Foster care is becoming a more prevalent diverse family form, and serves a critical role in our society. Little is known about the role siblings play in transitions in and out of foster care. Guided by discourse dependent ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This experiment uses a 2x2x2 experimental design to assess the influence that type of appearance-related surgery (reconstructive or cosmetic), stigma ...

This study examined the communicative construction of mental health in correctional work. Using narrative interviews with 25 current and former correctional officers, I explore how macro, meso, and micro D/discourses both ...

This project examined communication in distal parent-child relationships. Distal relationships are relations in which people are physically separated for a period of time. Little research has focused on distal relationships, ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This investigation utilized the Functional Theory of Campaign Discourse (Benoit, 2007) and previous content analyses of television advertisements to ...

This qualitative study of high-technology projects investigated how enduring conflict can operate as a precursor to project failure. Three types of conflict were found to be indicative to the outcome of projects. Unexposed ...

In this study, 42 participants (including newlyweds, parents of newlyweds, and siblings of newlyweds) were interviewed about their relationships with their in-laws. Most of the participants reported that they liked their ...

This dissertation looks at queer representation in the media and highlights a particular representational strategy that is used in a stereotypical fashion. My first chapter does two things. First, it centers on an exemplar ...

Sexual communication between parents and adolescents is believed to be challenging. Ample research has examined parent-adolescent sexual communication, but has been limited. The current study was designed to overcome some ...

This research focused on accounts and attributions following marital infidelity using a two-part investigation. In Study One, 250 married or previously married participants responded to a hypothetical scenario which asked ...

The present analysis examined the impact of celebrity gossip magazine coverage on pregnant women through both quantitative and qualitative methods. Study 1 employed both objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) ...

Guided by social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), social constructionism (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Gergen, 1985), and discourse-dependence (Galvin, 2006; Galvin & Braithwaite, 2014) theorizing, the present study illuminated ...

To understand the role of mediated messages in organizational socialization, this study analyzes the constructions of class and gender in popular business advice books (BABs). The books are used as training tools in many ...

The objective of this research was to understand the relationship between viewer motives for watching reality TV, reality TV exposure, and interpersonal relationship perceptions. The interpersonal relationship perceptions ...

After the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, both parties altered the manner in which the party nominees were chosen. This change resulted in a shift for the conventions away from choosing the party nominee ...