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- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
The effects of preventive interventions are found to be related to participants' responsiveness to the program, or the degree to which participants attend sessions, engage in the material, and use the program skills. The current study proposes a multi-dimensional method for measuring responsiveness to the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a parenting-focused program to prevent mental health problems for children who experienced the death of a parent. It examines the relations between individual-level risk-factors and responsiveness to the program, as well as the relations between responsiveness and program outcomes. The sample consists of 90 caregivers and 135 children assigned to the intervention condition of an efficacy trial of the FBP. Caregivers' responsiveness to the 12-week program was measured using a number of indicators, including attendance, completion of weekly "homework" assignments, overall program skill use, perceived helpfulness of the program and program skills, and perceived group environment. Three underlying dimensions of responsiveness were identified: Skill Use, Program Liking, and Perceived Group Environment. Positive parenting and child externalizing problems at baseline were found to predict caregiver Skill Use. Skill Use and Perceived Group Environment predicted changes in caregiver grief and reports of child behavior problems at posttest and 11-month follow-up. Caregivers with better Skill Use had better positive parenting outcomes. Skill use mediated the relation between baseline positive parenting and improvements in positive parenting at 11-month follow-up.
ContributorsSchoenfelder, Erin (Author) / Sandler, Irwin N. (Thesis advisor) / Wolchik, Sharlene (Committee member) / Millsap, Roger (Committee member) / Barrera, Manuel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Discovering Puerto Rican art song: a research project on four art song works by Héctor Campos Parsi
Description
Puerto Rico has produced many important composers who have contributed to the musical culture of the nation during the last 200 years. However, a considerable amount of their music has proven to be difficult to access and may contain numerous errors. This research project intends to contribute to the accessibility of such music and to encourage similar studies of Puerto Rican music. This study focuses on the music of Héctor Campos Parsi (1922-1998), one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century in Puerto Rico. After an overview of the historical background of music on the island and the biography of the composer, four works from his art song repertoire are given for detailed examination. A product of this study is the first corrected edition of his cycles Canciones de Cielo y Agua, Tres Poemas de Corretjer, Los Paréntesis, and the song Majestad Negra. These compositions date from 1947 to 1959, and reflect both the European and nationalistic writing styles of the composer during this time. Data for these corrections have been obtained from the composer's manuscripts, published and unpublished editions, and published recordings. The corrected scores are ready for publication and a compact disc of this repertoire, performed by soprano Melliangee Pérez and the author, has been recorded to bring to life these revisions. Despite the best intentions of the author, the various copyright issues have yet to be resolved. It is hoped that this document will provide the foundation for a resolution and that these important works will be available for public performance and study in the near future.
ContributorsRodríguez Morales, Luis F., 1980- (Author) / Campbell, Andrew (Thesis advisor) / Buck, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Kopta, Anne (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Libby Larsen is one of the most performed and acclaimed composers today. She is a spirited, compelling, and sensitive composer whose music enhances the poetry of America's most prominent authors. Notable among her works are song cycles for soprano based on the poetry of female writers, among them novelist and poet Willa Cather (1873-1947). Larsen has produced two song cycles on works from Cather's substantial output of fiction: one based on Cather's short story, "Eric Hermannson's Soul," titled Margaret Songs: Three Songs from Willa Cather (1996); and later, My Antonia (2000), based on Cather's novel of the same title. In Margaret Songs, Cather's poetry and short stories--specifically the character of Margaret Elliot--combine with Larsen's unique compositional style to create a surprising collaboration. This study explores how Larsen in these songs delves into the emotional and psychological depths of Margaret's character, not fully formed by Cather. It is only through Larsen's music and Cather's poetry that Margaret's journey through self-discovery and love become fully realized. This song cycle is a glimpse through the eyes of two prominent female artists on the societal pressures placed upon Margaret's character, many of which still resonate with women in today's culture. This study examines the work Margaret Songs by discussing Willa Cather, her musical influences, and the conditions surrounding the writing of "Eric Hermannson's Soul." It looks also into Cather's influence on Libby Larsen and the commission leading to Margaret Songs. Finally, a description of the musical, dramatic, and textual content of the songs completes this interpretation of the interactions of Willa Cather, Libby Larsen, and the character of Margaret Elliot.
ContributorsMcLain, Christi Marie (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In a world where everything is drifting away from the intellectual into materialistic, and where everyone is rushing on the daily basis to provide their basic needs, everything is getting more expensive except the human life’s worth. Construction sites can be some of the clearer examples that show how the technical work, the communication skills, team work and management relate to one another. However, lately, the safety of the labor is neither being prioritized nor considered an important aspect to even consider at sites. Lebanon is, unfortunately, one of the countries where most construction sites are aimed to increase production and decrease cost as much as possible, on behalf of labor safety measurements. The high occurrence of such cases are the result of the lack of government control and accountability, as well as other reasonings.
Similar to the majority of countries, falls are the number one cause of fatalities and serious injuries on construction sites, especially building sites, where working on higher elevations is a must.
This thesis focuses on the topic of “Techniques and technologies for reducing fall hazards in use on Lebanese building construction projects”. The main goal behind it is to shed light on whether there are any traditional, technical or modern mechanisms used for safety on the Lebanese construction sites, however statistically few they might be. On the other hand, Casting the deficiencies, weaknesses and flaws are also discussed by indicating some solutions and pointers on possible methods to improve. Hence, this thesis would demonstrate the high importance of this topic and consequently help construction managers and workers realize that safety should become a priority on all sites in the country.
Researches done and interviews conducted show that fall hazards prevention/protection techniques are only implemented by large scale companies, and totally ignored by other companies which constitute the highest percentage of the active companies in the market now. Several causes are behind this and the result is one: More lives are put in danger due to lack of education, absence of audits and sanctions, and insufficient budgets
ContributorsMdawar, Hikmat (Author) / Gibson, George Edward (Thesis advisor) / El Asmar, Mounir (Committee member) / Sullivan, Kenneth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Implementation challenges associated with low community effectiveness rates include low levels of client responsiveness to the intervention, less than ideal intervention fidelity, and low levels of provider quality of intervention delivery. The literature is mixed on how group leader fidelity/quality of delivery are associated with client responsiveness, and research on adolescents and ethnoracially diverse clients is particularly lacking. The current study examined group leader fidelity and quality of delivery as predictors of adolescent in-session group responsiveness to the first session of the Bridges intervention which is a universal, family-based, substance use prevention program delivered in Title I middle schools. Participants consisted of 325 adolescents across 30 intervention groups. Three separate observational coding teams coded group leader fidelity, group leader quality of delivery, and adolescent in-session group responsiveness to the program. Overall percentage of fidelity met was calculated. Next, two confirmatory factor analysis models were conducted on the responsiveness and quality of delivery data of session 1, and factor scores were extracted. Hierarchical linear regression was then conducted to predict adolescent responsiveness with group leader fidelity in step 1 and group leader quality of delivery in step 2. There were no significant associations between predictor variables and adolescent in-session group responsiveness. Findings suggest that group leader implementation constructs do not appear to account for a significant amount of the variance in adolescent group responsiveness during the first session. Future research should examine other variables that are relevant in influencing adolescent program engagement with larger sample sizes.
ContributorsKuckertz, Mary J (Author) / Gonzales, Nancy (Thesis advisor) / Mauricio, Anne (Committee member) / Anderson, Samantha (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The present study contributed an investigation of prosocial peers, a prospective promotive factor, and its association with depressive symptoms, an internalizing outcome. The study utilized six waves of panel data from 2,002 youth in the control condition of the Community Youth Development Study (mean age 13.12 at Grade 7; 52% male; 66.1% White; 26.6% Hispanic). A series of time-varying effect models (TVEM) illustrated the associations between prosocial peers and depressive symptoms over developmental time from Grades 7 through 12. It was hypothesized that prosocial peers and depressive symptoms would have a negative association for both males and females, and that the association would be moderated by gender at the time of transition to high school. It was expected that females would display a significantly stronger negative association than males between prosocial peers and depressive symptoms at this juncture, particularly due to gender-based differences in socialization that are compounded by transition. To strengthen conclusions about prosocial peers being a promotive factor, secondary analyses included covariates measuring previous levels of depressive symptoms; these models accounted either for baseline depressive symptoms or year-prior symptoms. Results showed, overall, prosocial peers had a significant negative association with depressive symptoms over time, for both males and females. When controlling for baseline depressive symptoms, this was still the case. When controlling for year-prior depressive symptoms, prosocial peers was no longer significantly associated with depressive symptoms for males across Grades 10 through 12. Gender moderated the association between prosocial peers and depressive symptoms at the time of transition to high school as well as other grades. When controlling for baseline depressive symptoms, it was again found that gender moderated the association between prosocial peers and depressive symptoms at the time of transition to high school (Grades 8 and 9) but also at Grade 12. When controlling for year-prior depressive symptoms, gender did not moderate the association at the time of transition to high school, but it did at Grades 10, 11, and 12. Overall, results support the possibility of prosocial peers as a prospective promotive factor for youth mental health.
ContributorsMendes, Skyler H. (Author) / Oesterle, Sabrina (Thesis advisor) / Doane, Leah (Thesis advisor) / Perez La Mar, Marisol (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Aggressive and violent behavior is expressed differently across development, but for some adolescents, this behavior leads to criminal justice involvement through arrests and incarceration. Further, according to the biopsychosocial model, aggressive behavior is influenced by both genetics and the environment. This study sought to examine the differential impacts of early childhood environmental cumulative risk and genetic risk on the developmental cascade from middle childhood behavioral aggression and lack of control to adolescent antisocial behavior or callous-unemotional traits, to emerging adult involvement with the criminal justice system, and whether the effects of risk were mitigated by receiving the Family Check-Up (FCU) prevention program in childhood. The sample included high-risk youth (N = 731; 50% female, 50% White, 28% Black, 13% Hispanic, 9% Indigenous, Native Hawaiian, or Asian; of these 13% were multiracial; Mincome = $28,993; representative 515 genotyped) involved in a randomized-controlled trial of the Family Check-Up and followed longitudinally across 11 waves from ages 2 through 19 years. Behavioral measures included parent-report of behavioral aggression and observational lack of control in middle childhood, self-report of antisocial behavior and callous-unemotional (CU) traits in adolescence, and self-report of involvement with the legal system at age 19. Results of longitudinal structural equation modeling (SEM) supported a developmental cascade from middle childhood behavioral aggression to antisocial behavior in adolescence to legal system involvement. Early cumulative environmental risk and polygenic risk tolerance (RT PGS) significantly predicted involvement with the legal system at age 19, while RT PGS also predicted antisocial behavior in adolescence. Further, intervention effects were found for the FCU, such that the FCU disrupted the effects of RT PGS and middle childhood aggression on antisocial behavior and CU traits in adolescence. This study showed that the FCU can mitigate polygenic risk, supporting the benefit of early psychosocial prevention programs. Importantly, this study showed initial evidence that prevention programs targeting early childhood conduct problems could potentially reduce rates of justice system involvement, including arrests and incarceration, by the age of 19.
ContributorsOstner, Savannah Grace (Author) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Tein, Jenn-Yun (Committee member) / Davis, Mary C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Child abuse and neglect is a devastating yet preventable social problem. Currently, early childhood home visitation services are the primary approach to preventing maltreatment and improving child well-being in the United States. However, existing literature suggests that improvement is needed regarding how home visitation professionals identify and respond to risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Although there is substantial multidisciplinary literature that investigates the utility of standardized measures to determine future risk for maltreatment, there has been minimal inquiry into the validity of early childhood home visitation assessment instruments to accurately identify and classify children and their families by their risk for future maltreatment. In response to the dearth in the literature, the purpose of this dissertation was to examine the utility of the Healthy Families Parenting Inventory (HFPI) to predict a family’s risk for future maltreatment. Families enrolled in Healthy Families Arizona, a child abuse and neglect prevention program, were followed for 12 months after the completion of the baseline HFPI to measure if the family had received an investigation of maltreatment from the public child welfare system. Bivariate results indicated that the generated risk classifications of the HFPI and the overall total composite score were related to the occurrence of a future maltreatment investigation. Specifically, the results from the binary logistic regression models provided evidence that as a family’s score increased on the inventory, the likelihood of receiving an investigation of maltreatment decreased. Further, significant relationships were found between a family’s score on several individual items of the HFPI and the occurrence of a maltreatment investigation. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of potential avenues of research on the topic of risk assessment in prevention programs serving at-risk families.
ContributorsKelly, Cara (Author) / Lecroy, Craig (Thesis advisor) / Anthony, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Krysik, Judy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
There is a need to reinvent evidence-based interventions (EBIs) for pediatric anxiety problems to better address the demands of real-word service delivery settings and achieve public health impact. The time- and resource-intensive nature of most EBIs for youth anxiety has frequently been noted as a barrier to the utilization of EBIs in community settings, leading to increased attention towards exploring the viability of briefer, more accessible protocols. Principally, this research reports between-group effect sizes from brief-interventions targeting pediatric anxiety and classifies each as well-established, probably efficacious, possibly efficacious, experimental, or questionable. brief interventions yielded an overall mean effect size of 0.19 on pediatric anxiety outcomes from pre to post. Effect sizes varied significantly by level of intervention: Pre to post-intervention effects were strongest for brief-treatments (0.35), followed by brief-targeted prevention (0.22), and weakest for brief-universal prevention (0.09). No participant or other intervention characteristic emerged as significant moderators of effect sizes. In terms of standard of evidence, one brief intervention is well-established, and five are probably efficacious, with most drawing on cognitive and behavioral change procedures and/or family systems models. At this juncture, the minimal intervention needed for clinical change in pediatric anxiety points to in-vivo exposures for specific phobias (~3 hours), cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with social skills training (~3 hours), and CBT based parent training (~6 hours, eight digital modules with clinician support). This research concludes with a discussion on limitations to available brief EBIs, practice guidelines, and future research needed to capitalize on the viability of briefer protocols in enhancing access to, and impact of, evidence-based care in the real-world.
ContributorsStoll, Ryan (Author) / Pina, Armando A. (Thesis advisor) / Gonzales, Nancy (Committee member) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Perez, Marisol (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This study examined whether the New Beginnings Program (NBP), a preventive parenting intervention, led to changes in coping strategies and coping efficacy in emerging adults whose families had participated in the program 15 years earlier. Gender and baseline risk were examined as moderators of these relations. Participants (M = 25.6 years; 50% female) were from 240 families that had participated in an experimental trial (NBP [mother-only, mother-child] vs. literature control). Data from the pretest and 15-year follow-up were used. Multiple regression analyses revealed that pretest risk interacted with program participation in the mother-only condition of the NBP such that offspring entering the program with higher pretest risk reported significantly less avoidant coping 15 years later. There was a marginal effect of participation in the NBP on problem-focused coping; emerging adults who had participated in the NBP had marginally higher levels of problem-focused coping. There were no significant main effects nor interactive program by risk or program by gender effects on support coping or coping efficacy. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for implementation of preventive interventions and research on pathways of coping.
ContributorsRhodes, Charla Aubrey (Author) / Wolchik, Sharlene A (Thesis advisor) / Tein, Jenn-Yun (Committee member) / Leucken, Linda (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019