Research indicates that in the last five decades, claims of Satanic ritual abuse (RA), and the numbers of clients receiving counselling for RA, have increased in all Western countries. This has resulted in an increased corpus of related literature overseas, which includes studies in which facticity as well as aetiology, symptomology and treatment are debated. This present study focuses on a New Zealand context, and examines the talk of New Zealand counsellors in relation to their views regarding RA and the counselling of RA clients. Social constructionist and positivist epistemologies were evaluated in terms of their suitability for this research, and the discourse analytic method developed by Potter and Wetherell (1987) chosen as the means by which participants’ talk might be analysed in such a way as to allow the inclusion of multiple constructions and the emergence of the many discourses and conflicting ideas which occur in overseas literature. A broad selection of the literature was first critically analysed to give an understanding of the topic. Nine counsellors gave interviews, eight women and one man, all Pakeha, six of whom were ACC-registered (Accident Compensation Commission, 2009). The participants constructed RA as a physical reality, which was justified by the use of the credible client discourse. A traditional linguistic repertoire furnished a discourse of government backing, which was employed to warrant voice. A moral stake in counselling, named concern for the client, was shown to be present in all arguments. The participants constructed three truths relative to context: a legal truth, the counsellor’s truth, and the client’s truth. Recovered memories were given a dual construction which legitimised correct and incorrect recall. DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) labelling was debated in a discourse of ambivalence. Finally in a discourse of preparedness, the participants constructed the therapeutic skills needed to treat RA clients. The thesis concludes by highlighting the participants’ comments regarding the need for openness and awareness, and specialised literature and training for counsellors treating RA clients.

This research examined the effects of motivation on the well-being of humanitarian health workers. Using Self-Determination Theory, I argued introjected and identified motivations were applicable to this occupational domain, and have differential effects on well-being. Introjected motivation would be positively related to hedonic well-being and burnout, while identified motivation would be positively related to eudaimonic well-being and vitality. Orientations to happiness and passion were proposed as mediating these relationships. An online quantitative questionnaire was used in the first phase of data collection. Respondents were N = 82 humanitarian health workers. A semi-structured interview methodology was used in the second phase. Participants were N = 5 humanitarian health workers. Path analyses revealed neither introjected nor identified motivation was significantly related to vitality or hedonic vs. eudaimonic well-being. Both motivations had significant direct effects on burnout, albeit in the opposite direction to hypotheses. Passion moderated the relationship between motivation and burnout. Additional path analyses showed obsessive passion mediated the path between introjected motivation and emotional exhaustion. Harmonious passion mediated the path between identified motivation and diminished personal accomplishment. Both obsessive and harmonious passion mediated the paths between each motivation and depersonalisation, although identified motivation had the strongest relationship with this aspect of burnout. Interview data supported the majority of quantitative findings. The results suggest the motivations underlying engagement in humanitarian work, are related to the development of burnout. The mediational effect of passion determines which aspect of burnout will be most prevalent. The findings have applicability to the design and implementation of recruitment strategies, and programs aimed at the treatment and prevention of burnout in workers, both pre- and post-deployment to humanitarian situations.

In an attempt to replicate and extend previous research, the present study conducted a brief psychoeducational intervention through community organisations designed to overcome methodological shortcomings of past studies. The two session intervention (one session with follow-up phone call) sought to establish if a brief community intervention was effective in both improving family members’ knowledge about schizophrenia and various other indicators linked to improved client functioning. People with schizophrenia and their family members (N = 50) were recruited into a controlled trial of a brief educational intervention. Clients and their corresponding key family members were randomly allocated to a treatment group or a wait-list control group. Measures included those reflecting knowledge about schizophrenia, expressed emotion, perceived coping ability, burden of care and distress. Analyses showed that knowledge increased significantly after the intervention and not after the control condition and was maintained at a nine-month follow-up. Family members’ and clients’ expressed emotion ratings significantly decreased from pre- to post-test with changes in total expressed emotion scores improving across treatment by over twice the magnitude compared to the control condition. All gains were maintained at the nine-month follow-up, with continuing improvement seen in family members’ intrusiveness ratings. A similar pattern of findings was reflected on other indices, with significant improvements in burden of care, coping and distress that were more a function of intervention than the control condition. All gains were maintained at the nine-month follow-up. Additionally, assessment of relapse rates at this follow-up interval indicated that no client had relapsed. Overall the results suggested that although knowledge increased as a result of education, the improvements in all indicators other than knowledge appeared to be due to education combined with some non-specific factors. These non-specific factors may have included expectancy effects, setting effects, sampling bias and other possibilities. These issues are considered in terms of implementation of brief programs in supportive community settings and in terms of future research.

Self-management programmes provide one form of education for people with diabetes. Evaluations of these programmes allow for a better understanding in regard to their impact and whether outcomes are met. Very little research has used qualitative methods to capture participants’ experiences of these programmes and their perception of psychological outcomes. This is the first qualitative evaluation of the Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management Programme in Whangarei. It has adopted an interpretative-phenomenological approach to explore participants’ experiences of the programme and participants’ perceptions in regard to their self-efficacy and quality of life after attending a course. A sample of 7 participants with diabetes provided data via interviews 4 weeks and 3 months after attending the course. The themes that emerged from the initial interview were separated into three evaluation components. In “6 weeks sounded very long but it was worth the time”, participants discussed enrolment, benefits of the course and suggestions for future participants. In “I know what I need to do and I’m confident to do it”, participants linked the gained knowledge from the course to improvements in their self-efficacy regarding self-management behaviours, education and control of own life. In “Life is good, diabetes is just another thing to handle”, participants reflected on the impact of living with diabetes and changes to their life. An overarching theme of settling into a comfortable routine emerged from the follow-up interview. Participants reflected positively on their course and research participation. The programme was perceived to be beneficial to participants, impacting positively on increasing knowledge, self-efficacy development, behaviour changes and quality of life. The participants maintained these benefits in the short-term. These results are discussed in terms of the need for further research to evaluate if benefits are maintained in the long-term, referral process to the programme, decision-making process in regard to enrolment and impact of a support person attending the programme. Practice implications for the programme are discussed in regard to incorporating a follow-up phone call to participants after they attended a course and offering follow-up sessions with the latest information on diabetes care.

While traditional behavioural parent training programmes have assisted families with concerns of child behaviour problems, they have not kept abreast with recent conceptualisations of the development of problematic behaviours in the parent-child relationship. Research has indicated that understanding of this relationship needs to go beyond bidirectional explanations and that a dialectical framework better describes the complexity of this relationship, which, in turn, should be reflected in the parent training programmes offered. Therefore, this study provided a parent training programme focused on balance in the parent-child relationship, which encapsulated the complex, dialectical nature of this intimate relationship. A central implication when adopting this notion of balance was that all aspects of the programme were addressed at the parent and child level. In addition, multiple factors were addressed that included mindfulness and acceptance, dealing with emotions, understanding development, and addressing parental attributions. It was only within this overarching concept of balance and relationship factors that behavioural skills were introduced. Mechanisms of change were identified by investigating parental emotional schemas through their narratives about themselves, their child, and the programme. This research involved 23 parents with their 3-4 year-old children in a parent training programme where both the parent and child met weekly with a therapist in group parent training. The groups involved 2-hourly sessions for 5 weeks, modelled on a “coffee morning” where parents met and discussed issues and the children played alongside in the same room. A research assistant was available to play with and tend to basic needs of the children. Measures at pre-, post-treatment, and at follow-up targeted child behaviour problems, how much of a problem these were for the parents, parents’ sense of competence, parental attributions, and what was useful for parents in the programme. Results indicated that at post-treatment parents were able to address and maintain balance in their parent-child relationship and this reflected multiple dimensions of a dialectical understanding that had not been evident prior to the intervention. There was an increased mindfulness of both parent and child’s needs with a strong emphasis on an increased understanding of the child as an individual in their own right. Parents reported an increased recognition of the importance of dealing with emotions, with improved skills to be able to do this, an increased understanding of accommodating development, and an appreciation of needing to address parental attributions. In addition, there was a decrease in parent-reported intensity of child behaviour problems and how problematic these were for the parents, which were corroborated with parental verbal reports of improved child behaviour. Mechanisms of change that were identified included changes in parental attributions, parents being able to share with other parents, accessing “expert” knowledge from the programme facilitator, and gaining parental strategies. Implications for practice were discussed with suggestions for behavioural parent training programmes. In conclusion, limitations of the research and directions for future research were indicated.

Low-skilled, low socio-economic status, young, co-resident, working fathers: Their experience of fatherhood Using open-ended interview techniques, 23 low-skilled, low socio-economic status fathers aged 20-29 were interviewed about their experience of fatherhood. All participants were in unskilled jobs and all lived with and supported their partners and child/children. This population of fathers is generally overlooked by researchers. Because they take responsibility for some of society’s most vulnerable families and children, understanding how they conceive of their role as fathers can promote the welfare of those families and children. Participants were recruited by casual connections, snowballing and advertisement. The interviews explored the participants' experience of fatherhood and their reasons for being active and committed family members. Focus was given to how they made sense of fatherhood in terms of their life course. Participants had two interviews, the first generic and the second idiographic. Interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed. A social constructionist approach was used: transcripts were analysed by identifying and examining the primary domains in which participants experienced fatherhood. Participants spoke of fatherhood as an affective activity, the primary object of good fatherhood being to maintain an emotional bond with one’s children. Being a good father was thought to involve eschewing deleterious family practices such as those which had marred their own childhoods. In this regard, participants saw themselves as repairing their family-of-origin's dysfunctional style. Providing was described as a core feature of fatherhood – subsidiary to, but corollary on, being an emotionally-engaged father. Good fathers were described as committed providers, albeit participants did not consider their own limited earning capacity to compromise their fatherhood. Obtaining a job and providing for one’s family was one of the ‘pro-socializing’ effects of fatherhood. Participants considered fatherhood to not only improve but to also redeem their lives, giving a purpose and focus they had lacked prior to their becoming parents. Being a good father also involved being a good partner. For many of the participants, this involved adopting non-gendered roles in the home. The sharing of housework and childcare improved home life by reducing the partner's workload. Those who failed to adopt the gender-neutral stance acknowledged this as a personal shortcoming that they planned to remedy. Fatherhood for these 23 interviewees was one of the few means by which they could obtain social value and status as adults. They lacked access to financial resources, education or supportive family connections, but fatherhood was a domain in which they could present themselves as significant members of society. It also provided a network of emotional relationships which promoted their sense of self-worth and their social and emotional wellbeing.

This thesis uses a discourse analytic approach to the language used by Pakeha in talk about Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The research begins with an assay of a large body of public submissions and, using the finding of common themes and patterns of ideas, images and usages running though the data, proceeds to examine texts arising from other contexts in order to comment on the generality of the original results. It is suggested that the commonalities described amount to an ideological and linguistic resource base for the construction of a powerful "standard story" of Maori/Pakeha relations, which underpins and legitimates the oppressive status quo. Further extensions of the investigation examine changes in the discourse in the contemporary setting and pursue origins of the themes in historical texts arising from the period of contact between Maori and Pakeha prior to the colonisation of the country.

This thesis uses a discourse analytic approach to the language used by Pakeha in talk about Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The research begins with an assay of a large body of public submissions and, using the finding of common themes and patterns of ideas, images and usages running though the data, proceeds to examine texts arising from other contexts in order to comment on the generality of the original results. It is suggested that the commonalities described amount to an ideological and linguistic resource base for the construction of a powerful "standard story" of Maori/Pakeha relations, which underpins and legitimates the oppressive status quo. Further extensions of the investigation examine changes in the discourse in the contemporary setting and pursue origins of the themes in historical texts arising from the period of contact between Maori and Pakeha prior to the colonisation of the country.

Perceptions of increased rates of violence worldwide have heightened the need to understand what children think about their experiences as victims or witnesses of violence. Few studies have examined violence from the viewpoint of children. The purpose of this study was to examine children's perceptions of the prevalence, incidence, and impact of violence experienced or witnessed by them and to explore the factors that might mitigate and reduce its impact. A national survey of New Zealand children, aged 9 to 13 years, with a representative sample of 2,077 children from 28 randomly selected schools of various sizes, geographic areas and socioeconomic neighbourhoods was undertaken. A questionnaire was developed for children to report the nature and extent of physical, sexual and emotional violence (including bullying) experienced within their main contexts (home and school). To assess the impact of this violence, as well as children's perceptions of school, their coping experiences, and the extent to which they used violence in their own interpersonal relationships, analyses of data comprised frequencies, bivariate correlations, t-tests, and multiple regressions. Results showed high prevalence rates of physical, emotional, and sexual violence. Comparison of the three types of violence revealed emotional violence to be the most prevalent form of violence and as having more impact on children than physical violence. Sexual violence had the most overall impact. Witnessing violence was more prevalent and, except for sexual victimisation, also had greater impact than direct violence. All types of violence involving adults were rated higher than violence involving children. The study also examined the ethical considerations and philosophy underpinning research that involves children. Guided by Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the results support the controversial ethical decision to adopt a passive consent procedure. The study demonstrated children's competence to express the ways in which violence has affected them. Conclusions are that effective development of policy and provision should be based on data that reflects children's perceptions of the violence in the context of their own lives

The monitoring-blunting theory of coping in threatening situations (Miller, 1981, 1987) suggests that when faced with a threatening situation, individuals can respond either by attending to threatening information (―monitoring‖) or by avoiding threatening information (―blunting‖). A valid and reliable measure of children’s preferred coping styles in dental situations may assist dental staff in providing efficacious anxiety-reducing interventions to diverse groups of children. The current study sought to validate a scale of children’s preference for monitoring or blunting in dental situations (the Monitoring Blunting Dental Scale or MBDS). The psychometric characteristics of the scale were assessed in a group of 240 eleven to thirteen year old New Zealand children. Internal consistency reliability was adequate for both the monitoring ( = .743) and blunting ( = .762) subscales. Convergent validity was indicated by strong correlations (> .6) between the MBDS monitoring and blunting subscales and those of an adapted version of the Child Behavioural Style Scale (CBSS-M). Discriminant validity with respect to dental anxiety was strong for the monitoring subscale, r = .079, p = .221, but not the blunting subscale, r = .478, p <.001. Confirmatory factor analysis of the MBDS indicated adequate fit for a two factor monitoring-blunting model (RMSEA = .079), but unacceptable fit for a one factor model (RMSEA = .095). A similar finding was observed when confirmatory factor analysis of the CBSS-M was conducted. These confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the monitoring and blunting theoretical constructs cannot be justifiably regarded as representing poles of a single underlying dimension, but are better regarded as distinct, related constructs. A content analysis of children’s comments about the coping strategies they might adopt in several dental scenarios indicated that these strategies were largely classifiable within monitoring-blunting theory, with blunting-type strategies much more commonly mentioned. Given further validity evidence, the MBDS could be a useful measure when attempting to tailor anxiety-reducing interventions in dental settings to children with diverse coping preferences.