College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item School Climate and Teacher Use of Strategies Linked to Bullying Perpetration and Victimization(2022) Gliese, Sara; Wang, Cixin; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Bullying in school settings is a major concern with approximately 22% of children in the U.S. experiencing some form of bullying (National Crime Victimization Survey, 2019). However, there is little to no current research specific to how teachers may play a modeling role through the behavior management strategies they use in the classroom to impact the likelihood and rate of bullying perpetration and victimization occurring among diverse middle school students. Additionally, while school climate has been linked to bullying perpetration and victimization, almost no research has examined how teacher strategies may impact school climate, which in turn predict bullying. This study sought to examine whether student perceptions of teacher use of positive (i.e., praise and reward) and punitive (i.e., yelling and punishment) strategies and school climate are linked to the likelihood and rates of bullying perpetration and victimization. In addition, it also examined whether school climate may have mediated the relationship between student perceptions of teacher strategies and bullying perpetration and victimization and whether gender and grade moderated these relations. Data were collected from 545 middle school students (Age: M = 13.12, SD = 0.76) from a diverse middle school in Southern California, using a multi-measure online survey administered at school. Students/families could opt-out of the survey. Data were analyzed following a two-part model suited for semi-continuous variables containing large numbers of zeros, with the first step being binary logistic regression with the whole sample, and the second step being linear regressions for cases with non-zero values using a victim-only sample and a perpetrator-only sample. Results of this study indicated that perceptions of punitive teacher strategies were linked to the likelihood of victimization, as well as the rates of perpetration and victimization for those who endorsed involvement. Perceptions of positive strategies were associated with the likelihood of victimization for those in their first year of middle school, but not for older students. Additionally, school climate was linked to the likelihood of both perpetration and victimization, but not rates. Lastly, school climate created a significant indirect effect when added to the models for positive and punitive strategies predicting the likelihoods victimization and perpetration, and positive strategies predicting the rates, and should be investigated longitudinally as a possible mediator. Overall, results supported the hypotheses that the strategies teachers use to manage behavior in the classroom and school climate may be linked to students’ involvement in bullying. Implications for practitioners and future work were presented.Item THE EFFECTS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ON BYSTANDER BEHAVIOR AND OUTCOMES: THE BULLYING LITERATURE PROJECT(2019) Scott, Arianna Lakeisha Lashley; Wang, Cixin; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Traditional approaches to bullying intervention focus on the bully-victim dyad. However, research indicates that bullying is a group phenomenon and often occurs in the presence of peer witnesses. Bystanders are uniquely situated to either deter or facilitate the social power play that can underlie bullying behavior. Specifically, individuals who bully others may be motivated by a desire to gain (or maintain) high status among their peers. Bystander-based bullying interventions are able to exploit this by directly targeting social components that reward and maintain bullying behavior, such as peer support of bullying, thereby disrupting the social feedback cycle involved in perpetration. However, bystander-based bullying interventions for elementary students pose a unique set of challenges in terms of fostering the awareness of bullying, social thinking, and cognitive-emotional skills that are necessary for positive bystander action. Children’s literature is a promising medium to facilitate elementary-aged students’ access to social-emotional knowledge, skills, and behavioral change. This study sought to add to the theoretical research base of bystander behavior using a majority-Hispanic sample to investigate the relationships between several theoretically-linked bystander-related variables and determine predictors of positive bystander behavior. Secondly, this study investigated the effectiveness of a literature-based, bystander-targeted, bullying intervention (the Bullying Literature Project) on children’s bystander behavior, attitudes towards bullying, prosocial behaviors, peer friendships, and victimization. Finally, potential moderators of the intervention on bystander behavior were investigated. Results revealed differences across grade and gender for select variables of interest, identified anti-bullying attitudes and victimization as significant predictors of positive bystander behavior, and identified a small, negative correlation between peer friendship and victimization, among other significant correlations. Main results revealed the Bullying Literature Project increased positive bystander behavior (small effect size) and teacher-rated prosocial behavior (large effect size), compared to the wait-list-control group, in a subset of the dataset. No moderation effects involving gender, peer friendship, or anti-bullying attitudes were found. Discussion and future directions of bystander-based bullying interventions are reviewed.Item ESSAYS ON SKILLS AND VICTIMIZATION(2015) Sarzosa, Miguel; Urzua, Sergio; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent literature has shown that skills are not only essential for the development of successful adults, but also that they are malleable and prone to be affected by many experiences. In this dissertation, I explore these two sides of skills and development. I use skills as a vehicle to study the consequences victimization events have on adult outcomes, and as the channels through which the gaps in those adult outcomes materialize. I use novel longitudinal surveys and rely on an empirical strategy that recognizes skills as latent constructs. First, I estimate the treatment effects being bullied and being a bully in middle school have on several outcomes measured at age 18. I find that both, victims and bullies, have negative consequences later in life. However, they differ in how non-cognitive and cognitive skills palliate or exacerbate these consequences. Then, I move on to investigate the channels that open the gaps in adult outcomes between victims and non-victims. I estimate a structural dynamic model of skill accumulation. I allow skill formation to depend on past levels of skills, parental investment and bullying. Also, I allow bullying itself to depend on each student's past skills and those of his or her classmates. I find that being bullied at age 14 depletes current skill levels by 14% of a standard deviation for the average child. This skill depletion causes the individual to become 25% more likely to experience bullying again at age 15. Therefore bullying triggers a self-reinforcing mechanism that opens an ever-growing skill gap that reaches about one standard deviation by age 16. Finally, under the light of skills, I explore how other type of victimization, namely discrimination against sexual minorities, creates income gaps against non- heterosexual workers. I estimate a structural model that relies on the identification of unobserved skills to allow schooling choices, occupational choices and labor market outcomes to be endogenously determined and affected by the sexual preference of the worker. The results show that difference in skills, observable characteristics, and tastes for tertiary education and type of occupation, contribute to at least half of the income gaps non-heterosexuals face.Item Behavioral Outcomes of Interpersonal Aggression at Work: A Mediated and Moderated Model(2004-08-06) Raver, Jana; Gelfand, Michele J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Interpersonal aggression at work is abundant, yet despite the importance of this topic for employees' well being, systematic research on aggression in organizational settings is only beginning to accumulate, and research on outcomes experienced by targets of aggression is limited. The purpose of this dissertation was to extend the workplace aggression literature by proposing and testing a more comprehensive model of behavioral outcomes associated with interpersonal aggression i.e., counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), job search behaviors, and work-family conflict. Furthermore, I examined two cognitive and emotional mediators of the relationship between experiencing interpersonal aggression and behavioral outcomes (i.e., interpersonal justice and negative affect at work), as well as several moderators including job characteristics (i.e., job autonomy, job mobility), target characteristics (i.e., dispositional hostility, neuroticism), and perpetrator characteristics (i.e., perpetrator status). The hypotheses were tested through established survey measures administered to a representative sample of 728 working adults who were diverse with regard to their jobs, occupations, and industries among other factors. The results revealed that the frequency of interpersonal aggression experiences was significantly related to enacting high levels of CWBs aimed at both the organization and at other individuals, and also related to high levels of job search behaviors. Interpersonal aggression experiences were also associated with perceptions of interpersonal injustice and negative affect at work, but there was no evidence for these psychological processes mediating interpersonal aggression's relationships with the behavioral outcomes. The results also revealed moderation effects for job autonomy, job mobility, dispositional hostility and neuroticism, yet moderated SEM results failed to provide evidence for differential relationships in the model based upon whether the perpetrator of the aggression was one's supervisor or a coworker. Implications for research and theory, future directions, and implications for organizations are provided.