Surrogate motherhood is a very complex issue with
many groups having vested interests. In order to measure
attitudes specific to surrogacy a 20-item Likert Scale
with high reliability was developed through item analysis
(N=131, Part-whole correlation range 0.749-0.478).
Correlation of surrogacy attitudes was subsequently
related to six other instruments: AIDS,...
This thesis investigates the reported communication experiences of married women transitioning to motherhood. The study involves a series of focus groups in which new mothers share their communicative experiences, explaining how they are navigating their new roles as mothers while also performing roles as wives, daughters, and workers. Informed primarily...
In many ways, losing a job is like losing part of
yourself. Your lifestyle suddenly changes. Schedules
and routines that controlled a large part of
your time are no longer there. You lose contact
with former co-workers and friends.
A study of student performance in relation to concentrated color
in the environment was conducted in an elementary school near
Portland, Oregon. Third grade classrooms served as laboratories,
with the total third grade student population of 83 students serving as
subjects.
The project covered a four week period of time....
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between
the similarity of food preferences among parents and children,
and parent attitudes.
Thirty-five children of preschool ages and their parents served
as subjects for this study. All children were enrolled in preschool
programs established by the = Family Life...
The purpose of the study was to explore the possible acceptance of
metric conversion for clothing sizes and sizing standardization by a
selected sample of female ready-to-wear clothing consumers.
A questionnaire was designed to elicit consumer's positive or negative
attitudes toward metric conversion for clothing sizes and sizing
standardization. The...
Individuals participating in the enviromental sport activity courses of backpacking-orienteering, mountaineering, and scuba diving responded to pre- and post - test trials of the Self-Cathexis Scale ard the Body-Oathexis Scale. Two control groups composed of random samples of the university student population reponded to the Self-Cathexis Scale Body-Cathexis Scale: one...
The purpose of this study was to assess reactions to and
opinions about color and color performance by women ages 45 to 54
years. Hypotheses were developed to test relationships and differences
between both perception and acceptance of color change and:
1) the three primary colors, 2) the two methods...
In response to the growing preference for the small family, this study was carried cut to acquire information about women who expect zero, one, or two children. The purposes of the study were: to identify the cultural and socioeconomic characteristics of these women; and to determine which of these characteristics...
The goal of the study was to investigate the relationship between
nonverbal behaviors and frustration. As a part of the study an
instrument for the observation of nonverbal behaviors related to
frustration was developed.
The specific hypotheses investigated in this study were the
following:
Hypothesis One - A valid and...
The significance of dress in a first encounter situation has
been demonstrated empirically: clothing serves as a vehicle for communicating
information from one person to another. Thus, it is influential
in affecting the formation of first impressions. This
study was undertaken to explore the elements of dress that are most...
The purpose of this research was to determine whether feedback
from vocational interest inventories leads to the arousal of psychological
reactance. The data for the study was collected from 80 male
and female subjects who were first year students at Oregon State University
enrolled in Psychology 111, Personal Development.
The...
Building upon Deci and Ryan's (1985, 1991) self-determination theory as well as
previous empirical work on motivation, the present study was designed to develop a
multifaceted 31-item Exercise Motivation Scale (EMS). A series of pilot studies were
first conducted in order to generate the 31 scale items. The EMS was...
Typologies of intimate violence are part of an emerging paradigm towards a multifaceted, multi-theoretical approach to understanding the causes and effects of intimate violence. For this new paradigm to be implemented into research and practice, there are several gaps in the knowledge base that must be addressed. In particular, there...
Published August 1980. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Published March 1981. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
In this creative non-fiction thesis, I present a collection of personal essays that examine my significant moments of awkwardness with failed communications or frustrated relationships when I wanted to draw people closer with language, but was unsuccessful. In the twelve stories, I discuss these issues in my interpersonal communication interwoven...
Designed to help you understand loss and grief and respond to the grief of others; emphasizes losses experienced in later life, however most information is equally applicable to grief throughout adulthood. Covers the fundamental steps involved in the grieving process—accepting loss, experiencing grief, adjusting to change, and reinvesting emotional energy...
Life is filled with changes. Sometimes those changes involve loss. When we lose someone or something important to us, we grieve. Although the death of a loved one is generally the most intensely and deeply felt loss, many life changes can involve loss and cause us to grieve.
Adaptation to role transitions can have various
outcomes. Health and demographic characteristics as well
as environmental control have been shown to affect the
transition to the role of patient. The acutely ill
elderly's adaptation to the role of hospitalized patient
has not been measured from the elderly patient's
perspective.
This...
The purpose of this study was to determine whether changes in physical space
impacted preschool children's cooperative behavior. These changes in physical space
included differentiated and undifferentiated ceiling height and wall color.
This study used an experimental design with subjects experiencing four
conditions each. The sample consisted of 30 preschool...
One of the most powerful and life-changing events that can occur in the life of a family is
the death of a child. Researchers who have studied death and bereavement suggest that a
child's death has a dramatic impact on parents. However, little is known about the ways
in which...
Losing your job is one of the most stressful events
you can experience. Losing a job forces you,
against your wishes, to make rapid changes in
your life. It is important to continue your normal
routines in order to reduce the number of changes
you make at one time.
Online shopping is one of the fastest growing forms of shopping with sales reaching $141.4 billion in 2004 (Shop.org, 2005). With the tremendous growth of online retailing, and the prevalence of impulse buying today, this study's purpose was to investigate the internal and external factors of impulse buying in an...
The death of a child is a traumatic family event. This qualitative study examined the experiences of parents and grandparents in 10 families who had lost a baby to SIDS, stillbirth, or birth defects. Key questions focused on support given and received, meanings attributed to the loss, continuing bonds, and...
In this paper, my aim is to call attention to the meanings women attach to their
birthing experiences using the symbolic interaction perspective in conjunction with a
feminist lens. I argue that the obstetrical model of childbirth defines the course of the
relationship between the laboring woman and attendant, limiting...
The purpose of this research study was to test a psychological theory of motivation called the Flow Theory by Csikszentmihalyi as it relates to non-industrial textile production activities. In using the Flow Theory, researchers attempt to explain why individuals continue participation with a specific activity; namely that the activity induces...
The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationships
among satisfaction with clothing, satisfaction with physical appearance,
concern over weight, self-esteem, and participation in leisure-time
activities among a sample of full-time homemakers.
To test these relationships, five measures were used. Satisfaction
with clothing was measured by comparing the actual...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship
between innovativeness in clothing and textiles and; self rating of
innovativeness, adoption leadership, venturesomeness, perceived
sewing competence, age, education, social status characteristics,
social participation, sources of information, and continuation of
learning.
The sample consisted of 67 women who sew who...
The purpose of the study was to investigate relationships among
time orientation, clothing influentials, importance of selected garment
characteristics, sources of clothing information, and clothing values.
The measures developed for the study were a clothing influential
measure, a garment characteristic measure, and a source of clothing
information measure.
Two measures...
A computer simulation was developed as a technique for
studying the effects of the process dynamics on the operator's
sampling and control behavior. This methodology was
used to study the effects of the process input memory
variation in the presence of different observation noise
levels. It was concluded that the...
Five NAIA intercollegiate men's basketball teams and 53 players
served as subjects to determine the role pre-game anxiety played in
basketball game performance. The study involved four games in which
Western Oregon State College competed against other small colleges
in Oregon during the 19 -81 season. Performance in basketball was...
Perception between people is part of the process of nonverbal
communication. Person perception including body, facial expression,
facial features, and clothing is part of the process that results
in the formation of impressions of persons by each other.
The purpose of this study was to investigate clothing perception
and develop...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship
between the self-body cathexis of obese women and their attitudes
toward physical activity. Fifty inventories were used for the
research in this project. The volunteer subjects' ages ranged from
18 to 45 with a mean age of 28.9 years. The...
The study's goal was to develop and initially validate the Food
Fantasies Questionnaire, a self-report therapeutic and research
instrument which assesses the occurrence and content of highly
irrational food cognitions (fantasies) common to eating disorders in
relation to seven theoretically derived factors characterisic of the
disorders: fear, anxiety, revulsion, pleasure,...
I assessed influences on women's attitudes toward and experiences with menarche and menstruation using feminist qualitative methodologies. Bronfenbrenner's ecological model interpreted through a feminist lens was the organizing framework for the study, focusing as it does on the sociohistorical and multilayered context wherein the women developed. Fourteen college women between...
Self-determination theory suggests that social contexts that promote a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness will increase internalization of behavioral regulation and lead to more self-determined forms of motivation, the prototype of which is intrinsic motivation. A positive relationship between internalization of exercise behavior regulation and actual levels of exercise...
Substantial research has shown deficits in the quality of end-of-life care in the U.S. In response to evidence of these deficits, efforts have been made to improve quality of end-of-life care. One approach has been to ask the question, "What is a good death?" Data on views of a good...
The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of peer presence upon the health-related physical fitness test scores of college students. A total of 312 undergraduate college students, 156 males and 156 females, 18 through 29 years of age, randomly selected from the physical education activity...
The purpose of this study was to examine whether participants can form impressions and make inferences about a hotel based only on the physical environment or design of the hotel lobby. The study investigated how the interior arrangement, furnishings and other aspects of hotel lobbies influenced participants' first impressions and...
This study focused on people’s emotional responses to curvilinear and rectilinear lines in interior environments. Emotional reactions towards simulated interior settings were tested by having subjects complete an online survey. The survey tested respondents’ emotional reactions triggered by different forms of furniture. The survey included questions about six simulated interior...
The purpose of the present study was to determine consumer perceptions of apparel products in Internet shopping. According to the existing literature, four categories of perceptions play primary roles for apparel shopping consumer decisions: apparel appearance, apparel comfort, fabric characteristics, and apparel fit. The present study aimed to observe how...
Shame is a debilitating inner experience elicited by the negative self-appraisal of one's entire self, and is characterized by a deep-seated sense of being flawed, defective, and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging (Brown, 2006). Although significant research has explored self-conscious emotions, including shame, little has been done to examine...
Window displays are an important means by which retailers communicate with both current and potential consumers. The present study investigated how the use of context setting (with or without) in a window display and background music (with or without) influence consumers' mental imagery, arousal response, attitude toward the display, and...
The aim of the study was to explore the possibility of relationships
existing between the warmth and coolness of personal
coloring, certain personality characteristics, and the choice of
warmth or coolness in colors to be used for clothing.
A review of the literature dealing with color preferences indicated
that one...
The purpose of this study was to explore relationships between
clothing interest and body awareness, between clothing interest and
selected demographic variables for college men and women, and between
body awareness and selected demographic variables for college men and
women.
To assess these relationships two measures were used. Body
awareness,...
The present study was a modified replication of the two pioneer
works in the field of sport and ethnic groups by Pooley (1968)
and Tindall (1973). This study investigated whether participation in
an ethnic basketball league in Japanese-American communities affected
the rate of assimilation of two groups of Japanese-American, high-school...
This study sought to chronicle the increased presence of the
foreign athlete in NCAA Division I track and field and to assess the
competitive motivations of American and foreign track and field
athletes. Recruiting pipelines, as well as the successes of foreign
athletes on U.S. university track and field teams,...
The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the interactive effects of locus of control and instructional method on perceived self-efficacy with computers. The two instructional methods in this
experiment were intended to represent variations in the amount of control over the lesson that students
would have, the amount of...
The purpose of this study was to document, through
personal interviews, perceptions, attitudes and coping
skills utilized by women who have survived breast cancer
treated by mastectomy for at least 5 years without
recurrence.
A semi-structured interview guide was developed with
input from professionals in the field. The questions were...
The satisfaction-paradox, defined as the state of
being satisfied with objectively unsatisfactory living
conditions, represents a dysfunctional state of the poor
for both the government and individuals by creating long-term
poverty. Traditional rationales classify the reasons
for this phenomenon as conscious decisions of individuals
or shiftlessness and thereby results in...
In social and biological evolution, infelicity can operate as a driving
motor to force change. In this essay, for life other than human, infelicity is
equated with physical unfitness to compete for the resources of a specific
niche. For humanity it is defined as the result of an incongruity between...
Smoking patterns were described and compared retrospectively for 5395 participants in the Lung Health Study at 12 and 24 months. 3592 participants were assigned to a special intervention (SI) group that received a counseling assisted smoking cessation intervention that included nicotine gum and 1803 participants were assigned to a usual...
In this qualitative, phenomenological study I employed
oral history methodology, grounded in a life-span
developmental and feminist approach, to explore the
developmental importance of menarche in twenty older women's
"bodily histories." Menarche is an important developmental
event in the female life course because it represents a major
point of confluence...
The researcher explored interpersonal trust (a construct from the fields of psychology
and sociometry) in the context of engineering work groups. The study explored the potential
antecedents of trust and the relationships among trust, creativity, communication, emotional
empathy and positive affect. The study attempts to argue that 1) trust is...
The self-efficacy construct has been determined to be an effective method of
stimulating desired eating behavior in diabetics and obese adults and exercise behaviors in
pulmonary rehabilitation patients. Although the self-efficacy construct has been shown to
mediate eating habits, practical classroom application of the construct has been rarely used
in...
The purpose of this research study was to examine the effects
of infant massage on the interactions between high risk infants and
their caregivers. A population of nine high risk infants who
received infant massage was compared to 14 high risk infants who
did not receive infant massage. Both groups...
A majority of states require parental consent or notification before a minor may have an abortion. Parental involvement laws are based in part on the assumption that abortion poses a risk to the psychological health of adolescents. Previous research has catalogued the risks to adolescent mothers and their children posed...
Depression has been one of the most prevalent psychological disorders. Its relationship with life events is reviewed in light of factors influencing the relationship such as self-esteem, attributional styles, and cognitive complexity. The mechanism of depression and its links with personality disorders are looked at in relation to anxiety. The...
This study aims to identify the effect of different lighting conditions and shelf height in a retail store environment on emotional states, feeling of safety and behavioral intentions. Lighting and store fixture height are two retail store components that can affect consumers’ emotional states and therefore their shopping experience.
This...
The purpose of this study was twofold. First, to determine if planned
interventions could increase untrained undergraduate students' use of positive and
specific skill feedback while a teaching fundamental motor skill to children who are
disabled. Second, to qualitatively assess the effect of specific verbal feedback on
student motor performance....
Fishermen's and managers' perceptions of fishery issues are an
important factor to consider when studying conflicts between the
two groups. According to theories of conflict management,
differences in perceptions may cause situations to be characterized
by misunderstanding and mistrust, and may add to the difficulties in
managing the conflict.
A...
Previous research suggested that unlike marketing goods,
marketing services required manipulating the physical environment as
well as price, promotion, production, and place. This indicates a role for
interior design in the marketing strategy of a service business. Research
also indicated that little was known about the effect of the different...
The two studies of this dissertation examined mothers' perspectives of nonresident fathers' involvement in low-income families. The overall goal of these studies was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of nonresident fathers' involvement and its effect on family well-being. In the first study I applied a relatively new methodology, zero-inflated...
In 1952, at the height of the McCarthy era, Franz Kallmann, a Jewish psychiatrist and eugenicist who fled the National Socialist regime in Germany, published a study, in which he claimed to have found a one hundred percent concordance rate for homosexuality among forty pairs of identical twins. From this...
You can enhance your sales success significantly by better
understanding your own personality and style of selling
as well as the personality and buying styles of your customers.
This understanding can provide you with strategies for
approaching, and selling to, different buyer types.
The purpose of the study was to investigate practical guidelines based on empirical evidence for effective website design, including both home page and product pages. This research consists of two consecutive empirical studies. Study 1 was one factor (home page design: image- vs. text-oriented home page) between-subjects design with two...
A life course perspective provide a meta-theoretical framework to understand human development. This perspective is characterized by studying the changing lives within the changing environment (George, 2004). Building upon the literature in the psychosocial paradigm and ecological models, Manuscript 1 discusses the uniqueness and the practical importance of a life...
Main Street USA in Southern California’s Disneyland theme park is often described as nostalgic. However, previous research on this subject has failed to identify what elements actually make Main Street USA nostalgic as well as determine why Disney uses this nostalgia to influence park guests. In order to respond to...
Previous research has revealed gender differences that impact females’ willingness to adopt software features in end users’ programming environments. Since these features have separately been shown to help end users problem solve, it is important to female end users’ productivity that we find ways to make these features more acceptable...
Many projects fail because employees and managers have different understandings of project "success" or "value". Other projects fail because managers are unable to effectively align organizational values with those of their employees. This problem is widely understood, but there is little empirical research that specifies the nature and effect of...
The present study examined involuntary attentional bias toward facial emotion expression. Particularly, the study examined two different attentional components for emotional processing, namely, orienting vs. disengagement. A cueing paradigm using two cue presentation times (250ms and 350ms) was used to determine if attention would be involuntarily captured by an irrelevant...
As rates of obesity continue to rise in the United States, interest in restaurant menu labeling has become a growing phenomenon. Many proposed initiatives to require posted nutrition information at the point of sale or decision point for choosing restaurant fare are gaining attention. Research to explore how nutrition labeling...
The aim of the study was to determine whether a higher correlated color temperature of the fluorescent lighting in an elementary school classroom influenced student on-task behavior as compared to fluorescent lighting with a lower correlated color temperature. A conceptual theoretical framework on interior lighting and human behavior was developed...
Decreasing mortality rates and increasing life
expectancy are contributing factors in a trend currently
referred to as the "graying" of America. Some members of
this aging population will require caregiving support from
their families. Because women tend to outlive men, adult
daughters generally assume this important role for their
widowed...
The research evaluated the remodeled lobby and reception office of the Linn- Benton Housing Authority, Albany, Oregon. Programming goals identified five needs: protect client privacy, provide for orderly queuing at the reception counter, decrease contact time between clients and staff, and improve reception office for attention focused tasks and for...
E-commerce is growing each year, reaching 130.1 billion in 2008 (Internetretailer.com, 2009b). Retailers have turned their attention to the online channel to discover ways to stay competitive. Yet there is still limited research on online apparel retailing, especially in online product presentation. Thus, the purpose of this study was to...
This study focused on users' emotional responses to a sustainable and a non-sustainable interior environment. Emotional reactions toward interior environments were tested by having subjects complete a survey. The survey tested users' emotional reactions with a mixed methods approach by including both qualitative and quantitative questions. The scope of this...
School Physical Education programs provide key opportunities to promote lifetime physical activity (PA) to students, while at the same time students can build a sense of enjoyment. The purpose of this study first sought to determine the effects of varying instructional approaches on the enjoyment and PA levels of students...
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between weight stigma consciousness, perceived body appearance, social physique anxiety, and the health outcomes of physical activity levels and eating behaviors. Select precursors were also examined. These relationships were based on Harter's model of self-worth. Two-hundred fifteen adults with a...
One's ability to determine the cause and effect nature events is important for navigating within the social realm. However, the ability to determine these relationships is not always as clear. According to Weary and Edwards (1996) causal uncertainty (CU) is the result of an individual perceiving themselves as someone who...
This thesis is a study of the clothing behavior of disadvantaged
adolescents in a rural community as it relates to the factors of social class, security level, peer acceptance and self-selection of clothing.
This study was selected because very little research in clothing
behavior has been done in disadvantaged rural...
The rise of social networking is more prevalent in today's society than ever before. Of the existing social networking platforms, Twitter is widely recognized as operating within the social networking elite. With this rise in social networking comes the challenge to develop new strategies of navigation when presenting one's identity...
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships
among leadership style (telling, selling, participating and
delegating), personality preferences (Extravert/Introvert,
Sensing/Intuitive, Feeling/Thinking, Judging/Perceiving and
effectiveness as a consultant teacher. The sample consisted of
thirty-one consultant teachers from Oregon: twenty from the
Portland School District, five from the Gresham School...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a deep
breathing and stretching exercise on communication Apprehension,
Cohesiveness and Attentiveness. An empirical method was used in
this study. All of the subjects involved in the study were students
in beginning public speaking courses, Speech 112, at Oregon...
This study examined the effect that three environmental
hues had on subjects' work performance and on mood levels of
anxiety, depression, and arousal in an office work environment.
Pre-test post- test measurements of differences in work performance
and mood levels were used to test twelve hypotheses. Work
performance was measured...
The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in
contact, emotional closeness, and aid exchange in the mother-daughter,
relationship during daughter's first pregnancy. According to the
literature reviewed, women increase contact with and become
emotionally closer to their mothers with pregnancy. It appears that
pregnant women have increased feelings...
Parent-characters in televised family programs set examples for viewers who may re-enact their behaviors with real children. This study attempts to determine how much "desirable" and "undesirable" behavior is modeled on these shows, and whether the behaviors are coupled with responses that might encourage or discourage viewer adoption of the...
The study was designed to assess the efficacy of Lou and Charlson's
(1991) social cognition training program for deaf adults. Sixteen deaf
adult subjects who were vocational rehabilitation clients, and who had
been identified as experiencing difficulties in social functioning, were
assigned to receive a eight-week training program designed to...
Sport is an avenue for children and adolescents to improve physical skills as well as
enhance their psycho-social development. Despite the benefits of sport, numerous children
and adolescents choose not to be physically active. Consequently, several investigators
have sought to determine why some children choose to participate in sport, while...