Human Development & Quantitative Methodology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2779
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Item A Comparison of Adolescents’ In-Person and Virtual Peer Interactions in a Multiplayer Video Game(2020) Smith, Kelly Alexandra; Rubin, Kenneth H.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Virtual peer interaction is prevalent among adolescents (Anderson & Jiang, 2018), but little is known about how adolescents’ virtual interactions with peers compare to their in-person interactions. The present study aimed to compare adolescents’ in-person and virtual interactions in a multiplayer video game during an initial interaction with an unfamiliar peer to examine differences in social behavior, physiological responding, and perceptions of interaction quality. The study also aimed to investigate how motivations for solitude related to interaction quality, and whether these associations differed across virtual and in-person interaction. Participants were 72 adolescents (78% male, Mage = 12.49) from the Washington, DC metropolitan area who interacted with an unfamiliar peer in the lab using the multiplayer game Minecraft. Pairs of participants were randomly assigned to interact with one another in-person, sitting in the same room next to each other, or virtually, able to communicate using the text-based chat feature. Participants completed questionnaires about their motivations for solitude prior to the interaction. They also completed questionnaires about their self-perceptions and affect before and after the interaction, as well as their perceptions of the interaction quality after the interaction. Participants’ social engagement and their social initiations and the partner’s responses were observed during the interaction, and their respiratory sinus arrhythmia was measured before, during, and after the interaction. Results showed that quantity of social interaction was higher in the in-person condition, but perceived quality of the interaction was higher in the virtual condition. Participants spent more time communicating with one another and made more social initiations in the in-person condition. However, participants in the virtual condition received more successful responses to their social initiations and reported enjoying the interaction marginally more, feeling less passive and more assertive, and viewing themselves as more socially competent following the interaction. Participants’ physiological responding did not differ across conditions. Shyness was related to less positive emotional responses to the interaction, particularly in the in-person condition, while other motivations for solitude were less consistently related to social difficulties. These findings suggest that virtual interaction can be an engaging context that facilitates high-quality interactions between unfamiliar peers, and it may be particularly helpful for shy adolescents.Item Coordinating School Goals: A Process Model of Multiple Goal Pursuit(2015) Baker, Sandra Ann; Wentzel, Kathryn R; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The social and academic goals students pursue in the classroom are important predictors of academic performance, particularly during the middle school years. Several motivational constructs, including self-regulation efficacy, have also been positively related to the goals students pursue in the classroom and academic performance. The role of multiple goal coordination (perceptions of inter-goal interference and facilitation) in predicting academic performance, however, has not been readily addressed. Goals are considered to interfere with one another when the pursuit of one goal conflicts with the pursuit of a second goal. Perceptions of inter-goal facilitation, on the other hand, occur when one goal is seen as beneficial to the pursuit of a second goal. The combined influence of these constructs in predicting academic achievement has not been explored. The purpose of the current study was to test a process model of multiple goal coordination that examined middle school students' self-regulation efficacy, multiple goals and perceptions of inter-goal interference and facilitation in relation to academic performance (GPA). Responses from sixth (n = 293), seventh (n = 226), and eighth (n =146) grade students from two racially diverse low-income school districts in the Southeastern U.S. indicated that self-regulation efficacy was a positive predictor of multiple goal pursuit. Students' multiple goals, in turn, mediated the relation between self-regulation efficacy and academic performance. Academic and social responsibility goals, in particular, were found to be important predictors of academic performance above and beyond levels of self-regulation efficacy. In addition, students' perceptions of inter-goal interference were negative predictors, and perceptions of inter-goal facilitation were positive predictors, of academic performance. Finally, results indicated that perceptions of inter-goal interference moderated the relation between self-regulation efficacy and academic performance (moderated mediation). If students perceived pursuit of one goal to interfere with the pursuit of a second goal, academic performance was lower regardless of levels of self-regulation efficacy. Findings provide evidence for a more complex model of multiple goal pursuit; one that includes both self-processes (self-regulation efficacy) and aspects of goal coordination (perceptions of inter-goal interference and facilitation) as factors that impact the relation between multiple goal pursuit and academic performance. Results also suggest that a measure of inter-goal relations can be a useful tool in examining motivational processes in young adolescent student samples.Item School Mobility as it Relates to Adolescents' Civic Knowledge and School Belonging(2009) Mackel, Brittany Erin; Torney-Purta, Judith; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The relation of school mobility to levels of adolescent civic knowledge and sense of belonging at school was examined using data collected from a nationally representative sample (N=2417) of 14-year-old adolescents from across the United States as a part of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study of 1999. Multiple linear regression revealed that higher mobility scores were associated with lower civic knowledge scores, civic knowledge scores were marginally higher for females than males, and having a higher socio-economic status was associated with higher civic knowledge scores. Further, low confidence in school participation was associated with higher school mobility, females had higher confidence in school participation than males, and having a higher socio-economic status was associated with higher confidence in school participation scores. Lower trust in schools was associated with higher school mobility, while gender and socio-economic status were not significantly related.