Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Family Reputation in Asian Indian American Women: An Exploration of Its Implications and Emotional Consequences(2023) Sheth, Anjali; O'Neal, Colleen R; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Asian Indian American young women are often torn between two incompatible cultures, Eastern and Western. The former promotes collectivism while the latter promotes individualism. In addition to this internal cultural conflict, there is the added obligation of maintaining one’s family reputation which can create challenges for young women who are navigating these opposing cultures. The specific goal of this study was to understand how Asian Indian American undergraduate women experience and perceive family reputation, in addition to its impacts on their emotional experience, emotional coping, and mental health. The method involved semi-structured interviews with ten participants who identified as (a) Asian Indian American, (b) cis-gendered woman, (c) second-generation immigrant, (d) the child of two parents born in India, and (e) an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland. For analyses, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to code and develop themes that emerged from the interview narratives. Results yielded six superordinate themes that defined family reputation through the perspective of the participants as well as their conceptualization of the various factors that are related to the construct (e.g., gender). The discussion addresses the importance of understanding this construct as it shows up for this sample given its relevance in various aspects of their lives.Item “Doing the Indian thing”: The influence of contrasting cultural norms on the decision making and development of second-generation Asian Indian American college students(2021) Parikh, Roshan; Park, Julie J; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Current research on Asian American college students articulates the impact of different aspects of life on the decision-making and development of Asian American college students. However, Asian Americans are comprised of people of many different ethnicities. Much of the research related to the Asian American population tends to highlight the experiences of East Asian Americans and often fails to disaggregate findings in a way that could accurately explain the unique life experiences of other Asian American ethnicities. The purpose of this study was to use social constructivist grounded theory to explore how contrasting cultural norms influence the decision-making and development of Asian Indian American college students. This study helps bridge a significant gap in the current body of research on the Asian Indian American. Asian Indian American college students are an understudied student population, and thus, they are poorly understood.The research questions that guided this study were: (1) What are key aspects of Asian Indian American students’ lives that influence how they think about American, Indian, and Indian American cultural norms? (2) How do these cultural norms influence the way in which Asian Indian American students make decisions related to their college experience and major life choices? Ten currently enrolled Asian Indian American college students at the University of Maryland participated in this study. Participants were interviewed twice. The first interview focused on life and family history, experiences during K-12 years, and more. The second interview focused on aspects of their understanding of Indian and American cultural identity. During the second interview, participants also presented an artifact they felt was meaningful to them, which represented an aspect of their identity they cherish. Key findings in this study highlighted the influence of family, identity salience of Indian identity, building a hybrid Indian American identity, decision making processes, and assertion of autonomy within participants’ lives inside and outside of college. A theory emerged from the data, which explains the influence of cultural norms on students’ lives and decision making.