SWAG�ϼ�

September 13, 2017
Story by Micah Oelze
Courtesy Photo Submitted

Former SWAG�ϼ� student Lindsey Rojas took first place at the Great Plains Students’ Psychology Convention at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) in the spring semester of 2017.

Rojas began taking classes at SWAG�ϼ� in 2011, graduating in 2013 with an associate in science before transferring to Kansas Wesleyan University (KWU).

“Something I loved about SWAG�ϼ� was that it felt like home. It is a smaller community; you are a lot closer to your teachers and you have personal relationships with them,” Rojas said. “I don’t think I would have been able to transition so easily into my bachelor or master’s degree without having that foundation at SWAG�ϼ�.”

For her senior research project at KWU, Rojas partnered with her classmate, Alissa Kim, to co-author a project on corporal punishment.

“Our research was titled ‘Parental Gender Differences on Attitude Towards Corporal Punishment’,” she said. “I have a daughter and at the time my significant other and I were discussing spanking and discipline which is where I got my idea.”

Working in childcare, Rojas knew she would have a good pool of parents to pull from to receive data needed for their study. They created an anonymous questionnaire and took additional measures to make sure the 97 participants felt comfortable answering their questions. The results they received were unforeseen for Rojas.

“We found really there is no difference between female and males in how they feel about corporal punishment,” Rojas said. “However, we found males are more likely to punish their children how they were punished when they were kids than females are.”

Rojas and Kim discovered corporal punishment is often only affiliated with spanking, but the term is actually more broad.

“It [corporal punishment] is just physical punishment; so, that includes pinching, grabbing, slapping and pulling,” she said. “We found a lot of people who were against spanking would do some of the other things. For the most part, the majority of our parents were for and practiced corporal punishment. We had probably less than 10 people who were completely against it.”

After seeing their research, Rojas’s professor, Dr. Hoekstra, brought forth the opportunity for Rojas and Kim to present their findings in an upcoming event at FHSU. Upon their arrival, Rojas noticed judge’s badges and asked her professor why there were people wearing judges badges when he dropped the surprise on them, it was a competition.

“I don’t know why but I psyched myself out,” she said. “We were in the third block so we had a little bit of time to practice and watch other presentations. Once I started watching some of the other research being presented I felt more at ease because I felt we had something interesting that wasn’t just throwing up numbers on a board.”

As Rojas watched her competitors, she noted a few ways her and her partner could improve their presentation to help stand out a little more – they were going to get the audience involved, throw in humor and present with confidence.

“All of the presenters we saw used note cards and didn’t seem to know their study very well,” she said. “We purposely wanted to know our slides and be able to explain our findings in a way which showed we knew what we were talking about.”

With their presentation revised from recent observations, Rojas and Kim presented their findings to the judges and then began to wait for the results. When their names were announced for first place it wasn’t a complete surprise to Rojas but she was still taken aback that the judges enjoyed their presentation and research.��

The judges were not the only ones thrilled with Rojas’s work. SWAG�ϼ�’s Psychology Instructor��Rick Bealer who had Rojas in six of his classes said he was impressed by her work.

“You must understand something about psychologists and psych majors, we are trained to pick-apart research, question it, be skeptical, etc.,” Bealer said. “I was very impressed with Lindsey’s research and her analysis. As I told her, I would like to discuss aspects of it with her.��All research in psych sheds a ray of light in a dark room, but never illuminates the entire room.”

Rojas holds a bachelor degree from KWU in educational counseling with a minor in psychology. Rojas is the Assistant Director for the childcare center in Ellsworth. Her next step is to pursue an online master’s degree from FHSU School of Psychology.

The duo also presented at an event at their school titled ‘The Best of KWU’, which showcases the best of students work across departments in which Rojas and Kim placed in the top six.