For over 100 years, youth mentoring has grown to be an evidenced based prevention strategy for youth, demonstrating positive youth outcomes through strong relationships with caring adults. While trusting relationships are the mainstay of the positive impacts achieved through mentoring, the difficulty in recruiting volunteer adults has not met the…

Using descriptive statistics and logistic regressions, this study compared U.S. Census data from 22-24-year-old women in 1980 and 2020 to determine the individual and contextual variables most predictive of bachelor's degree attainment. The regressions were conducted for women overall, women who have ever enrolled in college, mothers, and mothers…

Non-first-time students make up a large portion of higher education nationally, particularly in the two-year institution sector, and yet their completion outcomes are largely unstudied. Unfortunately, higher education as it is currently designed does not work well for many non-traditional students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the…

This study investigated the effect of multiple text-graphic interventions to facilitate conceptual change on the topic of human induced climate change. Given the superiority of refutation texts over standard expository texts, the goal of the present study was to determine if this effect could be enhanced, thereby creating an even more powerful…

Leveraging a sample of more than 198,000 adult entrepreneurs, both currently involved in the startup of a business or formerly involved in business creation, this study investigates the perceptual, societal impression, economic, and demographic variables that are predictive with an individual's decision to engage in entrepreneurial activity.…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections' 100 hour pre-release program and vocational education had a significant impact on offender recidivism. Additionally, a model of predicating offender recidivism using demographic data was another aspect of the study. Offenders in the…

The recent influx of immigration to the United States has naturally led to a population increase of U.S. born children with immigrant parents. These bicultural individuals undertake the complex task of constructing identities drawn from dual, and sometimes multiple, cultural foundations. This study examined sense of belonging and perceived…

Homelessness is a problem that has correlating social, psychological, and health problems. The pathways that lead to homelessness are plentiful and varied, as are the risk factors that are associated with chronic homelessness. Much of the research that has been completed with homeless individuals has focused on substance use or psychological…

Many organizations find selecting a leader to be highly challenging. Investigators have found and admit that the study of leadership is a very complex phenomenon that cannot be easily captured and explained in a manner that could lead to a final description about leadership or offer clear steps on how to choose the right leader. Among the many…

Adolescents and young adults with sickle cell disease (SCD) must develop self-efficacy and disease-management skills to transition successfully to adult medical care. This quantitative study explored whether self-efficacy, age, and gender were predictive of transition readiness of adolescents with SCD from pediatric to adult medical care.…

Adult second language (L2) learners often experience difficulty producing and perceiving non-native phonological contrasts. Even highly proficient bilinguals, who have been exposed to an L2 for long periods of time, struggle with difficult contrasts, such as /r/-/l/ for Japanese learners of English. To account for the relative ease or difficulty…

This project explores how experienced adult users of social media disclose personal information over online social networks (OSN). This work introduces a four-dimensional model to serve as a foundational framework for the study of online self-disclosure (OSD); these four dimensions are personal, social, technological and contextual, and support…

The development of social competence for children is critical to their ability to navigate social decision making processes; however, children with complex disabilities have many difficulties in developing social competence. In an educational environment, the optimal setting for a child to develop social competence is within the inclusive…

This study consists of three sub-studies. Sub-study 1 and 2 attempted to incorporate environmental variables as precursor background variables of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to predict quitting-related intentions among Texas adult smokers and university student smokers, respectively. Sub-study 1 and 2 analyzed different data sets and were…

Background: Pneumococcal vaccination (PV) is important as Streptococcus pneumoniae accounts for one third of all hospitalizations for community-acquired pneumonia. In 2009, 1.1 million people in the U.S. were hospitalized with pneumonia and more than 50,000 people died from the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that…