Browsing by Author "Odgers, Candice L"

Emerging adulthood, specifically the transition to college, is often marked by changing social networks, increased responsibility, and separation from the parental home environment. Educators, researchers, and those dedicated to the healthy development of young people are invested in understating how and why social support is important for students’ adjustment, wellbeing, and their ability to cope with the daily stressors that accompany this notable transition. In particular, parents are believed to be a key source of both perceived (stable) and enacted (immediate) support. Strong parental relationships predict students’ overall achievement and adjustment in the first year of college. Less is known about how parental relationships may impact students’ daily wellbeing and whether parents can provide helpful enacted support through daily communication. With the rapid ubiquitous rise in mobile technologies, students and their parents are now communicating more frequently during this transition; however, very little is known about whether daily virtual parental communication can help students cope with daily stressors. This study contributes to the existing literature by 1) describing students’ daily in-person and virtual communication with parents during the beginning of college, 2) examining whether students' daily virtual parental communication is associated with their same-day wellbeing, 3) testing whether daily virtual communication (i.e., enacted support) buffers daily responses to stressors, 4) examining the specificity of parental support (versus other sources of support), and 5) exploring whether the strength of students’ parental relationships (i.e., perceived support) is associated with students’ ‘reactivity’ to daily stressors. This dissertation consists of three studies that used daily assessments (i.e., ecological momentary assessments: EMA) and experimental manipulation to understand the momentary interplay between exposure to stressors, parent-child virtual communication, and students’ wellbeing during the transition to college.

Study 1, a 7-day EMA study of 136 first and second year college students, found that texting with a parent moderated the same-day associations between daily stressors and affect. Although daily parental virtual communication was not directly associated with same-day affect, on days when students reported a stressor and texted with a parent, they had lower negative and higher positive affect compared to stressor days when they did not text with a parent. Extending research by Gross (2009), Study 2 used an experimental paradigm in which 101 first year college students completed a virtual social exclusion stressor task (i.e., Cyberball) and then were assigned to text a parent, text a stranger, or play a solitary computer game. Students who ‘reached out’ via text message to parents or strangers demonstrated faster recovery in self-esteem following the experimentally induced stressor compared to students assigned to the no contact control. Study 3 followed the same 101 first year students with a 10-day EMA study. On days when students reported a stressor and called/texted with their parents (versus days without virtual parental contact), they reported lower negative affect and slept longer that night, as monitored objectively with a wearable wristband. Analyses testing for specificity across the three studies found that only virtual communication with parents or romantic partners, but not other texting patterns (number of texts or contacts) or partners (texting with acquaintances, siblings, roommates, or friends), moderated the daily associations between stressors and wellbeing. In addition, students with higher reported maternal relationship quality were less ‘reactive’ to stressors, such that in both experimental and naturalistic settings students with lower (versus higher) maternal relationship quality had steeper increases in negative affect when they experienced a stressor. Overall, the three studies found converging evidence that daily virtual communications with parents may aid students in dealing with daily stressors, especially for reducing negative affect. Possible explanations, ideas for future research, and implications are discussed.

The social gradient of health is pervasive and unrelenting. Across nearly any layer of society – race, religion, economic standing, or others – the populations worst off in terms health are also the most socially disadvantaged. Over three studies, this dissertation examines some of the experiences that underlie the connection between social disadvantage and health, namely internalized perceptions of status, interpersonal interactions, and institutional actions. The first study examines the link between adolescents’ perceived social status and their mental health at a range of ages, identifying at what age mental health problems begin to track perceptions of status, as well as contextual factors that do (or do not) relate to perceptions of status. In the second study, data from a nationally representative survey in France are used to document rates of reporting discrimination within the healthcare setting by gender, immigrant status, race/ethnicity, and religion. Rates of foregoing medical care are also documented across the same groups, and the potential explanatory role of discrimination toward disparities in foregone care is then investigated. The third and final study looks at the role of institutional stigma, using state bans of Sharia law in the USA as an exemplary case of stigmatizing policies with minimal material consequences. National birth record data for the USA is used, and the variation in policy enactment over time and space is leveraged to examine birth outcomes for Muslim women who were pregnant at the time their state passed a ban. Findings reveal a decrease in the secondary sex ratio to targeted women, suggesting the stigmatizing policy acts as a population-level stressor with consequences for maternal health.