This study examines the relationships between peer victimization, peer relations and depression among adolescents, with a focus on the moderating roles of peer rejection, peer acceptance and reciprocal friendships on the association between peer victimization and depression. A sample of 605 adolescents (average age 13.5 years) completed measures…

The 2014 genocide against the Yazidi community, perpetrated by ISIS, represents one of the most devastating humanitarian crises of the 21st century. This qualitative case study explores the lived experiences of Yazidi women, aged 25-40, who have resettled in Nebraska after surviving unspeakable atrocities, including mass killings, sexual…

Bullying continues to be a concern in the field of education among school aged students, including individuals with disabilities. The areas of exploration in this basic qualitative study were the characterizations used by students, the ways in which they perceive and experience bullying, and ways in which they react to social situations. Social…

Background: Alcohol-related sexual assault is a pressing health concern on U.S. college campuses. The unrelenting prevalence of campus sexual assault has led to a greater focus on how to empower college women to resist unwanted sexual advances within alcohol-infused contexts. Alcohol-aggression expectancies have emerged as one potential barrier to…

Bullying was a pervasive issue affecting high schools in the United States despite anti-bullying programs. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of former high school bullying victims about why anti-bullying programs have not reduced incidents of bullying. The conceptual framework that supported this study was…

Research suggests that school climate is a critical component in a student's sense of safety within a school and is the foundation for student-staff relationships. Despite this recognition, school staff demonstrate an insufficient intention to intervene on witnessed acts of gender- and sexuality-based inequity and grapple with discerning what…

This study examines survivors' perceptions of sexual harassment experienced as members of higher education (e.g., faculty, staff, students, and administrators). Individually, an examination of the survivors' perceptions of perpetrator consequences and how institutional responses occurred. This study aims to provide insight into the survivors'…

Female graduate students are targets of coercive sexual harassment (SH) three times more than female undergraduates; 67.8% of their harassers were university faculty. While SH victims expected peer support, peers often socially rejected female victims of coercive SH. Gray and Wegner's theory of dyadic morality and Bowes-Sperry and O'Leary-Kelly's…

In 1997, a sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee was released by a hired contractor who stole it from their home then released the tape for money (Siegel et al., 2022). In 2014, over 600 cloud accounts were hacked containing nude photos of celebrities, whose images were later posted online and to several revenge porn websites (Johnson, 2015).…

The violence between intimate partners is a critical public health threat and a non-unitary complex phenomenon involving factors like the types of violence, gender, and cultural influences. Traditional feminist theorists proposed the female's risk of becoming a violent victim was higher than the male in the patriarchal context. Though, studies…

Bullying is widely prevalent in the US. Although anti-bullying laws have been implemented across the country since 1999, bullying prevalence rates remain high. Research suggests that being a bully or a bully victim or both makes an individual more likely to experience worse physical, mental, and financial health. This dissertation comprises of…

Youth with disabilities are overrepresented in the bullying dynamic and experience poor mental health and school engagement outcomes associated with this involvement. However, limited existing research has looked at differences in bullying involvement based on disability category, and how youth with disabilities make decisions about bullying…

In light of the recent violent crimes and murders in and around educational institutions in the past year here in the United States, fear of crime is of great concern, Analyzing student's fear of crime levels and their perceptions' of the people and entities whom are in place to protect them from victimization is always up for discussion, This…

This dissertation includes three individual articles that explore the relationship between witnessing bullying and defending behavior among students who are bystanders of bullying. Chapter One provides the rationale and purpose of this dissertation and an overview of the three articles that comprise it. Chapter Two employed a cross-sectional…

Identifying factors buffering the bidirectional relationship between bullying victimization and perpetration is crucial in informing interventions to protect students from cycling between being bullied and bullying others. Nevertheless, that bidirectional relationship and its buffering factors have been underexamined among children. As a potential…