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
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Item “I BELONG HERE”: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY ON THE EXPERIENCES OF PARTICIPANTS IN WOMEN’S CLUB SPORT(2022) Crawford, Mary Kathryn Sullivan; Espino, Michelle M; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Dominant narratives are the stories society tells about the way things are and the way things should be. Often, these stories are internalized and thought of as true and accurate representations of people and systems. In sport, and in higher education, dominant narratives reinforce notions that men are always superior to women. Men are more athletic, more exciting to watch, have greater natural inclinations towards leadership, and as a result, are rightly in positions of power in sport and higher education institutions. In this study, I present counterstories that are contrary to these dominant narratives and represent the experiences of 7 club sport participants who engaged at the intersection of sport and higher education. In this narrative inquiry, club sport participant stories resist these dominant narratives and provide insight into the experiences of women and non-binary students as they navigate sport participation and leadership in student organizations. Findings suggest club sport participants rely on sport for familial and social connections and as a protective environment to express one’s true self. Additionally, club sport participants thrive as leaders when they feel supported and valued by teammates. Implications for practitioners of collegiate recreation and for future research are discussed.Item A SEQUENTIAL MIXED METHODS APPROACH TO IDENTIFYING AND UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATIONS FOR LEISURE TIME PHYSICAL ACTIVITY PARTICIPATION AMONG AMPUTEES(2022) Olsen, Sara H; Howard, Donna E; Public and Community Health; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Physical inactivity contributes to increased risk for hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes, various cancers, and depression. Research shows small increases in leisure time physical activity (LTPA) level among the least active populations result in larger improvements in overall health than any increase in LTPA among more active populations. People with disabilities (PwD) are less likely to meet physical activity (PA) guideline recommendations than their counterparts in the general population (39.2% vs 53.8%). People with mobility disabilities, such as those with amputations, are less active than those with other disabilities. Amputees, however, are largely absent from physical activity-related and disability-related research. One step toward improving LTPA participation among amputees is understanding motivations to be active and the experiences influencing those motivations. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a framework, this dissertation employed a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach to integrate fitness app intervention data with interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) findings. The quantitative component evaluated an app-based intervention with a waitlist control experimental design. Outcomes of motivations and PA level (Aim 1) were evaluated using linear mixed effect models. Amotivation, extrinsic motivation, and intrinsic motivation were evaluated as separate outcomes. Changes in amotivation and total activity level were significant during the intervention; there were no significant changes in extrinsic or intrinsic motivation. Amotivation (complete disinterest in LTPA) increased in both groups, but the increase was greater in the waitlist control group, suggesting use of the app staved off amotivation even though it did not contribute to increases in intrinsic motivation. Total activity increased in the waitlist control group only. Moderation was tested using SDT constructs of general causality orientation, a personality trait that represents a person’s belief about behavioral change and reasons to change (Aim 2). Amotivation is moderated by general causality orientation. Results from intervention analyses, including attrition analysis, were used to develop interview guides and participant inclusion criteria for the qualitative phase. In-depth interviews with amputees (Aim 3) explored motivations to be active and embodied PA experiences. IPA resulted in the development of six superordinate themes. Data from both the intervention and interviews were integrated to develop a deeper understanding of amputees’ experiences with motivations to be active (Aim 4). Participants identified barriers and facilitators to PA engagement that were unrelated to and unaffected by motivation to be active. These experiences disrupted the association between motivation and participation which added context to the intervention findings in which changes in intrinsic motivation over time did not parallel changes in PA over the same intervention period. Public health implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.Item ECO-HABITATS - USING ECOLOGICAL DESIGN FOR AMPHIBIAN AND REPTILE HABITATS ON GOLF COURSES: CASE STUDY AT LANGSTON GOLF COURSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.(2019) Simpson, Lotoia; Myers, David N; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Habitat restoration is useful to address the loss of amphibian and reptile habitats in the built environment. Golf courses provide the opportunity to implement best management practices and best development practices features to improve habitats for amphibians and reptiles. In addition, golf courses, through creative programming offer opportunities to provide education about amphibians and reptiles. This research project focuses on the application of vernal pools and regenerative stream conveyance (RSC) interventions for Langston Golf Course, a historically designated golf course in Washington, D.C. In addition, the implementation of additional programming allows for educational opportunities about amphibians and reptiles for expanded variety of users beyond golfers.Item Contested Play and Clean Water: McMillan Park, Race, and the Built Environment in Washington, D.C., 1900-1941(2016) Carrano, Joseph; Zeller, Thomas; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study focuses on the intersection of the politics and culture of open public space with race relations in the United States from 1900 to 1941. The history of McMillan Park in Washington, D.C. serves as a lens to examine these themes. Ultimately, the park’s history, as documented in newspapers, interviews, reports, and photographs, reveals how white residents attempted to protect their dominance in a racial hierarchy through the control of both the physical and cultural elements of public recreation space. White use of discrimination through seemingly neutral desires to protect health, safety, and property values, establishes a congruence with their defense of residential property. Without similar access to legal methods, African Americans acted through direct action in gaps of governmental control. Their use of this space demonstrates how African-American residents of Washington and the United States contested their race, recreation, and spatial privileges in the pre-World War II era.Item COACHES, CLIMATES, “FIELD” GOALS, AND EFFICACY: A “DE-CONSTRUCTION” OF THE MASTERY-APPROACH TO COACHING AND EXAMINATION OF RELATIONSHIPS TO PSYCHOSOCIAL OUTCOMES IN A YOUTH FOOTBALL PLAYER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.(2015) Goldstein, Jay; Iso-Ahola, Seppo E.; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In support of the achievement goal theory (AGT), empirical research has demonstrated psychosocial benefits of the mastery-oriented learning climate. In this study, we examined the effects of perceived coaching behaviors on various indicators of psychosocial well-being (competitive anxiety, self-esteem, perceived competence, enjoyment, and future intentions for participation), as mediated by perceptions of the coach-initiated motivational climate, achievement goal orientations and perceptions of sport-specific skills efficacy. Using a pre-post test design, 1,464 boys, ages 10-15 (M = 12.84 years, SD = 1.44), who participated in a series of 12 football skills clinics were surveyed from various locations across the United States. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) path analysis and hierarchical regression analysis, the cumulative direct and indirect effects of the perceived coaching behaviors on the psychosocial variables at post-test were parsed out to determine what types of coaching behaviors are more conducive to the positive psychosocial development of youth athletes. The study demonstrated that how coaching behaviors are perceived impacts the athletes’ perceptions of the motivational climate and achievement goal orientations, as well as self-efficacy beliefs. These effects in turn affect the athletes’ self-esteem, general competence, sport-specific competence, competitive anxiety, enjoyment, and intentions to remain involved in the sport. The findings also clarify how young boys internalize and interpret coaches’ messages through modification of achievement goal orientations and sport-specific efficacy beliefs.Item Changing Course: Repurposing Golf Landscapes for Wildlife Habitat and Recreation(2015) Yoder, Nicholas William; Sullivan, Jack; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)More than 1,400 golf facilities in the United States have closed permanently since 2001, part of a natural supply correction, as well as a reflection of the fluctuating interest in the game. Through their design, golf courses inherently preserve a singular form of open, green space. In their most dynamic form, they are culturally integral landscapes with vibrant ecosystems that provide wildlife habitat. They represent some of the largest ‘undeveloped’ spaces in United States’ cities. Each golf course closing represents a single patch of many that, with sound design, could be woven together through a common purpose, like a landscape quilt. Through a site-specific analysis, the resulting design proposal for Wakefield Wildlife Reservation is a new type of landscape for the city of Westminster, MD, serving as an example for future projects. It will provide valuable habitat and dynamic recreational space, while expressing site and regional history.Item Exercising Social Class Privilege: Examining the Practices and Processes Defining Upper-Middle Class Swimming Club Culture(2010) DeLuca, Jaime; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu argues that social class is defined by the interplay and operation of various forms of capital and, as such, is thought to be a significant determinant of an individual's everyday experiences, understandings, and identities. He believes that participation in private sport communities, such as swimming clubs, can contribute to one's social standing by positioning "the body-for-others," distinguishing those maintaining a privileged lifestyle, and transferring valuable skills, characteristics, and social connections to children for the purposes of class reproduction (Bourdieu, 1978, p. 838). Drawing on these ideas, this research explores the inter-related social constructs of the physically active swimming body, family, and social class at the Valley View Swim and Tennis Club (a pseudonym), a private recreational swim club in an upper-middle class suburban town on the outskirts of a major mid-Atlantic city. Through four years of ethnographic engagement, including participatory lived experience, observations, and interviews with mothers and children who belong to the pool, this project examines the way in which membership at Valley View plays an integral role in daily and family lives. Invoking Bourdieu (1978, 1984, 1986), I argue that pool participation is illustrative of members taken for granted, lived experience of power and privilege. Valley View operates as a distinctive consumption choice offering families a strategic opportunity to promote, demonstrate, convert, and transmit their varied levels of capital in and through their children, with the goal of expressing distinction now, and reproducing their familial social class position for future generations. Specifically, from the maternal perspective, this research discusses how the pool functions as a physical space for children's acquisition of physical capital and the tools to live a healthy, physically active lifestyle emblematic of social class position; details the way in which pool participation is a constitutive element of the upper-middle class family habitus, and thus offers parents an opportunity to teach their children valuable social and cultural dispositions; examines how Valley View provides children with enriching, intangible experiences characteristic of their class-based privilege; and lastly, explores how club membership is an important feature of these mother's privileged everyday daily lives.Item Family Processes and Leisure Activity Involvement Across the High School Transition: The Mediating Roles of Adolescent Internalizing Problems and Self-Esteem(2010) Dashiell-Aje, Ebony N.; Rubin, Kenneth H; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Parents are among the most important socializing agents in adolescents' lives. The purpose of the current study was to examine the prospective relations between family processes and leisure activity involvement across the high school transition. Specifically, I explored the meditational role of adolescent psychological well-being (internalizing problems and self-esteem) in these relations. The first aim of the present study included two dimensions: 1) to examine whether there were prospective relations between family processes (maternal and paternal parenting) and adolescent leisure involvement across the high school transition; and 2) to investigate the extent to which psychological well-being mediated the relations between family processes and adolescent leisure activity choices, based on Eccles and Harold's (1991) research linking parenting dimensions to leisure outcomes. The second aim of this study was to explore whether boys and girls differed in the extent to which their psychological well-being mediated the relations between family processes and leisure activity involvement from the 8th to the 9th grade. It was hypothesized that perceptions of maternal and paternal parenting would differentially relate to adolescent leisure activity intensity and enjoyment. Likewise, I hypothesized that internalizing problems and self-esteem would act as mediators in these relations. Finally, I hypothesized that gender would moderate some of the meditational relations. OLS regression and bootstrapping techniques were used to test simple mediation and moderated mediation for all variables. Significant mediation effects emerged for relations between perceptions of paternal involvement and sports intensity and enjoyment through internalizing problems. Additionally, internalizing problems mediated the relation between perceptions of paternal support and sports enjoyment. An indirect effect emerged for the relation between adolescent's perceptions of maternal negativity and arts enjoyment through self-esteem. Subsequent hierarchical regressions revealed significant gender by family process interactions when predicting leisure involvement and one significant gender by internalizing problems interaction effect emerged when predicting social activity enjoyment. These findings suggest that maternal and paternal parenting play significant and differential roles in adolescent leisure activity involvement across the high school transition. These results also suggest that adolescent psychological well-being effects the relations between adolescent perceptions of parenting and their leisure activity involvement.Item To Render Inaccessible: The Sierra Club's Changing Attitude Toward Roadbuilding(2008) Schultz, Jason Henry; Zeller, Thomas; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the early twentieth century, the Sierra Club was a foremost booster of roads and national parks as a way of rendering the mountains accessible. In the middle of the twentieth century, however, the Club reassessed this stance. By looking at three instances where the Club initially supported roads and recreational projects in California's Sierra Nevada--improvement of the Tioga Road, support for a Minaret Summit Highway, and development of Mineral King for skiing--I trace the Club's movement from an organization promoting automobile-oriented recreation to a group opposed to the development of recreation facilities, including roads. These Sierran struggles broaden the importance of the definition of wilderness as roadlessness investigated by Paul Sutter, and demonstrate that such visible concerns over roads persisted beyond the interwar years.Item A Recreation and Wellness Center in Waldorf, Maryland: Creating Connections within a Suburban Community(2004-05-18) Ault, Edmund Barry; Bowden, Gary; ArchitectureThis thesis responds to the common condition of disjointed suburban communities, linked only by roads, in the fast-growing town of Waldorf, Maryland. While the focus of recent development has been directed toward residential dwellings and restaurants, public recreation has been neglected. By applying a new fabric of residential and commercial development influenced by The New Urbanism, and a park system connected by a network of trails, the young members of the disjointed communities can be easily brought together for mental and physical stimulation outside of their homes, where such development is limited. By creating a mixed-use recreation and wellness center in the new park system between three schools, visual and physical links can be formed. Interior spaces provide comfortable areas for activity, socializing, and assembly, all of which are integral parts of a healthier body, mind, and soul.