Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 I get High with a Little Help from my Friends (and Family): Close Relationships, Distress Tolerance, and Risk-Taking in Adolescence(2012) Ehrlich, Katherine Babcock; Cassidy, Jude A; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite substantial efforts to educate adolescents about the consequences of their risky decisions, adolescent risk behavior remains a significant social and public health problem. The goal of this research was to examine the role of individual and contextual predictors of adolescent health risk behavior and risk-taking measured in the laboratory. Specifically, I examined parent-adolescent relationships and friendships as two contextual predictors of risk, and I measured adolescent distress tolerance as an individual predictor of risk behavior in a longitudinal study of adolescents and their families. In Aim 1, I used a variable-centered approach to examine concurrent and prospective predictors of adolescent risk-taking. In Aim 2, I took a person-oriented statistical approach to the study of adolescent risk-taking by examining whether there are particular groups of adolescents with particular relationship characteristics who were most likely to engage in risky behavior, and whether these groups of adolescents would be more likely to take risks if they had low distress tolerance. Aim 1 analyses revealed that adolescents were most likely to engage in health risk behaviors when they had negative parent-adolescent relationships or positive friendships, but distress tolerance was unrelated to risk-taking. None of the predictors was related to laboratory risk behavior. Aim 2 analyses revealed that the influence of adolescents' relationships on their risk-taking behaviors depended on their ability to tolerate and manage their emotions. Among adolescents with high levels of friendship conflict, distress tolerance served as a protective factor against health risk behavior. Among high distress tolerant adolescents, those who had high parent-adolescent conflict engaged in greater risk-taking than adolescents who had high friendship conflict. Across all analyses, none of the predictors accounted for Time 2 risk behavior after accounting for Time 1 risk-taking in the models. Overall, these findings suggest that adolescents' relationship experiences and distress tolerance relate to risk-taking behaviors, even at an age when adolescents are engaging in relatively low levels of risk behavior. Future research should continue investigating predictors of risk behavior across multiple levels of analysis, with an emphasis on biological, individual, relational, and environmental factors that contribute to risk-taking.Item THE EASE PROGRAM: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DISTRESS TOLERANCE INTERVENTION FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL ADOLESCENTS(2012) La Touche-Howard, Sylvette Antonia; Daughters, Stacey B.; Public and Community Health; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although many middle school adolescents consider the middle school grades to be an exhilarating time of momentous change in their lives, others struggle not only with academic challenges but also with the inability to handle negative emotional states. Middle school adolescents often seek ways to cope with the distress they experience. Evidence indicates that adolescents are rarely adequately equipped with the necessary skills to deal with these stressful situations. Moreover, studies indicate that their distress tolerance, defined as the ability to persist in goal directed activity while experiencing emotional distress, is associated with increased risk behavior. Given preliminary evidence that low distress tolerance is associated with risky health behavior amongst adolescents, the overall goal of this study was to develop an adolescent appropriate intervention for improving distress tolerance skills, drawing on techniques from Dialectical Behavior therapy, with four main objectives: (1) to enable adolescents to understand the relationship between their emotions and behavior; (2) to educate adolescents on how to identify and label their emotions; (3) to teach skills to adolescents that will enable them to cope with their difficult emotions; and (4) to provide adolescents with skills that will enable them to avoid engaging in later risk behavior. To aide in the development of this intervention, a multi-method approach was employed using focus groups (n=20), in depth interviews (n=15) and a 3 round Delphi method (n=12). Results from this study were used to develop, modify and finalize a distress tolerance intervention (EASE- Empowering Adolescents to deal with Stress and Emotions) for middle school adolescents.Item A Comprehensive Assessment of Distress Tolerance as a Predictor of Early Smoking Lapse(2008-04-08) Stipelman, Brooke Allison; Lejuez, Carl W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The CDC estimates that approximately 20.9% of U.S. adults currently smoke. Moreover, cigarette smoking continues to be the leading preventable cause of death and disability in the United States making it is a significant public health problem. Although 70% of smokers express a desire to quit, relapse is quite common, with rates as high as 60-90% depending on the method of quitting used. Moreover, many smokers who attempt to quit, lapse within a few days, and many of these individuals ultimately resume smoking and are not able to recover to achieve abstinence. The initial experience of smoking cessation is stressful and is associated with a number of unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Therefore, one particular hypothesis suggests that how an individual reacts to and tolerates these uncomfortable feelings may be a key contributing factor of relapse. This threshold for tolerating physical and psychological stress is known as distress tolerance. While early evidence has suggested that distress tolerance is associated with duration of quit attempts, to date, no study has examined the effects of distress tolerance across physical, psychological and biological domains on a number of other relapse predictors (e.g. negative affect, anxiety sensitivity and withdrawal symptoms) in determining smoking outcome. Therefore, the following study looked at the role of these variables in predicting smoking outcome in a group of 58 adult smokers who entered a smoking cessation treatment study. As hypothesized, both measures of physical distress tolerance and one measure of psychological distress tolerance significantly predicted time to smoking lapse above and beyond other smoking related variables. There was no relationship between smoking abstinence and self-report and biological measures of distress tolerance. There were also no significant findings with respect to any affect related smoking variables. Implications and future directions are addressed.