Prosocial behaviors (e.g., sharing, helping) are important for adolescents' academic and social-emotional wellbeing and can be predicted by students' adoption of prosocial goals. Due to the recent uptick in experiences with learning online for adolescents, understanding what prosocial behaviors look like for students within this context, as well…

Health messaging can be a successful tool in encouraging pro-social behavior, such as bystander intervention in sexual violence situations. This dissertation explored the development of a social media message to encourage bystander intervention among college students using multiple theoretical frameworks: social norms approach and bystander…

Increasingly, empathy is a topic of discussion and instruction. Often used as a synonym to describe the socially acceptable and friendly behaviors we want to see more of in our society and specifically among adolescents, empathy is being used as a catchall phrase, confusing efforts to teach people how to choose empathetic behaviors. Adolescents…

The current study examined the impact of a live, virtual training on the combined topics of affirmative consent and bystander intervention among 1,395 students new to the university in 2022. Student responses on pre-survey and post-training surveys were analyzed to determine if attending the intervention promoted students' ability to understand,…

Students' prosocial behavior is linked to their own and their classmate's engagement in the classroom. This raises the question of through what pathway prosocial behavior is linked to engagement. This study investigates whether early adolescents' peer belonging mediates the relationship between prosocial behavior and classroom engagement. The…

Social skills training (SST) interventions are evidence-based approaches to building prosocial behavior. When used in schools, SSTs are commonly situated within Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) as Tier 2 interventions. Despite promising gains in social skills and social understanding from SST participation, criticism is noted that gains do…

Young adults are very socially active. During infectious disease outbreaks, their interpersonal interactions serve as a mode of viral transmission, especially to vulnerable populations such as the elderly and immunocompromised. A lack of compliance with recommended health behaviors among college students during the early months of the COVID-19…

Reading is a fundamental skill that is critical for later academic success. Despite extensive research on its development, reading remains a challenging skill for students in the U.S. to master: recent data from the National Assessment of Education Progress showed that 65% of fourth-grade students score below the level of "proficient" in…

Ethical decision-making and ethical behavior are an essential focus of training for students who wish to pursue careers in behavior analysis. In addition to education and training mandates by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, universities that offer a Verified Course Sequence are required to teach and maintain ethical behavior in students.…

Student-athletes have been identified as an at-risk population for sexual assault victimization and perpetration. While sexual assault prevention has been effective in increasing student-athlete awareness and response to sexual assault, student-athletes are less likely to see the importance of sexual assault prevention compared to non-athletes.…

Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have difficulty maintaining their focus during class lessons and often require reminder prompts from an adult including a teacher or instructional assistant. This study used goal setting paired with a technology-based application and Smartwatch to explore increases in elementary student…

This study examines the effects of Jayhawks Give a Flock, a bystander education program adapted from "Bringing in the Bystander," on first-year students' intentions to intervene as bystanders and prevent sexual violence using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Fishbein & Azjen, 1975; 2010) as a theoretical framework. This study…

Mental health, social-emotional disparity, and the woes of not self-regulating or controlling one's mental well-being are significant factors that educational institutions are fighting to manage daily. What common thread can be used to stitch or heal the emptiness that so many urban elementary school students experience on a given day? This…

Adolescents' defender and outsider behaviors in classroom bullying situations, which involve various kinds of participant roles, are likely determined by individual characteristics, social status variables, and classroom/school contextual factors operating simultaneously in the peer ecology. Despite increasing attention in anti-bullying…

Structural analysis (SA) is an assessment process developed to analyze hypothesized relationships between contextual variables and subsequent behaviors. In the present study, an alternating treatments design investigated the effectiveness of environmentally-based interventions to reduce disruptive behaviors and increase on-task behaviors of…