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 Mothering in the streets: Familial adaptation strategies of street-identified Black American mothers(Wiley, 2022-05-18) Hitchens, Brooklynn K.; Aviles, Ann M.; McCallops, KathleenObjective: Using components of the Family Adjustmentand Adaptation Response Model, Critical Race Feminism, and Sites of Resilience, this study explored how street-identified Black American mothers engage in street life, while juggling the pressures of child rearing, family, and home life within a distressed, urban Black community. Background: Street-identified Black American mothers are vilified for their intersecting identities of being Black women who are experiencing poverty, and who may also be involved in illegal activity. Black mothers are disproportionately represented in the criminal legal system, but existing research has inadequately examined how street-identified Black mothers “do” family in the confines of structural violence. Method: We addressed this gap by analyzing interview data with 39 street-identified Black American mothers ages 18 to 54. Data were collected using street participatory action research. Results: We identified a typology of three adaptive mothering strategies employed by street-identified Black women as they respond to and cope with violent structural conditions shaping their mothering: constrained mothering, racialized mothering, and aspirational mothering. Conclusions: Findings suggested that these strategies were developed in response to an overarching carceral apparatus, of which these mothers were tasked with avoiding when possible and confronting when necessary. Their mothering strategies were shaped by a collective, Black American cultural identity and worldview, and the mothers possessed a unique way of perceiving the world as criminalized subjects with disproportionate proximity to the punitive state.Item Perfectionism and eating disorder symptoms: An analysis of the protective effects of ethnic identity in female Latinx college students(2023) Cerrato, Stephanie; O'Neal, Colleen; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Disordered eating in college student populations is highly prevalent. Even so, eating disorder research has largely centered on risk and protective factors relevant to White women, while neglecting to focus on the experiences of people with marginalized identities. The current cross-sectional study a) assessed the relation between evaluative concerns and strivings subscales of perfectionism on disordered eating symptoms in Latinx college women, and b) determined if a high sense of ethnic identity may moderate this relation such that as ethnic identity increases, the effects of perfectionism on disordered eating symptoms decreases. Latinx women from a Mid-Atlantic university (n = 113) completed self-report questionnaires of perfectionism, ethnic identity, and disordered eating. Results revealed that evaluative concerns was a positive predictor of dietary restraint, shape and weight over-evaluation, and body dissatisfaction. Moderation results were non-significant.Item Autochthonous and Introduced Stores of Biomass Value: Measuring Resilience Outcomes of Enset and Eucalyptus as Green Assets in Three Representative Smallholder Farm Systems of Ethiopia(2020) Morrow, Nathan; Hansen, Matthew C; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Fundamental shifts in the ability to observe our world with synoptic satellite remote sensing and the profusion of trend tracking longitudinal data sources not only better inform us of the mounting trouble our planet is in but also provide completely new perspectives on basic shared understandings, such as how many trees grow on Earth and where they take root. Observing the dispersed pattern of increasing tree cover across a multidecadal satellite mosaic, developed by Matt Hansen and colleagues at University of Maryland at College Park, sparked an interest in the ramifications of this unanticipated change, marked clearly upon the landscape in Ethiopia. The following chapters explore the relation of changing amounts of autochthonous treelike perrenial enset and introduced eucylyptus trees, commonly found on Ethiopian farms, to smallholder resilience, food security, and well-being. Spatially informed longitudinal models for three representative subnational data sets are used to investigate the central thesis of this dissertation—trees and treelike perennials on farms in rural Ethiopia indicate a fundamental store of value in living biomass, building a household’s assets over time through improved biomass management, for resilient small farm livelihoods that ensure food security and related well-being. Green assets acting as biomass stores indicate natural “value,” representing transformed and stored energy of the sun, that Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) considered inadequately captured as a no-cost contribution to the “use value” concept in development economics, economic geography production, and income-focused research, as well as in Marx’s (1887/2013) labor-focused value constructs that only briefly acknowledge workers are helped by the transformative “natural forces” at work on the land. Model results presented in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 reveal a lack of on-farm trees and treelike perennials often indicates biomass poverty and energy insecurity. Chronic biomass poverty, measured with spatially aware hierarchal models, is related to an inability to maintain a sufficient level of essential green assets, thereby contributing to poor resilience and well-being outcomes on small farms. On the other hand, medium and longer term asset accumulation supports improved well-being when livelihood strategies make use of farm forests, other on-farm trees, and treelike perennials.Item Explaining Resilience to Peer Influence: The Role of Decision-Making(2020) Deitzer, Jessica; McGloin, Jean M; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Researchers often discuss deviant peers as if they are a deterministic risk for an adolescent's own delinquency. There is a strong, consistent link between the two, especially in adolescence. Yet, some adolescents act counter to predictions and display resilience to deviant peer influence. Paternoster and Pogarsky’s (2009) concept of thoughtfully reflective decision-making (TRDM) may add to our understanding of resilience to deviant peer exposure; individuals who make slow, deliberate decisions may be more likely to avoid the pitfalls associated with deviant peers, perhaps by selecting out of deviant social networks. In this dissertation, I use longitudinal data from the PROSPER Peers project in the context of adolescents in rural schools to 1) identify and describe a group of youth that displays resilience to deviant peer influence and 2) investigate whether decision-making skills differentiate those who demonstrate resilience from those who do not. I leverage structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the role of TRDM in fostering resilience to deviant peer influence. Specifically, I test whether TRDM moderates the impact of deviant peer exposure on resilience directly or indirectly, through prompting changes to the adolescents’ social networks. I estimate SEM models that test these relationships using interaction and multigroup models separately for each starting wave. I find evidence that TRDM promotes resilience to deviant peer influence across waves. My results also provide evidence of a nonlinear interaction between deviant peer exposure and TRDM, whereby TRDM is most protective for adolescents with a high degree (but not entirely) deviant peer group in for analyses starting in 6th or 7th grade. I do not find evidence of a consistent association between TRDM and a change in adolescents’ proportion of deviant peers at the next wave or any partial or full reduction to the direct impact of TRDM on resilience when including this indirect pathway. Thus, I conclude that TRDM does not appear to have an indirect impact on resilience through prompting prosocial change to adolescents’ friend groups. Finally, I discuss the limitations of my study, along with its implications for theory, practice, and future research.Item Resilience to Climate Change: An Ethnographic Approach(2016) Johnson, Katherine Joanne; Paolisso, Michael J; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Global projections for climate change impacts produce a startling picture of the future for low-lying coastal communities. The United States’ Chesapeake Bay region and especially marginalized and rural communities will be severely impacted by sea level rise and other changes over the next one hundred years. The concept of resilience has been theorized as a measure of social-ecological system health and as a unifying framework under which people can work together towards climate change adaptation. But it has also been critiqued for the way in which it does not adequately take into account local perspective and experiences, bringing into question the value of this concept as a tool for local communities. We must be sure that the concerns, weaknesses, and strengths of particular local communities are part of the climate change adaptation, decision-making, and planning process in which communities participate. An example of this type of planning process is the Deal Island Marsh and Community Project (DIMCP), a grant funded initiative to build resilience within marsh ecosystems and communities of the Deal Island Peninsula area of Maryland (USA) to environmental and social impacts from climate change. I argue it is important to have well-developed understandings of vulnerabilities and resiliencies identified by local residents and others to accomplish this type of work. This dissertation explores vulnerability and resilience to climate change using an engaged and ethnographic anthropological perspective. Utilizing participant observation, semi-structured and structured interviews, text analysis, and cultural domain analysis I produce an in-depth perspective of what vulnerability and resilience means to the DIMCP stakeholder network. Findings highlight significant vulnerabilities and resiliencies inherent in the local area and how these interface with additional vulnerabilities and resiliencies seen from a nonlocal perspective. I conclude that vulnerability and resilience are highly dynamic and context-specific for the local community. Vulnerabilities relate to climate change and other social and environmental changes. Resilience is a long-standing way of life, not a new concept related specifically to climate change. This ethnographic insight into vulnerability and resilience provides a basis for stronger engagement in collaboration and planning for the future.Item Integrating Environmental Justice and Social-Ecological Resilience for Successful Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons from African American Communities on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay(2016) Hesed, Christine Danielle Miller; Paolisso, Michael; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research concerns the conceptual and empirical relationship between environmental justice and social-ecological resilience as it relates to climate change vulnerability and adaptation. Two primary questions guided this work. First, what is the level of resilience and adaptive capacity for social-ecological systems that are characterized by environmental injustice in the face of climate change? And second, what is the role of an environmental justice approach in developing adaptation policies that will promote social-ecological resilience? These questions were investigated in three African American communities that are particularly vulnerable to flooding from sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, I found that in all three communities, religious faith and the church, rootedness in the landscape, and race relations were highly salient to community experience. The degree to which these common aspects of the communities have imparted adaptive capacity has changed over time. Importantly, a given social-ecological factor does not have the same effect on vulnerability in all communities; however, in all communities political isolation decreases adaptive capacity and increases vulnerability. This political isolation is at least partly due to procedural injustice, which occurs for a number of interrelated reasons. This research further revealed that while all stakeholders (policymakers, environmentalists, and African American community members) generally agree that justice needs to be increased on the Eastern Shore, stakeholder groups disagree about what a justice approach to adaptation would look like. When brought together at a workshop, however, these stakeholders were able to identify numerous challenges and opportunities for increasing justice. Resilience was assessed by the presence of four resilience factors: living with uncertainty, nurturing diversity, combining different types of knowledge, and creating opportunities for self-organization. Overall, these communities seem to have low resilience; however, there is potential for resilience to increase. Finally, I argue that the use of resilience theory for environmental justice communities is limited by the great breadth and depth of knowledge required to evaluate the state of the social-ecological system, the complexities of simultaneously promoting resilience at both the regional and local scale, and the lack of attention to issues of justice.Item Adoptive Parents: At Risk or Resilient(2009) Merson, Erica Shawn; O'Brien, Karen M.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study advanced knowledge regarding the demographics of a nationally representative sample of adoptive parents and their use and level of satisfaction with adoption agency services, specifically that they are functioning well both psychologically and in their marital relationships and are satisfied with the adoption agency services that are being offered and used. It also examined the contributions of (a) psychological functioning at nine months postpartum, (b) infertility experiences, (c) tangible resources, and (d) the marital relationship in predicting the psychological health of adoptive parents at 27 months postpartum. Findings revealed that the psychological health of adoptive parents at nine months was the strongest predictor of depressive and anxiety symptoms at 27 months for both adoptive mothers and fathers, with tangible resources also contributing unique variance to the prediction of fathers' depressive symptoms. Moreover, marital hostility was found to partially mediate the relationship between mothers' depressive symptoms at nine months and 27 months postpartum.Item Challenges and Resilience in the Lives of Multiracial Adults: the Development and Validation of a Measure(2008-01-22) Salahuddin, Nazish; O'Brien, Karen M.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate the Multiracial Challenges and Resilience Scale (MCRS). The MCRS is a measure of the types of challenges (i.e., Others' Surprise/Disbelief Reactions, Lack of Family Acceptance/Understanding, Multiracial Discrimination, Feelings of Disconnection from Family and Friends) and resilience (i.e., Appreciation of Human Differences, Multiracial Pride) experienced by Multiracial adults. Participants (N = 317) included a national sample of individuals who identified their biological parents as representing two or more different racial groups. All participants resided in large metropolitan areas within the continental United States at the time of data collection. Data were collected through the use of an internet survey containing the MCRS and measures used to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Internal consistency estimates of subscales ranged from .76 to .83. Convergent validity was supported through positive relations of the Challenge subscales with depression and positive relations of the Resilience scales with self-esteem. Discriminant validity was supported through the absence of correlations between the Challenges scales and Orderliness and lack of relationship between the Resilience scales and Social Desirability. Directions for future research and the limitations of this study are discussed.Item Internal and Environmental Buffers of Terrorism-Related Anxiety(2005-03-31) Spiegel, Eric Baron; Gelso, Charles J.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study focuses on the adjustment of Washingtonians to living under the threat of terrorism. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships of six predictor variables - resilience, spirituality, perceived social support, perceived controllability, denial, and previous trauma - with terrorism-related anxiety. The author hypothesized that resilience, spirituality, and perceived social support would all be negatively associated with terrorism-related anxiety. Furthermore, it was posited that spirituality would moderate the relationship between previous trauma and terrorism-related anxiety, and that perceived controllability would moderate the relationship between denial and terrorism-related anxiety. A cross-sectional design utilizing correlation and regression analyses was selected to assess the relationships between the predictor and dependent variables, as well as a series of demographic variables. A total of 154 individuals completed a questionnaire packet containing reliable and valid self-report items, which was posted on a secure web site accessible only to study participants. Of the three main effect hypotheses, only the hypothesis involving resilience and terrorism-related anxiety was partially supported. Resilience was significantly and negatively correlated with one of two measures terrorism-related anxiety; it also had significant negative relationships with both measures of terrorism-related anxiety in separate regression analyses. In addition, the interaction effect involving spirituality and previous trauma was partially supported. For one of two measures of terrorism-related anxiety, the spirituality-previous trauma interaction term had a negative relationship with the criterion. Based on the results of this regression, we see that for those who reported high levels of spirituality, higher amounts of trauma were associated with less terrorism anxiety. For people low in spirituality, the level of anxiety stays roughly the same, regardless of the amount of trauma. The significant and non-significant findings for the present study provide tentative directions for future research into terrorism-related anxiety.