Elizabeth Mazur

Self-Presentation and Interaction in Blogs of Adolescents and Young Emerging Adults

This article analyzed 124 blogs, chronological, journal-type entries published on public hosting Web sites, as new and popular places for adolescents and emerging adults aged 15 to 19 to play openly with their self-presentation, an important aspect of identity exploration. Findings indicate that most young persons write emotionally toned entries; focus on their daily activities, friends, and romantic relationships; and describe themselves, but less frequently their experiences, positively. Bloggers often alter content and appearance of their Web pages, most commonly with photographs of themselves. Number of friends ranges widely, and most blog entries receive no or one comment, most of which are supportive. The article also describes and discusses gender and age differences and concludes that blogs written by adolescents and young emerging adults are less about direct interaction with others than about careful self-presentation.

Positive and Negative Events Experienced by Parents With Acquired Physical Disabilities and Their Adolescent Children

Research on the positive and negative events experienced by parents with acquired physical disabilities is limited, and research on their children’s experiences is even rarer. Thus, with this project the author merged stress-and-coping research with the social model of disability to develop two specifically tailored profiles of life events specific to the experiences of these family members. Fifty knowledgeable informants (parents with acquired disabilities, their spouses, their adolescent children, and professionals) were interviewed about the positive and negative aspects of being or living with a parent with a physical disability. From these discussions, the author identified samples of meaningful positive and negative events so that future researchers can examine the associations among the experiences of these events and adolescents’ and parents’ coping and adjustment as well as evaluate social policy to reduce barriers and create supports for parents with physical disabilities and their families.

Parent and Adolescent Positive and Negative Disability-Related Events and Their Relation to Adjustment

This project merged Felner’s transitional events model with the social model of disability to develop profiles of life events specific to the experiences of parents with acquired physical disability and their adolescent children and examined the relations between these events, severity of disability, and psychological adjustment. Parents and adolescents reported significantly more positive than negative disability-related events. Frequency of parents’ negative events correlated significantly with multiple measures of self-reported adjustment, their reports of adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems, and adolescents’ self-reports of adjustment. Frequency of adolescents’ negative disability-related events correlated significantly with self-reported depression and lower self-esteem. Several correlations between parental rating of severity of disability and number of physical limitations with their and their children’s adjustment were significant. Implications for understanding the daily effects of parental physical disability on civilian and military parents and their children are discussed, and recommendations for research on disability in military families are suggested.