Date of Award

Spring 2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

First Advisor

Janelle McDaniel

Abstract

In order to achieve all the benefits of sleeping, adequate quantity and quality of sleep are required, particularly for children and adolescents because of the issues of physical, emotional, and psychological development. Recent reviews of the literature have concluded children and adolescents consistently do not get enough sleep, and childhood sleep problems have serious negative effects on children and their families. Self-help guides have been proven to be effective, but the particular framing of the message is vital to its overall persuasiveness. Many researchers have found that these framing effects are important to the overall persuasiveness of a message. However, the interaction of message frame with individual characteristics of the decision-maker has not been explored in the way presented in this study. This study sought to determine what type of framing a factsheet regarding sleep in children and adolescents needs to have to induce the greatest amount of intended behavioral change, and what individual characteristics vis-à-vis dysfunctional parental discipline are related to message framing effects. Results showed expected correlational relationships between subscales of the Parenting Scale, with all other analyses lacking statistical significance. The current results are consistent with recent meta-analyses of the literature. Explanations for a lack of statistical significance are discussed.

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