Psychological aspects

Personal wellness and burnout have been common themes in research studies regarding professional satisfaction and career success. Personality characteristics in relation to job and career success among professionals have also been included in countless studies. However, Bateman and Crant (1993) defined and began research on the specific construct of the proactive personality and how it related to personal achievement, satisfaction, and success among executives. This dissertation study is an extension of their research in that the relationship between proactive personality, job satisfaction and levels of burnout among Licensed Mental Health Counselors in Florida specifically, is being examined. While proactive personality positively and significantly related to job satisfaction and satisfaction with being a counselor among the participants in this study, it did not significantly relate to feelings of emotional exhaustion or feelings of depersonalization toward clients. When age, salary, years licensed, and proactive personality in relation to job satisfaction and levels of burnout were included in the statistical analysis, proactive personality and salary positively related to job satisfaction, personal accomplishment, and satisfaction with being a counselor, but the relationships were not significant. Hence, the results of this study provides useful information regarding proactive personality and how it relates to the overall job satisfaction, levels of burnout among clinicians, and to assist in the development of wellness programs, burnout prevention, and in the empowerment of mental health professionals in this demanding field.

individuals who self-identify as sex addicts, unique health and social consequences are not well understood because of factors, such as stigma. It is important that the nursing community understand this phenomenon to address, understand, and provide sensitive and meaningful care. However, there is limited research on this topic. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of individuals who self-identify as sex addicts. Through snowball sampling, five men and five women between 27 to 45 years old, and older. participated in the phenomenological study. Meaning units and themes were revealed through the participants' experiences as follows: A Connecting with Others: 1. Reaching Out 2. Seeking Shared Understanding 3. Connecting with Your Higher Power B Managing Stigma: 1. Revealing Concealing C Integrating the Past for Recovery: 1. Reflecting Triggers 2. Overcoming Powerlessness. D Being Vigilant: 1. Intentional Refocusing 2. Living an Honest Life E Giving of Oneself: 1. Informing Others 2. Doing Service. The overall structure synthesized from the meaning units and themes was: "The lived experience of seeking health in recovery from sex addiction is dancing on the outer circle, connected to a community that understands fear, shame and the struggle to remain vigilant for pitfalls while intentionally refocusing on living an honest life of giving and receiving." Seeking health incorporates a holistic, community involved, multifaceted approach to recovery. Understanding how individuals seek health in recovery provides a framework to impart meaningful, sensitive nursing care.

J. M. Coetzee's brutal novel Disgrace questions popular understandings of criminality and victimhood by establishing parallels between its various characters and their actions. Through close reading of Coetzee's descriptions of protagonist David Lurie's behaviors and attitudes towards women, non-human animals, and people of color compared with descriptions of the mysterious trio of men who rape Lurie's daughter and coldly kill the dogs in her kennels, I argue that the line Disgrace draws between Lurie and these men is deliberately flimsy, ultimately all but disappearing if we look closely enough at their behaviors and descriptions rather than their justifications. I also argue that the novel's perpetrators rely upon archetypical "rapist" and "criminal" constructs, resulting in an inability for them to ever accurately address their own crimes, despite Coetzee's descriptive parallels. Ultimately, I read Disgrace as suggesting that there can be no resolution for violence so long as these mythical archetypes persist.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate student outcomes following implementation of a clinical scholar model of clinical education in one of four placement sites of a college of nursing grounded in a caring philosophy. The question guiding the study was to determine if the clinical scholar model has an influence on student perceptions and outcomes when used with second-degree accelerated BSN students. Watson's Human Caring theory, based on ten caritas processes, serves as the theoretical framework for this study (Watson, 2007). A sequential mixed-methods approach that combined quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques was implemented using a pre-experimental, post-test only design with non-equivalent groups to determine differences between the Traditional Model (TM) and Clinical Scholar Model (CSM) in clinical nursing education... Limitations of this study include low sample size and are partially due to limitations of the class size and low survey participation. Additionally, only CSM students attended a focus group, which prevented comparisons of qualitative feedback between groups. Even with these limitations, CSM students scored as well or better than TM students, indicating that the CSM could be a viable model for nursing clinical education.

Triathlon status symbols allow community members to gain prestige. The accrual of paraphernalia, such as race apparel and bumper stickers, provide individuals with a means to display their accomplishments for non-participants, too. Ethnographic fieldwork, questionnaires and interviews provided insight into a variety of experiences. The individual nature of the sport is reflected by a participant's decision to display status markers. Car signs (e.g., bumper stickers and license plate frames) are displayed by a quarter of race participants. They come in a variety of forms allowing the car's driver to communicate with triathletes and non-triathletes while driving on the road. The most prestigious triathlon is the Ironman. The M Dot Ironman logo appears as a decal on vehicles and as a mark of permanence on the body. Tattoos act as a formal communication system in a similar manner to car signs. Triathletes display status symbols to garner respect from their peers and separate themselves from the larger society.

This study examined the relationships of adult attachment, locus of control, and fear of intimacy between adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) and non adult children of alcoholics (NACOAs). A convenience sample of 224 participants, specifically 108 ACOAs and 116 NACOAs, completed the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Questionnaire (ECR-R), Rotter's Locus of Control Scale (LOC), and the Fear of Intimacy Scale (FIS). Participants were drawn from self-help groups, gatherings, and a health fair held in Palm Beach County, Florida. Data were analyzed utilizing multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), series of analyses of variance (ANOVA), stepwise regression analyses, discriminant function analysis, in addition to correlational analyses. ... ACOAs demonstrated insecure, fearful avoidant attachment patterns, an external locus of control, and greater fear of intimacy. In contrast, NACOAs exhibited secure adult attachment, an internal locus of control, and lower fear of intimacy. This study lends empirical support to clinical practice pertaining to the constructs of adult attachment, locus of control, and fear of intimacy in ACOAs and NACOAs.

Research shows that bilingualism confers substantial cognitive benefits in children and the elderly. Bilingual advantages on nonverbal working memory, updating, shifting and inhibition tasks are widely reported. However, advantages are not always observed in young adults. These disparities may be due to varied proficiency levels and task types (verbal versus nonverbal) administered. This study sought to detect bilingual performance advantages on executive function and working memory tasks (verbal and nonverbal working memory, updating, shifting and inhibition tasks) between groups of 37 high and 37 low proficiency Spanish-English bilingual and 40 English monolingual young adults. ... Young adulthood may represent a lull during which bilingualism does not confer cognitive advantages for functions examined.

In today's era of high stakes testing and accountability, school principals are confronted with many difficult challenges in addition to those traditionally experienced by principals given the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the many mandates each school principal must report on annually. With mandated curriculum standards and widespread demand to improve student achievement, principals face a multitude of administrative tasks. As the school accountability deadline to meet the 2014 federal objective of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 rapidly draws closer for the majority of states, this federal legislation has created increasingly high stress levels, potentially the highest ever, for principals across the country. ... The proposed study is significant to the field of education because this study provides the most current research regarding the mental and physical effects of work-related stress on elementary school principals in an era of increased accountability and the impact stress has on the school climate. Further, this study offers school principals a repertoire of effective coping mechanisms that can be utilized to help reduce their perceived stress levels. Over the time of the study, it was repeatedly reported by the principal participants that their work stress had increased, which was found to have impacted their health as well as the school climate.

Despite extensive research into memory and violence, relatively little is known about the relationship between violent media and memory of advertised products. Research has yielded contradictory evidence ; some scholars have found a negative relationship, others a nonexistent one... This research investigated the role of emotion in the relationship between violent media and product placement memory. This study creates insight into inconclusive previous findings by providing evidence that violence influences product memory. Specifically, participants were significantly worse at remembering products placed within violent clips (e.g., free recall, cued recall, recognition. Participants' emotional responses to the violent clips also appeared to influence their memory for embedded products ; product recognition was significantly correlated with disgust, avoidance, and interest ratings.... Interestingly, stronger negative responses to the violent clips were correlated with decreased preference for the embedded products. Furthermore, the pattern of differences for product preference between target and non-target violent products varied according to negative emotional reaction. Therefore, this dissertation provides insight into the role emotion plays in the relationship between viewing violent media and product placement memory.

This study investigates the relationship between mobbing, burnout, and religious coping styles among Protestant clergy. Mobbing is an emotionally abusive workplace behavior and is defined as the prolonged malacious harassment of a coworker by a group of other members of an organization to secure the removal from the organization of the one who is targeted. Mobbing has only recently become a focus of attention in the US. To date, there are no known studies investigating mobbing in the workplace setting of the church. The broad purpose of this study is to determine if Protestant pastors experience mobbing, how they are affected by it, and how they cope with it. Four religious coping styles - Self-directing, Collaborative, Deferring, and Surrender to God - are investigated to determine how coping styles of religious individuals function in mediating the effect of mobbing or burnout. Burnout is assessed throught he Maslach Burnout Inventory and measures emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This study utilizes Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and presents two models of mediational analysis.... The results of analysis indicate that Protestant clergy do experience being mobbed which results in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Clergy with a self-directing coping style experience more burnout than do those who utilize a surrender to God style. Differences in indirect effects between models were noted. The implications to theory and practice are discussed.