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Position postings and professional literature represent opportunity for insights into the expectations of aspiring position applicants as well as describe appropriate skills, experiences and management or leadership approaches that can inform incumbent information executive (e.g. Chief Information Officers and Library Deans) on effective leadership of their respective organizations within colleges and universities across North America. This study also lays the foundation of a model that leverages massive quantities of anecdotal literature in quantitative and empirical manners. Such a model, when fully developed can be used to examine all sorts of qualitative data of sufficient size. Analysis of the data can then be performed using a variety of Natural Language processes and tools as well as statistical tests to evaluate correlations, commonalities and frequency of the terms in relation to the roles that individuals play in their institutions. Individual tokens are used rather than nGrams or co-located tokens in an effort to minimize potential bias that can be found in phrases or word combinations such as ‘creative leadership’ or ‘strong management’. Instead, terms are used as a way to identify the tokens ‘creative’ and ‘strong’ and correlate their frequency with roles, literature and position postings. In contrast to other common techniques, such as Latent Semantic Analysis, this approach values the impact of individual responses and perspectives by using qualitative questions to cull initial tokens as well as quantitative surveys to reinforce outcomes. With few adjustments to accommodate specific disciplines, this study successfully forms a foundation requiring future development that analyzes large quantities of textual data that otherwise might have been painstakingly analyzed using time and labor-intensive qualitative processes such as content analysis. This study also identifies a list of tokens that are commonly used in position postings and leadership literat

The goal of this research was to explore cohort differences in the role of communication in romantic relationships throughout the lifespan. This project explored the direct and indirect effects of attachment styles (i.e., anxious, avoidant) and negative communication patterns (i.e., Gottman's four horsemen: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling) on commitment levels, psychosocial outcomes, attitudes toward union transitions (i.e., marriage, divorce, cohabitation), reasons for divorce, and reasons for delaying divorce as a direct function of experience with marital biographies. A marital biography refers to the history or experiences with union transitions in romantic relationships. A secondary aim is to test differences in these same variables as a function of direct experience with divorce moderated by age at the first divorce. Participants, including young divorced adults between ages 18-49 (N = 162) and gray adults ages 50+ (N = 96), completed a survey with measures including attachment, communication practices, commitment, attitudes toward union transitions, psychosocial outcomes, reasons for divorce, and reasons for delaying divorce. The results indicated that, insecure attachment styles and Gottman's four horsemen are predictive of divorce, with stonewalling being an aggravating factor, particularly for anxious attachment styles, and the risk for divorce. The experience of union transitions, especially divorce, affect how we approach future romantic relationships in addition to altering psychosocial outcomes, personal, moral, and structural commitment. Gender differences were found in divorced participants’ personal and moral commitment, psychosocial outcomes, and reasons for divorce. Age at first divorce-related differences were present in participants' structural commitment, reasons for divorce, length of delay, and reasons for delaying divorce. Even though age at first divorce was not a moderating factor, it still played an important role in reas

Child maltreatment is extremely prevalent and leads to a host of negative effects, both immediately and long term. Instances of maltreatment are often accompanied by deception, both by the perpetrator, as well as by the victim in order to avoid stigma and protect family. Thus, this study investigated social learning of deception through instances of maltreatment. 413 young adults completed an online survey assessing current attitudes toward deception, childhood maltreatment including child sexual abuse, child physical abuse, witnessing interparental violence, psychological abuse, neglect and parental addiction, social support, and participant addiction. Results indicated that neglect and psychological abuse during childhood, and current addiction were associated with a positive attitude toward deception. Severity of CSA and severity of neglect each interacted with role (agent or target) in the deceptive scenario to determine attitude toward deception. Severity of CPA interacted with perceived social support to determine attitude toward deception. Furthermore, victim's awareness of deception by perpetrators of CSA was associated with a more negative attitude toward deception. These findings support both attachment theory and social learning explanations for adulthood attitude toward deception. Attachment theory explains why neglected and psychologically abused individuals find their own deception more acceptable and other's deception less acceptable than their non-neglected counterparts, and why the opposite pattern is true for victims of CSA; and social learning theory's emphasis on attention and reinforcement to motivate behavior are supported by these findings.

This dissertation advances the affordance utilization model (AUM), which addresses the use of communication modes affordances in personal relationships. Drawing from social penetration theory and research regarding two communication mode affordances--asynchronicity and reduced cues--the AUM predicts that these affordances are positively associated with certain conversational outcomes (specifically, conversational effectiveness and appropriateness, and self-disclosure breadth and depth) but that these associations vary as a function of relationship development. As relationships become more developed, the AUM predicts that communication mode affordances exert less impact on conversational effectiveness, conversational appropriateness, and self-disclosure in conversations in relationships. As a result, the associations between communication mode affordance use and these conversational outcomes are attenuated by relationship development. Regarding self-disclosure depth, the AUM predicts that the association between communication mode affordance use and self-disclosure depth is greatest at moderate levels of relationship development. The AUM also predicts that both use and perceived importance of affordances as a proportion of communication in relationships will decrease as those relationships become more developed. Two studies were conducted to test the AUM. The first surveyed participants regarding their most recent conversation in either a friendship (N = 147) or romantic relationships (N = 166). The second study was a diary study in which participants (N = 64) filled out a short survey after every conversation with their partner for four days. The results of the two studies provide mixed support for the AUM. Although importance of affordances was not associated with relationship development, use of affordances was generally negatively associated with relationship development, as predicted. In general, conversational appropriateness was positively associated with the