Scholarship & Research
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Item Relationship between social support and substance use among American Indian people with substance use disorder(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2023) Neavill, Morgan Eva; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Monica SkewesAmerican Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) have endured trauma over generations and still experience systemic racism and oppression today. Historical trauma has contributed to health problems among AI/ANs, including high rates of substance use disorder. Social support is a protective factor for substance use in other populations; however, little is known about the role of social support and substance use in AI/AN communities. The current study employed secondary data analysis to understand the relationship between social support and substance use among AI/AN adults with substance use disorder. Using a Community-Based Participatory Research framework, a cross-sectional survey was conducted in partnership with an AI reservation community in Montana to examine risk and protective factors for substance use. Participants were 198 tribal members who self-identified as having a substance use problem. Social network characteristics were assessed using a modified version of the Important People Drug and Alcohol (IPDA) interview and substance use was assessed using the Timeline Followback. Consistent with previous research, the current study found that network substance use behavior was a better predictor of participant substance use outcomes than general support, substance specific support, or support for recovery/treatment. Variables associated with greater drug and alcohol abstinence among participants included living in larger household, having a greater percentage of the household that is sober, not having attended boarding school, having a larger percentage of the social network that does not accept one's substance use, having a smaller percentage of the social network rated as moderate or heavy substance users, and having a smaller percentage of the social network that uses substances frequently. An additional analysis was conducted to test whether the association between social support and participant substance use was moderated by the substance use behavior of the network, but the interaction was not significant. Contrary to prior research, the size, general supportiveness, and importance of the social network were not significantly associated with participant substance use. Results suggest that the IPDA may benefit from modifications to improve its usefulness in addiction research with AI/ANs. Implications for tribal members with substance use problems, their loved ones, and community leaders are discussed.Item Cultural adaptation and preliminary validation of a measure of grief for American Indian and Alaska Native populations(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Gameon, Julie Ann; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Monica SkewesGrief research among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) people has been limited to studies focused on unresolved grief associated with historical trauma or epidemiological studies focused on reporting mortality rates among AI/AN people. Grief measures developed and tested in non-Native populations have not been validated for use with AI/ANs and may not reflect a culturally appropriate Native perspective on grief. Additionally, research on adaptive grieving, or how people grow while healing from grief, has not been studied in this population. The current study aimed to: 1) work with AI/AN community members to culturally adapt the Inventory of Complicated Grief and the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory, and 2) test the psychometric properties of the resulting culturally adapted Indigenous Grief Inventory. In Study One, interviews were conducted with AI reservation-based community members (N = 12) to gain insight into Native perspectives on grief. Findings suggested unique cultural considerations related to grieving and healing following the loss of a loved one in Native communities. Some items were revised and new items were developed based on participant feedback, and a pool of 60 items was generated for further testing. In Study Two, a sample of AI/AN community members (n =10) and academics (n = 7) was recruited to provide feedback on the measure items adapted or developed in Study One. Based on participants' ratings and feedback, items with low cultural appropriateness and comprehension scores were removed, and other items were revised, leaving 45 items remaining for psychometric testing. In Study Three, a web-based survey including the culturally adapted Indigenous Grief Inventory and mental and behavioral health measures was administered to 600 AI/AN people who reported experiencing a significant loss in their lifetime. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses using separate randomly selected samples from the survey data (ns = 300) were conducted to identify the factor structure of the culturally adapted measure. Items were trimmed following these analyses, resulting in a two-factor Indigenous Grief Inventory. Additional analyses were conducted to examine the convergent and discriminant validity and measurement invariance of the revised measure. Findings suggest that the final 26-item Indigenous Grief Inventory developed in this dissertation is valid, reliable, and suitable for use in health research with AI/AN people.Item With a little help from my friends: investigating communal mastery as a contributor to resilient outcomes among American Indians with substance use disorder(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Lahiere, Amanda Nicole; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Monica SkewesAmerican Indians and Alaskan Natives (AI/ANs) have endured significant historical and individual adversity across several generations. Such adversity is associated with negative mental, physical, and behavioral outcomes. However, this adversity is not always associated with negative outcomes for all AI/ANs. In order to understand the differences in AI/AN outcomes, protective factors buffering against negative outcomes need to be examined. Communal mastery, a relatively unexplored construct, has been posited as a potential protective factor for AI/AN people. The present study aimed to understand the relationship between communal mastery, risk factors specific to historical trauma and discrimination, and substance use. Moreover, we hoped to understand if communal mastery moderated the effects of historical loss and discrimination on substance use. Participants (N = 197) included tribal members from a Northern Plains reservation in recovery from substance use disorder or with the desire to change their substance use behavior. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression to understand if communal mastery is protective for substance use in the current AI sample. Contrary to my hypotheses, communal mastery did not moderate the relationship between culturally-specific risk factors (i.e. historical trauma and discrimination) and substance use. However, the present sample had high levels of communal mastery indicating that restriction of range may have affected the findings. Moreover, communal mastery may be protective at certain times in the recovery process but not when people are using substances. Also, historical loss was associated with greater levels of abstinence from substance use, contrary to predictions. Thus, future research should focus on the role of historical loss awareness in AI/AN recovery and investigate how communal mastery interacts with other risk factors to predict substance use outcomes in Indigenous populations.Item On life and death: vitality, mortality salience, and worldview defense(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Sanders, Courtney Suzanne; Co-Chairs, Graduate Committee: Jessi L. Smith and Ian HandleyHuman experience is most notably characterized by feeling or being 'alive.' However, according to Terror Management Theory (TMT), humans possess the awareness of their own mortality, and the resulting potential for existential anxiety produced by mortality salience might interact with vitality, or the subjective experience of enthusiasm and aliveness. The construct of vitality includes attributes such as resilience and self-esteem, which is why vitality was predicted to be a more holistic approach to dealing with the potential death anxiety triggered by mortality salience. TMT operates under the notion that anxiety from the realization of one's mortality is managed in part by embracing cultural worldviews, or psychological systems that provide life with meaning. When one fails to employ such a psychological buffer in the face of mortality concerns, this results in an increased defensiveness toward those who threaten or violate cultural worldviews. As such, Study 1 hypothesized that, under mortality salience, those low in a self-report measure of vitality would react more defensively to a moral transgressor than those high in vitality. To test this prediction, 176 individuals completed a self-report measure of vitality and were randomly assigned to provide a written response to two open-ended questions about their own death or to two parallel questions about watching television. Then, following a necessary delay, all participants provided judgments of moral transgressors; previous work shows that reminders of death lead to harsher judgments on this scale. No evidence for buffering was found in the results of Study 1, and findings failed to replicate past TMT research. To better understand vitality as a construct, Study 2 randomly assigned 90 individuals to view photos of either natural, outdoor scenes, or photos of built, outdoor scenes and were subsequently measured on vitality. Results of Study 2 conceptually replicated findings of previous work illustrating that those exposed to photos of nature reported higher levels of vitality than those exposed to photos of built environments. These findings strengthen evidence of the vitalizing effects of nature and supports contact with nature as a potential factor in future studies on vitality. Alternative explanations and implications are discussed.Item Prejudice and traits of victimization among the Crow Indians : an experiment in behavior modification(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1972) Parks, Helen Margaret Bybee