The second study expands the current literature regarding instructional quality thresholds. Limited research has addressed the question of whether there is a minimum level of instructional quality that must be experienced in order to see significant changes in children's academic performance, and the limited research has focused primarily on preschoolers. The goal of study two was to determine if high-quality first-grade instructional support predicted children's first-, third-, and fifth-grade academic performance. Using piecewise regression analyses, results did not show evidence of a relation between first-grade instructional support quality and children's academic performance at any grade. Possible reasons for inconsistencies in findings from this study and previous research are discussed, including differences in sample characteristics and measurement tools. Because instructional quality remains at the forefront of discussions by educators and policy makers, the inconsistencies in research findings argue for further research that may clarify thresholds of instructional support quality that must be met in order for various subgroups of children to gain the skills needed for long-term academic success.
The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to explore school and classroom practices that may be particularly effective in supporting the socio-emotional development of marginalized adolescents. I focus on two distinct populations: youth affected by violence in Colombia, and students of color within the United States. In Study 1, I explore whether three aspects of school climate – safety, connectedness, and services – buffer the negative implications of violence exposure for adolescent development in a Colombian sample. In Study 2, I determine how culturally responsive teaching practices in schools with high concentrations of students of color in the United States can be integrated into our current conceptualization of what constitutes high quality teaching, by examining profiles of teaching practices and associations between these profiles and teacher and classroom characteristics and student behaviors.
ested data, hierarchical linear modeling or multilevel modeling (MLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) has the ability to predict outcomes for each level of analysis and across multiple levels (accounting for relationships between levels) providing a significant advantage over single-level analyses. When multilevel data contain missingness, multilevel multiple imputation (MLMI) techniques may be used to model both the missingness and the clustered nature of the data. With categorical multilevel data with missingness, categorical MLMI must be used. Two such routines for MLMI with continuous and categorical data were explored with missing at random (MAR) data: a formal Bayesian imputation and analysis routine in JAGS (R/JAGS) and a common MLM procedure of imputation via Bayesian estimation in BLImP with frequentist analysis of the multilevel model in Mplus (BLImP/Mplus). Manipulated variables included interclass correlations, number of clusters, and the rate of missingness. Results showed that with continuous data, R/JAGS returned more accurate parameter estimates than BLImP/Mplus for almost all parameters of interest across levels of the manipulated variables. Both R/JAGS and BLImP/Mplus encountered convergence issues and returned inaccurate parameter estimates when imputing and analyzing dichotomous data. Follow-up studies showed that JAGS and BLImP returned similar imputed datasets but the choice of analysis software for MLM impacted the recovery of accurate parameter estimates. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research will be discussed.
Dating apps have become commonplace in our society, with popular apps such as Tinder having more than 75 million monthly active users. Dating apps allow people to search for relationships, serious or casual, at any time of the day and greatly expands a person’s dating network. However, dating apps mostly rely on photographs of their users in order for potential matches to choose to pursue a relationship. So, users are tasked with promoting an appealing online version of themselves to their audience. This research seeks to understand how dating apps affect body esteem, specifically how dating app usage and photo editing correlate to reported body esteem. The findings of this study indicate that the amount of dating apps a person uses correlates to negative body esteem, and that those that reported editing their photographs more than their peers also reported lower body esteem.
Torah-observant Jewish married couples practice family purity, a Jewish law forbidding sexual relations during menstruation and shortly thereafter. During this time couples often avoid sleeping in the same bed, physical touch, and behaviors that can instigate a sexual encounter. These distancing restrictions are lifted when the wife immerses in a ritual bath. The process repeats at the next menstruation.
This research examined the effects of family purity’s marital distancing through two studies. The first involved qualitative interviews of family purity wives (N = 10) guided by relational dialectics theory (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996). Study one findings suggest that family purity wives navigate the three tensions of integration, expression, and certainty. Study one also revealed a new tension, the dialect of restraint. The dialectic of restraint appears to enhance marital communication, heighten the appreciation for the mundane, and help sustain sexual desire.
Study two, the quantitative phase of the research, applied self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1986) to investigate differences between family purity and non-family purity couples. A sample of 90 married Jewish dyads (N = 180) participated in a cross-sectional online questionnaire. Findings suggest that while non-practicing couples report greater self-expansion, family purity couples report greater sexual closeness. Family purity couples also report the same closeness and sexual closeness ideals, whereas non-practicing couples reported divergent ideals. Non-practicing family purity husbands had the greatest reported discrepancy between ideal and actual sexual closeness.
The combined findings suggest that sanctioned prosocial distancing as practiced by family purity couples enables the integration of cognitive growth and mitigates the threat of autonomy. Prosocial distancing within the family purity marriage appears to provide the wife space for autonomy that in turn provokes novelty and sexual desire. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical contributions, study limitations, and future directions.