intervention for children of divorce between the ages of 9 and 12. The current sample included 159 young adults (mean age = 25.5 years; 53% male; 94% Caucasian) who participated in six waves of data collection, including a 15-year follow-up study. Participants reported on exposure to negative life events (four times over a 9-month period) during childhood, and mothers rated child temperament. Six years later, youth reported on the use of active and avoidant coping strategies, and 15 years later, they participated in a standardized psychosocial stress task and provided salivary cortisol samples prior to and following the task. Path analyses within a structural equation framework revealed that a multiple mediation model best fit the data. It was found that children with better mother-rated self-regulation (i.e. low impulsivity, low negative emotionality, and high attentional focus) exhibited lower total cortisol output 15 years later. In addition, greater self-regulation in childhood predicted greater use of active coping in adolescence, whereas a greater number of negative life events predicted increased use of avoidant coping in adolescence. Finally, a greater number of negative events in childhood predicted marginally lower total cortisol output, and higher levels of active coping in adolescence were associated with greater total cortisol output in young adulthood. Findings suggest that children of divorce who exhibit better self-regulation evidence lower cortisol output during a standardized psychosocial stress task relative to those who have higher impulsivity, lower attentional focus, and/or higher negative emotionality. The conceptual significance of the current findings, including the lack of evidence for hypothesized relations, methodological issues that arose, and issues in need of future research are discussed.
ContributorsHagan, Melissa (Author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis advisor) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Wolchik, Sharlene (Committee member) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The adaptation and integration of the mainstream and ethnic culture are important processes to understand as they have been associated with immigrant and minority youth's adjustment and family dynamics. However, few studies focusing on youth's cultural experiences have explored youth's active role in their own cultural development, and even less have explored youth's role in influencing parents' cultural development. In the current dissertation, two studies addressed these issues by using a within-family longitudinal design to explore 246 Mexican American youth's role in their own and their families' cultural development. The first study examined the reciprocal associations in parents' and two offspring's cultural values to examine developmental differences in parent-youth socialization processes. Overall, the importance of mothers' values was highlighted as a significant predictor of increases in youths' values, five years later. In addition, Study 1 highlighted situations where youth play an active role in their parents' cultural development as youths' lower endorsement of respect for elders values was associated with increases in fathers' value endorsement, five years later. The second study explored the associations between youth's imitation and de-identification from parents and parent-youth incongruence in Mexican and Anglo cultural orientations. Youths' active role in their cultural development was underscored, as youths' reports of de-identifying from parents were linked to more incongruence in parent-youth Anglo orientations. Further, important family characteristics (i.e., parent-youth warmth and demographic similarities) were shown to predict youths' more imitation and less de-identification from parents.
ContributorsPerez-Brena, Norma J. (Author) / Updegraff, Kimberly A (Thesis advisor) / Umaña-Taylor, Adriana J. (Committee member) / Dumka, Larry E (Committee member) / Glick, Jennifer E. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation combines three first-author manuscripts that focused broadly on the study of adolescent sleep within a family context (Sasser et al., 2021; Sasser & Oshri, 2023; Sasser et al., 2023). First, Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical background and empirical research that grounded the research questions and hypotheses explored across the studies. The first study (Chapter 2) examined the influence of family connection on actigraphy-measured sleep among Latinx late adolescents and explored family dynamics and cultural values as potential moderators. The second study (Chapter 3) investigated daily and average concordance between parent and youth actigraphy-measured sleep and how this varied as a function of family context (e.g., parenting, family functioning). The third study (Chapter 4) examined concordance in actigraphy sleep among parent-youth and sibling dyads and explored how relations differed across zygosity type and sleeping arrangements. The dissertation concludes with an immersive discussion (Chapter 5) that summarizes the key differences, similarities, and takeaways across studies and highlights future directions and implications for developmental science, public policy, and clinical interventions. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of youth and adolescent sleep within a family context by identifying proximal (e.g., daily interactions with parents/siblings) and broader family-level factors (e.g., dynamics, culture) that may help promote more healthful sleep among both adolescents and their family members.
ContributorsSasser, Jeri (Author) / Doane, Leah D (Thesis advisor) / Su, Jinni (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin J (Committee member) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Latinxs are one of the largest ethnic-racial minoritized groups in the U.S., with children and youth serving as the driving force of the population’s growth. Latinx children and youth living in the U.S. navigate their development within sociocultural contexts that present unique stressors (e.g., discrimination) and assets (e.g., biculturalism) that shape their development. Thus, when studying Latinx youth and families, it is critical to consider important individual, developmental, and contextual factors that enhance Latinx youth development. This includes studying culture-specific family processes (e.g., familism) as well as more universal general parent-child processes that are developmentally salient (e.g., parent-child conflict regarding everyday issues). Therefore, my two-study dissertation focuses on the integration of cultural and developmentally relevant factors in studying parent-child relationships among Latinx families. In Study 1, I use longitudinal data from 246 Mexican-origin families to examine developmental trajectories of parent-child conflict regarding everyday issues across 12 to 22 years of age. In charting parent-youth conflict trajectories, I examine how youth and parent familism values may serve as important cultural factors that are associated with variation in parent-youth conflict. In Study 2, I use a person-centered approach to examine constellations of parental warmth, parent-child conflict, and parental ethnic socialization among Latinx families with children in middle childhood and explore how different patterns of parent-child relationships emerge and how these patterns relate to child adjustment (i.e., academic competence, peer competence, and depressive symptoms). Guided by a family systems theory, both studies consider important nuance in parent-child dyads by examining gender dynamics in mother-child and father-child relationships. Together, the studies make an important contribution to the understanding of culturally and developmentally salient processes of parent-child relationships in Latinx families and provide research and practice implications for enhancing the lives of Latinx youth and families.
ContributorsSon, Daye (Author) / Updegraff, Kimberly A (Thesis advisor) / Su, Jinni (Committee member) / Jager, Justin (Committee member) / Elliott, Steve (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The current dissertation focused on the risks and rewards of the digital context in adolescent romantic relationships. Adolescent romantic relationships are a pivotal developmental milestone and a foundation for future relationship functioning. Thus, it is vital to understand how adolescents function within their romantic relationships to identify potential intervention points that can improve adolescents’ relationship skills. Adolescents frequently utilize technology within their relationships, with positive and negative implications. Thus, the digital context is an important area of research for adolescent romantic relationship functioning. The neo-ecological theory and the transformation framework help contextualize the digital context's impact on adolescent romantic relationships. The first study utilized two experiments to test the effects of an adolescent’s romantic partner hypothetically ”liking” a digital relationship threat’s Instagram post on their feelings of jealousy and digital dating abuse behaviors. Adolescents reported greater feelings of jealousy and engagement in digital dating abuse behaviors when their romantic partner “liked” a post from a different-gendered individual, and effects were exacerbated when that individual was high on attractiveness. While the digital context may serve as a risk context for adolescent relationships, the risk conferred may depend on the couple's functioning. Thus, the second study examined how sexting among adolescent couples was associated with their daily affect. Results demonstrate that while sexting may boost an adolescent’s affect on the same day, it is related to worse affect as the days pass. Lastly, the digital context can also be an external stressor that impacts the relationship. Thus, the third study examined how daily digital stress exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with late adolescent romantic couples’ substance use and mental health. This study examined actor and partner effects to assess the dyadic nature of stress contagion between romantic partners. This dissertation advances the current literature on associations between the digital context, adolescent development, and adolescent romantic relationship functioning.
ContributorsQuiroz, Selena (Author) / Ha, Thao (Thesis advisor) / Corbin, William R (Committee member) / McNeish, Daniel (Committee member) / Iida, Masumi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Guided by the Risky Families model and Daily Process methods, the present study examined how daily stressors are related to emotional well-being at the between- and within-person levels among adolescent grandchildren raised by grandmothers. This study also examined whether risk (i.e., adverse childhood experiences/ACES) and resilience (i.e., socio-emotional skills) factors were linked to differences in daily well-being, stressor exposure, and emotional reactivity, and evaluated the efficacy of an online social intelligence training (SIT) program on daily stressor-emotion dynamics. Data came from a subsample (n = 188) of custodial adolescents who participated in an attention-controlled randomized clinical trial and completed 14-day daily surveys prior to and following intervention. Analyses were conducted with dynamic structural equation modeling. Daily stressors, on average, and experiencing above average stressors, were associated with higher negative emotions and lower positive emotions and social connection. Those with more ACEs, on average, reported higher daily stressors and worse well-being, whereas those with higher socio-emotional skills, on average, reported lower daily stressors and better well-being. At the within-person level, more ACEs were associated with higher daily negative emotions. Nonverbal processing was linked to higher daily positive emotions and social connection. Conversational skills were associated with higher daily positive emotions and social connection, and lower, more inert daily negative emotions. Neither ACEs nor socio-emotional skills were associated with within-person reactivity to stressors. Also, the SIT program did not demonstrate efficacy for any outcome. My discussion focused on how findings extend the literature on custodial adolescents by showing that daily stressors impact well-being, offer knowledge of how ACEs and socio-emotional skills shape daily stressor-emotion dynamics, and considers reasons why the online, self-guided SIT program failed to show efficacy on key outcomes.
ContributorsCastro, Saul (Author) / Infurna, Frank (Thesis advisor) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This study examines the identity development of young women in the context of an urban high school in the Southwest. All of the participants were academically successful and on-track to graduate from high school, ostensibly ready for “college, career and life.” Life story interviews were co-constructed with the teacher-researcher. These accounts were recorded, transcribed and coded for themes related to identity development. The narrative interviews were treated as historical accounts of identity development and, simultaneously, as performances of identity in the figured world of the urban high school. The interviews reflected the participants’ ability to create a coherent life story modulated to the context of the interview. Generally, they used the interviews as an opportunity to test ideas about their identity, or to perform an ideal self. Several key findings emerged. First, while content and focus of the interviews varied widely, there was a common formulation of success among the participants akin to the traditional “American Dream.” Second, the participants, although sharing key long term goals, had a diverse repertoire of strategies to achieve their goals. Last, schooling, both informal and formal, played different roles in supporting the women during this transition from childhood to adulthood. Results indicate that multiple pathways exist for students to find success in US high schools, and that the “college for all” narrative may limit educators’ ability to support students as they create their own narratives of successful lives.
ContributorsBogusch, Emily Bridget (Author) / Nakagawa, Kathy (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Beth Blue (Committee member) / Arzubiaga, Angela (Committee member) / Klimek, Barbara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Adolescent substance use carries a considerable public health burden, and early initiation into use is especially problematic. Research has shown that sensation seeking traits increase risk for substance use experimentation, but less is known about individual and contextual factors that can potentially protect against this risk. This study utilized a longitudinal sub sample of youth (N=567) from a larger study of familial alcoholism to examine sensation seeking in early adolescence (ages 10-15) and its relations to later substance use experimentation. Hypotheses tested whether individual executive control, parenting consistency, neighborhood disadvantage, and neighborhood ethnic concentration moderated sensation seeking’s effects on substance use experimentation using multilevel zero-inflated Poisson modeling. Across models, higher levels of sensation seeking were predictive of a higher likelihood of having initiated substance use, but sensation seeking was not significantly related to the number of different substance use classes tried. Only neighborhood disadvantage emerged as a significant moderator of the path from sensation seeking to substance use initiation. The strength of sensation seeking effects on substance use initiation increased as neighborhood disadvantage decreased below average levels, with the most advantaged neighborhoods exhibiting the strongest link between sensation seeking and substance use. There was also a trend towards the most disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibiting increased sensation seeking effects on substance use initiation. These results highlight the importance of focusing on relatively more advantaged areas as potentially risky environments for the externalizing pathway to substance use.
ContributorsJensen, Michaeline R (Author) / Gonzales, Nancy A. (Thesis advisor) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Enders, Craig (Committee member) / White, Rebecca (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016