pavica sheldon

Dr. Pavica Sheldon will receive the 2015 Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award in April.

Michael Mercier | UAH

The Southern States Communication Association (SSCA) has named Dr. Pavica Sheldon, an assistant professor of communication arts at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), the recipient of the 2015 Janice Hocker Rushing Early Career Research Award.

The award honors SSCA members who have demonstrated exceptional scholarly ability through research and publication early in their academic careers. Nominees must be untenured, assistant professors in the field of communication, and no more than five years shall have passed between nominee's appointment to the rank of assistant professor or receipt of terminal degree and the time of the award.

In addition, nominees must have participated in the program of the annual convention at least twice, or participated once in the convention program and published an article in the Southern Communication Journal. In addition to the requirements noted above, a maximum of three representative publications by the nominee were required to be submitted.

Dr. Sheldon will receive the award April 11 at a luncheon at the SSCA's 85th annual convention in Tampa, Fla.

I think it is wonderful for UAH to get this exposure, acknowledging the hard work that we are all doing here to make this university great.

Dr. Pavica Sheldon
Assistant professor
Communications arts

"I think it is wonderful for UAH to get this exposure, acknowledging the hard work that we are all doing here to make this university great," says Dr. Sheldon, who is currently the SCCA communication theory division program chair and is also on the editorial board of the Southern Communication Journal.

Dr. Sheldon recently published twice in the journal and has presented five times at SSCA conferences, including garnering a top paper award.

In one study that was published, she tested how parental and peer communication influences young adults' body image. Results of a survey of 283 college students show support for developmental and social comparison theories that argue that peers' influence in adolescence is more significant than parents' influence.

"Peer pressure is most often negative, especially for girls," Dr. Sheldon says. "Too much parental control can also negatively influence how college-aged women and men feel about their bodies. This is especially true for an opposite-sex parent."

A second SCJ paper examined how college students' use of media, peers and family pressure combined with their individual level of perfectionism to influence body esteem, with a special emphasis on gender differences.

"This study tests not only the students' exposure to different media but what they do with the media or how they compare themselves to the models in fashion magazines or on television," Dr. Sheldon says.

Although a survey of 224 college students showed that perfectionism and media use were not related to students' body esteem, higher family and peer pressure and a high score on perfectionism influenced women to compare themselves to the models in fashion magazines and on television. High family and peer pressure also influenced men's body esteem.

"The study provides practical implications for media educators, encouraging women to examine the possibility that the bodies of magazine models are just Photoshopped images with unreal body measurements," says Dr. Sheldon. "Not all women will need this kind of warning, though."

Additionally, Dr. Sheldon has published research about Facebook usage and relationship benefits among various user personality types. She found that even though introverts spend more time on the site, the relationship benefits of Facebook tend to accrue to extroverts, narcissists and people who desire great control over how they present themselves. The more extroverted a person is, the more status posts he or she is likely to make.

"I have had an undergraduate student present at SSCA, as well," says Dr. Sheldon. "This past summer another student, Larae Wade, worked with me on grant research and will present some of the findings in the upcoming SSCA conference in Tampa. She will also present in the top paper session."

 

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