College of Education
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1647
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item Relations Between Expressive Writing and Teachers' Affect and Predictors of Engagement with Expressive Writing During the COVID-19 Pandemic(2022) McCurdy, Kelsey Faith; Teglasi, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The physical and psychological health benefits associated with expressive writing (EW) have been extensively studied (Frattaroli, 2006; Frisina et al., 2004; review by Pennebaker, 2018; Smyth, 1998). Despite the depth of this research, two important questions remain why is EW beneficial and who chooses to engage in EW. This study addresses these two questions by using a mixed methods procedure, which includes teachers’ written products about significant teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as their ratings of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) before and after writing, and their ratings of the impact of the event they wrote about. Narratives were coded for levels of meaning-making and self-regulation with acceptable reliability among four raters. Results showed an immediate small decrease in NA after writing (d=.30) and an immediate small to moderate increase in PA after writing (d=.38). Additionally, correlational analyses revealed that higher levels of narrative meaning-making were related to higher levels of pre-writing NA, but not changes in NA or PA. Conversely, higher levels of narrative self-regulation were not related to pre-writing affect, but were significantly related to adaptive changes in immediate post-writing affect (increase in PA and decrease in NA). Two logistic regression models, one predicting who completed the first expressive writing session and one predicting who volunteered to receive information about the next phase of the study (i.e., additional writing sessions) were not significant. However, a logistic regression predicting whether a participant completed a second writing prompt using change in affect and narrative quality as predictors was significant. Narrative self-regulation was the only significant predictor, such that higher self-regulation was related to an increase in the likelihood of completion of a second prompt. Overall, results suggest that meaning-making and self-regulation are related to different outcomes associated with participants’ affect, with self-regulation being associated not only with adaptive change in affect, but also with continuing to engage with EW.Item WHAT IT MEANS TO CARE: A MEANING-FOCUSED EXPRESSIVE WRITING INTERVENTION FOR FAMILY CAREGIVERS(2015) Fuhrmann, Amy Carr; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over 67 million adults in the U.S. provide informal or unpaid care to a loved one facing a health challenge, but caregivers often feel underprepared and isolated in this challenging role. There is a dearth of interventions to improve quality of life for caregivers. One hundred caregivers wrote three expressive writing essays about their experience in one of three randomly-assigned conditions: caregiver time-management, emotional expression, and meaning of caregiving. This study had two primary aims: 1) to investigate effects of writing among the three writing conditions on outcomes of depression, caregiver burden, intrusiveness, satisfaction with life, worldview violation, and meaning in life and 2) to assess whether meaning in life serves as a mediator for outcomes. Results indicated that some positive effects of expressive writing can be explained by the discovery of, but not simply the search for, meaning. Implications about understanding of the psychological experience of caregivers are discussed.Item Personal Growth Initiative as a Moderator of Expressive Writing Tasks: Test of a Matching Hypothesis(2009) Martin, Helena M; Lent, Robert W; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study advances knowledge regarding a new potential client variable moderator to therapeutic writing. Therapeutic writing, also referred to in the literature as expressive or experimental writing, utilizes the expressive nature of writing as a therapeutic means to recovery and growth. The current study tested the moderating effects of a client variable, personal growth initiative (PGI; Robitschek, 1998), on cognitive and affective therapeutic outcomes including depression, the impact of the event, subjective well-being, positive affectivity, and the subjective evaluation of the task. More specifically, this study explored whether participants differ in the extent to which they profit from two different versions of expressive writing depending on whether they are high or low on the personality dimension of personal growth initiative (PGI). Findings revealed that, overall, those lower in PGI found greater benefit from the traditional writing task than the BPS task. In contrast, those higher in PGI found greater benefit from the BPS task than the traditional writing task.