Currently, the etiology of obesity is conceptualized as a confluence of environmental, socioeconomic, behavioral, biological and genetic factors. With regard to behavioral factors, some have suggested that a failure of self-control may contribute to the difficulty of an overweight/obese individual because of their inability to resist food or maintain physical activity. Recent research proposed that self-control could be described as similar to a muscle that can be fatigued. Thus, if an individual engages in a self-control task they have lessened ability to utilize self-control on a subsequent task. Theory also suggests self-control may be fueled by a finite resource, identified as blood glucose. The role blood glucose plays is important to understand, especially in overweight and obese populations, as they may be more likely to be insulin resistant. In effect overweight and obese individuals are less likely to adequately process glucose. Therefore overweight/obese individuals might react to self-control tasks differently than normal weight individuals. Participants who were considered normal weight, overweight, and obese were recruited from the UNT research pool. They answered questions about their trait self-control in daily life and engaged in either a task that required them to exert self-control (e.g., resist crossing out a letter unless criteria …

HIV is a potentially fatal virus that affects over 1,148,200 people in the United States. Due to the minority status that comes with living with HIV, PLH (people living with HIV) often encounter various aspects of stigma due to HIV, which contributes to suppressed overall psychological quality of life (PQOL).While the relationship between stigma and PQOL in PLH is well documented, little research examines mediators of this relationship. We hypothesized that spirituality (as measured by sense of peace, forgiveness of self and perceived fulfillment of life's goal) mediates the relationship between stigma and PQOL (as measured by depression, mental health and stress). We used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design which utilizes two distinct phases of the research process: quantitative (QUANT) analysis followed by qualitative (QUAL) analysis. Results of the QUANT phase suggest spirituality is a partial mediator in the relationship between stigma and PQOL in PLH. In the QUAL phase, we interviewed 15 PLH to elaborate on the relationships between the three constructs. We found PLH endorsed personalized stigma most frequently. Similarly, our results also indicate PLH experience stress, depression and anxiety as a result of their HIV status. Lastly, participant's interviewed most commonly described their spiritual beliefs as …

Discordance between weekday and weekend sleep schedules is common (Bonnet & Arand, 1995; Breslau, Roth, Rosenthal, & Andreski, 1997; Machado, Varella, & Andrade, 1998; Strauch & Meier, 1988; Tsai & Li, 2004). Brief retrospective self-report measures are essential for epidemiological research studies (Moul, Hall, Pilkonis, & Buysse, 2004), but self-reports are prone to error in recall, and the greater the variability in nightly sleep, the less reliable are retrospective reports (Babkoff, Weller, & Lavidor, 1996). More accurate self-report responses may be possible if measures prompt participants to consider variations in sleep schedules that are consistent (i.e., weekday and weekend sleep schedules). The current study experimentally examined whether Bifurcated (Weekday and Weekend) retrospective assessments of sleep are more accurate than Unitary (Past Week) assessments. Participants were randomly assigned to complete one of the two versions (Bifurcated vs. Unitary) of the Sleep Questionnaire. One hundred and thirty-one participants were included in the analyses. Results of a a series of analyses demonstrated that the Bifurcated version of the Sleep Questionnaire provided more accurate and less variable estimates of total sleep time than the Unitary version of the Sleep Questionnaire. Differences between the versions of the Sleep Questionnaire for other sleep variables were less …