UNT Theses and Dissertations - 19 Matching Results

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Accuracy of Three Assessments of Sleep Timing, Duration and Efficiency Compared to a Single-Channel EEG Device

Description: Poor sleep measured across many dimensions has been linked to adverse physical and mental health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, increased mortality, depression, and anxiety. Current research typically relies upon brief, subjective, inadequately validated methods to assess limited dimensions of sleep, resulting in inaccurate measurements and possibly faulty conclusions. Specifically, research validating objective (e.g., actigraphy) and subjective (e.g., sleep diarie… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Dietch, Jessica R.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Cognitive Performance as a Function of Sleep Disturbance in the Postpartum Period

Description: New mothers often complain of impaired cognitive functioning, and it is well documented that women experience a significant increase in sleep disturbance after the birth of a child. Sleep disturbance has been linked to impaired cognitive performance in several populations, including commercial truck drivers, airline pilots, and medical residents, though this relationship has rarely been studied in postpartum women. In the present study 13 pregnant women and a group of 22 non-pregnant controls c… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Wilkerson, Allison K.
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Combining Select Blood-Based Biomarkers with Neuropsychological Assessment to Detect Mild Cognitive Impairment among Mexican Americans: A Molecular Neuropsychology Approach

Description: Mexican Americans face a significant health disparity related to the development of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) when compared to other ethnic groups. Recent work has documented the utility of utilizing blood-based biomarkers in the detection of amnestic MCI among this population. Efforts to enhance the utility of biomarkers in detecting disease through the inclusion of select neuropsychological measures, an approach termed Molecular Neuropsychology, has shown promise. The present study soug… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Edwards, Melissa L.
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Community-based Participatory Research: HIV in African American Men Who Have Sex with Men

Description: To date, traditional behavioral interventions have done little to reduce the prevalence and transmission of HIV among African American men who have sex with men (AAMSM), a highly at risk group. Some researchers theorize that the lack of success may be because these interventions do not address contextual factors among AAMSM. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is one approach to research with the potential to lead to effective interventions in the future. CBPR is a collaborative, m… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Miller, James MS
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An Experimental Study of Bifurcated (Weekend and Weekday) and Unitary (Past Week) Retrospective Assessments of Sleep

Description: Discordance between weekday and weekend sleep schedules is common (Bonnet & Arand, 1995; Breslau, Roth, Rosenthal, & Andreski, 1997; Machado, Varella, & Andrade, 1998; Strauch & Meier, 1988; Tsai & Li, 2004). Brief retrospective self-report measures are essential for epidemiological research studies (Moul, Hall, Pilkonis, & Buysse, 2004), but self-reports are prone to error in recall, and the greater the variability in nightly sleep, the less reliable are retrospective reports (Babkoff, Weller,… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Sethi, Kevin J.
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Forgiving the Unforgivable: Forgiveness in the Context of LGBT Partner Violence

Description: Intimate partner violence (IPV) in sexual and gender minority relationships is an underexplored and misunderstood phenomenon. Much of what has been investigated has explored IPV from a heterosexual lens, without taking into account the complexities of these relationship dynamics. Further, outcomes of IPV traditionally focus on negative sequelae, such as depression or anxiety. In this study, we examined the propensity to forgive partner abuse as a means of adaptively coping with the trauma. Furt… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Lopez, Eliot Jay
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Healthy Eating in College Students: 24-Hour Dietary Recall and the Theory of Planned Behavior

Description: The transition to college is marked by poorer eating behaviors. The Theory of planned behavior (TPB) represents a promising tool for predicting eating behaviors through the examination of attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavioral control (PBC), and intention (INT). Despite prior application of the TPB, there exist several key methodological issues in the literature addressing eating behaviors. The present study utilized an enhanced dietary assessment methodology, the ASA24 di… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Douglas, Megan E.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Impact of Observational Learning on Physical Activity Appraisal and Exertion Following Experimental Back Injury and the Role of Pain-Related Fear

Description: Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is one of the most prevalent and disabling health conditions in the US and worldwide. Biomedical explanations of acute injury fail to account for why some individuals experience remission of pain and restoration of physical function while others do not. Pain-related fear, accompanied by elevated appraisals of physical exertion and avoidance of physical activity, has emerged as a central psychosocial risk factor for transition from acute injury to chronic pain and di… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Guck, Adam J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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A Mixed Methods Approach to Exploring Social Support and Resilience in Coping with Stigma and Psychological Distress among HIV-Positive Adults

Description: Since its emergence in the U.S., HIV has been a stigmatized illness. People living with HIV (PLH) are a minority and prone to psychological distress and poor mental health outcomes due to HIV-related stigma. PLH who identify with another minority group in addition to being HIV-positive (e.g., gay, African-American) experience multiple forms of oppression or layered stigma. Affirmative social support and resilience are negatively associated with HIV-stigma and are important coping resources for … more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Fritz, Sarah-mee Hesse
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Nice Dissertation, for a Girl: Cardiovascular and Emotional Reactivity to Gender Microaggressions

Description: Gender microaggressions are normative messages that communicate harmful stereotypes or attitudes towards women. Research suggests that being the target of microaggresions may contribute to negative mental and physical health outcomes. The current study examined how gender microaggressions affect emotional and physiological reactivity as well as performance on a working memory task. Results indicated condition (i.e., control vs. sexual objectification microaggression vs. denial of sexism microag… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Prather, Courtney C.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Nightmare Disorder Prevalence as Defined by the DSM-5 in a College Sample

Description: The nightmare prevalence literature to date has largely focused on nightmare episode severity (i.e. frequency), with 8%-87% of individuals reporting these events in the past week to year. While this has helped to determine the prevalence of these events, focus on the episode severity alone is problematic because it means little is known about the actual prevalence of nightmare disorder. Moreover, focus on episode severity likely overestimates the actual prevalence of clinically significant nigh… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Estevez, Rosemary
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Racial Microaggressions: Relationship to Cardiovascular Reactivity and Affect Among Hispanic/Latinos and Non-Hispanic Whites

Description: Racial microaggressions are a type of perceived discrimination entailing a brief pejorative message by a perpetrator, whether verbal or nonverbal, intentional or unintentional, about a target person that operates below the level of conscious awareness. Research supports a relationship between perceived discrimination and worse mental and physical health outcomes, with the literature centered mainly on non-Hispanic blacks. Less research exists on how perceived discrimination, specifically raci… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Hoar, Mariana
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Role of Injury-related Injustice Perception in Adjustment to Spinal Cord Injury: an Exploratory Analysis

Description: Research has begun to explore the presence and role of health-related injustice perceptions in samples of individuals who experience chronic pain associated with traumatic injury. Existing studies indicate that higher level of injustice perception is associated with poorer physical and psychosocial outcomes. However, to date, few clinical populations have been addressed. The aim of the current study was to explore injustice perceptions in a sample of individuals who have sustained a spinal cord… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Garner, Ashley Nicole
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Self-Control in Overweight and Obese Individuals: The Relationship of Dispositional Self-Control and Blood Glucose

Description: Currently, the etiology of obesity is conceptualized as a confluence of environmental, socioeconomic, behavioral, biological and genetic factors. With regard to behavioral factors, some have suggested that a failure of self-control may contribute to the difficulty of an overweight/obese individual because of their inability to resist food or maintain physical activity. Recent research proposed that self-control could be described as similar to a muscle that can be fatigued. Thus, if an individu… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Edwards, Kate
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Self-Efficacy and Competence: A Physical Activity Experimental Comparison

Description: Sedentary behavior has been shown to lead to overweight and obesity, which are risk factors for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular heart diseases (CHD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Two constructs have been used to attempt to enhance motivation in order to promote long-term physical activity behavior change: self-efficacy (from Self-Efficacy Theory) and competence (from Self-Determination Theory). Though these constructs are from two different theories and purportedly measure two different… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Phillips, Amanda S.
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Sleep in Early Adolescence: an Examination of Bedtime Behaviors, Nighttime Sleep Environment, and Parent-set Bedtimes Among a Racially/ethnically Diverse Sample

Description: Early adolescence (e.g., 10-14 years old) is a time during which health habits and behaviors first develop that carry over into adulthood. This age range is also a time when changes are often first observed in typical sleep patterns, such as a delay in bedtimes, decreased total sleep times, and increased sleep problems. Electronic media and social networking have become essential to adolescent interpersonal communication and are negatively associated with adolescent sleep. Room and/or bed shari… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Marczyk Organek, Katherine D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Social Support as a Moderator of Racial/Ethnic Differences in Subclinical Atherosclerosis: The North Texas Heart Study

Description: This study examined racial/ethnic differences in pre-clinical disease, social support, and tested whether social support was a moderator of racial/ethnic differences in subclinical atherosclerosis. Participants were NHWs, NHBs, and Latinos (n = 283) from the baseline and cross-sectional sample of the North Texas Heart Study. Results from unadjusted models showed no significant racial/ethnic differences for common or bifurcation intima-media thickness (cIMT). However, unadjusted models for cIMT … more
Date: August 2017
Creator: García, James J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Stigma and Psychological Quality of Life in People Living with HIV: Self-Esteem as a Mediating Factor

Description: Although the negative impact of HIV stigma is well documented, a gap exists in exploration of constructs that mediate the relationship between HIV stigma and psychological QOL (PQOL). Self-esteem is often conceptualized as a protective factor. We used PLS-SEM to explore the relationships between HIV stigma, PQOL and self-esteem, where PQOL and self-esteem are latent constructs represented by direct observations. Our hypotheses were supported - stigma is negatively related to self-esteem (as mea… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Wike, Alexandra
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Stigma, Spirituality and Psychological Quality of Life in People Living with HIV: A Mixed Methods Approach

Description: HIV is a potentially fatal virus that affects over 1,148,200 people in the United States. Due to the minority status that comes with living with HIV, PLH (people living with HIV) often encounter various aspects of stigma due to HIV, which contributes to suppressed overall psychological quality of life (PQOL).While the relationship between stigma and PQOL in PLH is well documented, little research examines mediators of this relationship. We hypothesized that spirituality (as measured by sense of… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Purser, Megan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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